Tag: social media

Like for WWE’s Mixed Match Challenge

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Full disclosure: at first blush, I thought the Mixed Match Challenge was going to be stupid.  A weak college try for the WWE to experiment with social media live broadcasting, and a blatant attempt at trying to garner web views and social squawking as if they actually could be translated into tangible revenue.

I’ll also be honest that I haven’t been watching the MMC over Facebook, because the last thing I want to see when I’m watching wrestling is to see a million comments flying by in an illegible stream, and a bunch of reaction icons floating across like a fart in the wind.  I’ve been watching them as they’ve been made available on the WWE Network instead, like a staunch hipster.

Regardless of the fact that I’m watching it in the manner not intended, I still have to say that I’ve found the MMC to be really enjoyable over the last four weeks.  Sure, it’s very evident in the way its executed that they’re definitely making great efforts to try and appeal to casuals and tenuous viewers, but in doing so, they’re unintentionally breaking all the tropes and memes that exist about the wrestling industry that most smarky fans like myself are innately aware of, and therefore making it refreshing and interesting in the process.

For example, despite the fact that WWE programming is televised at least five hours every week, if your name isn’t John Cena, Roman Reigns, Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey, Shane McMahon or AJ Styles, it’s not very likely that a wrestler is going to get much screen time.  The rosters are large, and there’s simply not enough time for everyone to get a piece of the spotlight.  The MMC has been running basically a 30 minute format, but featuring just two men and two women at a time, and suddenly there’s a generous slice of spotlight for all participants to be in a main event, even if it’s just for just a singular web broadcast.  It’s allowing superstars not necessarily main eventers to get a lot of attention, and in a monopolized industry where we’re spoonfed formulaic wrestling storylines meant to maximize revenue and sell merchandise, it’s a refreshing reprieve form the norm.

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The sad truth about Doc

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As is often times the case whenever a publicly known figure dies in some unexpected incident, there is a lot of immediate response of shock and surprise, followed by endless litanies of knee-jerk condolences, instant sorrow and poetic waxing.  Personally, I think it’s sometimes obnoxious when I think that people are doing it what I feel is disingenuously, especially when it seems like they’re just trying to be seen grieving, and not actually caring that much.

The point is, there are a lot of immediate reactions when it comes to news of the sudden deaths of publicly known figures, and as nihilistic as I may think they sometimes can be, it’s for good reason.  Death is almost always sad, and it is rarely good news to hear about the passing of life in general.

A few months ago, Major League Baseball pitcher Roy Halladay died in a plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico.  It was sudden and out of nowhere when this occurred, and immediately afterward, just about anyone who ever liked baseball in the last two decades immediately came out to speak about condolences, thoughts and prayers, among other things.  The cities of Toronto and Philadelphia, where Halladay played for made huge public announcements of their sadness of the passing, and I bet they were preparing for shit like moments of silence, memorials or public acknowledgments of his career in the coming 2018 season.

The sudden loss of one of the greatest pitchers of this generation was definitely surprising, unfortunate, and a genuine loss for Major League Baseball.

But as is often the case whenever a publicly known figure passes, personally, I’d like to know the whole story first before I decide to speak about them.

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I am a fan of teens eating Tide Pods

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The long and the short of such a remark is that it’s simply accelerating Darwinism that the stupid and weak evacuate existence faster than nature may have originally intended to.  I’m not a fan of stupid people, and unfortunately the world is quite overloaded with them anyway.  I’m also not a fan of mercilessly killing people for the sake of reducing the population of unsavory people, but when people croak on account of their own stupidity because they think it’s funny or are so starved for internet attention that they resort to eating laundry detergent, then it’s really out of all of our hands here.

I’m long past writing out the words “just when I thought people couldn’t get any dumber” because I learned a long, long time ago that no matter how low the bar may be lowered to, people will always, always find the ways to make it sink even further.  Frankly, teenagers deliberately staging fake tripping incidents in grocery stores while holding gallons of milk or juice seems like Mensa-caliber compared to people eating Tide Pods.  Or when thousands of people managed to organize and gather… for a Rick & Morty themed chicken nugget sauce that pretty much barely existed, and were ultimately owned by McDonalds when they all had to be told that they didn’t have any; those buffoons seem like MIT’s class of 2020 now.

Frankly, I wasn’t really surprised or concerned when I found out that teenagers eating Tide Pods was a thing recently.  If I think tons of people my age and generation are idiots, it’s a no-brainer that their offspring that’s budding into today’s teenage class are going to be just as stupid, and in this case, somehow manage to be even dumber.  Not only is the risk of ingesting laundry detergent clearly labeled on all packaging, the thought of eating it isn’t remotely appealing or worth the risk in order to get twelve people to see it on social media.

But whatever, if kids want to eat Tide Pods and kill themselves in the process, go ahead and let them. If they’re dumb enough to be doing so in the first place, it’s kind of doing the world a favor and getting them out of the way so that the actual cream of the crop can rise and make something of this wasteland of a world that we’re living in.  I’m not promoting death, but far be it for us to stand in the way of natural selection, and if kids are knowingly swallowing poison on their own volition because it’s what they think will get them attention, then I should switch professions into the funeral industry, because there’s tons of money to be made there for this reason and so many more.

Oh, Curbed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honestly, I don’t even know why I still bother visiting Curbed Atlanta these days.  In the past, I used to look at it, because they actually talked about real estate, and it was kind of cool to see what properties in other neighborhoods throughout the metro area looked like, and I was on the verge of hitting the market.  But now I’ve got a new home, yet I still find myself visiting the site with some regularity.

I could write a bunch of bullshit reasons about how it’s still a local community website discussing things pertaining to Atlanta, but those would all be, bullshit.  Really, I think the most intriguing part about it is the robust comments sections of every article, featuring the same insufferable hipsters, NIMBYs and ITP snobs constantly repeating how great East Atlanta and Old Fourth Ward are, and how everything not those neighborhoods aren’t really Atlanta, and if it were remotely possible, they’d declare them not even a part of the United States as well.  It’s these people butting heads with those who foolishly choose to engage them, and the ensuing internet fights that happen every single day, is why I tend to visit somewhat regularly.

Like the year prior, Curbed has decided to do this silly arbitrary tournament, deciding the “best neighborhood” of Atlanta. Much like the year prior, a bunch of neighborhoods that are not really a part of the metro Atlanta proper and/or crime-ridden cesspools have populated the bracket.  And much like the year prior, inexplicably, College Park, Georgia not only makes the dance, but dances their way into the final four.

I could simply state that the inclusion of College Park in this silly competition is what immediately invalidates it from the onset and call it a day, but then we lose out on all the fun of criticizing everything about it.

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People are fucking dumb

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For reasons completely outside of my comprehension, I’ve come across numerous articles about how people are deliberately smashing and breaking their Keurig machines out of protest for them pulling their ads from some talking head show.

The first thing that comes to my head is: why??

Keurigs are expensive machines.  I love my Keurig.  It allows me to have consistently reliable coffee at the push of a button, and I never have to worry about making too much or too little, and ever since I switched to a reusable pod, the whole wasteful argument from k-cups goes out the window. 

I would never destroy my Keurig because I disagreed with their non-business related views; they’ve already gotten my money, what’s the sense of destroying it out of protest and denying myself future coffee that I rely on and enjoy so much?

Even if I were in a position where I had replacement hardware for my Keurig, and could feasibly destroy my Keurig so I could try and fail to farm attention on social media, I still wouldn’t.  Instead, I could give my old Keurig to someone who might benefit from having one, or better yet, donate it to charity, so I can inflate its value on my taxes and actually make a little bit something back from it.

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No, please god no, just no

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The word people my ancient age are really beginning to identify as a legit trigger: spinoff.  As in The Karate Kid is filming a spinoff show, starring Ralph Macchio and Billy Zabka, about their fucking kids and their own miserable, post-Karate Kid lives.

This one hurts.  I tolerated Fuller House and Girl Meets World because as much of an old-man stink as I made about their spinoffs, because as much as I actually did watch the shit out of those series, I didn’t really care about them.  Same goes for whatever Roseanne spinoff they’re plotting.

But The Karate Kid?  THE fucking The Karate Kid??  With Daniel-san and Mr. Miyagi and Cobra Kai and get him a body bag yyyeeeaahhh??  This one hurts.

This one hurts, really bad.

Why the fuck can’t people just let the classics live out their lives and die peacefully?  Why does some fucking asshole(s) have to dip into nostalgia and dig shit out of their treasured pasts and bring them back into this shitty present time with social media and retards as elected officials and other literal and metaphorical cancers, with weak, convoluted, fan-fiction-caliber storylines and their kids’ perspectives for the promises of paydays?  Why the fuck can’t these actors manage their money or their egos where they don’t feel the need to accept these miserable spinoffs for the sake of their own classic bodies of work?

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This is precisely why my trust in white people is fractured

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the vast majority of nerds that comprise of the vast majority of my social media circles, there was an individual that many of us knew/knew of identified as having been present in Charlottesville during the weekend of hell there.  This was confirmed by commentary made by them that stated as such, and that’s pretty much all that there needed to be known by the community before the witch hunt began and the shit started to fly.

Typically, my go-to move on social media is to unfollow people but not outright unfriend people, if I don’t like seeing what people post.  Whether they post too much for my liking, post opinions that I don’t want to see, flood my streams full of narcissism and/or selfies, or all of the above, among other reasons, I’ll usually unfollow first, but rarely unfriend.  I don’t want paranoid people eventually discovering that they’ve been unfriended and to have an uncomfortable conversation later down the line, and if it can be avoided, I’d rather avoid it.

But it’s not every day that you find out that someone you know personally, have allowed into your home, and allowed to pet and carry your dog, with smiles and seeming sincerity, marched in a rally and chanted discriminatory rhetoric with known white supremacists.

This is why my trust in white people has taken a critical hit, and why I can’t feel like I can ever let my guard down with them.  Even those that I’ve known for a while, apparently.

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