Tag: social media

I love when a bad plan backfires

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Blue Jays pitcher goes on Twitter to bitch about United Airlines asking his wife to clean up after their kids on a flight, gets bodied by The Internet

See, now this is an instance where The Internet made the right call on someone to unleash the fury onto.

Anthony Bass, a journeyman pitcher of marginal talent, who has played for seven different MLB franchises, and has made over $10 million dollars in career earnings, tries to go on the internet to shame United Airlines over the crew of a flight he and his family were on, asking the pregnant mother of their children to clean up a popcorn spill.  But his evident quest to gain sympathy and shame United Airlines backfires stupendously, and he receives a healthy dose of reality from the cauldron of the internet, leading to lots of disagreement, ridicule, and of course, snarky analysis of his baseball talent.

I think it goes without saying that I’m on the side of The Internet on this one, because I’ve done my share of traveling on airplanes with kids and it is every bit as difficult, aggravating and patience testing as one without kids might think it is.  But I also do it intelligently, and even if the airline were to present fucking popcorn to my kids, I simply wouldn’t let them have it.  The probability of a mess is higher than Bass’s opponents’ batting average has been this season, and I wouldn’t want to put myself in a position to where I would have to be the parent asked to clean up after my kids.

But if I were?  I’d do it, no questions asked.  I’ve flown enough in my life and know enough about the airline industry to know that flight attendants aren’t maids, butlers, servants or custodians.  I respect what they do, and I know that cleaning up after mine or my kids’ messes aren’t their primary jobs, and any assistance that they do give is a genuine act of generosity to be grateful for, and not expected.

Bass, his wife, and his wife’s sister, who is also married to a (former) professional athlete, are all a bunch of spoiled, infantilized idiots who have lost touch with normal people in normal occupations, because they’ve been coddled in the lifestyles of professional athletes for the better part of a decade.  I absolutely am tickled by the notion that Bass and his clan all got on social media with the intent to shame United Airlines, but it mostly backfired on them all, and of all the resistance they received, I absolutely love it when a baseball player’s poor performance inevitably is brought up, because in most cases it adds nothing to the argument, but in the context of comparing it to the situation, it kind of works.

I love the fact that someone screen grabbed his Baseball-Reference page, primarily showing off his 2023 stats where he has an abysmal 7.11 ERA and a negative -0.2 WAR, and made the comparison that he had no room to complain about United not doing their jobs when it was very evident that he was not doing his.

But I kind of get Anthony Bass’s frustration a little bit too though.  I’ve been twice a husband to a pregnant wife, and I understand that if I’m not here, I could only wish people were willing to help her out when needed.  Frankly, he had some reason to be frustrated with a flight attendant, if they didn’t help at all, and stood there and watched his wife get down and pick up popcorn, but frankly I’d also be miffed with surrounding passengers who sat on their asses with seatbelts on, and didn’t help a very likely obviously pregnant woman on the ground picking up popcorn.  Sure, it’s not their job to do such, as it isn’t the jobs of the flight attendants, but a little bit of empathy and compassion can go a long way in life.

Either way, I still got a lot of amusement of reading the fallout of Anthony Bass and his beef with United.  He clearly thought he was going to have The Internet to back him up against United, but much like the confidence in his abilities he must have had after his fairly decent 2022 season, he was wrong.  And I love seeing spoiled professional athletes get owned on the internet.

Great, now I have to defend the influencer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t think I’d find a way to organically work this Keyboard Warriors logo I made into a post, and would have to dedicate an entire post to it, but sometimes the internet provideths

The skinny: 21-year old TikTok influencer makes posts about purchasing a home free and clear, The Internet responds with venom, resulting in the influencer tearfully apologizing for being out of touch with people with don’t make as much money as her

Welp, I never thought I’d ever be in the position for wanting to defend an influencer, but here we are.  I’m on the side of the influencer, and when it really comes down to it, I just feel that everyone who is throwing stones her way is, a jealous fatty.

Because I’ve seen enough people do exactly what this little chica does whenever they buy a home: they fucking announce it to the world on social media, because no matter what way you put it, it is a tremendous achievement, that anyone who gets into the position of entering homeownership should be proud of.

I purchased my first home at 22 years of age.  I obviously wasn’t an influencer or in any field nearly as lucrative as this kid was in, and I most definitely wasn’t free and clear from the onset.  But I still delved into the world of homeownership at a very young age, and it was truly for the best as I’d begun accumulating experience that I feel has been valuable as I’d evolved my living situations since then.

The influencer isn’t really that special in the sense that she got a home at a young age.  Any 20-something that’s remotely responsible with their finances could probably make it happen.  The only real difference between her and the vast majority of the world is that she happens to make her living in a form that is oft-seen as insufferable, obnoxious, and generally not popular with the cynical segment of the world, in spite of the fact that those who succeed at it tend to make lucrative livings from doing such.

And this is where I think it’s pretty petty, ripe with jealousy, and sour grapes from the people who are casting rocks in her direction, but mostly jealousy at the fact that she has managed to get into a position to where she could achieve free and clear homeownership.  I mean, I’m envious over the fact that she’s free and clear, but I don’t hold it against her; if I had the ability to just completely pay off my mortgage, I’d most definitely wipe that shit out too.

But it sucks that she has to endure such abuse from the peanut gallery, just because she happened to have gotten the right combination of finding a working formula, luck in gaining exposure, and the appeal to get lucrative sponsorships and means to make the copious amounts of money needed to afford the lifestyle.  Because I’d wager my house that anyone who flung bile at her, if they were in her position, they’d most definitely be buying real estate and doing exactly what she did too.

The fact that she felt the need to apologize was completely unnecessary and I don’t think she owes anyone an apology for being successful.  And I’m spending a lot more time white knighting for this kid than I thought I would deem necessary, but the point is, this is a scenario where The Internet sometimes makes the wrong choices of picking people to vilify, and picking on an influencer just because the majority of the people wish they could have her success, is one of them.

Now wait for her adventures as the world of homeownership comes closing in on her.  Home repairs, being responsible for fucking everything in the house, taxes, homeowner associations or any of the niggling things about homeownership that often makes us sometimes go “I understand the appeal of renting,” begins.  That can be the content insufferable anons can get up on their high horses about instead, but those who have already taken first swings, are already playing from behind.

I don’t think the WWE realizes the Christmas gift they’ve just been given

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SSDD – WWE superstar under fire for unpopular opinions on social media, feat. Lacey Evans

I don’t particularly care to go too in depth on what Lacey Evans said or supported on social media, I’m sure anyone interested could simply google it and find it with relative ease, but basically it has something to do with her basically being a believer in some conspiracies about how autism and ADD are fake or something of the sort, and the internet coming down on her like Hulkamania, forcing her into internet defense mode, and last I checked, she’s deactivated all her shit and gone dark, as one really should do when the heat gets a little hot.

The point of this post is though, that if there were ever one small sliver of an advantage that Lacey Evans has in her life right now, is the fact that she’s a professional wrestler, an occupation oft-seen as carny and not to be taken too seriously, and if she and interested parties play their cards right, I feel like there’s a hell of a gift to be found and cashed in upon, and Evans can be absolved of dumb doing, and the WWE can possibly make some money in the process.

Long story short, the WWE hasn’t had much luck in finding a working formula, creatively, for Lacey Evans.  And Lacey Evans, personal beliefs notwithstanding, is one of those talents that actually excels more on the physical spectrum than character work, which is kind of a rarity these days, as lots of wrestlers have realized that it’s more important to be able to entertaining versus demonstrating technical ability.

We had the, kind of Rosie the Riveter She Can Do It version of Lacey Evans when she was still in NXT, she was called up to the main roster to be the sassy southern belle, which had a little bit of success, but her personal life derailed her career just when things were getting interesting in a program with Charlotte Flair when she got pregnant and had to go off television.  But to her credit, she had a kid, got back into shape, but has been spinning wheels trying to get back on television, even trying to lean into the usual layup of All-American veteran-turned pro wrestler.

Just when things were seemingly trying to get back on course again, by pairing Evans up with the hall of fame Sgt. Slaughter, she had to get in her own way by spouting off on Twitter, which frankly social media should be avoided by all celebrities if they know what’s good for them, and the internet is all over her because her opinions are not popular, regardless of the fact that I think they’re dumb too personally.

But the thing is, as Eric Bischoff once said, controversy creates cash, and whether Lacey Evans and the WWE realize it or not, they’ve been given a tremendous gift right now, in the form of an extremely effective emotion-eliciting potential persona for Lacey Evans:

Lacey Evans: the Karen of the WWE.

Continue reading “I don’t think the WWE realizes the Christmas gift they’ve just been given” →

Re: Lensa, AI artwork and theft

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In most cases, I don’t have much idea of what’s going on in the world other than what I see people talking about on social media.  I simply don’t go out of my way like I used to, to seek out information and the happenings in the world as I occasionally did in the life before children.  However, over the last few days, the topic of some AI art generator, Lensa, has been noticeably a hot topic as far as my digital eyes can see.

Mostly because it’s been determined that Lensa’s art database in which it pulls its art generation from has been built up from billions and billions of images of photos and artwork from the internet, mostly with no sense of consent or permission, which ultimately concludes with the notion that they are using a fuckload of stolen artwork to feed the database.

In this debate, I’ve noticed that there are two very prevalent sides, both of which like in so many cases, have their feet firmly implanted in the mud and neither seemingly willing to yield a single digital e-inch on their opinions.  There’s the side of the creators, the people who have been creating, artwork, or rather content, whose creations have been absorbed and usurped into Lensa’s database without any sort of authorization, and feeding a machine that is spitting out AI-generated results at the beck and call for its increasing base of users.  This is the side of the equation that is unhappy, angry and calling for the cancellation of a service that has stolen the work and creations of countless artists, for use in a, for now, trendy art generator.

On the other side are, what I like to call, are the consumers.  These are the people who have been using Lensa to entertain themselves by creating all sorts of modified images of themselves or whomever they want to process through the Lensa AI.  All of these people are pretty much completely okay with Lensa and where they get their content from, and wish for people to leave Lensa alone and let them have their fun photo generator, regardless of negative perception of what their database is being fed from.

From what I’ve been witnessing, creators are furious because in most cases, many of them can cite examples of their work having already been fed into the Lensa database.  Understandably, they are very unhappy with some AI hoovering up the things they’ve created, and really wish that people, including their friends who fall into the other side to stop using Lensa, and try to educate them to why they shouldn’t.

However, the consumers, are in no rush to stop being Lensa, because regardless of education and regardless of how their artist friends may feel about it, they’re in no rush to stop using it.  It’s giving them entertainment, it’s giving them amusement, but most importantly, it’s giving them content in the form of digitally altered images of themselves in fun and kooky ways, in a variety of art styles generated by AI.  I’ve noticed that these people aren’t the types to just quietly use Lensa and hope nobody judges them for it, but instead are usually the ones who defend it, tell their artist friends to let it go and chill, and we all know how well that goes with people, especially on the internet.

If it wasn’t obvious, I’m of course on the side of the artists.  Out of curiosity, I floated some example images of photos of mine that I’ve known are pretty well seen, and sure enough, they’re populating in the Lensa, which means that I’m also “a victim” of AI theft.  I don’t want to delve deeper, because I know of the thousands of photos and images that I’ve uploaded onto the internet over the last 24 years, lord only knows just how much of my shit has already fed some AI.

I’ve concluded that it’s not really a situation where it’s artists versus Lensa, but really artists versus the narcissism of consumers, and when the day is over, that’s truly an unwinnable battle for those who create.  It’s like cockroaches, you can kill 99 out of 100 roaches in a home, but as long as that 100th cockroach lives, infestation is inevitable to occur again.  Artists can beg and plead with all of their friends and followers to stop using Lensa, but as long as they have the few people who will quietly use it, they’re never going to get any sense of victory in the matter.

Because that’s really all it is, at the root of things.  Consumers like getting fun pictures of themselves and they don’t really care where they’re coming from, and Lensa has, whether by design or not, tapped into a human behavior that is their biggest ally in getting their service off the ground.  The consumers are doing the defense for them, and the artists are exhausting themselves screaming into the aether, and Lensa is quietly growing and spreading without any consequence.

Whether it was intentional or not, it is an ingenious, albeit shithead execution.

David Chang has apparently gone full Gusteau

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last week or so, I’ve been getting inundated with ads for David Chang’s (endorsed) air-dried noodles, which effectively has taken David Chang from being a well-known restauranteur and into the arena of an actual home cooking brand. 

I have this love-hate opinion of David Chang, because when I first heard of him, I thought he was this weeb that sold out his Korean heritage by opening a restaurant called Momofuku.  But then I learned that not only did he grow up in the same area I did in Virginia, one of my cousins has classes with him in high school, adding to the parallels I felt I had with him in this self-loathing manner.  But then I really did enjoy his first Netflix series, Ugly Delicious, because it was a well-produced series that had a lot of heart and soul in it.  But then anything he did afterward turned into this cringey star-fucking humblebrag, because of his increasing celebrity, so I’m mostly at this 60/40 scale of thinking he’s uncool, because anonymous people on the internet’s opinions totally matter.

Never mind that the product is about the whitest alternative to instant ramen there possibly could be, and their marketing pitch strategy that seems to think people are choosing to eat these 17¢ pucks of freeze dried noodles in pure salt water because they have a financial choice, and that “at ~$4 a meal” buying Momofuckyou air-dried noodles are a superior alternative.  Or that we’re supposed to believe that Chang himself was actually involved in “ten years of flavor research” when the guy is a few years older than I am, which would imply that he actually had any time at all in his early 30s to give a fuck about how to make a more white people friendly version of instant ramen.

It’s that by entering the world of producing DIY home cooking products, David Chang has basically turned into Gusteau from Ratatouille, spring-boarding his restaurant brand and celebrity status into a cheesy food brand.  Sure, it will in all likelihood make him richer beyond my capable dreams, but on the less-significant and internet coolness side of things, make him kind of a lame sell-out. 

Obviously I’m of the belief that such is always the goal of those who achieve fame, because securing the financial freedom for your family and possibly the generation(s) beyond you is always more important than what strangers think of you.  But I really wanted to make the comparison of David Chang to Gusteau, because it’s what I think he’s on the cusp of doing. 

Sure, Gusteau is dead [spoiler-alert] and it’s his crooked sous chef selling him out, but if Chang decides to go beyond noodles, and starts trying to sell DIY Indian food or soul food or Caribbean food, then he’s basically a real-life Korean Gusteau, worthy of having a series of tasteless cardboard cutouts of him wearing stereotypical garb of various nationalities.

Either way, I’m sure the internet and their endless parade of algorithms will know that I’ve got any opinion of David Chang at all, and when he inevitably releases Momofuckyou’s DIY chicken tikka masala, I’ll be ready and waiting to photoshop his head on Dhalsim’s body for an I-told-you-motherfuckers-so brog post.

The forced watching of Doctor Strange 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The worst part about big blockbuster and/or Marvel films is the feeling that if you don’t see it immediately, as in opening night immediately, you will inevitably get spoiled in some capacity within the next 24 hours.  Be it some passing graphic on social media, a news feed analyzing a massive spoiling plot point, or some rando internet friend who thinks they’re way more clever than they actually are and giving away something critical, if you don’t watch the film with some sense of urgency, you will without uncertainty, have something ruined for you.

Ironically, I’m not even really that big of a fan of Doctor Strange.  I wasn’t ever a fan of his in the actual comic books, despite knowing he was something of a big deal considering just how many crossovers he ended up in.  The MCU, as it has demonstrated on numerous occasions, made him somewhat cool and digestible, and I think Benedict Cumberbatch has breathed adequate life into the character. 

The first film, I didn’t even see in a theater and instead watched it on an international flight, since I had 8-13 hours to kill in the air, which wasn’t too bad.  The funny thing is that he’s way more interesting in other characters’ films than his own, but obviously for the sake of moving the entire MCU phase plot along, of course he’s going to get his own film(s) from time to time.

Spider-Man: No Way Home was a no-brainer of a film that had to have been seen with urgency and I’m glad that I did.  And Doctor Strange was pretty good in that film as well as an extremely critical player in the grand spectrum of the plot.  But ultimately, it ended up being more obnoxious and feeling like a sense of inconvenience that I had to put forth the same effort in order to see Doctor Strange 2, even if it seemed like this was going to be a critical film in the overarching MCU phase storyline; it’s still Doctor Strange, a character that I’ve always been kind of ambivalent about, in general.

Regardless, mythical wife and I made a point and made some arrangements to where we were actually able to go out for a night and watch Doctor Strange 2: The Multiverse of Madness.  My general theater experience was tarnished by the shitty quality of service we had and I never got my actual fucking entrée and they had the audacity to try and get me to pay for it, but as far as the film itself went, it wasn’t that bad.

Cumberbatch once again makes Doctor Strange not so much of a square, and injects some actual personality into the character.  And I suppose it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that the film basically ends up becoming the film sequel to WandaVision, seeing as the Scarlet Witch was primarily featured in the post-credit preview of the film after Spider-Man, not to mention Elizabeth Olsen is very predominantly featured on all film advertising.

As predicted, the film does kind of blow open the MCU in general, and between this film, the events from the Loki television series, and a lot of the shit alluded to in No Way Home, it’s almost brain-bending on how Marvel is even going to proceed from here, not to mention they’ve unlocked the ultimate plot devices that effectively allows any and all properties to be retconned and revised at a moment’s notice.

But as a standalone film, I’d say that DS2 is about a 6-7 out of ten.  A lot of crowd-popping cameos and ah-ha moments don’t really mask that the core plot of the film was a little on the weaker side of things, and there’s some pretty big plot holes that are poked open in WandaVision that beg to be asked.  The film effectively acts more like a vehicle to the overarching phase and tends to lose track of the fact that it’s still supposed to be about Doctor Strange, but all in all, I was still entertained and walked out of the theater ready to discuss and try to suppress excessively mansplaining anything that mythical wife might not have been familiar with.

However, back to the original hypothetical, on whether or not Doctor Strange 2 is worthy of being a must-see on an opening day?  I wouldn’t say so.  But solely because of the fact that I didn’t want to be spoiled to any MCU-isms and ah-has, I still felt like I was forced to do so, which makes me feel a little bit resentful of the way social media and the internet has created such a dynamic.  Fuckin’ ruins everything.

The subtle arrogance of unfriending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

To my knowledge, short of third-party plug-ins or software, it’s not easy to really know when the people you know on social media unfriends you.  Maybe if you don’t have a generally high number of online friends and a pretty good memory, one might be able to notice the lack of a name or three in their respective lists, but for the most part, it’s not something that’s pretty easy to do, at least in my estimation.

I like to think that I don’t have a tremendous number of online friends, but it still encroaches over 100 people.  That said, it’s still easy to not notice when some names might not be present anymore, which seems to really be the only tell of when you’ve been unfriended by others.

Recently, a friend of mine sent out a group invitation for their wedding.  I hold this person in very high regard, so I will most definitely be making the effort to go to the wedding, in spite of it being numerous states away and will require the logistical efforts that go along with parenting young children.

As we have a number of mutual friends, out of curiosity I clicked on the members tab to see if I could get some hints to the people I may be coming across at the eventual wedding.  As expected, I saw quite a number of familiar names and faces, and felt a modicum of excitement at the idea of finally getting to see some people after many years and pandemic-related reasons for being unable to connect for a while.

And then I noticed something: next to some of these names that I thought I was already friends with, were +Add Friend buttons.  Now unless I’m missing something here, that means to me that I had been unfriended by these particular people.

Obviously, if I’m expending the effort to brog about it, I am taking it probably more personally than I should be, but honestly?  It’s hard for someone like me not to, because in spite of distance, time, or general lack of maintenance, these are people that I still consider friendlies in life, and at the very least would enjoy knowing the feeling is mutual enough to warrant keeping as friends status on their fucking Facebook pages.

I know that I didn’t unfriend them, because I don’t ever unfriend people, save for some pretty extreme circumstances.  In fact, I remember the last time I unfriended someone, and I regret doing it because I felt that I was pressured to do it and didn’t really do it on my own accord, but the circumstances were pretty extreme.  But usually if my opinion on a Facebook friend sours, or I’m just tired of the shitposting I think they do, then I just perma-mute them, or snooze them for 30 days at a time and repeat it every month.

Just because I don’t always like the stuff they post doesn’t mean I don’t think of them as at least acquaintances, because everyone is different in person than their online behavior indicates.  Outright unfriending people, at least to me, there’s an air of, I no longer wish to care about you any further, and that is kind of a shitty sentiment to pass onto someone else.  Maybe I’m making a bigger deal about this than I should, but it’s definitely some food that my mind has been thinking on for a day.

There’s also something subtly arrogant about unfriendings.  Because I like to think I know the people who have unfriended me well enough to be able recollect instances in the past where they’ve made posts about their intentions or acts of doing unfriending sessions, and up until the cuts where I didn’t make it, I could be subconsciously pleased that I was thought enough of to remain alive on their lists.

Regardless, the act of unfriending either comes off arrogant and/or is examples of recency bias, because it makes me think the people doing them think highly enough of themselves and their number of internet friends to where surfing the news feed is such a chore that they need to cull down the numbers to better filter the shit they want to see, as opposed to the shit that comes from their supposed friends, regardless of if they really want to or not.  Or, I feel like I’m getting cut, and people they’ve never met, or people they hardly know, remain, because they need constant attention, and don’t need a silent lurker like me to occupy one of their precious 5,000 spots.

Anyway, that’s my word vomit on this particular topic.  The reality is that regardless of my apparent unceremonious cutting from these peoples’ internet lives, I still don’t wish them any ill will or hold any genuine animosity towards them.  This is the equivalent of silently busting their balls at their arrogance of thinking they’re so important that they can’t possibly have a pleeb like me associated with them.

The chances are high that I’ll run into some of these folks at the wedding, if the stars line up and most of the people in this group also make the trip.  We might very well sit at similar tables, share drinks, stories, reminisce and possibly be in pictures together.  It will in all likelihood be good times, but back on the internet we may as well remain strangers, as long as they’re too good to remain friends with me online.