Silence ≠ ambivalence

I’ve had a difficult time putting into words the things that I feel these days, as the world continues to sink further and further into chaos.  Tons of people suddenly loathe law enforcement, and there’s no end to the ping-ponging of stories out there where one side of the fence is writing whatever they can to slander the other side of the fence.  Cops supposedly being overheard ordering each other to deliberately go out and hurt protesters, protesters being accused of transforming into looters, and the list goes on and on where two definitive sides are trying to smear the other.

Throughout it all, I’ve watched own social media landscape turn from a pretty casual, relaxed locals-only kind of environment to where everyone is now taking a very intense voice about current events, and it’s honestly a little bit frightening.  People calling out their friends and family that might have different viewpoints, and others ready to get into vitriolic arguments at the drop of a hat if anyone dares to have a conflicting opinion.  I’ve seen no less than three posts where people are rallying others to suppress their own posting unless it’s relevant to current events, because “it will take up space” as if there’s ever been any amount of finite space on the internet.

Offline, people are going out en masse to attend protests and this scares me more than anything, because unless you’ve been living under rocks, protests all across the country have often descended into riots, regardless of whom starts it, and the nights end with tallies of injured, arrested, and eventually if this keeps up, dead.  Cops beating the shit out of civilians, bouts of looting erupting in just about every city where protests are occurring, and as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing good at all is happening on a nightly basis.

I’ve mostly kept quiet about all of this because I frankly don’t know what to really say.  My world right now is quite tiny, because yes I definitely have feelings for what’s happening in the greater world all around me, but with an infant child that classifies as medically fragile, my focus and energy is primarily on my baby, whom I grieve for, having been born in such a terrible year in history.

But please don’t mistake my silence for ambivalence, and I do state such in response to the asinine opinion that those who aren’t posting allied messages, or changing their Facebook profile pictures to black squares, or going out and protesting, or any other virtual action or otherwise, is implicit in the negativity by being inactive.  That’s a bullshit belief, and I really scoff at anyone who believes such; but only those specific people.

Because saying “everyone” would be an blanket statement, and frankly I feel that we’re in this what I’m calling blanket statement culture, where the prevalent opinions that are being flung around left and right are these gigantic, overarching blanket statements where all cops are bad, all protesters are looters, all black people are thugs, and all sorts of encompassing rhetoric.

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Well, she wasn’t entirely wrong

lol: A Susan goes to Wal-Mart, sees an nWo wrestling t-shirt, blasts Wal-Mart on social media for supporting global elites trying to push for a literal new world order

I guess she didn’t see the WWE logo on the very picture she took, or more likely she didn’t take the two seconds to verify what the logo was if she didn’t recognize it in the first place.

Either way, this story made my day, and it’s not often that I’m put in a position where I have to take the side of Wal-Mart, but when the day is over Susan/Becky/Karen culture is worse than the corporate disgust of even Wal-Mart.

This was a classic case of a Susan who goes around looking for things to SJW about, and hoping to be the first one to do such.  And once she found something that she thought she could get her teeth into, she doesn’t even try to do a little background research about it before going off on Facebook about her conspiracy theories of global elites on top of attempting to shame big business despite the fact that she herself was apparently shopping at a Wal-Mart.

And naturally because the internet lives for little else than the opportunities to point out when other people are wrong, it didn’t take long for the Susan to become the target of all sorts of laughter and ridicule once it was realized that she was flagrantly mistaking a professional wrestling t-shirt for propaganda for the Illuminati.

But let’s play devil’s advocate here a little bit; Susan wasn’t entirely wrong with her remarks of:

global elites pushing for the nWo (New World Order) which includes one world leader, one world religion, one world currency and one world government

…as long as it was kept within the appropriate context: of professional wrestling.

I mean seriously, look at those assholes (above).  Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall (sorry, it was hard to find a decent image that didn’t include at least one scrub like Sean Waltman), if it were truly up to them, they really would have pushed for such an agenda.  Undoubtedly, Hogan would love to be the one world leader [of professional wrestling] and he’s already declared himself to be God before [not just god of professional wrestling, or A god, but just straight up God god with a capital G].  Nash and Hall are two of the greediest motherfuckers in the history of the industry, so they’d obviously be all about one world currency, especially if it meant they got to have more of it than anyone else, and would probably be supportive of whatever one world government would help expedite that collection of money.

So Susan wasn’t totally wrong with her conspiracy theory, she just went a little overboard with its boundaries, and it was just unfortunate that she happened to do it on social media, where once it makes it onto the internet, it didn’t matter that she deleted the post later, there’s always going to be at least one prick who will have screen grabbed it and chronicled it forever, and then it becomes fodder for some rando brogger.

Not art + design

Because every gym on the planet is seemingly contractually obligated to be airing ESPN on at least one television, I saw this story about how the coach of the Cleveland Browns was spotted wearing this t-shirt that said “Pittsburgh started it,” as commentary over an incident a few weeks ago where the Browns’ Myles Garrett and the Steelers’ Mason Rudolph got into a scuffle ending with Garrett ripping Rudolph’s helmet off of him and swinging it at his head.  Garrett has been suspended indefinitely by the NFL for basically assault, and Rudolph was fined a bunch of money for remarks that supposedly started the whole incident which may or may not have been racist.

But this isn’t a post about the incident, because when the day is over, I really don’t give two shits about an organization that somehow thinks organized dog death fighting is a lesser crime than kneeling during the national anthem.   No, I’m more incensed over the fact that on the aforementioned t-shirt, is an actual signature on it from a supposed “art + design” company as if printing a t-shirt with three words in the Garfield font (Cooper Black) is remotely anything considered art or design.

This is the kind of shit that really makes me jaded towards the creative industry as a whole.  A bunch of hacks out there that take the most low-effort bullshit, slap a logo or take credit for it, and call it “design.”  And when challenged, comes a deluge of bullshit about minimalism or simplicity.  And then there’s legions of like-minded sheep who think it’s the most innovative idea in the world, and then it goes viral and people actually benefit from it.

Amazingly, the “company” that signed this shirt that I could easily plagiarize in 2 seconds, appears to be an actual company that actually makes all sorts of Cleveland-centric apparel and merch, almost all of which is 78,000% more creative and contains actual design than Pittsburgh Started It.  But because they’re an actual company, they do have the audacity to try to monetize their low-hanging fruit, and to no surprise at all, are selling these bullshit shirts for $28 a pop.  But realistically, even if it was some individual who calls themselves a studio, they’d still try to sell them for $35, because they’re broke-ass poor and trying to capitalize on going viral.

Naturally, people are buying them because they clearly have way too much money.

Either way, if I had more than 0 readers, I’m sure I’d inevitably be accused of being jealous that someone out there is making money on such a low-budget idea.  And they’d be entirely right, because I would love to make actual money on such little effort.  Why the fuck can’t something controversial and nationally known happen for an Atlanta team, that I could easily make into some sort of meme, call it design and cash in on?

There’s no way Popeyes can live up to this much hype

Frankly, I’m not entirely sure how it all started; I saw a few passing clickbait headlines that said that Popeyes new chicken sandwich was better/equal to Chick Fil-A’s flagship chicken sandwich one day, and then the next day, I’m hearing all sorts of stories of Popeyes restaurants dealing with insanity lines, running out of chicken sandwiches, and all sorts of social media beefs over people debating on who really is the best.

Naturally, this piqued my curiosity on whether or not this chicken sandwich really is the real deal, so this past weekend, mythical wife and I swung past a Popeyes hoping to get in on the debate.  And immediately after we pull into the lot, we’re barely on the property we’re so far back in the drive-thru line.  Eventually, two cars bail from the line, and as we pull forward, we can see exactly why they bailed: a handwritten sign on the door saying:

sorry we all out of ALL sandwiches

Needless to say, that’s all I needed to see, and we bailed from the line as well, and went to go pick up a pizza for dinner instead.  Ultimately, I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get to try it, because who doesn’t like getting denied something they want to eat when they want to eat it?  But the reality is that as good as the sandwich may or may not be, there’s no way I’m really going to bother attempting this again for at least a month, when hopefully the hype dissipates some.

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MLS is clearly the preferred white people sport

Driving around Atlanta, there are often a lot of tells on peoples’ cars that indicate the race of the people driving them.  Some are pretty blatant, like how white people all love to have shit like stick figure family stickers, black people have big flashy rims or the content of Africa silhouetted in some way shape or form, or Hispanics having pictures of their trucks airbrushed onto their trucks, while being looked over upon by the Virgin Mary.

However, some tells are more subtle, but no less obvious to those who see them.  Like blackout license covers or (likely) illegal shades of tint or a box of Kleenex wrapped in an ornate satin box cover sitting in the back window.  But there’s no more obvious tell that a car belongs to a white person in Atlanta, than an Atlanta United sticker or emblem on it.  Because there’s nothing short of Ponce City Market and talking about gentrification and urbanism that white people in Atlanta like more than Atlanta United soccer.

And then it got me thinking beyond just Atlanta United, and about soccer in general, specifically MLS.  And how it really seems like MLS has become the de facto preferred spectator sport of choice for white people, even above the NFL, NBA and MLB.  The more cursory internet glancing I do, I’m seeing that in major cities like Toronto, Seattle, Portland and Philadelphia, if you take snapshots of the crowds, they’re unmistakably overwhelmingly white.  It doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s really all the justification I need to make my snap judgments; I’ve been to enough cities to watch sports, and despite being in different states, they really aren’t that much different from one another.

Ultimately, I think white people loving MLS really boils down to two very obvious white people traits: racism and a lack of commitment.  A low-key third would be the fact that so many are hipsters, so naturally, they gravitate towards a lower-tier popularity sport, especially if it meant that there were fewer minority fans to have to mingle with.

But frankly, upon thinking about it, it kind of makes perfect sense why white people love MLS so much. Go to any NFL or NBA game, and it’s abundantly clear that black people love football and basketball.  And the average white person is often times afraid of the average black person, so it stands to believe that white people don’t like going to these sporting events, because it puts them in too close proximity with those that intimidate them.  When the home team does well and the black people get excited, it scares the white people.  But when the home team loses and the black people get butthurt, it scares the white people then too.  This isn’t to say that white people avoid these sporting events outright, but typically they tend to go when they have privileges like corporate box seats, or are in large enough numbers to where they manage to feel safe, but even still it’s not the same white safety as an MLS game would be.

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Avengers: Endgame and the obnoxious evolution of hype

Disclaimer: I may or may not say things that might be interpreted as spoilers for the movie.  But then again considering the fact that I am still offline, it could be weeks or literal years before anyone other than myself sees this post.  Always good to maintain good brogging etiquette though.

So mythical fiancée and I went and saw Avengers: Endgame today.  It’s been two days since the formal release date of the film, but because Hollywood ticket sales data is weird and loves to fudge things to make profits sound way more impressive than they might actually be, it could be anywhere from three to four days since other people of the mostly public world has been watching it.

Typically, this is the type of film that I don’t exactly make such an effort to see so immediately after its release.  Frankly, I didn’t even see Avengers: Infinity War in theaters, and didn’t actually watch it until it started to be available for home releases.  But as a person who was raised heavily on comic books, and as someone who actually read the actual Infinity War/Gauntlet/Crusades comic book arcs, it was still something that I’d be interested in, and despite the fact that I’m not exactly a opening night/special screenings kind of seeker, I’ve still kept up pretty well with just about all of the films of the general Marvel Studios Phase 1 series.

However, because the world is so connected and locked into the internet these days, and damn near everyone is attached to social media in some way, shape or form, I felt somewhat of an urgency to watch Endgame on the earlier side of the spectrum, solely for the fact that I recognize that the citizens of the internet, be it through news and pop culture websites, or through social media itself, are completely incapable of not spoiling things, and waiting to watch anything runs the serious risk of having anything and everything spoiled for you, by people on the internet who just can’t shut the fuck up.

So, we went and watched Endgame.  2-4 days after its initial release.  And it was good.  A solid film that tied up just about every loose end that was unraveled throughout the last 11 years of Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Lots of comedic moments here, some very serious moments there, some slightly eye-rolly fan service moments occasionally, and a few nods to the actual comics, which nerds like me probably recognized.  As I said, it was a solid flick that was fairly enjoyable, and didn’t feel like the three hours that many bemoaned was going to be a test to all viewer’s constitutions.

But do I think it lived up to the hype that the internet artificially created over the last few months?  Absolutely not.

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I guess I shouldn’t be surprised

But apparently, Love Death & Robots probably requires a trigger warning; despite the fact that it’s an 18 episode anthology of entirely self-contained individual stories, snowflakes on the internet declare that the entire series has a problem and that it is not okay.  I almost don’t want to link to it out of disgusted spite, but I don’t really hide the things that make me tick.

Long story short, the triggered link basically ignores every one of the 18 episodes except for Sonnie’s Edge and The Witness, and considering the fact that prior to Netflix’s alleged decision to adjust the order of the episodes, implies that this “author” watched the first three episodes and then went off on a tangent about how the show solely glamorizes violence against women; otherwise, it goes without saying that Good Hunting would have made this post as well.

Obviously, I agree with their point that glamorized violence against women is definitely a bad thing, but I’m not the least bit convinced that the so-called author actually watched the rest of the series, and decided to anoint the series as a whole as an enemy to women, and that people should watch it with such preconceived notions.  Sure, Netflix could’ve presented the order of the episodes to not start with such jarring violence, but the fact of the matter is that in today’s bingeing viewing society, viewers would still end up watching the suspect episodes eventually.

I did a really stupid thing today, which was I commented about this link on social media, when an online acquaintance of mine posted this link in the first place.  I will admit that my defenses were up seeing criticism of something that I’d so recently declared my love and enjoyment for, and even after a few hours of thinking about all of this, I still feel similarly about my opinions.  I think the article was cherry picked, and ignores the 14-15 out of 18 other episodes of the show that have literally nothing to do about sexual violence towards women.

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