Tag: comparison

#TRYHARDSZN2025: this one will contribute to our demise, Black Mirror style

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WWNYTV7onmyside: Massachusetts teen accepted into 88 colleges, amassing over $6M in scholarship dollars

As far as acceptance numbers, I think it’s going to be a hard task for any potential #TRYHARDs to surpass the one chica who cleared like 155 and one in every state.  But what piqued my interest with this #TRYHARD wasn’t the acceptance numbers, but the amount of scholarship dollars he amassed in his 88 acceptances.

For context, Ms. Queen #TRYHARD and her 155 acceptances notched $6M in cumulative offers.  But this kid out of Chicopee, Massachusetts also amassed $6M in scholarships from nearly half of the acceptances.  That’s an average of $68K per scholarship, versus the $38K/per from the Queen of Westlake High.  He doesn’t get to brag about having acceptances from random schools out in Idaho, Wyoming or North Dakota, but it’s evident that schools see more value in this kid over Queen Spray and Pray.

Additionally, aside from Chicopee kid’s ridiculous 4.39 GPA (like I still don’t understand just how much extra work one has to do to blow past a 4.00 GPA so hard) is the fact that this egghead is all into AI and robotics, and is pursuing a future where he can work on AI systems and/or robots.  Considering he’s from the New England area, and among his offers is Boston University, it seems like a very good possibility that he goes to BU, and then gets a job with Boston Dynamics, the company that is making robot dogs and robots that can run, do moonsaults and basically complete Ninja Warrior courses, and then contributes towards the rise of our eventual robot overlords.

Anyway, I got nothing else.  Among his other notable acceptances were UConn, Florida, and Purdue.  No mention of any Ivies, and as impressive as his GPA and his current acceptance haul is, the seeming lack of mention of any other extracurriculars lends to believe that he probably doesn’t have any.

Thus, he is not #TRYHARDing enough, and probably won’t be worth mentioning again the rest of this #SZN.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: We’ve finally got some Ivies

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ABC30: Fresno teen accepted into 15 different schools, including four Ivy League schools

This story is really succinct and lacks a tremendous amount of context, and I can’t seem to find any more information on it, but whatever.  I’ve got our first Ivy League #TRYHARD, as he didn’t get into all of the Ivies like some of the most mega of #TRYHARDs do, but still getting into four of them is still warranting of #TRYHARD status.

Most importantly, he got into Harvard and Yale, which coming from the child of Asian parents, it doesn’t matter if there are actually schools out there better than either of these, Harvard and Yale are the absolute cream of the crop when it comes to college educations, and seeing as how this #TRYHARD is Hispanic, I don’t imagine his parents’ perceptions of college is probably that far off from immigrant Asians.

Overall, 15 schools doesn’t sound like he was trying hard enough, in comparison to the #TRYHARDs he’s unknowingly going up against in the arena of my brog, but since he’s not black, that clearly wipes out all the HBCUs, despite the fact that non-black students can attend them from what I understand.

Additionally, no context of scholarship dollars were mentioned, but I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise considering this one is dealing with Ivy League schools, whom seem to probably think adequate compensation is simply being allowed entry onto their lily white grounds, and that if this #TRYHARD actually wants to attend Harvard or Yale, better be prepared to pony up the $65K a be able to attend, although I heard that Harvard is offering free education to those who can get in, if their family doesn’t make a certain amount.

Either way, I got nothing else, because the story of this #TRYHARD is short and straight to the point of glamorizing the fact that he got into multiple Ivies.  He’ll still be easily defeated by the inevitable kid who will have been accepted into all the Ivies, but for now I’m just glad to find a #TRYHARD to be from outside of Georgia as well as have some Ivy League schools on his resume.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Good effort, but not enough trying hard

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

11AliveOnMySide: Fairburn, Georgia teen accepted into 53 colleges with $1.5M in scholarships earned

After writing about the chica that notched 155 acceptances and $6M in scholarships, #TRYHARDs like this one just seem so pale in comparison to write about.  Which really sucks for them, because being a student with a 4.0 GPA and hoovering up 50+ college acceptances really is something to be proud of, but I guess this is what happens when #TRYHARD culture has become the thing it’s become, and gives a glimpse to why #TRYHARDs #TRYHARD.

As important as education is, to those in the #TRYHARDing game, attention and notoriety seems to matter just a little bit more.  What with all the insufferable humblebragging, the photoshoots and general look-at-me behavior by all those that #TRYHARD, it’s apparent that the actual education at the end of the journey is secondary to the two seconds of internet notoriety that comes with being the best of the best when it comes to #TRYHARDing and accumulating as many college acceptances as possible while more than likely, not having to pay a cent in application fees.

Which is a shame, because a lot of the stories of the people who become #TRYHARDs are really fascinating and inspiring up until the point where they decide to do what they do because they want the attention.  Like this one chica from close to where I used to live, which was a pretty desolate wasteland back then, and is seemingly worse now, has still managed to emerge from the muck and be a student with a 4.0 GPA, volleyball player, and somehow has the tenacity to be working two jobs, really is the embodiment of hard work.

But at some point in her journey, it was decided to become a #TRYHARD, and the question becomes if the grades, the extracurriculars, and the jobs, are they for the purpose of building character and necessity, or are they the purpose for padding a personal resume to feed into the next stage of life to where additional #TRYHARDing is all that life is going to be until they’re anonymous adults who hate their lives and wonder what their formative teenage years went.

I can’t remember who said it between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, but one of them had a story about when they were young and in high school, and they were being touted as future megastars and can’t-miss prospects, they were reminded that as great as they think they were, inevitably there would always be someone out there who was working harder, and was probably better than you were.  And as inevitable as greatness finding greatness is, Bird and Magic eventually encountered each other at the college ranks, a rivalry was born, carrying into the NBA, and the debate still lives on whom of the two was the better player.

And as impressive as 53 and $1.5M should be, in the grand spectrum of things, just up the street from where this #TRYHARD was doing her thing, she probably wasn’t aware of a queen bee #TRYHARDingn way harder than she was en route to her 155 and $6M.  And there is no debate on whom of the two was the bigger #TRYHARD.

As I said before, it’s going to be a real hard act to follow, and I almost don’t want to waste my time writing about lesser #TRYHARDs unless a real noteworthy #TRYHARD comes along, but we’ll see how time permits in the coming months of #TRYHARDSZN2025.

So many easy jokes about the Mariners repping Nintendo

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LL: Seattle Mariners agree to wear Nintendo Switch 2 patch for the 2025 MLB season

I don’t care enough to dig deep into the finer details, but Nintendo doesn’t own the Mariners like they once did, but they have enough pull with the baseball organization to ensure that throughout the 2025 baseball season, the Mariners will have a sponsorship patch on their away uniforms for the Nintendo Switch 2.  Their home whites will have a regular old Nintendo word mark logo on those alternatively.

Regardless, the jokes write themselves about a company like Nintendo being the uniform sponsor for a baseball organization like the Mariners, because in more ways than one, they operate in similar manners.  Now such could be as the result of the once ownership and the influence Nintendo clearly still has within the Seattle Mariners organization, or maybe they really are two peas in a pod in how their business philosophies are concerned, but the fact of the matter is that there really is a lot in common between both companies.

Nintendo is notoriously Japanese, as in that they are more than happy to operate in a completely risk-averse, efficient manner that prioritizes a zero-waste mentality.  For example, despite the fact that a billion people on the planet wanted the Wii when it first came out, they were all like ehhhh, let’s make just 20 million units, can’t possibly risk there being some false demand and us being stuck with extra units and being forced to sell at a discount.  And for the next several years, nobody could get their hands on one, and they were selling on the resale market at insane markups, and by the time demand was truly fulfilled, the Wii 2 was knocking on the door, and the process kind of repeated itself. The point is, Nintendo prioritizes efficiency and avoiding all risk over possibly making consumers happy and meeting demand a lot closer in which they operate to this day. 

And the Mariners are kind of the same way, because they just, always kind of suck as an MLB franchise, and no matter how much the market changes, how much talent they luck into from their system, and the availability of free agents throughout the years, the organization just somehow manages to always suck at winning baseball games, and much like Nintendo, letting consumers down by taking no risks, avoiding any possibility of dead money by signing no free agents, and routinely letting their fans down on a yearly basis.

It’s funny, because I actually wrote about the Mariners not too long ago and how it’s pretty incredible how much they’ve sucked historically.  Because this is an organization that has had the likes of Ken Griffey, Jr., Randy Johnson, Ichiro Suzuki, Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martinez and a prime Robinson Cano, and in some cases, an overlap of some of these talents. Yet they never won anything, beyond the magical 2001 season where they won 116 games, before crashing out unceremoniously in the playoffs to the Yankees.  They rarely saw the playoffs, didn’t do much once they got there, and no matter the talent that has been on the squad, they just, well suck.

Just recently, the Mariners successfully signed their catcher Cal Raleigh, to an insanely team-friendly deal, six years at just $105M.  The guy is an average 4 WAR player, not even hitting his prime, and could easily have been worth double of this, in just a few years.  But he clearly likes something in Seattle and has agreed to stay there, but the real question is if the Nintendo Mariners will actually do something with this centerpiece, or if it will just be more of the same, operating like Nintendo, where they will only produce the absolute bare minimum in order to be relevant, but absolutely nothing more in order to even attempt to be anything but afloat.

It’s really a chicken and egg situation on whether the Seattle Mariners are operating like Nintendo, or if Nintendo is operating like the Seattle Mariners; but if I’m a betting man, I’d say the former, but either way, neither is a particularly enviable position to be in, because jaded video gamers all resent Nintendo for their Nintendo-ey business practices, and Mariners fans all resent the Mariners for simply never really trying, so ultimately, this sponsorship marriage seems to be a very fitting fit for both parties involved.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Meet the front runner

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo: Westlake High School senior accepted to 155 colleges, with at least one from every single one of the 50 United States, and has accumulated over $6M in scholarship offers

Welp, just when I was thinking about how Westlake High hadn’t produced a #TRYHARD yet, here they come to join the fray, guns ablaze.  It’s like the school itself doesn’t seem to be concerned about absolutely anything other than raising kids to be fixated and obsessed with applying to as many colleges as humanly possible, so that they the kids and the school can insufferably brag about their success rates, and effectively cockblock a metric fuckton of other kids throughout the country who will be inevitably be put on waiting lists while all these attention hounds make their decisions like they think they’re LeBron James.

But yeah, Georgia teen from the seemingly most notorious college application factory in the nation, 155 acceptances, and $6M in cumulative scholarships so far.  Sounds impressive, but when you do the basic average there, we’re looking at $38K per acceptance.  Sure, it’s not a flat $38K being offered by every single acceptance, but the reality is that some of the higher-tiered schools probably haven’t offered anything remotely close to a full ride, and if a full ride is what chica is looking for, she better be prepared to be going to Florida A&M or Howard, and not any of the Power-5 schools she probably got into. 

And let’s not assume she made any of the Ivies, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about #TRYHARD culture, is that if you’ve been accepted into an Ivy, that name is ensured to be mentioned, early in the article no less.

I had a moment when writing about the last few #TRYHARDs about why I’m taking time to pick on these kids, seeing as how they’re really just trying to get a free ride to whatever college is willing to give them one.  But this queen bee #TRYHARD is a reminder of why I started writing about them in the first place, because it feels like they’re doing what they do for all the wrong reasons, prioritizing attention-seeking and the right to brag and boast ahead of actually giving a fuck about their educations when the opportunity to grasp 15 minutes of internet fame is on the line.

I mean seriously, 155 schools is one thing, but it’s very apparent that the real coup de grace here for this chica is simply the ability to say that she got into a school from every single one of the 50 states.  Because I have a hard time believing that any teen from the southside of Atlanta would have any remote interest in attending a school in Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana or any other flyover state where the mortality rate of black people is probably noticeably lower than it would be in any actual civilized metropolitan area in the country alternatively.  I refuse to believe that there’s actual interest in any schools from any of those remote parts of the country, and that the sole goal was to check off gaining an acceptance in those states.

The University of Alaska, Fairbanks was mentioned as an acceptance, and a quick Google search has them ranked at 635 out of 650 accredited American colleges, so big win there.  Hawaii isn’t mentioned at all, but I’m going to guess that the acceptance from that state is probably along the lines of the University of American Samoa from Better Call Saul, or some other extremely low-difficulty school.

It’s funny when I think about it, because although she got 155 acceptances, I have to wonder how many rejections she got.  That’s one thing that all of these #TRYHARD stories fail to mention, unless they have an abnormally high success rate, and they brag about having gotten into like 50 schools out of 50 applications, but there was no such context here.

And as is often times the case, despite the fact that they might have over 100+ acceptances, in the end, they’re inevitably going to go to some generally low-tier school, mostly because of the fact that the most free-est ride is going to come from there.  And despite the fact that this #TRYHARD wants to become a bigwig pharmacist, her front runner schools are Florida A&M, Howard and THE Ohio State.  There’s nothing wrong with phishing for a free ride, but I do think it sucks for all the kids throughout the country who is put on a waitlist on account of all these attention-seekers just trying to amass acceptances and scholarship dollars.

But anyway, it comes as no surprise that the de facto front runner of #TRYHARDSZN2025 is a kid out of Westlake High, and the bar has been set extremely high now.  It’s going to take some real Ivy League #TRYHARDs to gain some consideration over this one, because 155/$6M is going to be hard to surpass, but it is still extremely early in the #SZN, so never say never.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Imagine if UGA were your dream school

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lowered expectations: Georgia teen accepted to 60 different schools, amassing $1.3M in cumulative scholarship offers

Another day, another Georgia-based #TRYHARD.  I’m seriously wondering if it’s an IP thing or something or if the vast majority of the #TRYHARDs in the country are all coincidentally just coming out of Georgia, but every single edition of #TRYHARDSZN2025 so far have all been from Georgia.  I doubt that such is going to be a case throughout the whole #SZN, but it is a little head-scratching from the onset.

Anyway, if I had 60 acceptances when I was this kid’s age, I undoubtedly would have had the criteria of being how far away from home, and how much scholarship money are they going to float me, and the best combination of distance from Northern Virginia and how much they’d scholarship me, would be the strongest contenders.

Such, is not the case for this guy, whom although they don’t disclose any of the 60 acceptances he received, the State of Georgia doesn’t have that many colleges and universities in it to constitute close to 60, so I have to imagine that a lot of ideal and acceptable out-of-state, far the fuck away from bumfuck Dublin, Georgia are being left on the table by deciding to go to his dream college of, the University of Georgia.

This reminds me of Terry Jerry-Larry-Garry Gergich from Parks & Rec and how him and his family’s annual vacation was to their favorite place in the world, Muncie, Indiana, which was presumably not that far from fictional Pawnee, Indiana.

Like, the boy has the opportunity to get the fuck out of Georgia, but instead he’s taking his golden tickets and just going two hours north, up to Athens, where his supposed dream school is.

Don’t get me wrong, UGA is a solid school, reputable and moderately respected in the world, but the boy wants to go down a pre-med track, and I’m hard-pressed to believe that UGA is the most qualified school to go to for a guy who’s interested in biology and pre-med.  Just in the SEC, I know that Auburn is a better school for such things, but I can’t imagine the level of education and awareness of the world outside of Laurens County is particularly high.

Either way, I’m already getting tired of writing about #TRYHARDs from Georgia with fairly mediocre numbers in the inevitable grand spectrum of #TRYHARDSZN, so good on this one guy for 60 acceptances and $1M in scholarships, and getting to go to his dream school right up the road, but when the dust settles, there’s already bigger #TRYHARDs and bigger dreams being chased by much bigger overachievers.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: We got a Doogie over here

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

11Aliveonmyside: 13-year old Georgia teenager accepted to his dream college – Morehouse

At first when I read this, my thought was like, Morehouse?  That’s your dream college?  But that was just from the headline alone, the kid’s age wasn’t really mentioned, nor any of the context to why he wants to go to Morehouse seemingly above all others.

But yeah, 13-year old kid, from Conyers.  Now I have a Google alert set for any and all #TRYHARDs regardless of where they’re from, but it seems apparent that Georgia seems to be the #TRYHARD capital of the country, seeing as how out the gate, it’s Georgia 2, everyone else 0 as far as putting #TRYHARDs on the board.

Anyway, Black Doogie over here seems to have an impressive story, being a preemie and how overcoming obstacles early on seemed to set the tone for his overachieving nature throughout his young and diminutive life thus far:

By 9 months old, Joshua was talking; by 18 months, he was reading. At age 3, he wrote his first book.

Joshua has skipped multiple grades, jumping from second to fifth, then to seventh, and later to 11th.

And despite the fact that the initial headline doesn’t seem to indicate that there was any #TRYHARDing in the sense of applying to a gozillion schools, we seem to have it anyway:

At 12 years old, he received over 20 college acceptance letters from institutions such as Miles College, Shaw University, Tennessee State University, and Jackson State University. He is dual-enrolled at Augusta Technical College, completing 27 credit hours with a 3.88 GPA.

All things considered, we have here a tremendous front-runner in this year’s #TRYHARDs considering his age, number of acceptances and current courseload, but we’re not getting any seven-figure cumulative tuitions.  The names of schools aren’t necessarily known for their moneybags, but this is where we say come on, kid’s 13.  If he were 18 and maintained his current trajectory, he’d probably be on Moon University in Outer Space.

However, there is one red-flag in my opinion when it comes to his motivations:

At just 4 years old, he learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. attending Morehouse College at 15 and decided he wanted to surpass that milestone. Now, at 13, he has done just that.

To me, there’s an air of wanting to better MLK’s age record for the sake of bettering MLK, and not necessarily because he wants become and starting impacting civil rights as early as humanly possible, and if that’s his motivation for wanting to do such, then there’s something a little ego-centric beyond what MLK’s actual objectives were in comparison.

Either way, the kid is just 13-years old; once he grows up and matures a little bit, and maintains this kind of academic development, the sky and beyond is still the limit, even if it draws the criticism of being a mega #TRYHARD from some randos on the internet.