Tag: social media

The whitest thing since January 6th

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I will never understand how social media algorithms work, but for whatever reason, I was fed some videos about a dude who proclaims to be a “lawn dad” and has a bunch of videos of him working on his flawless, impeccably curated lawn.  At first, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes a little at the obvious white privilege I was watching of a white man painstakingly pampering his grass, but I was learning some interesting techniques of lawn care, like leveling out divots.

Eventually, I saw a video of the same dude, and it looked like he was doing some more mowing of his grass, but the caption said something along the lines of removing the morning dew from the grass to reduce moisture and create conditions that could lead to mold, mildew or whatever nasty growth occurs from moisture.  But the fact of the matter was that lawn dad was basically squeegeeing his grass, and at this point I was just like what the fuck.

The concern over something so inconsequential to the survival of the human race.  The excessive pampering over a concern that is naturally regulated by Mother Nature, the sun and the great outdoors.  Calling himself a “lawn dad.”

Yeah, all this bullshit is a whole lot of peak white guy, and probably the whitest content I’ve seen since footage of the January 6th storming of the Capitol.

Now I know a lot of people always recommend, avoid the comments, but when I see something so full of shit, I can’t help but be curious on what is being said in the comments.  Fuck it, I often times enjoy reading the comments, because sometimes I discover some really good memes in them, and as long as I don’t participate, there’s few things I enjoy more than seeing some good internet squabbling.

Anyway, I was relieved to see that there were plenty of commenters like me who were weirded out by just how much time and effort lawn dad puts into his lawn, calling him out for having extraordinary amounts of extraneous time, resource, privilege and all sorts of white guy attributes without specifically referring to his whiteness.

Naturally, these responses triggered a tremendous amount of mostly white, white knights, who were more than willing to trade barbs with other commenters calling lawn dad out on his privilege, and it goes without saying that those flinging stones were likely people who were lawn dads in their own right, or were so inspired that they were considering their path to becoming one too.

The point is, lawn dad life is clearly a life without kids or any of the daily struggles that those not from a background of privilege can enjoy themselves.  I’m like, motherfucker, have some kids and see if you still have any time left in your life to wick dew or pattern lines into your grass, but that being said, a guy like this probably has a trad wife who does all of the parenting without him so that he can go play around in his yard all hours of the day.

Question is, when election time was in full swing, does a lawn dad dare risk poking holes into his lawn to plant his orange guy political signs, or does the health of his lawn supersede his support for racist bigots?

I always wanted the front of my house to look like an office vestibule

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I saw this meme from Black Twitter about how now that glass-enclosed front porches are becoming a thing, it’s only a matter of time before black people start tinting their front porches.  It was one of those things that I thought was kind of funny because of the stereotypes that were being implied by such an observations, but really my mind went to being fascinated that glass-enclosed front porches were actually a thing.

The examples I’d been seeing since being curious don’t really sell me on their benefit, other than the fact that they’re a hard-shell that stands as one more layer to protect the front door of a home from the devastating effects of prolonged rain exposure.

But otherwise, they make the homes that choose to go in that route look like, a vestibule to an office building.  And frankly, I don’t even understand what the point of vestibules are in the first place; Google is telling me that they’re:

for the purpose of waiting, withholding the larger space from view, reducing heat loss, providing storage space for outdoor clothing, etc

The thing is, most everywhere I’ve been, offices, hotels, airports, or any place that might have vestibules, the only rationale that really makes any sense is the prevention of loss of a desired air temperature; cold in the summer, heat in the winter, and anything in between.  I guess they could be used as something of mudrooms for a patch of space where people can reduce the amount of dirt and mud they track into the larger part of the structure.

But to basically turn homes into having a glorified vestibule once a front segment of a home is enclosed in glass?  Yeah, seems counterproductive in my opinion.

Not only does it look aesthetically ridiculous, it’s an invitation to greenhouse effect your front stoop/porch, and microwave the inside of it during a sunny and/or hot day.  Short of having some logical ventilation in there, I have to imagine that moisture gets trapped in these things and now you’ve also now got a sauna, pressing and permeating moisture onto one of the exterior walls and doors to your home, and if there’s one thing that I’ve ever learned about homeownership is that moisture is definitely not a good thing in most cases.

Provided on whether they’re locked or unlocked, these doors just create an extra layer for packages to be dropped off at; like Amazon will just plop the boxes outside the vestibule instead of next to your actual front door, and the risk of package theft goes up.  Or in a true nightmare scenario, a place for bums and squatters wandering by to meander to the door and give a tug, to see if they can get a free place to sleep overnight, or drop a deuce in the corner.

And of course, even if they’re not making up of straight up actual glass, plexi, acrylic and other forms of transparent surfaces still shatter and shard into sharp, dangerous pieces, and all it takes is one local vandal, an errant baseball, golf ball or football being struck or thrown, or a drive-by destruction of property in order to trash one of these glass boxes, and now you’ve got one more fragile thing that can break and cause a lot of harm and trauma.

I’m going to make an assumption here and assume that it was white people who came up with this silly idea, of glass-enclosed front porches because this definitely sounds like something white people would really come up with.  Have the pleasure of feeling like you’re outside enjoying a picturesque day, except not have to be influenced (as much) by summer heat or winter cold; and that’s provided that these are built to be remotely temperature controlled.  But completely not take into considerations of building little glass boxes that live outside, and all the consequences of creating such silly things.

But for real though, it will be entertaining if when the first time I actually see one of these out in the wild, it’s tinted.

Are Ravens fans really this dumb, pt 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even before I had daughters, I’ve always been in support of women’s rights.  What’s wrong with believing in that whole notion that everyone should be equal?

So a few days ago, I saw while scrolling, a quote from a Ravens player I’d never heard of before, about how he thought it was literally disgusting to see Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles playfully giving the bow down motion to Gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.

My first thought was, who the fuck is Marlon Humphrey, but then feeling my own disgust that someone was so offended by some women demonstrating a beautiful scene of sportsmanship and camaraderie with a fellow Olympian, to where they needed to use their influence as a for-lack-of-a-better-term, celebrity on Twitter to take a shit on it.

I felt the compulsion to comment on it:

Man plays on a team whose fans gave ovations to a guy whom had video evidence of him beating the Jesus out of his babymama in an elevator, and he thinks some sportsmanship is literally disgusting. Yeah ok

I didn’t give it much thought afterward, but clearly I had ignited Ravens fans for taking a pot-shot at their fanbase for how they so glowingly supported Ray Rice after his domestic assault charges against his fiancée, implying that they are as brainless and dumb as I genuinely think of most of them anyway, and the responses were about as predictable as one might imagine.

Firstly, most everyone who replied to my comment completely missed the point of being in support of female gymnasts, because I had committed the most heinous of sins, which was to take a swipe at the Ravens, and all these schmucks were blinded with rage when composing their own silly rebuttals, with denial, personal attacks, including a racist one where a black guy told me to stick to ping pong that either was deleted, or they had the wherewithal to delete themselves, and a not-surprising amount of people who were inadvertently taking Humphrey’s side just because he’s on the Ravens.

The thing is, what a lot of these butthurt commenters don’t seem to realize that by attacking me, they’re basically showing their support of Marlon Humphrey’s disdain for women athletes demonstrating sportsmanship as well as being okay with domestic violence towards women.  Yes, it’s a little bit of a reach to come to those conclusions, but looking at the gamut of people who took their time to air out their grievances with my words with their own, it doesn’t seem that far-fetched after all.

My favorites are the people who tried to defend Ray Rice by stating how he helped the Ravens win a Super Bowl some time ago, as if it makes it completely okay that he beat the living shit out of his fiancée in a hotel service elevator.  Or how she was spitting on him and cursing and smacking him first, so she seemed to deserve it.

I like when abusers, or those who are okay with it identify themselves, because it makes it easy for me to steer clear of the pieces of shit they are.

The thing is, my remarks also got a surprisingly high (300+) number of likes, showing that a lot of more intelligent people agreed with my opinion of Humphrey’s dumbass remark.  Unfortunately, those people were all smarter than me and didn’t comment in the first place, and frankly I don’t know why I do it sometimes, other than inadvertently embarking on some weird social experiments.

But hey, unsurprising as it is, it’s something to see, that even ten years after the last time I posted about Ravens fans being idiots, absolutely nothing at all seems to have changed.

Hello, L . . . GBTQ+

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was 16 years old and the WWF was in the midst of their Attitude Era, business was booming, wrestling couldn’t possibly be anymore mainstream than it was, and week after week was compelling television to the demographic that clearly targeted people like me, and of similar age mindsets.

When vignettes of Val Venis began, of him announcing is impending arrival in the WWE while simultaneously pantomiming all sorts of sexual activity, it really was a holy shit moment, as in the reality that professional wrestling was going to have a porn star character, was actually going to happen.

I remember debut on RAW is WAR, against Too-Cold Scorpio, and thinking this match was going surprisingly long for a guy’s debut, and after a vicious spinning heel kick from Scorpio, I actually remember wondering if Val Venis would be among the few superstars to actually take an L in their debut, the last one I could remember being Bastion Booger way back in like 1992.

Perhaps The Big Valbowski was being too generous as the noob in the locker room.  Or maybe Too-Cold was going into business for himself a little bit seeing as how he was eventually supposed to take the L; maybe the man that Mick Foley put in writing as having the largest penis he’d ever seen in his life was a little salty that some Canadian guy was getting to portray the porn star gimmick that he felt could’ve been his.

But Val Venis did win the match, and I remember thinking how unimpressive he actually was in the ring, based on that singular match.

Eventually, he would get opportunities to redeem himself, and seeing as how the WWF roster was stacked to the gills with guys like The Rock, Mick Foley, Kurt Angle and Edge, even the mid-card was loaded with guys like the New Age Outlaws, Hardcore Holly, D’lo, X-Pac, Ken Shamrock among many others.

Not only was The Big Valbowski a fun character, gushing with charisma and cleverly-written promos, the guy actually could work too.  Needless to say, I was a fan of Val Venis.

However, it should come as no great surprise that a guy whose character was a literal porn star, there would be a ceiling for him, dictated by the rules and regulations of public decency and mostly the FCC.  In order for Val to elevate to the main event and the top of the card, the character would have to grow and evolve, and there’s really not much growth or evolution a porn star would be able to do on national television.

Eventually, due to mounting pressure from outside forces, most notably the formed Parent-Television Council, the Val Venis persona eventually made its way to the block and was soon choppy-choppy’d from the program.

As talented of a worker as he was, workrate is only half of professional wrestling, and character is the other half.  Losing a persona like Val Venis was the kiss of death, and after flops like RTC member Val Venis and then Chief Morley, he would flounder some more in TNA before his professional career came to mostly an end.

Much like lots of former wrestlers of yesteryear, Sean Morley [his real name] could’ve faded into the sunset, or among the many things a guy could do in order to stay relevant to the modern wrestling community, utilize social media to announce their existence, but also to spout horrifically right-wing propaganda and become one of the countless right-wing nuts that pollute the population.  And if you went with the latter, at what you think Val Venis has been doing in retirement, you’re absolutely right.

Which finally brings us to the point of this post’s existence; apparently The Big Valbowski’s right-wing rhetoric and how much he blathers it has ruffled a few feathers, most notably the guy who has been running his website, ValVenis.com.  I didn’t dive too far to find out the context of just how bad the rift went, or specifically what caused it, but the result of such a fallout was that the guy who had the keys to the car, has decided to turn ValVenis.com into a site that now exists in support and allyship of the LGBTQ+ community; and if there’s one major demographic that exists in the crosshairs of the hard right, it’s the LGBTQ+ community.

Unsurprisingly, The Big Valbowski is none too pleased with this development, and has supposedly pursued legal action and is suing the webmaster to try to get the reigns to his website back.  I don’t care enough to have an opinion on whom is going to possibly come out of the legal battle with any advantage, but my knee-jerk thought is that webmaster probably has the upper hand, seeing as how they’re probably the one who registered, paid and are actually the ones still maintaining the virtual property.

Seeing as how the WWE hasn’t cared enough about the Val Venis character to bother renewing and retaining the IP, I imagine if Sean Morley secures the copyright for himself, he might have a leg to stand on, but in the meantime, I love that the Webmaster has turned “VAL VENIS” into a really reaching anagram of LGBTQ+ support in a long-shot way to justify using the domain for its current purpose:

VAL : Valued Allies of LGBTQ+
VENIS: Vital Educational & NonJudgemental Informational Services

Sean Morley didn’t really have that long of a career, but he kind of existed in the era when professional wrestlers were free-spending jocks who blew thousands of dollars on drinking, drugs and ring rats, and aren’t the athletic nerds of today who have gamified investing and earning, so I have no idea what his current financial status is.  But if I had to guess, it’s more towards the former, and I don’t imagine he has the means to get into a legal battle against a website, fighting over the web domain of a former wrestling porn star in an actual court of law.

The bottom line is as it stands now, Val Venis is in 100% owned status, and is a precautionary tale of the importance of being good to your webmasters, especially if you yourself don’t have any keys to the house.

I hope Southwest is ready to be mediocre

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WaPo: Southwest Airlines eliminating open seating starting in 2025

In the grand spectrum of things, Southwest Airlines getting rid of open seating doesn’t really impact my life that much.  I don’t fly enough anymore to really be affected by this, because my life is too hectic at this juncture in my life and when it’s time for a family trip, driving is more economical and logical albeit more time consuming, but it’s better than dropping $2,100 on a trip to like Orlando.

But Southwest was always a company that I had some admiration for, because their general people-first modus operandi was always refreshing in the vast ocean of big businesses that existed solely to part dollars from the hands of the people and put them into the pockets of soulless shitheads known as investors and other finance-ey words used to describe old white people. 

And it’s not like they were starving by any stretch of the imagination, even during some of the most brutal recessions and stretches of financial wastelands, SWA was one of the few airlines that continually turned profits, mostly on account of their generally friendly business practices.

Reasonable fares, convenient routes, free checked bags, and free change policies; there was a lot to like about SWA, but if there was ever one thing that conversely blew the minds off of the dull-watted, and to some probably perceived as a deterrent and turn-off, was the open-seating policy that probably defeated more people than the internet itself.

Personally, it was, and has never been an issue for me, because I have a brain.  It’s not that hard to queue up in lines in little chunks of five behind clearly marked totems, and it takes either a little bit of upfront discipline or the willingness to pay a little extra to get Group A boarding, and seeing as how the vast majority of my travels on SWA have usually been by myself, I’ve almost always been able to grab an errant single aisle or window seat closer to the front of the aircraft, meaning I can get the fuck off sooner rather than later being wedged into the back of the aircraft and needing an extra 20 minutes just to deplane.

But if I had to guess, in spite of being their policy for over the last 50 years, SWA has simply had enough of the bullshit of dealing with passengers who just haven’t gotten it after a half century, passengers who conduct themselves like entitled spoiled assholes on the aircraft, and having to deal with passengers who they have to reimburse or give free second seats to because they’re the sizes of Pontiac Azteks.

Like the vast majority of things in the world that end up being declared ruined, there’s nobody really to blame, except people.

Sure, at the root of it, I want to accuse some managerial change at the higher rungs of the ladders at SWA, where some bean counters have identified a vast field of earning opportunities to be had by ditching open seating, and that’s probably not inaccurate, but the company had resisted many opportunities to switch in previous decades, but in this day and age, the bullshit of passengers has probably grown too much, their workforce has grown flakier and full of impatient younger heads, and enough is enough and this is where we’re headed.

The reality is that SWA has probably lost out on millions over the last few decades, by trying to be The People’s™ airline, with their friendly policies and acceptance and inclusion, and thanks to mounting passenger bullshit, they’ve probably just hit a philosophical wall of why they should be handicapping their earning capabilities being nice to a ton of assholes, when absolutely nobody else is doing it?

When the day is over, as I said, it doesn’t impact me a whole hell of a lot, but I would be curious to see what lies in the future for Southwest.  I don’t imagine the loss of open-seating is really going to impact the airline as much as many outlets on the internet make it sound like it’s going to, but for those people who were married to the concept, and are going to revolt, or at least no longer prioritize them because they’re basically transforming into an “ordinary” airline on the level of United or American or JetBlue, SWA is just going to likely blend into the pack, except, barring a change, more handicapped by virtue of not partnering up with travel aggregators like Google, Kayak, Travelocity and Expedia.

Their free baggage and lack of change fees might be enough to retain some customers, and I’m really curious to know what’s going to become of the large passenger policy once seats become assigned, and big people won’t be able to just lumber to the gate and assume an empty seat will be available next to theirs, but in the game of airline thrones, the most important thing is solely going to hinge on if as long as SWA can remain competitive with fares.

Regardless, I still lament over the days before SWA engulfed AirTran.  Not a travel day goes by where I don’t miss AirTran and the time where I could get sub-$200 RT fares to visit my family and eastern-based friends, and then cash in my credits to trips to Las Vegas or Seattle.  After the merger, all those routes have nearly doubled in cost, and despite my general positive opinion of their brand, I was not happy about it.

Things change, this is where we’re headed, and I hope SWA is ready to slide into the middle of the pack.  But as long as they don’t have to see any further videos and articles about their passengers being douchebag pricks on the internet, they probably are happy to take that deal in the long game.

Rawdogging has got to be the dumbest flex in recent times

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although there have been a few positive exceptions, social media has mostly spawned nothing but bullshit since, well, the inception of social media.  From stuff as stupid as kids eating Tide pods, illegal activities like teaching people how to steal Kias and Hyundais, to all sort of pointless, stupid bullshit often dubbed challenges like pretending to slip and fall in grocery stores while holding milk cartons or weird dances in public places.

Sure it’s easy to just chalk up my attitude being a grumpy old man, but I have a hard time trying to justify peoples’ defense of claiming that things are just fun, if they’re inconveniencing others, or you know, committing crimes.

Recently, I saw this thing where people are apparently bragging about their ability to ride on airplanes and do absolutely nothing at all.  No headphones to listen to music, no watching any in-flight entertainment, no napping, no snacks, seemingly no bathroom breaks, just sitting and doing absolutely nothing at all.  Some of these braggarts might have a cup of coffee that they brought onto the flight, or are allowing themselves to watch the flight status screen, but for all intents and purposes, they’re partaking in a challenge known as raw dogging flights, aka doing absolutely nothing at all for as long as they can.

For some reason, it seems to be limited to men participating in this flexing contest, and I’ve (unfortunately) seen people flexing seven hours, ten hours, 14 hours, on flights within the United States, and transcontinental flights to other countries.  Dudes boasting about how they raw dogged these flights, as if its something to be proud of to be so devoid of anything in their heads that they can stare mindlessly in front of them and absolutely nothing else.

Don’t get me wrong, my life has been chaotic to the point where I have been in the position to where I do want to just stare at a wall and do absolutely nothing, but with my inherent doer mentality, even at my worst, I probably could only last like 20-30 minutes before my brain turns back on and I feel the necessity to be making good use of my time instead of squandering it.

What I wouldn’t give  to have an hour, much less 7-11 hours on a flight to do all sorts of activities that I typically can’t do when I’m in my ordinary life because I’m so in the trenches of being a dad.  I would read books, magazines, I would write brog posts, I would binge television shows and movies from the list of titles that I’ve been trying to keep track of over the years since becoming a parent.  I’d listen to music, or play a video game, but the idea of squandering any bit of free time that flights inadvertently provide would be completely out of the question.

A long time ago, I was on a flight from Atlanta to Toronto, and I was reading a book.  I was seated next to this girl who appeared to be inadvertently raw dogging the flight, and at first I thought it was strange, but I was minding my own business.  After a while, I noticed how fidgety she was, and that she had skimmed through the in-flight magazine and it was pretty apparent that she was bored.  Finally, I put my book down, and asked her if she were bored, to which began a pleasant conversation for the remainder of our flight, how she was from Guadalajara, and learned a lot of English from watching English-language television, but the point being raw dogging was such a terrible experience that conversing with a total stranger was preferrable over it.

When I went on a work trip last year, I couldn’t wait to get on the plane, because of all the free time that awaited me once my ass was in the seat.  ATL to LAX meant I would have almost four hours to myself, and once we took off, I knocked out like two brog posts, and then watched half of the latest season of Castlevania and several episodes of the live-action One Piece.  After landing in Los Angeles, I felt productive and accomplished and got my head in a good place going into a work trip.  The flight back saw more Netflix and more writing and frankly catching up on my writing queue as well as binging through two shows that I had wanted to watch was a bigger accomplishment than lots of the work crap I had to do during the trip.

Very soon, I have a small flight coming up; it’s only going to Florida, so the in-air time is only going to be barely more than an hour.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit and stare blankly in silence on the flight, because that’s an hour in which I could read a book that I haven’t finished yet, maybe knock out a brog post of something that I might’ve wanted to write about and haven’t had the time to do.  Or maybe I’ll put something to watch on my iPad and enjoy an episode or two or half of a movie.

The point is, raw dogging is about the stupidest thing to have ever been come up with in recent history, and I can’t help but express disdain for it as a whole.  All these brainless dorks flexing that the ability to do it is something to be proud of, clearly have little in their heads or are completely okay with wasting time that could be better used for any sort of things that aren’t just burning a large number of hours staring at nothing but a shitty 3D model of a flight screen.

Zuck may be a tool, but I respect what he’s doing with his physical life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know where or why I was shown it, but I saw a picture of Zuck without a shirt on at some MMA event, and I had a wtf moment at just how jacked the dorky motherfucker now is.  Whenever his name pops up somewhere, my mind automatically fills in the visual of Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of him in The Social Network, but with his doofy looking head with his buggy-looking eyes instead.

But in reality now, we’ve got a pretty athletic looking guy with budding muscle definition and a growing amount of jiu-jitsu training, because from what I understand it’s pretty much the only thing he does when he’s not being a corporate stooge these days.  Zuck is absolutely becoming a problem in that he’s a rich go-zillionaire, but is also developing the physique and the skillset to be able to fight, and that automatically knocks about 85% of the people who hate him for being who is off their pedestals of wishing they could bully him or intimidate him in a real-life fantasy altercation.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t particularly care much for the guy, but I will freely admit that I respect what he’s doing with his body.  Think about all the billionaires and millionaires out there that are fat, soft and doughy, and all shaped like pears.  Because of their wealth, they’ve simply given up on trying at all when it comes to their bodies, because they can just continuously throw money at things until they get a positive result.

But Zuck, it’s like he revolves his day around his working out and BJJ training, and that running theFacebook or Meta or whatever the fuck company is making him infinite money is basically a nuisance of a day job that is interfering with his ability to train.  When he’s not practicing grappling, he’s most definitely got a nutritionist and personal trainers who ensure that his body becomes sculpted and is in optimal shape, and I have to give props that the man is actually investing a little bit of his wealth into his own physical well-being, because there are so many in similar positions to him that absolutely do not.

I mean, it’s exactly what I would do if I were infinitely rich and didn’t have to work anymore.  I’d have both a personal chef as well as a personal trainer to make sure I got adequate exercise with physical goals in mind, as well as being fed healthy food that doesn’t suck or get exhausted with.

And then I’d get hardcore into wood working or restoring cars, and building my Nissan Sil-Eighty because that is still something that I really would like to do in my life, and when I hit the points of progress where I can humblebrag about the things I’m working on, I won’t look like a fat fucking slob that people would look at and overshadow the quality of my work because they’re too busy laughing at me.  I guarantee, that the more jacked and competent that Zuck gets with his training, the less fuel the troglodytes of the internet have to clown on him whenever his name pops up in the future.