Tag: social media

I doubt I could cut it as a content creator

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Occasionally when I’m doomscrolling, I’ve noticed some content creators that get spoon fed to me for whatever reason for a variety of reasons.  Parenting, girl dads, wrestling fans, Asians, whatever, like many people out there, videos are suggested and shown to us, and I have a tendency to remember what I like to think is more detail than average people tend to absorb.

One thing I’ve noticed is that most of these creators, occasionally they drop some hints, be it inadvertent, or poorly staged, of their living situations, and the one commonality that exists with a lot of these content creators is that they seem to be doing very well for themselves and apparently making some good money, for what seems like inane content that seems like it should be a breeze to produce.

Usually when I’m driving in the car, commuting to the office, my mind absently wanders to thinking about what to do in order to make more money, and lately it pivots into wondering if I could do what a lot of these content creators do and start churning out mundane, slice-of-life kind of content that they do and eventually reach the point where I’m getting paid fuck you amounts of money to produce such simple crap.

The answer is unmistakably, probably not.   I’m not going to discount the amount of effort that goes into a single video, and editing and posting with the most optimal tags, optimization and other back-end effort that helps a video get seen, but what it really boils down to is the fact that I’m just not comfortable enough in front of a camera to produce anything that wouldn’t come off as awkward, uncomfortable and just plain crappy probably.

And when I watch some videos by certain creators, there’s a tremendous amount of labor that must go into simply positioning cameras around everywhere in order to capture the hundreds of micro, transitional clips that help a video flow and progress from one shot to the other with clearer context.  Like a quick shot of a dude pressing an elevator button, a 2 second clip of someone’s car backing out of their driveway or pulling into a parking lot; I’m amazed at the dedication to capturing these micro-moments, or the amount of cameras being utilized, or perhaps both, in order to get all this content out there in the world.

Yeah, I couldn’t do that shit, at least I don’t think I could, nor do I really have the drive to really try it.

Even if the end result is churning out really low-difficulty content that by sheer volume alone, would be capable of generating viewership dollars, perhaps this is one of those things where I’m just of too old a mindset and work ethic to where I don’t seem capable of doing it, but the point remains, a tip of the cap to the people who have bet on themselves, put their lives on the internet for other people to gets glimpses into, as genuine or not it may actually be, and beg people to pound that like button and subscribe.

But going back to the topic of envy, it’s hard to not be envious of the supposed money that a lot of these creators are generating by doing things that are probably more self-satisfying than what nonsensical crap people like me do for The Man for pithy wages do in comparison.

Perhaps I need to be put into a scenario where going into content creation is my only option and have to do it as if my life depended on it, in order for me to break the wall of potentially getting my foot into the door of that world, but like most generally risk-averse human beings, I don’t want to rock the boat and jeopardize the stability I have currently, for the instability and uncertainty of trying to do something else, like content creation.

White people learning Asian languages to create content is omega-level white privilege

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I try to not be envious of too much in my life, but I’m also human, and sometimes we just can’t help those types of feelings when we come across them.  That being said, I often lament when I see talented musicians, artists, or even video gamers, and ponder if I could have become as talented as they are, had I not been such an unambitious shit and strayed away from them.

But if there’s one talent that I often feel what could possibly be construed as envy, it would be polyglots.  Obviously English is my native tongue, but I can speak enough Korean to survive easily in Korea, despite my reading being about as good as a grade schooler, with my writing being even weaker.  I know enough Japanese to probably not be completely dominated in Japan, and I’m almost to a two-year streak in Duolingo, practicing Español at least 30 minutes every single day.

However, I’m nowhere near as capable of those people who would be considered actual polyglots, where they can switch languages as easy as a manual transmission driver changing gears, and I’m usually awestruck at how these linguistic masters can hang with just about anyone when they need to.

Lately, I don’t know why The Algorithm is showing me these things, but occasionally I’ve seen videos of white guys who film videos of themselves surprising Chinese people in public places, usually restaurants, when they pretend to be meek shy tourists at their establishments, and after letting a Chinese server struggle to communicate with them in English, they bust out flawless Mandarin or Cantonese, much to their surprise as well as any bystanders in the background.

It was interesting the first time I saw one of these, and dare I say entertaining.  But when it becomes apparent that this is pretty much the only trick that these content creators have, regardless of how many other languages they speak, it becomes obnoxious to me, and I would go as far as to say that it’s also exploitative of, usually Chinese people, because I have yet to see any of these clowns try this schtick with Koreans, Japanese, or any other Asian culture other than Chinese.  I’m not saying they haven’t, and videos don’t exist, but god help me if I ever came across one, especially if it were with Koreans.  It’s bad enough that these polyglots probably speak better Korean than I do, but I’d be incensed to see them pull their schtick on my people.

As the subject of this post says, white guys picking up Asian languages, and then using their talents to farm content on the internet is a level of white privilege that I would say is definitely omega-level.  Because frankly not many other demographics in the world could really get away with this like white guys can, and frankly I’m not entirely sure that any demographic is as attention-starved as white content creators are to even come up with this kind of gimmick.

Just like a black American couldn’t go into Africa and flex some Swahili and expect to surprise some locals, I can’t go into Korea, identify myself as America, and even remotely come close to impress any locals.  Mexicans weren’t at all impressed with my Español on my last time in Mexico, and whenever I’ve been into France, Italy, or Germany, I feel like I’m met more with disdain that I don’t speak their languages.  I highly doubt such would be that different even if I did speak their languages.  It’s like I, or any other Asian person is expected to have learned their languages, based on the educational stereotypes of us.

The thing with all these white polyglots is that they all feel at home and that their bread and butter content is that of tricking and surprising Chinese people.  I don’t seek, but The Algorithm doesn’t bother to feed me any examples of them doing this to any other demographics, and it’s always Chinese people that they film their shitty content with.

And I’m obviously not Chinese, but I am a fellow Asian, and I do take some objection to their exploitation of my Asian brethren in order for them to film content.  What I really want to see is for all these Chinese restauranteurs to start adopting the mindset that everyone who walks into their establishments should be expected to know some Mandarin or Cantonese, and if they do, great, but if they don’t, start unloading the exasperation and passive aggression of disgust, and basically make it so that these white clowns don’t have any ammo to make any further shitty videos.  No-sell the shit out of their reveals and respond with dismissive remarks with rebuttals like “oh good, you do speak Chinese” or better yet, respond in English, like natives tend to do whenever tourists bungle their way them in their native tongues.

Non-Koreans need not apply

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I use my brog to vent out my general frustrations about randos on the internet because I don’t want to comment on social media and possibly risk engaging in interactions I don’t want to get sucked into.

But over the last year or so, there’s a content creator with whom I engage with regularly enough to where theFacebook keeps offering me up a top fan badge which I promptly delete the suggestion because I don’t care nor is it at all important for others to see me as someone who spends more time than is necessary engaging with someone that I don’t know at the end of the day.

I like to keep my interactions generally positive, as this person is also Korean, also a dad, and although I could be jealous of his success at climbing the rope of content creation and the lifestyle it has created for him, I don’t want to be the jealous fatty of Korean person who envies and generally becomes a hater, because I really am happy to see a Korean guy finding success, making wholesome content in such a droll world where everything is an uphill battle.

Mostly I interact with fairly innocuous remarks, primarily positive, but also when he queries other parents, I sometimes share opinions, as another Korean father in America.  But I occasionally sprinkle my commentary with some 한글 every now and then, kind of as a way of directly speaking to him and/or other Korean supporters of his, because sometimes there are just some things in the world that aren’t really relatable to anyone other than to us Korean people.

However, being public forum, this means that the rest of the non-Korean pleebs of the world can see what I’m saying, and worst of all, have the capability to comment and respond when they feel necessary, which is unfortunately to say way more often than I’d like it to be.  Mostly because the overwhelming majority of people in the world are incapable of initiating, which includes on the internet where nobody has the balls to make their own comments but have zero qualms with rebutting and contradicting when they feel the urge (that nobody asked for) to say something.

A lot of the time, my remarks get the “this doesn’t apply to just Koreans” or “I’m also X Asian/minority class and this tracks for us” counters, which in some cases might not be completely invalid.  But my favorites are the responses I get from what are obviously white people who feel that they have absolutely anything to add in any sort of matter that pertains to me pointing out -isms of Koreans and other Asian tropes.

Like the impetus of this post stems from this content creator low-key flexing his pockets by showing an itemized e-receipt of some ingredients purchased for a future video.  But instead of being a hater and acknowledging and calling out the humblebrag, I remarked about imagining his or the hypothetical Korean parent seeing this receipt and it’s exorbitant cost, and how they’d probably imagine it would be cheaper to travel to [foreign location] to [acquire] the ingredient, and ignore the whole time and labor cost, in the name of saving money, because the trope is that Koreans are eternally cost-conscious and the only things that matter are those bottom lines.

I get some Chad Borowski responding to me that time and labor is free to one’s self, and that they can get memories and experience out of the hypothetical journey to [foreign location].  Some hippie-dippy white person bullshit, injecting their belief system to a culture that couldn’t give a shit less about such things versus the objective of not paying exorbitant costs for anything.  And then it’s topped off with an umbrella sermon about how Chad wished more people were capable of doing things for themselves and enjoy the process.

 

Normally I don’t re-engage, but this one made me roll my eyes so hard, by the time my eyeballs returned to their sockets, I had already hit send on a response, facetiously saying his remark was cute but [due to his obvious lack of knowledge of Korean parents on account of not being fucking Korean] that the only experience and memories a Korean parent wants to get out of such a hypothetical journey is the ability to humblebrag to their group chat about how much money they saved, and have an unsmiling selfie at the location to prove it.  Because that’s entirely what hypothetical Korean parents of this specified generation are entirely all about, and the exact course of action that would take place.

But my bad for re-engagement, because later in the day, Chad rebuts again because white people are about as other classes when it comes the need to get the last word in, and they accused me of being miserable with a sour world view, which isn’t entirely incorrect, but in the context of this conversation, is completely putting words in my mouth.

I didn’t bother responding again because I had already broken one of my general rules of social media of commenting on comments, and I feel no need to get the last word, but the point of all this is that Chad here, or any other white person need not bother getting involved in this observation that has nothing to do with them.

Unfortunately, I know that tons of white guys out there in the world are incapable of receiving such a memo, so this won’t be the last time Ben Affleck or Jillian Michaels is going to interfere with my knowing commentary of Koreans to another Korean.  But hopefully, it won’t pique my nerves to the point where I feel the need to burn a brog post about it again.

I don’t know why the term ‘human kibble’ triggers me so much

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: Man of mass efficiency meal preps in large quantity, Vice opines whether ‘human kibble’ is viable or is just another internet trend

I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts and trying to articulate my words, but the bottom line is that I’m triggered by the phrase ‘human kibble’ and it bothers me enough to where it is manifesting in this brog post.

So what we have here is a guy who clearly values efficiency, not wasting a lot of time thinking about what to eat, and understanding the benefits to prepping food en masse.  What he basically makes is a gargantuan amount of fried rice, loaded with tons of veggies, tofu, chicken, rice and beans, and presumably, this is all he ever eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and has done so for several years now.

From the looks of the guy, whom based on his names is more than likely Korean, he’s in great shape, doesn’t look at all overweight, and is more than likely tremendously healthier than the troglodytes of the internet judging his culinary decision making who are mostly eating takeout sludge and closer to My 600 Lb. Life The 6,000 Lb. Diaries participants than they are to him. 

As mortifying as the thought of eating the same thing over and over again might seem to many people, it clearly works as far as this guy is concerned.  You’re not dieting for the taste… 

Frankly, I feel a bit of a kindred spirit in this guy, because I too also have the innate ability to eat the same thing over and over again without really getting tired of it.  A long time ago, I used to eat Willy’s pretty much 4-5 times a week for lunch.  Currently, I basically eat the same lunch every day.  Honestly, if I were still single and without kids and didn’t have to ever worry about anyone else, I’d probably have gone the same route as this guy, and been as happy as a clam in doing it.  

Add another idea to embark on if I were ever to discover a time machine and could go back in time to get ahead of the curve.

But where my ire begins is towards the people who have coined it as ‘human kibble,’ because I know that it’s typical dorks on the internet trying to get themselves over as inventors of clever quips, but at least to me, it comes off as demeaning, and even if it’s not its intent, slightly kind of racist.

Kibble is what was designed to the default food for all sorts of animals, and by denigrating this dude’s fried rice by calling it kibble is indirectly equating him to as being an animal.  Especially since the contents of his mass produced stir fry is all clean, fresh food, and again, probably way healthier than the people cracking jokes are eating, there’s something ironic about equating what he’s making and eating to something that is so default, for aniamls.

It doesn’t help that the man in question is Asian, seemingly Korean that doesn’t deter the racist narrative, because obviously there’s a low-hanging fruit of Koreans who have been known to eat dogs historically, and comparing what an Asian man eats to what dogs eat, dregs up this sour negative connotation that feels like it’s stemming from racism, regardless of how innocuous the origins of human kibble may have originated from.

Maybe this says more about me than it does about the masses, but the whole idea of people labeling mass-produced meal prep as ‘kibble’ rubs me the wrong way, and like I said, I’m having a hard time articulating everything the way I want to.  I don’t recall when there was a dude way back who invented a meal replacement shake and called it ‘Soylent,’ people at all denigrating it in any way, and instead applauding the idea and the massive savings in time they could enjoy by replacing all their meals with Soylent.

Mass-batch making fried rice is basically the same concept, except the end result is a hearty bowl of fried rice and not a viscous liquid.  The only differences are the skin color and nationalities of the creators.  It is nowhere near being the equivalent of kibble for humans, and the people who tried to get this to become the thing it already is, can all go fuck themselves.

If only I were in my 30s again

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There have been multiple times in my life in which I have thought that I was born in the wrong time.  Like whenever I see professional gamers and how revered they are in Korea and how worshipped they are in the gaming community, I think to myself that maybe that could’ve been me, had I been born in like ten years later than I was, where my parents wouldn’t have discouraged and shamed my love of video games and instead nurtured and encouraged them, and maybe I could’ve ended up like Faker or Daigo or some other professional gamer that makes millions of dollars playing video games and streaming video games today.

Lately, I’ve been having those similar thoughts again because for whatever reason, the social media algorithm has decided to start providing me reels of all these people who basically do nothing but film themselves, going around doing mundane things by themselves, but usually prefaced with a caption of “single 30-something does X in a day,” and it’s a 45-70 second reel of them going around, doing mundane things, with the underlying hook being that they’re doing it peacefully and without anyone bothering them.

Grocery shopping, visiting some local restaurant, going on a run, hitting the gym, driving around, eating some more food, cooking food that they’ll eat, getting and/or drinking a fancy coffee; running some mundane errands but doing it at their own pace and leisure.

These videos will all have hundreds to thousands of reactions, comments and seemingly very high engagement numbers, and although it might be all by bots, the stats are still stats, and undoubtedly these people are making money doing such.  They all have templated formats, cold opens and tiny gimmicks, presumably to make them who they are, but at the root of things, they’re still just doing mundane crap, and it just so happens that they’re not all unattractive blobs of humanity, they’re admittedly watchable.

I just can’t help but think that if I were in my 30s now, when I was single forever, and had pretty much nothing but time on my hands when I wasn’t working, I could be in on this hustle, and be making a bunch of videos about my mundane life and presumably be getting paid to do it, and when I got tired of doing it, I’d have a million bucks in my bank account to where I could have the seed money to perhaps embark on to my current life, but with moar capital backing me up.

Seriously, I’m not sure I could churn out content at the rate as many of these creators do, but I think about the things that I have done in my life throughout my 30s, and wonder if some things would be worth making content out of.

  • 30-year old single Korean-American travels to X to visit MLB team/park/city
  • A day in the life of a 31-year old Korean living in Atlanta
  • How a 32-year old single Korean guy prepares for standby travel
  • 33-year old single Korean guy gets stranded in Minneapolis
  • Dragon*con with a 34-year old single Korean guy
  • 35-year old Korean guy visits Korea for the very first time

Shit, I could do what a lot of the creators do now.  Albeit perhaps with less of the extravagances they subtly like to flex, like how all their cars seem to be way high-end, or they have designer belongings, but I like to go to coffee shops and restaurants, and I could film myself walking into a gym or an H-Mart.  Film myself going to my computer “to work” and all the other inane bullshit that all these creators do.

And when the cameras aren’t rolling, basking in the largely positive ratio of engagement scores that my content is generating, and waiting for all the digital media money to start rolling in, and encouraging me to keep going.

Nah, instead I’m in my mid-40s now, married with kids, and I’m not saying that they’re the reason why I couldn’t embark on a new career of being a content creator, it’s just that I know that content creation is an largely, wholly time-consuming endeavor to embark on, and personally it’s more important to be present with my family and children versus getting caught up in the rat race of trying to produce, film, edit, and post content, and knowing my luck, by the time I get the machine rolling, the content creation bubble will pop, and it won’t be nearly as lucrative then as it is now.

And ironically, the new moneyball of making money, would be getting a fucking job, doing it, and getting these periodic things called paychecks.

But, nothing is ever going to change until I get in on things, because I am begrudgingly the master of the universe, and nothing happens until I decide to get involved.  If I did what the single 30s somethings are doing today, it probably wouldn’t be nearly as monetarily viable as it is now.

World Cup 2026: the global heel turn of Argentina

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I thought about waiting until after the finals of the World Cup to write this, but I realized that it doesn’t matter.  With it being Spain vs. Argentina in the final, it’s basically a match between the Colonizers versus the Racists in a matchup between two top-4 FIFA ranked squads, and at this point I’d say that I’m pulling for Spain solely because I’d been hoping anyone at all could stop the freight train that is Argentina, but there’s little reason to believe that all the memes, narratives, accusations and perceived favoritism towards Argentina is going to let up at this point, and it seems like the inevitable is going to remain, inevitable.

And that’s what this post is basically about, how throughout the course of this World Cup, it seems to me that Argentina has gradually gone from defending champions and home to Lionel Messi, to this gradual, increasingly disliked squad that everyone outside of Argentinians and/or front-running bandwagoners are rooting against, and the deeper that Argentina has advanced into the tournament, the stronger the disdain seems to be growing.

From what I have been observing, it has been because of several factors:

  1. Lionel Messi is getting the Shohei Ohtani treatment, as in absolutely anything and everything he does is being glorified ridiculously out of proportion. A goal?  An all-caps Twitter tweet from every single sports outlet on the planet.  An assist?  ALL CAPS.  Converting on a PK from penalty drawn by someone else?  ALL CAPS.  His reaction after a match?  ALL CAPS.  Like Ohtani, I have little reason to believe that Messi is actually a horrible person, but when the media is forcing him down everyone’s throats, resentment begins to creep upward.
  2. FIFAvoritism – with each match it becomes harder and harder to deny these accusations, and the public have gone from what they’ve been seeing with their own eyes, to internet bean counters statistically making nifty charts to document the perceived favoritism Argentina has been getting as far as things like strength of schedule, fouls drawn versus the fouls they commit, how many times VAR has ruled in their favor versus against, and just the narrative that FIFA is doing everything in their power to tip the scales to constantly be leaning favorably for Argentina, be it referee selections, locations of their matches. As the tournament has progressed, we’ve the growth of numerous memes, with my favorites being VARgentina, Fix It For Argetnina and Get yourself a partner that looks at you the way FIFA looks at Argentina.
  3. Historical – One thing I’ve enjoyed throughout this World Cup are all the historical jokes that have been made throughout the tournament, poking fun at events like the Revolutionary War, colonizing done by various countries, and other historical factoids, shaped into futbol matches. I didn’t know this, but it’s through the World Cup that I learned that Argentina is where many Nazi/German/Axis people fled to after World War II, and the correlation many have pointed out how their futbol squad basically has nobody of any dark pigmentation, especially compared to the numerous Latin countries’ rosters.  And that perception alone is worth drawing a lot of hate from the internet and casual sports fans.
  4. THAT’S RACIST! According to my au pair, Argentina is a pretty racist country.  Their history of having racist refugees seeking asylum there probably has something to do with that, but there’s still a ceiling to her opinion since she’s Brazilian, and they hate Argentinians like I hated Marylanders growing up in Virginia, and how I look down on Alabamans as a Georgia resident.  But then you have the coach of Egypt throwing up the crossed arm X gesture, signaling for racism during a match, grumblings from players from Cabo Verde saying they heard some racist remarks, and most recently England’s Jude Bellingham angrily getting into it with Argentina’s bench warmers after what appears to be in reaction to something he heard one say, and given the fact that he’s a person of color, people are making assumptions, and perhaps my au pair isn’t just being a nationalistic neighboring rival.

But above all else, is the fact that Argentina just keeps winning, and it seems like inevitability that they’re going to be the first repeat World Cup winner since Brazil repeated in 1958 and 1962.  Like the MJ’s Bulls, Kobe’s Lakers, Tom Brady’s Patriots, and Shohei Freddie’s Dodgers, everyone begins to turn on the winning teams, especially if they start developing large numbers of bandwagon and/or disingenuous fans.

Circling back to #2, it’s not even like Argentina really needs any help from FIFA or anyone who may or may not be moving things around to ensure that they win.  Argentina is the defending champs and ranked top-4 for a reason, and even if they weren’t getting excessive favoritism from refereeing, they still have to make the crosses and accurate headers and kicks and get the ball into the back of the net.  They’ve been living life in time after 90’ with all sorts of late-match dramatic goals against Egypt, Cabo Verde, Switzerland, and England, and favoritism or not, they’re making incredible scores happen.

It’s funny, because from colleagues and sports fan friends I speak with, I don’t think I’m along in seeing the things I’m seeing, especially with Argentina’s heel turn.  At the same time, this World Cup has also witnessed the increasing love-fest for Mexico, helping eliminate decades worth of character assassination of their country, mostly from the United States, as people from all over the world have seen how vibrant, lively and generally welcoming Mexico has been throughout the course of the tournament, with many pointing out just how quickly things simmered down in the excitement department, once Mexico was eliminated and matches were no longer being held in Mexico.

Regardless, whether Argentina wins the World Cup or not, I think the heel turn has already been completed.  It’s not that people really want or care if Spain can defeat them, it’s all about just wanting to see them lose.  And I guess if futbol really did operate in the wrestling bubble, just getting people to have that reaction, negative as it may be, is still win, especially if it draws money.

Asian tech addiction is real, man

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whilst on my cruise, I purchased a 24-hour internet package, for one device.  It was $29 added to my folio, and to the credit of blatant cash grab, the internet speed was adequate, and I was able to accomplish the one reason that I had purchased it for: to neurotically be able to post a singular theFacebook post on a completely self-mandated and arbitrary date, which was the Father’s Day blet photo that I’ve long decided that June 26th is the date every year in which I post it so that I may be able to neurotically use the Memories feature in future June 26s and view them sequentially despite the fact that I have no less than 2-3 other ways in which I could do the exact same things and not have spent $29 extra on my cruise.

Also, I was able to use it to extend two days of my Duolingo streak without having to utilize any streak freezes, despite the fact that I had dropped 3,000 gems on a 7-day streak freeze which was already in effect for the explicit purpose to protect my streak whilst on the cruise. 

But also mythical wife was able to log into her account on my phone and do the same thing, which was probably the only fortunate use of it, since she didn’t have the same amount of freeze protection that I already did.

And honestly, that was probably the most useful use of the data beyond my completely arbitrary need to post Father’s Day blet photo on June 26th.   Otherwise, I found myself mindlessly dicking around the internet like I normally would do with a permanent umbilical connection to it whenever I get bored, and in a way I was glad to be rid of the internet again once 3:21pm rolled around the following day and my 24 hours of access had expired.

For all the criticism and self-loathing I opine about ‘Muricans and being American myself, there is one trope that I can give some credit to in a positive light; which is how there are lots of Americans, and I like to include myself among them, that occasionally acknowledge how toxic and how much trash internet connectivity is capable of being, and feel the need and want to disconnect and be free of connectivity from time to time, and live in the actual moments of time and present.

Because that doesn’t seem to be the case with Asians, whom on my travels, witnessed probably like 90% of the time, Asian people were glued to their phones, eyes down, being phone zombies, and being connected to the internet.  It didn’t matter if they were Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Singaporean or Indian, the vast majority of people I witnessed over two weeks in Asia, were simply glued to their phones as if they were physically attached to their beings.

The image above was snidely taken at the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore; beautiful place, meticulously curated and meant to be a globally recognized destination landmark for tourists and travelers.  The motherfucker on the far right actually had a laptop propped up on the railing, and was on some video conference and was simultaneously doing some calisthenics, and of course I was easily able to capture some bros on their phones – in the middle of a horticultural exhibit showing trees and plant-life from four different continents and six different ecosystems.

There’s a part of the Jurassic World exhibit called the sky bridge that the place doesn’t do a good job of explaining in advance, but it’s basically 25-stories up in the sky, on a suspension bridge that is made of mesh, so you can see through it while you’re way the fuck up in the air, and the surface is meant to rock a little bit, which is all meant to say it’s high as fuck and if you have any issue with heights or don’t realize you have an issue with heights, it’s absolutely terrifying.

However, that doesn’t stop idiot tourists from stopping in the middle of, and clogging up the pathways, in order for them to get their selfies, live-stream their journey, or be video-calling their friends and families, while there are other, tense and on edge patrons just trying to traverse it as quickly as possible and get to solid ground.

Being human obstacles to those with realized anxieties, all for the ‘gram, or whatever self-important self-broadcasting medium they feel the need to document for their zero viewers.

But circling back to the cruise, and the data package that I had purchased, if Disney Cruise Line made an extra $29 off of me for one day and one device of internet, I have to imagine the likely closer to $100K than $50K they made on all the other Asian motherfuckers on the boat that probably had the full comprehensive internet packages for all their devices for all family members in their cabins, because pretty much at no point on the boat was I seeing anyone other than mythical wife and myself, incapable of being able to be online.

We’d look for quiet areas to sit and read, or enjoy the ambiance of the ship, at the numerous bars, lounges and pool sides, but there would always be some fuck(s) from China or India around, prattling on in their native tongues to someone on the phone, completely disregarding the existence of others around them that might not want to hear their dumb conversations.  Kids actively playing RTS and MOBA games on their phone, naturally with no headphones.  And no shortage of people with their selfie sticks and tripods set up in order to Hey What’s Up Guys livestream and film content for their shitty channels that nobody watches.

As annoying as it was, it was also rather fascinating to see the differences of internet addiction in Asian culture, as it is with Americans.  And yeah, ‘Muricans are no paragons of good manners in their own right, and I can’t speak for many beyond myself, but we do more often grow exasperated with connectivity from time to time, and simply want to enjoy things in solitude and without the need to humblebrag it to the rest of the world.  It all just seems so petty and pointless, and when the day is over, the hours have passed and the minutes expired, nobody fucking gives a shit. 

Even the zombies that are producing it.