#Vader: find a loophole. abuse it.

[chiliger]

This close to avoiding a social event.

[padme-amitabha]

I found your blog, and I love all the Anidala content! Keep up the good work! Anyway, I’m so glad I’m not the only one who didn’t get Reylo! I never understood why she loved Kylo when all he did was Rey go kill her. Like, I get Vaderdala fanfics because Padmé KNEW Anakin, and understood that something like Mustafar was a fluke in Anakin's usually gentle and submissive nature, but Rey never knew Kylo? I just... people could’ve shipped Rey with anyone, but why did everyone go for him?

Thank you for the kind words! :)

I never understood their canon relationship and Disney had to come up with “Force Dyads” to justify that forced kiss and their relationship. It’s probably because of the enemies-to-lovers trope which most people dig. I mean I like the trope too as long as it’s done well but considering how abusive their canon interactions are and how bland the characters are, I never got into the ship. Besides, I hate that they are constantly being to compared to Anidala when they have nothing in common.

Yes, I do ship Vaderdala but as long it is done right. You’re absolutely right about the Mustafar incident being a one-time thing and that’s how Anakin usually is so I can see them reconciling and Vader being deeply apologetic for his actions. I think the closest in character Vaderdala interaction I saw was in the legends comics Darth Vader and the Lost Command (that has literally the best eu interpretation of Lucas!Vader imo) and that’s how I believe he would have reacted if Padmé had survived.

But even if they never knew each other like Kylo and Rey, I can see it working because they were destined to be together and shared a connection. And I don’t see Vader mind raping Padme like Kylo for information either - he might try to interrogate her with bots like he did with Leia but in any case, I just don’t see Padme as the type to outright deny him the information he’s looking for. I think she would be willing to cooperate because she’s a good diplomat and then try to find a loophole. Which makes for an interesting story if they are allies and fall each other, particularly because Vader still has good in him but refuses to act on it and Padme is compassionate and understanding. Even though they are enemies, there’s no toxicity or abuse involved. And Vader never kills or hurts people unless they betray or fail him in any way. Fics which portray them as abusive and make Vader an abusive/dominating husband make no sense to me because even in OT we saw that he is submissive to Palpatine. Making him so forceful is completely out of character for Anakin/Vader. So Vaderdala is not really abusive if Vader is in character. It’s more forgiveness and acceptance than anything else.

[cryptovalid]

The Rise of Skywalker is Bad, but I was wrong to expect any better (and it’s not as bad as I expected, either)

If the title did not give it away, I’m conflicted about Star Wars Episode IX: the Rise of Skywalker. I just saw it in theatres, and I thought it was bad, but I can’t muster up any scorn or outrage. It’s just like the popcorn I ate: bland and forgettable, and somewhat stale. I guess it helps I was never a huge Star Wars fan at any time. I’ve seen every movie in the series, except for Solo. but I’ve not seen any of them more than once or twice. In short, I’ve always thought of Star Wars as Fine, but also massively overrated. I believe the interesting concepts in A New Hope and the Empire Strikes Back were squandered by first George Lucas, and then J.J. Abrams.

 I can’t say that Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi was my favorite Star Wars movie, but it was without a doubt the least compromised of all the other entries. It had something to say whether fans liked it or not. It wasn’t meandering, self-indulgent and uncanny like Lucas’ prequels, and did not take the original trilogy as unassailable gospel the way JJ Abrams does. I did not like the pacing or how Poe and Finn’s characters seemed less central to the story, but I understand why Rian Johnson focused on Rey’s interactions with Luke. The message of the Last Jedi was bold and challenging for fans: the Force is for Everyone and fans are wrong to obsess over the royalist eugenics and power fantasies in the original trilogy. Johnson wanted to focus on some of the more challenging aspects of war: loss, betrayal, and failure. Not everyone liked that, but for all that it did to sideline my favorite new characters, Finn and Poe, that was a daring and worthwhile statement to make.  

That said, I expected Disney to fully backtrack, given the way TLJ was received. So expectations were not high. Watching RoS is a strange experience. It’s kind of fun but also profoundly unoriginal and hackneyed. But given how similar it is to the Original Trilogy, it just made me realize that Star Wars was never as good as I imagined it was (or could be?). For Rise of Skywalker to be actually great, it would have to Rise (pardon the pun) above its predecessors. Which obviously it didn’t.  

 From here on there be Spoilers for SWIX: ROS

Let’s talk nuts and bolts. This movie is a random remix  of setpieces and McGuffins, artificially raised stakes and callbacks and hommages to the Orginal Trilogy. There’s a thing the heroes need to find the resurrected Emperor, and 80% of the movies is just a huge wild goose chase that also involves Kyle Ron stalking Rey to convince her to rule to galaxy with him. Then there’s a bunch of Death Stars and  confrontation with the Emperor. It’s all quite well paced, shot and scored, and even though I am highly critical of both the stilted dialogue and the uninspired plotting, the film is at least entertaining to watch. It is frequently funny and tense, sometimes unintentionally. And this, looking back, is really all that Star Wars can really claim to be. It’s an all-ages action comedy about war with some fantasy and sci fi for flavor and that’s really all that Star Wars has ever been.   

I had an epiphany as I watched Kyle Ron’s redemption and the messages around the Dark and Light Side. I was first struck by the fact that they are really the same story beats as the original trilogy, with some details changed that merely made it more obvious how hypocritical, lazy and thematically inconsistent these ideas have been from the beginning. Redeeming Darth Vader was always a cheap copout. He is a mass-murderer whose last action is sacrificing his life to kill the Emperor. He never really reckons with his many, many crimes. 

It becomes slightly grosser when Kyle Ron has one warm moment with his mom before she dies, a near-death experience and a peptalk from the dad he murdered, murders a bunch of goons, and sacrifices himself to save Rey’s life. For this, Rey immediately not only forgives him for the mass kidnappings, genocide, torture and the many times he threatened, gaslit and assaulted her, but immediately kisses him. It’s such a gendered framing of redemption that basically reproduces the views that narcissists and abusers have about relationships: that you can treat others like literal dogshit and redeem yourself with a single grand gesture of self-sacrifice. I’ve talked about the Martyr Dad before on this account, but making it a romantic thing is so much worse. This is the cycle of abuse to a T.

In terms of the Light Side Versus the Dark Side, Star wars has always wanted its cake and to eat it too. On the one hand, it wants to suggest that the Light Side is a fundamentally morally opposed way of living focused on ‘Knowledge and Defense‘, that striking a Sith down in Anger is something the Light Side can not abide, but in the end, the Light Side always wins because the Sith are violently killed. It always feels like a convenient loophole that Darth Vader throws the Emperor into a nearby pit so that Luke doesn’t need to get his hands dirty. All the more so when the resurrected Emperor literally has his own Force Lightning reflected into his face by Rey’s dual wielding two Skywalker Lightsabers+3. It’s cheap. It’s moral sofistry with the gratification of a power fantasy.

You might have noticed I’ve said nothing about my soft boys, Poe and Finn, or Rose Tycho for that matter. That’s because they’re not important to the overarching story. They could easily have been cut from the film without significantly altering the story. They pad the runtime. They’re charming and funny as always and the writers give them stuff to do in every act, but it’s not the A-plot. The story is partially about Kyle Ron having an admittedly well-acted but very hackneyed redemption arc that is sure to please fans of the character but doesn’t involve in any sense an understanding that he has hurt billions of people. His redemption is exclusively about his parents, who are the only people he’s hurt that are worth mentioning in this context. The other part is the revelation that Rey does have a special lineage: she’s Palpatine’s granddaughter. This is why she’s powerful and also why she’s tempted by the dark side. 

If the message of TLJ was ‘we’re all equals in the eyes of the force‘, ROS is basically a massive apology for even entertaining that idea, and reaffirms that all the important characters are related by blood to characters from the original trilogy and all the rest are also there, I guess. If you’ve ever thought that you could be as strong in the force as Luke or Kylo or Rey, you are a fool. After all, your parents weren’t Force Royalty. You thought a person of color or a non-force user could be the key to defeating fascism? You thought main characters could be anything other than straight? Utter simpleton, you. You thought redeeming yourself from mass-murder was difficult, or that the Jedi were flawed just like every other organisation? Nah mate, the bad guys wear black robes and we totally fucked them up with laser swords and heavy ordinance. 

Don’t worry, white hetero superfan looking for a power fantasy that doesn’t challenge your beliefs or moral superiority. Your priorities and fixations are our script editor. We’re sorry, Disney appears to say with this movie, that we would ever suggest there was anything more to Star Wars as a franchise. We promise, she may be a girl, but in all other respects, she’s just like Luke now. Except this time, Luke is hot and totally into your edgy dark side.

Ok, I’m sorry, that’s just the bitter shipper in me. Finn deserved better. He deserved to be a main character. A love interest. His redemption was never fully framed as such, nor did he ever really get credit for being a consistently supportive, relatable, honorable character with the scintillating charisma of John Boyega. Despite being literally raised as a child soldier, he was never seen as a good example of redemption and somehow, he was not considered a main character. This is, I believe, the greatest waste of this trilogy.

Fuck the idea of a Dynasty of the Force. Fuck Eugenics. Fuck this idea that your birth is what makes you powerful. It is weak. It is lazy. It is boring. 

I had such high hopes after Episode VII, despite it being derivative. It appeared in that moment that Finn could be love interest for both Rey and Poe. Perhaps even at the same time! I imagined the climax of this trilogy would be all about Finn growing from a deserter unsure that he could ever make a difference, to becoming a true hero. I imagined the heroes facing the First Order in their darkest hour, when all is lost. I imagined them being rescued by defecting Stormtroopers, painting their helmets with three vertical red stripes in honour of the First Traitor. I imagined my boy Finn leading a legion of traitors, proving that all it takes to defeat fascism is to reject it and inspire others to do the same. 

But of course, that hope was foolish. I shouldn’t have expected good storytelling from a series that pays lip service to non-violence and redemption while handling both as cheap, esthetic elements rather than actual narrative commitments.

[emperorren]

1) I love the lie/honestly thing going on with Rey, Finn and Kylo, because they all have different approaches. Rey and Kylo are extremely good at lying to themselves, Kylo by externalizing his own issues and Rey by deluding herself with happier fictions, but neither of them are dishonest, and only seem to lie under pressure. Finn knows himself much better--he realizes his conflict with the FO on his first mission and follows through and leaves right away--and he lies frequently, but out of fear

2) concern, and necessity instead of any effort at manipulation. He lies easily but in a frenetic, “making up excuses to get out of trouble” way, because he feels he has to, maybe because in his Stormtrooper indoctrination, being honest about your flaws and shortcomings could lead to punishment. But Rey has never had to lie to others on Jakku, only to herself to keep herself going on false hope, and it’s no surprise Kylo dislikes lying per the novels, given the Vader=Anakin secret in his past.

I appreciate the background you offered for Finn’s alleged ‘inclination to lie’—which I don’t even believe is a character flaw per se, or a pattern that can be examined outside of the context where it happens. If Finn lied it’s because he’s internalized a distrust towards the external word, that he perceives as potential enemy territory (whether it’s the Resistance or a perfect stranger like Rey was when they first met). I think he also has an incredibly low self esteem and internalized guilt, not only for his past as a stormtrooper but also because he defected. The militaristic concept of honor—which I don’t doubt was drilled in him since an early age—tends to fuck you up, and even if you rationally know you defected for a right cause, there’s always this voice inside your head that tells you you’re a coward, a man without honor. (not that the movies focused on Finn’s feelings re:deserting or anything, it’s just my plausible reading of his mental state). It’s no wonder he’s not immediately ready to tell the truth about himself, for both practical and personal reasons. He doesn’t know if those he’s talking to are trustworthy enough to hear his story. He doesn’t know if they’ll praise or condemn him.

Finn grew up in a completely different abusive background than Rey or Kylo, in many aspects more extreme, one that demanded him to conform to very strict rules or be punished since he was a young boy. It makes complete sense that his coping mechanism is to find excuses and loopholes to avoid punishment or retaliation. He also strikes me as an idealist at heart, with the tendency to romanticize heroic figures that he heard about (similar to Rey), and he had a sort of heroic imprinting on Poe. His lie about being Resistance is less about dishonesty towards Rey, and more about affirming for the first time his identity as a decent man, which is something he’s never been allowed to do in his whole life. Resistance = shortcut for “I’m a good guy, and I mean no harm”, in his mind. “I’m a defected Stormtrooper” or “I’m just a scavenger who found this jacket in the desert” don’t have the same ring to it (and the second would be a lie anyway). I would say Finn’s first act as a Resistance member was telling that he was a Resistance member (self-identification), even though at the time he didn’t really “believe” in it—but it’s still crucial and thematically poignant for narrative reasons.

However, he can also be realistic about the Resistance, probably because he knows better than others that they, too, are a military force who probably killed many of his companions. So, when he lies about his knowledge of Starkiller Base in order to get the chance to save Rey—it’s actually completely reasonable on his part to assume the Resistance, as a military organization, is no more inclined than the First Order would be to put their soldiers’ lives at risk for a single civilian (by that point Rey is still a civilian and nobody knows of her powers). The FO wouldn’t laugh in Finn’s face and Rey would be lost if he said the truth, so why would the Resistance be any different?

[flukeoffate]

Governor Pryce Appreciation

(Contains spoilers for the Thrawn Novel)

There has been a few anti-Pryce posts on my dash this week and My thoughts on her spiraled out of control. I just wanted to throw my two cents in without making a mess of those posts. This is in no way meant to attack other people’s opinions, just studying what I like and dislike and considering reasons for the various reactions she gets.

(Extremely long character examination essay that I may have spent the better part of three or four hours on under the cut.)

I like Pryce. And I admit, the more I thought about her story and personality while writing this, I have maybe even grown to love her.

Is she a likeable person? Well, by the time of Rebels: no. Definitely not. But how many villains are likeable within the time of their introductory story? Few, I think. What I believe makes a villain likeable is their backstory, and also how charismatic they are during their screentime.

I want to examine some famous Star Wars villains. IMO there are very few Star Wars villains that are interesting until you dig deeper into their characters.

Unpopular opinion time: Vader and Tarkin are stupidly boring characters in A New Hope. They show up, kill some people, then lose a battle. We don’t know about Vader being Anakin Skywalker. He just looks cool. And Tarkin-well, I frankly think his interest came more from Peter Cushing’s acting more than the character itself. It is no secret that I’m a huge Hux fan, but the thing that drew me to him initially was his screaming speech. Other than being the ‘Tarkin’ of TFA, (and I use this description begrudgingly for the comparison) Hux doesn’t do much more than Tarkin ever did. All three of these guys are boring cardboard villains until you delve into their histories. Vader=Anakin? Holy shit, tell me more! Tarkin is classy AF and came from Space Australia? Sign me the fuck up! Hux has an abusive father and the weight of the First Order’s future on his shoulders? Damn, that is something to examine!

Pryce has the same problem as the above three: when they are introduced, they are already fully formed villains. You don’t see their developement. It’s done. Their story is pretty much over. No development is expected within their initial debut, their sob stories are not the focus of the plot. Like the aforementioned three, Pryce is 2D boring until you read her backstory. Why is she singled out as terrible compared to the others?

Well, without playing the gender card, I want to say it’s because she doesn’t display the charisma of the others. She is cold, doesn’t look flashy, and lacks charisma in Rebels. She just has one thing going for her: a generally evil and contemptuous thirst for authority and control. It’s standard and boring. I will grant that.

Where I differ from a lot of readers: I think she is a fantastic villain after reading the Thrawn book.

The most popular villains are either someone who has characteristics that you either identify with, or you aspire to have. And the more I think about Pryce, the more I realize that her story is actually very relatable, at least to me.

Pryce starts out as a member of a prominent family with a profitable mining company. She has aspirations of getting away from her backwater planet. Fuck, a lot of people have that urge. It’s not an evil trait in itself. When it the mine is forcibly taken from her family (more specifically her parents are threatened) she vows revenge, and it catipults her into motion. She gets out of there and to Coruscant. Ok, pretty basic. A lot of people hold grudges, it’s not super villain stuff yet. It’s a pretty simple vendetta focused on destroying one obviously corrupt and dislikable government official. (Which, seeing as the entirety of Star Wars is based on fighting evil and corruption, I find it ironic that her initial motive has come under scrutiny.)

All things considered, Pryce is pretty crafty in her plans. Sure, she can be devious. She has the makings of a good spy if she were properly trained. But for the most part, her plan revolves around using the established system against her enemies. THAT is a direct parallel to Thrawn himself. He makes his plans work through ingenuity and finding loopholes. But where Thrawn lacks the ability to manipulate the politics of the system, she can. But more importantly, she grows: she isn’t perfect at navigating the political system to start. It takes a fall from grace to lead her there.

And here we come to the crux of her relatability: her biggest downfall was betrayal from those she trusted the most. People she worked with, people who claimed she was their friend, people who claimed the friendship was genuine even after their schemes had been revealed.

I have had ‘friends’ betray me. Let me tell you it is a mind-blowing and traumatic experience. My therapist actively made me recognize my ex-friend drama as a real traumatic event that should not be trivialized. 

And Pryce faces trauma. She was betrayed in the worst of ways, systematically and over a period of years. Pryce was physically, emotionally, and professionally assaulted. When she was drugged during ascension week and threatened? Holy shit, that is the kind of scenario associated with kidnapping and rape. And it was used as blackmail. You don’t shrug something like that off. I felt genuine disgust and fear for her in that scene. Then later, her ‘friends’ involve her in a plot that mixes her up with SAME PERSON who attacked her? Holy shit, wonderful way to reinforce that trauma. And then her friends bring her deeper into their plot by actually endangering her in order to manufacture more trust. And that same plot was made to FRAME Pryce in the event of a take down. She could have been imprisoned or worse, all because of her ‘friends’.

But you know what? Pryce overcame all of this. She fought any fear and pushed it down. She took control of the situation with grace and dignity. She knew what she wanted and how to get it. She manipulated her attackers, destroyed them with cleverly obtained evidence, and took them down with the law at her side. And she never forgives them.

I think that is something people don’t like. That she doesn’t forgive.

Frankly, she doesn’t owe her ‘friends’ a goddamn thing. They are as brutal and manipulative as Pryce becomes. They don’t get a free pass on this for being on the “right” side of things. They are horrible people. Good on Pryce for letting them rot. They fucking deserve it.

I often find myself wishing I could do the same to the people who hurt me. I’m glad she got the opportunity and took it. I would not have the same courage. Fuck all that nonsense about forgiveness being the brave thing to do. In my experience, forgiveness is a lip service phrase followed by a societal pressure to ‘be nice’. Fuck that. I want to be angry. I want them to suffer. But I don’t follow through—because revenge is seen as a negative trait, especially for a woman. There is a reason women resort to sneaky tactics for revenge: it is unbecoming to outwardly express our rage.

Pryce is never shown to have more than a few friends. All of them betrayed her trust.

I relate to that. Viscerally.

You know who has not betrayed her?

Her parents.

We don’t have the full scope of their relationship, but from the getgo we see that Pryce is ready to pounce on anyone threatening her parents. That is a constant through the book. And her parents obviously love her at least as much as any parent should be expected. They are concerned for her wellbeing, and are generally in touch with her. And by the end of the book, she isn’t the same person who vowed to ruin a corrupt official. She has taken up her mantle of anger and distrust. She discovers that she is ready, willing, and able to kill for her family and damn the casualties. She doesn’t care about other people. Other people never cared about her. Her life has proven to her one truth: trust no one. Beyond her parents, she has no love for anyone. The times she tried were a disaster.

There is a tragedy in that. I have experienced betrayal. But I have also had true friendship. We have no indication she ever had the good with the bad. I’m pretty sure that if I can pity Hux for having a shitty childhood, I can pity her for the events that left her so jaded.

So, yes. I like Pryce. I think she has damn good reasons for being the way she is. Do I condone her actions at Batonn? Hell no. Do I hate how she affects Thrawn? Yes. But Batonn is her Anakin to Darth Vader moment, the point where she truly goes to ‘the dark side’. I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to see it unfold. She can continue to be the frigid flat villain in Rebels, because now we know where she comes from. Rewatching Rebels shows her in a new light just as much as it changes how we see Thrawn. And we might see her comments now and think: you evil bitch! But damn, if that doesn’t make me like her more. Before the book, she was a generic Imperial baddie. Now I actually have an emotional response to back it up, and that is WAYYYYY more interesting.

I think the one big thing that prevents her from getting more love is that she doesn’t have the traits that fans typically like to explore in fanfic. She is closed off, and has no real big candidate for shipping purposes. And she doesn’t have any meaningful commonality with the heroes in Rebels beyond being the Governor of Lothal and therefore the enemy. She doesn’t have a specific vendetta driving her actions, she is just doing her job. By the time Rebels takes place, Pryce is not making impressive plans of destruction and she is done with any self reflection that might garner sympathy. But I don’t think she needs it. The book is enough.

With characters like Kallus, you could see than he had a sort of joy for the hunt in the first seasons. Then you learned more about his personality and he grew. Pryce doesn’t get the same treatment. Some people love Phasma for being an absolutely cold monster with no emotion. But Pryce isn’t cold or monsterous enough to have the same level of ‘wtf?’ that makes Phasma interesting (again, adding to the list of boring characters that are only great with their backstory considered...) Most of us can’t relate to the sheer heartlessness of Phasma and are compelled by it. Both Pryce and Phasma are self centered and power hungry individuals. But where Phasma has no conscience or hint or moral code, Pryce does have the capacity for such things, and that make readers see her selfishness as a negative trait to be hated instead of studied.

Maybe people find Pryce’s motivations too easy—a lot of us have friends who aren’t friends, and love our parents. Maybe her relatability is so common that we forget that these still qualify as three dimensional traits. Maybe we are afraid to admit that we have anything in common with her.

Pryce is a good character. I liked her parts in Thrawn. I was scared for her when she was drugged. I felt her loneliness when she couldn’t confide in her friends. I laughed my ass off at the unemployment office scene. I felt her shock and sorrow when she realized no one could be trusted. I envy her tenacity and bold resolve. I don’t have half her courage.

I like Pryce.

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On

We “re living” the final choke of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all the points we now receive is purposely mistaken, and that includes the percentage and professionals I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad fact is, the majority of members of you are able to never have the critical envisage or research abilities to know what’s real, and that will simply manufacture you more absolutely convinced the erroneous situations your stupid ass belief. The good story is that this article isn’t about that shit. The imitation information fighting is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political area and religion. 5 Pointlessly Insane Product Are Not That At All Last year, Tiffany& Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d naturally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. It’s the kind of sentiment that they are able to offset the other Saved By The Bell novelists tell, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to effort, make more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The item I’m building is that it’s hard-boiled not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany& Co. than where reference is comment on how the ones who quarried their concoctions all lived of slavery. “Darling, I was part of many someones transcending penetration to convert a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter justifying to his wife why “theres” seven colourings of pubic hair in his underpants Read Next 8 Baffling Poop-Themed Toys Kids Are Lining Up To Buy And it’s is not simply tin cans and Wu-Tang recordings that are marketed in intentionally strange modes. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Retain when KFC employed fried chicken as sandwich food in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken detested lesbian people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made amusing of them, but they perfectly did not care. These are people souring pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget figures. They’ll take any press they can get. We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper started when they liberated a special copy of their soda for men exclusively . We all went on Twitter to add stuffs like, “Forbidding females from savor Dr. Pepper Ten will only retard the disclosure that it’s made from semen , not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men exclusively? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.” SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b> Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together. In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time. essay > And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.” “CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “ div > 4 All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests. “I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.” When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim? What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner? div > You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board. It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world. 3 It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare? I think about this every day. Every day. div > Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body. It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless. I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks. div > Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy. If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up! 2 Being Special Is Free That’s right, I said it. You’re welcome. It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd … … for Toddslaughter. div > Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth. One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing. Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster. div > OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile. I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it! div > Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online. You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars. div > 1 Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think. You’re welcome again. div > Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest. BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness. div > Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately. BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES! div > Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “ We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference. Seanbaby devised being funny on the Internet. You can follow him on Twitter, or frisk his hit mobile competition Calculords . b> Did you realise Casper van Dien was in a Tarzan movie in the 90 s ? i > b> Support Cracked’s journalism with a tour to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you . i > b> For more, check out 5 Deeply Embarrassing Thing The News Keeps Doing and 6 Time The News Went Totally Overboard Chasing A Story . i > b> You should click on this join and follow us on Facebook . i > b> Read more: http :// www.cracked.com/ blog/ 5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/06/30/5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/

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5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On

We are living through the final gasps of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all information we now receive is deliberately false, and that includes the percentage and experts I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad truth is, most of you will never have the critical thinking or research skills to know what’s real, and that will only make you more sure about the wrong things your stupid ass believes. The good news is that this article isn’t about that shit. The fake news fight is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political side and religion.

5

Pointlessly Insane Products Are Not That At All

Last year, Tiffany & Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d normally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once held Prince’s final green beans. It’s only a can. As an artistic statement, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making scheme, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea box and that same product without a lid. It’s the kind of idea that would make the other Saved By The Bell writers say, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to work, take more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The point I’m making is that it’s hard not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany & Co. than when we comment on how the people who mined their products all died of slavery.

“Darling, I was part of many souls transcending penetration to transform a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter explaining to his wife why there are seven colors of pubic hair in his underpants

Read Next

8 Baffling Poop-Themed Toys Kids Are Lining Up To Buy

And it’s not only tin cans and Wu-Tang albums that are marketed in intentionally strange ways. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Remember when KFC used fried chicken as sandwich bread in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken hated gay people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made fun of them, but they absolutely did not care. These are people turning pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget shapes. They’ll take any press they can get.

We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper came when they released a special version of their soda for men only. We all went on Twitter to say things like, “Forbidding women from tasting Dr. Pepper Ten will only delay the discovery that it’s made from semen, not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men only? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your kids?” Or maybe you simply speculated, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing treat you reach for when defending an accused rapist you haven’t met.”

SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES.

Products should make the customer happy, not be so deliberately dumb that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t make every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the desperate hope that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you especially need to get your shit together.

In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the idea of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, quite by accident, when his manager caught him fucking a pizza and demanded an explanation. This marked the last time there would ever be a non-insane pizza invention. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged innovations, like a serial killer’s journey toward becoming the Minotaur. For instance, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that place an order for you. Aside from getting the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for ordering Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to do it a second time.

And did you know that Domino’s spent millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance?” It’s what it sounds like — a financial guarantee that when your sloppy ass drops a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how dumb that is, what’s the point? Was there a community of fat idiots eating pizza off the ground and demanding their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s just to set your mind at ease. Let’s pretend you’re thinking about ordering Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always dropping pizza. Will this convince you? Of course not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a lump of brain tissue labelled “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.”

“CARRYOUT INSURANCE!? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just found a loophole that gives me unlimited floor pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass.“

4

All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes

We are living in the darkest of times. Our current sexiest man alive looks like a rectangle who makes its living hustling milk-drinking contests.

“I’m digesting four gallons of Half & Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest man alive.”

When People magazine announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest man alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it hit like a bomb. Every Twitter account and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t merely controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even meant. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the new standard of sexy? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim?

What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner?

You know what we should have been doing that whole time? Not giving a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms probably don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy cow, you’d think “Him?” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest man alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some great honor decided by measuring the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five editors desperately trying to hang onto print media jobs, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone?” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to teach a prosthetic arm how to give a handjob, the People staff would write your name up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board.

It’s important to keep in mind how meaningless these titles are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time gave its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to inspire terrible conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her winning tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her face tattoo says “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop getting outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world.

3

It’s Not An Event When Fictional Characters Die

In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an invincible ventriloquist with laser eyes, frost breath, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock monster who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third time he had died, the country went into mourning and the story was picked up by the actual news. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman stories, where were they when his girlfriend got turned into a pony and fucked his horse?

I think about this every day. Every day.

Why are we so obsessed with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe universe in which they happen. Captain America and Batman die around 20 times a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurrections, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a time machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold off on making funeral plans. And if your favorite character dies on The Walking Dead, maybe don’t waste an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you see the body.

It should help you relax knowing that most fictional deaths are only abusive pranks, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless.

I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly. This death cost us maybe two wisecracks.

Remember when Han Solo died? He was a 73-year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and completely inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker stories than anyone could ever want. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, yet he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable cosmic energy.

If George R. R. Martin went on TV to announce that a meteor hit Westeros between books and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is gone, how is that different from the world you’re living in now? The guy has clearly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four books. You know what’s sadder than seeing Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slob go through the stages of grief in a YouTube video afterwards. Parents, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger failure than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon supporters. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but when you cry over fake people whom you can still see every day for as long as you want, you’re only sending a message to the people around you that you’re a dramatic piece of shit. But I know something that will cheer you up!

2

Being Special Is Free

That’s right, I said it.

You’re welcome.

It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the idea that they’re special or important for actual money. For example, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his name on it. “I hope they have a Todd,” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty garbage. “They do! And it’s spelled right!” So Todd will buy it, a cute reminder of the worst store in the least interesting part of a city he once visited, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian factory gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to remind himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd …

… for Toddslaughter.

Back to the point I was trying to make: We are all susceptible to this crap. Coke had its first sales increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking names to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been haunted by ego-stroking personality quizzes and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girls peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will suspend all disbelief and critical thinking to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple personality questions does not make you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an IQ test that you watched yourself cheat on which also advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth.

One of my favorite examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community called Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only join if you score in the top 1 percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 application fee. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to mail in a test with a 98 percent score or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then pay a $39 annual fee to be a part of a genius club for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual fee, you get unlimited pity and the right to post a photo and bio about your unusually gullible self. It has created an avalanche of unearned ego that looks like a late ’90s Casper Van Dien fan page whose webmaster went mysteriously missing.

Image courtesy of the estate of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page & Genius Community webmaster.

OK, no, but seriously, this next image is a real screenshot from the Inertel (An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual elites, and this is his real profile.

I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim369 pays $39 a year to display. Fuck! This world is magic and you get to live in it!

Another business that exploits your love of yourself on a massive, sprawling scale is the pop-up museum industry. The name implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than art galleries. For instance, if you take a trip to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will learn zero to one things about ice cream and eat ice cream worth $45 less than the entry ticket. What you will do is wait in line to take photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other context as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an effective business model to charge us money to take pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online.

You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars.

1

Stop Making It Seem Like There Are Nazis

OK, so the world has enough idiot racists to elect Donald Trump president, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply too religious to know when someone is lying or too old to change their mind about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as awful as you think.

You’re welcome again.

Impossibly shitty people, like the Trump supporters who took that Garfield mug personally, seem like they’re everywhere. A lot of that is our fault — the decent people making fun of them. They use us to amplify their voices, like Han Solo (R.I.P.) convincing a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s way more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variation on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four racist tweets quoted in every article, tweeted by the same three or four racists who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters. We need to stop treating these three or four people like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest.

BREAKING NEWS: Local high school’s least-likable prick still making quite a spectacle out his irrelevant awfulness.

Here’s a reassuring fact: A study of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally ignorant comments of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and pretending they’re a tidal wave of hate we must stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 boys too cranky to date and too slow to learn Dungeons & Dragons. Their supporters are a toxic group of gamers who will disappear once they turn 17, and their media outlet is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper white nationalism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide cults, we can be rid of them almost immediately.

BREAKING NEWS: C-word who only tweets C-wordy antisemitic things DOES!

Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal remains of antique intolerance, and she has about as much cultural influence as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss wrong things at impatient TV personalities or pretend that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic comedy? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch every time she blames her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us explaining to each other how wrong she is, Coulter would just be wandering through Home Depot to see if there are any white employees she can ask about the toilet safety rails. And soon she would be hatching spider eggs in her mouth while her parakeet watched her body rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again!” it would repeat to her undiscovered corpse. “The Jews are at it again!”

We all seem to get how dumb it is when the news says “teens” are doing a comically apeshit thing like human centipede parties or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same giant brains to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to resist trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right,” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you see another column about how women won’t date conservative men, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis keep writing versions of that article into the empty void until they learn evil causes women to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread defends their Second Amendment rights after a school shooting, don’t validate their child murder fandom with attention. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s profile. Pose as Blake Shelton, win her moist trust, and quietly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference.

Seanbaby invented being funny on the Internet. You can follow him on Twitter, or play his hit mobile game Calculords.

Did you realize Casper van Dien was in a Tarzan movie in the 90s?

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5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On

We “re living” the final choke of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all the points we now receive is purposely mistaken, and that includes the percentage and professionals I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad fact is, the majority of members of you are able to never have the critical envisage or research abilities to know what’s real, and that will simply manufacture you more absolutely convinced the erroneous situations your stupid ass belief. The good story is that this article isn’t about that shit. The imitation information fighting is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political area and religion.

5

Pointlessly Insane Product Are Not That At All

Last year, Tiffany& Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d naturally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. It’s the kind of sentiment that they are able to offset the other Saved By The Bell novelists tell, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to effort, make more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The item I’m building is that it’s hard-boiled not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany& Co. than where reference is comment on how the ones who quarried their concoctions all lived of slavery.

“Darling, I was part of many someones transcending penetration to convert a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter justifying to his wife why “theres” seven colourings of pubic hair in his underpants

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And it’s is not simply tin cans and Wu-Tang recordings that are marketed in intentionally strange modes. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Retain when KFC employed fried chicken as sandwich food in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken detested lesbian people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made amusing of them, but they perfectly did not care. These are people souring pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget figures. They’ll take any press they can get.

We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper started when they liberated a special copy of their soda for men exclusively . We all went on Twitter to add stuffs like, “Forbidding females from savor Dr. Pepper Ten will only retard the disclosure that it’s made from semen , not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men exclusively? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.”

SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b>

Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together.

In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time.

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And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.”

“CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “

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4

All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes

We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests.

“I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.”

When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim?

What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner?

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You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board.

It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world.

3

It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die

In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare?

I think about this every day. Every day.

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Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body.

It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless.

I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks.

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Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy.

If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up!

2

Being Special Is Free

That’s right, I said it.

You’re welcome.

It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd …

… for Toddslaughter.

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Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth.

One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing.

Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster.

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OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile.

I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it!

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Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online.

You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars.

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1

Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis

OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think.

You’re welcome again.

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Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest.

BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness.

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Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately.

BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES!

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Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “

We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference.

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