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#i am halfway tempted to email the dude and just be like 'is there a version of this article in any language that is NOT this conlang?'
homenecromancer · 6 months
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found an article where someone analyzes Chakobsa (based on the book)
...and because it's in a conlang journal, it's written entirely in a fucking conlang
so uh if you want to go reverse-translate this thing, it starts on page 28 here, and i am not fucking doing any of that before i go to work today
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kingexpl0sionmurder · 4 years
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Missed Connection - Shinsou Hitoshi
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Author: @kingexpl0sionmurder​ Rating: NSFW 18+ Warnings: Unprotected sex, blowjobs, dirty talk, poking fun at fakes who shop at UO and wear band t-shirts for bands they don’t listen to, terrible poetry, Kaminari is a weirdo. Pairing: Shinsou Hitoshi/F!Reader Words: 4,554 AN: This is for the bnharem server collab, the theme is pen pals! We were able to write basically anything as long as there was some kind of communication/writing/texting etc! This is the first time I’ve written for Shinsou and I head cannon him as a fucking closet goth so don’t at me. Collab Masterlist (Please go check out everyone else’s contributions!) My Masterlist Buy me a Ko-fi -- When his phone started ringing, Shinsou was tempted to throw it halfway across the room. Whoever thought it was okay to call him at - he turned to squint at the clock on his bedside table - 10 in the morning on his day off, better have a good excuse. He frowned at the screen once he’d found his phone, and sighed.
“The world better be on fire, Kaminari.” His palm rubbed over his face as he pressed the phone to his ear, his eyes closing again.
The blonde chuckled, full of energy as usual. “Aw, come on ‘Toshi! It’s not that early.”
A million ways he could kill his friend and make it look like an accident flashed through his mind. “You know I like to sleep late on my days off.” He left it at that, no further explanation needed. Kaminari knew he stayed up impossibly late on his off days, crawling under the covers only when the sun started to rise.
“You want to hear this, I promise. I wouldn’t call this early unless it was important.” Shinsou listened to the sound of a keyboard clicking through the phone, waiting impatiently for his friend to continue. 
“So, you know how I sometimes like to fuck around on the internet?” This was a rhetorical question. Of course he did. “Well, occasionally I like to browse through Craigslist, and this morning I was in the missed connections section, and I found something interesting.”
“Why do you look through missed connections?” He didn’t really care, he just thought it was kind of...weird. But, then again, this was Denki, so he shouldn’t have been surprised.
Kaminari huffed. “Dude, sometimes it’s so sad to read how they saw someone and thought there was a connection. It makes me wonder if they ever find each other.” He was quiet for a moment like he was deep in thought. “But then sometimes, it’s like ‘You farted in the produce section and I’d still date you, let’s go out’ and it kind of loses the romantic appeal.”
“You’re a sap. Also, gross.” He found himself drifting off, bored with the conversation already. “Do you have a point?”
“God, you’re impatient! Listen, I was scrolling through the ads and I found this one, I think you should hear it.” Clearing his throat, he began to read. 
“You were the sleepy purple-haired man in the cat cafe on Main, I was hiding behind an orange tabby by the window. I was staring, but I wasn’t trying to be creepy. You just looked kind of lost, and the black and white short hair on your lap seemed to have all your attention. Oh, I think his name is Socks. Isn’t that unoriginal? Anyway, I’ve seen you there a few times and I want to know more about you. If you see this, please respond.”
Shinsou sat up in his bed, ignoring the sharp pain of his muscles protesting at the sudden movement. “What the fuck?”
“This is about you, isn’t it?” Denki’s excitement was clear. “You’re the only sleepy guy with purple hair I know who frequents that cat cafe on Main Street.”
“How long ago was that posted?” Hitoshi felt strange, restless energy flowing through him. Someone had noticed him and decided that he was interesting enough to want to get to know? He wasn’t anything special, and he kept to himself mostly. What did this even mean?
“Last night! When did you go to the cafe?” He didn’t even wait for a response. “I’m forwarding this post to you, and you better send them an email! It’s been too long since you’ve dated someone, ‘Toshi, and I’m concerned.”
Unfortunately feeling more awake than he wanted to be, Shinsou shifted until his feet were on the floor. “Yesterday afternoon. And it hasn’t been that long.”
“It’s been like a year, dude.” Kaminari sighed. “Okay, I sent it. Please write back to them. Let me live vicariously through you in this weird turn of events.”
Shinsou sighed and said goodbye, ending the call and staring off into space for a minute. He needed coffee before he could even think about reading it for himself and then maybe responding.
--
Uh, hello.
 I can’t help but feel like this was about me? I’m not even really sure what to say. This feels weird. You could have come over and said hi, maybe. I don’t bite. I might have stared at you and made things awkward but I feel like it would have been a surefire way to talk to me instead of posting this on craigslist of all places and expecting me to see it. 
You’re lucky I have a friend who likes to scour the dark recesses of the internet for entertainment purposes and happened upon this post.
-Shinsou
--
How do I know this is really the person I’m talking about? What were you wearing when you went to the cafe? That’s like the only way I can be sure you are who you say you are. 
The only reason I didn’t come over and talk to you was that I had Oliver on my lap and he is a grump and didn’t want me to get up until he was good and ready. (That’s the orange tabby’s name, by the way.) By the time I was able to coax his fat ass off of me you had gone. 
Honestly, I’d let those cats climb all over me like their own personal cat tree all day long and not complain about it, but I digress. 
I didn’t expect you to find this or reply, it was kind of my way of convincing myself that I’d given it a shot, even though I really hadn’t done much.
-Y/N
--
I was wearing the following:
A Joy Division t-shirt depicting the cover of Unknown Pleasures, which is arguably the most cliche t-shirt I own. It’s become one of those shirts that people wear who have no idea who Joy Division is, they just like it for the aesthetic. (I’ll have you know I happen to know who they are and like their music very much.) This shirt was more than likely covered in cat hair.
Black jeans, which were probably covered in cat hair as well.
Black boots, a staple of mine.
I am a closet goth. I don’t know what else to say. I won’t deny it. I’ve learned to embrace who I am. I happen to know that Oliver is a grumpy shit, so I am not surprised he kept you pinned down for so long. That cat has been known to knock people over and purr loudly while “making biscuits” on their chests for hours at a time. I’m glad to know that you survived his assault.
So what are you going to tell me about yourself now? I have confessed to you about my goth status, so I demand something in return.
-Shinsou
--
Yeah, it was you.
I was hoping that you actually liked Joy Division and you weren’t one of those Urban Outfitters aesthetic people. I can now rest easy. I like them too, but I really like New Order more? I hope this isn’t the end of our budding friendship.
I will not say that I am a goth, though I have goth-like tendencies? Or I just appreciate the music. Whatever. I don’t have, like, a pet bat or anything. I own a pair of Doc’s, though.
I have been on the receiving end of one of Oliver’s attacks before, so you don’t have to tell me about them. I have experienced his pushy demeanor on more than one occasion.
So, something about me? I don’t know. I spend a lot of time in that cafe because I love cats, but that’s kind of a given, isn’t it? I usually bring my laptop and make an attempt to work on my homework, but it’s usually futile. I’d rather pet the cats. 
Oh, I guess that counts as something right? I go to college. I’m an English major and taking a fuck ton of creative writing courses. What about you?
-Y/N
--
An English major? That sounds like fun. I think if I had a need to go to college I’d have liked to take something like that. I have a friend who writes ultra depressing Gothic poetry, that would be right up his ally as well.
I’m a pro hero, hence why I didn’t need college. Saving people is something I’ve always wanted to do, especially since I was always bullied about my quirk as a kid. It kind of made me more determined, I always wanted to prove those assholes wrong, you know? So, here I am.
I’m glad to know we can wear matching Doc’s together, and that you don’t keep a bat as a pet. As cute as their faces are, they’re not very easily domesticated. 
New Order is fine. The real question is, The Smiths or The Cure? Your answer to this question will be what determines the longevity of our friendship.
-Shinsou
--
This is the worst question you could ever ask me. How could you do this? I could never choose between them. Both? The answer is both.
I hope your next email will not be your last.
Bats are cute but they always seem to dive bomb my head when they’re around. Not that I go places with bats often, but I used to go camping as a kid and they always did that. It was not a good time.
I think it’s amazing that you’re a pro hero! You’re really out here, fighting the bad guys and saving people and then coming into the cat cafe and petting kittens and drinking coffee like a normal person. I think it’s admirable how hard you worked to achieve your dream. I know we don’t know each other that well, but I’m proud of you. Why were you bullied for your quirk? You don’t have to answer that if it makes you uncomfortable.
I wish I could write ultra depressy Gothic poetry. Here let me try:
The night is black like my soul Clove cigarettes burn slowly My life is Meaningless
How was that? Do I get a gold star? Or a black skull? Which is appropriate?
-Y/N
--
I’m printing that and sending it to Tokoyami. Thank you for making my entire existence with that poem. I’m breaking out the red wax candles and putting on “How Soon Is Now?” right now.
You get a star, but it’s a pentagram. We have to keep with the theme.
My quirk has to do with mind control, so I was always told I was meant to be a villain. You can imagine what that could do to a kid’s psyche, being told by peers and adults alike that you weren’t hero material, when that’s all you wanted. It’s okay though, I did what I wanted and they can eat my ass.
Sorry if that was too raunchy, but it’s how I feel.
If my earlier comment wasn’t proof enough, I prefer The Smiths, but I cannot deny the impact of Disintegration. Lullaby is a really great song.
That being said, this will not be my last email, so you can breathe easy. 
On a semi serious note, I really enjoy talking with you. We have a similar sense of humor, and you like cats which makes you automatically better than most people. Would you like to get coffee sometime? I know a nice place that’s quiet and filled with fluffy kittens...
-Shinsou
I’m glad I haven’t lost your friendship due to my opinion. I know how important that feud can be to some people. People get very passionate about it. Kind of like with Blur versus Oasis, or Brand New versus Taking Back Sunday. I hate that these are the only examples I can think of. 
It wasn’t too raunchy. Those people can most definitely eat your ass. I’m glad you have decided to use your powers for good. You’ll have to explain to me how your quirk works sometime. 
I shall treasure my shiny pentagram sticker with my entire heart.
Isn’t Tokoyami the Jet Black Hero: Tsukuyomi? He looks like the type to write Gothic poetry. I am not even mildly surprised. 
Even though the way we met was unconventional, I’d like to think I’d have gotten up the courage to speak to you the next time I saw you in the cafe. Somehow this is better, though. It makes for an interesting story, you know?
I’d love to get coffee. I think I know the place you’re talking about. Let me know when.
-Y/N
Shinsou was nervous. It was stupid really. He’d been exchanging emails back and forth with you for a few days, and even though you’d barely revealed much about each other, the easy banter through your messages was comforting. He felt like the two of you would be compatible. He just hoped that he was able to keep the conversation going in real life. 
When he entered the cafe, he ordered his usual and picked his normal table towards the back. Socks, his favorite black and white companion, was at his side almost immediately. He let his hand drift down to scratch behind her ears, his gaze fixed on the door as he waited for you to arrive. 
Out of habit he was a little early, but he figured it would be easier this way. He had no idea what you looked like, but you knew him, so he knew you’d come over when you got there, and it would make things less awkward. 
A few minutes later he saw the door open, and he immediately knew it was you. Black Doc’s and thigh high stockings, a black skirt and an oversized deep red sweater adorned your body, a leather jacket over your shoulders and your hair tucked under a black beanie, cheeks pink from the chill of the autumn weather outside. You were pretty, and he felt his nerves increase tenfold when your eyes met his, a smile gracing your face. 
He watched as you ordered a drink at the counter, the paper cup clutched in your hands as you made your way to his table. He stood up when you approached, letting himself appreciate you up close. “Y/N?”
“Hi, Shinsou.” You were so much shorter than he was, and he found himself having to gaze down at you when he was standing at his full height. 
“It’s nice to put a face to all those emails.” The way you blushed under his attention made his heart flip. “Please, sit.”
You nodded, sliding into the seat across from him. He sat back down, his hands moving to grip his coffee cup. 
“This is kind of weird, isn’t it?” You looked down when Oliver made his way over, rubbing himself against your boot. “I almost feel like I don’t know what to say.”
“I know what you mean. We could just sit here and email each other, if that would make you feel better.” Your laugh was like music to his ears. “I’d rather hear your voice though.”
Your face was red when you looked back up at him. “I have to agree.” You leaned your elbow on the table, your cheek cradled in your palm. “Tell me more about yourself, Shinsou.”
“It’s Hitoshi. You can call me Hitoshi.”
If anyone would have told him that the night would end this way, he’d have said they were insane, and should probably get themselves checked into the nearest institution. 
But here he was, his face pressed into the spot where your neck and shoulder met, lips ghosting over soft skin, his calloused palms sliding underneath your sweater. You were purring, your head thrown back and your fists clenched in his t-shirt, your back pressed against the wall in the hallway that led to his bedroom. 
“Fuck, ‘Toshi.” You mumbled, pressing yourself closer to him. “Bed?”
You didn’t have to ask twice, his hands sliding down to lift you up by the backs of your thighs, his cock hard and straining in his jeans as you rutted against him. He turned himself and began walking toward his room blindly, his eyes still shut as he sucked a mark into your neck. 
He pulled back so he could peer over your shoulder and maneuver your bodies through the doorway without bumping into anything, laying you back on the bed. 
The events of the night were a blur, your coffee date turned into him taking you out for ramen at the restaurant down the street, and then he asked you back to his apartment to show you his record collection. 
It was mostly a ruse though. You’d been flirting back and forth, the both of you getting bolder as the night went on. He was only half surprised when you’d entered his apartment, barely removing shoes and coats and hats before you spun around on him, pressing him against the door and kissing him like your life depended on it.
He rested on his forearms, poised above you, looking over your flushed face and kiss bruised lips. Your legs wrapped around his waist and pulled his hips closer, making him groan. “Impatient?”
Your hands moved to cup his face, pulling him down toward you. “Very.” 
He wasn’t expecting your strength, caught off guard when your lips crashed into his, your body pushing him over until he was on his back and you were straddling him, knees on either side of his hips. You ground down against him, moaning when his hips snapped up reflexively. He was happy to give you control for a while, especially when you sat up and grabbed the bottom of your sweater and pulled it over your head. The view was spectacular.
He let his hands wander, tracing along the lines of your thigh highs from under your skirt, and up to the lace at your hips. Your chest heaved as you tried to catch your breath, the devilish glint in your eye was not lost on his as you shifted down his body, fingers swiftly working to unclasp his belt and undo the button on his jeans. 
You slid off of him, and he lifted his hips to aid you in pulling his pants down his legs, his boxers following. His cock was achingly hard, the tip angry and red as it sprung free from it’s confines, nearly slapping his stomach. You eyed it greedily, and he was lost for words when you surged forward, delicate fingers wrapping around his length and stroking him, your tongue peeking out to taste him.
Amethyst eyes rolled back when you took the tip in your mouth, tongue swirling around the head, a low moan sounding from the back of your throat. The warmth and wetness that surrounded his cock when you closed your eyes and bobbed forward had him breathless, his hand threading through your hair, and his palm resting on the back of your head. He kept himself steady, fighting back the urge to buck his hips and push you down further on his length. 
Shinsou bit down on his lower lip, his stomach muscles tensing as he tried to keep it together. Kaminari had been right, it had been a while since he’d been with someone, and he wanted this night to last as long as possible. The sweet and innocent look in your eyes as you looked up at him through your lashes, your mouth enveloping him all the way to base, was nearly too much for him to handle, his hand tugging at your hair gently to pull you off of him. “I’m not going to last if you keep that up, kitten.”
You visibly shivered at the pet name and he grinned, loving the feeling of being able to invoke that reaction from you. He scooted forward when you sat back on your knees between his spread legs, his arms circling your torso as he worked at the clasp on your bra, pulling the straps down your arms when he unclipped it. Strong hands gripped your waist and moved you to the side as he stood up, reaching under your skirt to tug your panties down your legs.
He took a moment to consider what he’d do next. He wanted to taste you, it was only right for him to return the favor, and he was almost certain you would taste as sweet as you looked. Another part of him wanted to hike up your legs around his waist and slam inside of you, desperate to hear you moan his name as he pounded you into the mattress. As he contemplated what to do, reached back and pulled his shirt over his head, and then let his hands wander up to the apex of your thighs, digits sliding through your folds. You gasped, falling back onto your elbows, back arching as he toyed with your clit, letting his long fingers slip inside your heat. “So wet. Just for me?” Eyebrows raised, he teased you.
“Fuck, Hitoshi, please.” Breathless and panting, you gazed up at him, biting your lip.
“Please what? Tell me what you want.” You would make the decision for him. “Would you like my mouth or my cock? I’ll let you choose.”
Huffing, your hips rutted against his hand impatiently. He kneeled on the bed between your legs, adjusting his arm and adding a second finger in with the first, his thumb finding your bundle of nerves again. He listened to your breath hitch, and your quiet mewls, pride filling his chest that he was the one coaxing those noises out of you. Finally, you breathed deep and answered him. “Fuck me, Hitoshi.”
Ignoring the protesting whine that left your lips when he removed his fingers, he brought them up to his mouth, maintaining eye contact with you as he sucked on them, tasting you. “You’re delicious, kitten. I’ll have to make sure to taste you properly later.” 
Wasting no time, he lifted your legs up to rest your legs over his shoulders, one hand on his cock. He lined himself up with your entrance, grabbing at your hips and pushing himself inside you. If he thought your mouth was hot and wet and basically everything he thought was heaven, he was mistaken. This was it. This was everything. He wasn’t even inside you all the way and he was fighting back the need to cum again, cursing himself and breathing deeply. He leaned forward, forearms on either side of your head as his mouth crashed against yours, all lips and tongues and teeth, his need for you growing tenfold as you wiggled your hips in an attempt to feel more of him.
Groaning, he bucked forward, filling you up, the both of you sighing in relief at the feeling. He gave you a moment to adjust, lips moving down your jaw and tongue laving at the mark he’d left on your neck earlier. “You feel so good, kitten.”
“Toshi, you can move…” Your hands were gripping his biceps, nails leaving crescent shapes in his pale skin, breathing ragged as you clenched around him.
Hissing, he followed your instructions, hips pulling back until he was almost completely out, before sliding back in. Your arousal made the glide easy, your back arching underneath him. He started a steady rhythm, grunting quietly and letting the feeling of you pulsing around him keep him grounded. He let one of his hands wander, shifting his weight so he could ghost his palm over your side, fingers pinching your nipple and rolling the hardened bud between them. You keened, chanting his name like a prayer, the sound of blood pounding in his ears almost masking the sound.
It spurred him to move faster, his chest tight, sweat pooling at his temples and between his shoulder blades, purple locks sticking to his forehead. His gaze was locked on you, and it stole his breath. Your chest and neck were flushed, the most beautiful sounds spilling from your lips as he fucked into you. It became clear to him that he wasn’t going to last much longer, and neither were you.
“Hey, kitten. You gonna cum for me?” He shifted back to his knees and trailed the fingers on his left hand down your stomach, coming to rest between your parted legs. “I want to hear how pretty you sound when you come apart.” He kept a firm grip on your hip to keep you from sliding away, rolling his hips and rubbing tight circles on your clit. 
“Fuck, Hitoshi!” The effect was almost immediate, your body and lungs seizing, eyes rolling back as you fell over the edge, your cunt clenching around him like a vice. 
Falling back over you, his thrusts became sloppy as he chased his own release, barely able to move with how tight your pussy was gripping him, your orgasm still rolling through you. He felt your hands on his face, guiding him to kiss you again, fingers carding through his hair and down his back, your nails raking red trails down his back. He felt like he could barely breathe, lost in you. “Y/N…”
He felt his muscles tense, and moved to bury his face in your neck, his hips stilling as he came hard, filling you up with his release. You squeezed around him again, and he sighed into your skin, eyes closed as he tried to regulate his breathing.
Rolling over to the side, he hissed when he pulled out. You chuckled, and he turned to look at you, a lazy smile on his face. “What?”
“Is that what you call showing me your record collection?” 
Snorting, he propped his head up on his palm, leaning on his elbow, his free hand reaching out to push a piece of hair away from your face. “You attacked me, remember?”
“I couldn’t help it!” Protesting, you blushed. “I wanted to kiss you from the moment I walked into the cafe.”
It was his turn to blush. “Yeah?”
Shrugging, you turned on your side to face him. “Mm. Can you do me a favor?”
His body was still buzzing, muscles loose and pliant as he shuffled closer to you. “Anything.”
“Can you thank your friend for being a weird internet troll and finding my post?” 
Shinsou coughed a laugh, leaning forward to rest his forehead against yours. “Please, I can’t do that. It’s all he’d ever talk about for the rest of our lives if I did.” 
You leaned up and kissed him, your fingers pushing back his hair. 
He hummed against your lips, feeling content, shifting himself on the bed and wrapping his arms around your waist, tugging you into him. “Maybe I’ll send him a text later. For now, I have other plans.”
--
Kaminari’s phone buzzed on the coffee table, and he picked it up, eyes widening at the message that appeared on the screen.
Toshi: I owe you a crate full of Pokemon cards and my eternal gratitude for being a weirdo meme king who trolls the internet.
Denki: Oh, you’re in a good mood. Did you get laid?
Toshi: Fuck all the way off. 
Denki: That’s a yes. You’re welcome.
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sending-the-message · 6 years
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Never Buy Cheap Computers on Craigslist by 2017Interloper
Ever notice the little lightbulb icon at the top of the MS Word screen, to the far right of all the options like File, Home, View, etc.? Well, I don’t know about yours, but mine isn’t working properly. It showed me something I didn’t want to see, and I may have used it to kill my girlfriend.
I just got a new laptop. For a broke ass grad student, finding a customized Lenovo ThinkPad b66 with 32G Ram and all the other awesome specs it comes with, WITH WINDOWS 7 INSTALLED (Huge selling point for me) for $300 was unreal. I use my laptop for gaming, streaming, work, school, you name it. I had to go check it out. I didn’t realize the b66 was a Lenovo model, but reading the tech specs on the Craigslist ad gave me a nerd boner for the ages.
The older lady who answered the phone number listed on the craigslist ad was really nice, and said it had belonged to her grandson. “He is gone now,” she told me. “I have no use for the thing. Is three hundred too much? It looks like a nice computer, at least, to me.” I could have been a total dick, and talked her down to 200. I am sure of it. But, I would have felt bad about it, and I happened to have the cash. Granted, it was all I had, but I had gas in the car, coffee, and my girlfriend and I had some things in the pantry that could pass as food, so we’d be ok for a few days. I noticed that the lady didn’t specify what ‘gone’ meant in reference to her grandson, whether he had died, moved away or what have you, and thought it a bit odd that she had mentioned it. Hey, maybe she was just a lonely old lady and I was the first person she had spoken to in a few days, right? I told her I was sorry about her grandson, went and cleaned out my bank account at the nearest ATM and sat in my car at the Evergreen Town Park where we had agreed to meet, waiting for her to show up.
I had to call my girlfriend, Alex. She and I had been talking about getting a new laptop for a while now; the one we currently shared was getting a little long in tooth. There was one we were looking at that was decent and in our price range, but I was resistant to spending any money on it, because they all come with Windows 10 now, and I freaking hate Windows 10. We settled on looking at used ones, and figured it would be cheaper that way anyway.
“Hey!” She answered. “Good timing. You just got me on my break. What’s up?”
“Well, I drained my bank account, but you are never going to guess what I just found for three hundred bucks!”
At first, she was weary about the cost but when I told her about the operating system and had her google the specs on the thing, all she could say was “damn.”
I saw the lady I was waiting for, at least, I figured it was her. She was driving a green Buick, and craning her neck, likely looking around for me and my car as I described it on the phone. She was probably feeling the slight anxiety that most people get when meeting someone from Craigslist, that ‘what if I just gave my car’s description to some serial killer’ feeling. I figured I’d not keep her waiting on me, and I was psyched about the computer. “Babe, I gotta run. I don’t want to be all rude and make this old lady wait. Love You.”
“Love You. Good find. Can’t wait to check it out.” We hung up and I got out of the car and waived at the lady in the Buick.
She rolled down her window halfway. “Are you Colin? The young man I spoke to earlier?” She asked, a little hesitantly.
“Yes ma’am, thank you for meeting me. My girlfriend and I have been looking for a good computer for a while now,” I told her, trying to small talk a little to make her feel at ease. I got the impression she was nervous or uncomfortable. Craigslist ads get a lot of bad publicity. For all the scams and bullshit that undoubtedly originate with Craigslist ads, most times when you buy secondhand things, rent an apartment or adopt a pet go without a hitch. But, those aren’t ever the ones you hear about. Plus, I’m a dude, so I don’t worry about that stuff as much as Alex does and I imagine other women might. I mean, it’s not like a bigger dude couldn’t lure me out to a dark alley and jump me or whatever, I guess it’s just not my nature to worry about things like that. If it happens, I’ll deal with it when the time comes. Then, I just wanted to make the old lady feel at ease, because she was doing Alex and me a huge favor with this cheap laptop.
She seemed a little uneasy still, but she stepped out of the car, and we walked over to the bench. She took the laptop out of the case and handed it to me. “Go on ahead and fire it up,” she said. “You can take a look and make sure it has everything it is supposed to have, and no viruses or bugs or whatever it is that steals all your information.” She smiled. “Forgive me, I don’t know much about these things. I had my daughter type out all of the information on that computer ad you found my number on. She showed me how to use Facebook on my phone, and that’s about as far as I go with this sort of thing.”
The laptop booted right up, appeared to have all the usual bells and whistles, had a full version of Microsoft Office on it (I would remember to switch the subscription to my name later) and a surface inspection of it looked fine. I told the lady as much. “It looks fantastic to me. I believe I owe you a few dollars?” I produced six fifty-dollar bills from my wallet and handed them to her, trying to be discreet. I’d rather have a casual onlooker think it was a drug deal than jump her because they saw me handing her cash.
She still looked a little uneasy as she stuck the bills in her wallet. “Thank you,” she said.
“Ma’am?” I asked, hoping that she hadn’t realized that she was practically giving the computer away. “Is everything all right?”
She sighed, barely audible. “Yes, thank you.” We got up and walked toward the parking lot. “I just…” She paused, looking as if she were trying to decide whether or not to tell me something. “My grandson… he was on the computer a lot. I can’t say for sure what got to him at the end, but… I don’t know. Just be careful,” she said warily. With that, she got back into the Buick and left.
I sat there holding my new computer and feeling kind of weird. I mean, what had happened to the kid? Had he gone into a chatroom and met some kind of creepy pedophile? Disappeared? Suicide? It really was nothing but idle curiosity and I supposed it didn’t matter anyway, but it gave me the creeps. I shook it off and drove home.
I took the computer into the apartment I shared with Alex, and set it down on the small, round kitchen table we had. It was getting dark, so it was probably around 6:00, and I was hungry. I figured Alex would grab a bite on her way home. She didn’t get off work until 10:30, and I wasn’t a great cook, nor did I feel like making pasta or a sandwich, which were currently my options. I grabbed the take-out box of last night’s Chinese and put it in the microwave. While my crappy takeout dinner reheated, I unzipped the bag the laptop was in and fired it up. There was a wireless mouse, a wall plugs, and a manufacturer’s CD-ROM that came with the computer neatly tucked into the bag with the laptop.
I shuddered a little seeing the dead boy’s name pop up with a little icon of a soccer ball. I was going to click “guest,” but I told myself I needed to access the admin account on the computer to create my own profile, run some anti malware and antivirus BS and all that. If I were being honest with myself, I wanted to snoop a little, because the lady’s comments were kind of weird. I pulled up Google, and just as I suspected, the kid’s account was still logged in. The microwave startled me when it let me know that my food was done with a pretentious little ‘ding!’ I got up and got my food and a fork, realizing that I felt guilty, like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar, thinking in that brief second that I may have been discovered snooping through a dead kid’s computer.
No. MY computer, I mentally corrected myself. I purchased it, and the previous owner just had something unfortunate happen to him. It wasn’t the computer. And it isn’t snooping, because it is my computer, and I would like to know if the kid had visited any websites or received any sketch emails that I should worry about stealing my credit cards and internet porn search history or anything like that. Right?
Right. And so, with that justification in mind, even though I wasn’t actually concerned about any of that, I went about my snooping. I was curious, and felt kind of guilty and a little spooked. There is something that feels intrinsically wrong about snooping through a dead person’s files, especially a dead kid. Maybe he hadn’t died, but I had the feeling he did, from the way his grandmother had warned me. My mind kicked into justification mode again and told me it was no different than wandering around an estate sale after someone died, and Alex brought me to those all the time. Truth be told, they creeped me out a little, too, but it’s just what people did. Best not to think about it.
Over the next few hours, I found very little, if any, surprising or suspicious activity on the computer. The kid mostly hung out in chat rooms, played WoW, had a reddit account, and had spent a lot of time on YouTube. Nothing that looked like it would be installing malware. (And, I thought, nothing to indicate the kid was suicidal or into anything weird). Somehow it felt like ghosts should have come flying out of the screen or something. None did, and I decided that none of it was my business anyway. I selected anything I found in documents, music, pictures, or on the desktop and each time hit shift+delete, so it would bypass the recycle bin and I would not be tempted to snoop. Snooping like that is sort of a rabbit hole, and one thing my mother always said when we would house sit for the neighbors or found ourselves in anyone else’s home when they weren’t home rung true with me here: ‘if you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it. Doesn’t enough trouble find us on its own?’ That was her ‘don’t snoop through shit that isn’t yours’ spiel, and she was probably right. Time to make it my own.
I wiped the signed-in account on the browser. I went in to the ‘users’ screen and created my own as an Admin, and I made sure any programs I would need to use were installed in a way that any user could access them. I signed in as me, and deleted the poor, dead kid’s account. I opened up Word, intending to sign in to my own “Office 365” Account, so the lady didn’t get charged or anything, and I went to the top of the screen for the “sign in” option.
It wasn’t there. Huh, weird, I thought. Could this have been one of those older copies of Microsoft you bought on a disc and didn’t have to pay a subscription fee for? Score again! I thought they had stopped making those. It looked pretty new, though. Weird. The front door opened, and I heard, “Hellooooo!” in Alex’s sing-songy voice.
“Hey babe.” She came in and kissed my cheek.
“So, you gonna show me this new hotshot computer of ours?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Okay, yours.”
“You can use it sometimes,” I teased. She shoved my shoulder playfully.
As I suspected, she had grabbed something from Zaxby’s on the way home. I grabbed one of the fries in her meal and savored it. Zaxby’s coats their fries in seasoned salt, and they’re freaking delicious. She slapped my hand away and whined, “Hey! I haven’t eaten since noon. Back off!” She turned away from me. “Hey…” She grabbed the wireless mouse and moved it to the top of the screen. Microsoft Word was still open.
“This a bootleg or something?” She was hovering the mouse over the top part of the ribbon, where it says ‘Home, Design, Review’ and the like. Next to those options was a little lightbulb that said “TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO” and it was blinking red.
“I don’t know, but I tried to sign in to our account, and there is no place to do that,” I told her. “What makes you say that?”
She ate another fry and thought about it. “I don’t know, it just looks different. Maybe the blinking red ‘Help’ thing?” She sat down and moved the laptop in front of her. “May I?”
“Sure.” I gestured for her to have at it. My girlfriend currently works in retail, at a department store, and a lot of people mistakenly assume that retail jobs don’t have any use for tech skills. As the Assistant Manager of her department, she used these Microsoft programs as much or more than I did.
“I can’t get over the blinking ‘TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO’ thing,” she said. “It’s weirding me out.” She clicked it and it stopped blinking.
She typed, ‘I want to get a raise at work’ and hit enter. “Let’s see what a discounted two-thousand-dollar computer with a bootleg copy of Word can do for me,” she joked.
The screen sat there loading for a minute before a pop-up appeared on the screen.
No Registered User Found. Would you like to register, Alex McCabe? (Yes, No)
“What the fuck?!” She said, scooting her chair away from the table. She looked at me.
I should have been scared, felt defensive, or been worried, but I was fascinated. “How…?”
“You should uninstall that,” she said. “It’s probably some kind of black market copy that steals your…. I don’t know.” She walked over and clicked No. The screen reverted to its usual, mostly normal format, except the red blinking message: TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. “I am getting in the shower.”
As soon as I heard the bedroom door shut, I immediately began typing into the red blinking area on top of the MS word screen. ‘Tell me how you knew my girlfriend’s name.’
Loading again. Error message.
‘No registered user found. Would you like to register, Colin Davies? (Y/N)’
I clicked yes. Should I have been a little more concerned that it knew the difference between me and my girlfriend? Absolutely. But I was oddly transfixed by it, and for some reason, it didn’t seem odd at the time. Maybe I was just careless, and maybe it was something else that made me click Yes; I can’t be sure now. Hindsight is always 20/20, right?
‘THANK YOU, COLIN. YOU ARE NOW THE REGISTERED USER. PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND END USER LICENSING AGREEMENT, THEN TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.’
Does anyone ever read the terms and conditions? I didn’t. I typed again, ‘I want to know how you knew our names.’
Loading.
Error: invalid query.
Okay, well, good parlor trick, Microsoft. Our Wi-Fi/Cable provider billed us on a joint account, so I figured it was pulling our names from the ISP. Great privacy policy, Comcast. I rolled my eyes and typed, ‘I want to see Alex get a raise at work tomorrow’ and hit enter.
Loading.
DID YOU READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS?
I clicked Yes, Ignoring the link.
Loading. Nothing happened.
“We’ll see.” I chuckled to myself and closed the lid. I figured I’d join Alex in the shower. And I did. As we were drying off, I told her how I’d registered the software in my own name, and that I told it to get her a raise.
She said, “You erased that creepy bootleg and just downloaded the regular one, right?”
“Of course.” The lie was on my lips before I had time to consider it. In hindsight, that too was odd, because Alex and I had a policy of absolute honesty. The kind of honesty that I wouldn’t recommend for most couples. She had been cheated on in the past, and I had a roommate that got into Heroin and stole from me, so when we first started dating, it was something we had easily agreed on: no lies. And usually, I kept to it. Usually, I had nothing to lie about. I didn’t even think about it as we curled up for bed that night.
Later on that night, I woke to a godawful racket that I can only compare to some sort of a ‘roided-out digital dog whistle. An alarm of some sort? I nudged Alex to see if she could hear it too. She had to. It was loud, abrasive, and probably waking the neighbors. Was it in the house? A neighbor’s alarm system? How the actual fuck was she sleeping through this? Wow. She rolled over and mumbled something incoherent. Sleeping like a baby. I got up, grabbing the .22 varmint rifle I kept next to the bed, and went to see what the noise was. In retrospect, on some level I knew that an intruder couldn’t make this sort of screeching, ear shattering noise, but I was half asleep and did the guy thing: grab gun, defend turf. Like a magnet, I was drawn into the small kitchen, and I could somehow feel that the sound was coming from that area, even though it permeated the air in a way that it was no louder or softer in one room than any other. My new laptop sat innocuously, closed, on the kitchen table, but it was emitting a sickly, orangeish red glow from the small space between the screen and the keyboard. The unnatural light formed an odd, glowing square around the laptop, except the side with the hinges that the screen rested on when you flipped it open.
Okay, I thought. I knew I should have considered that there would be something wrong with this thing. Too cheap. But could it really be making this noise? I half considered shooting the damn thing and going back to bed. I wish I had. Too much paperwork, though. Discharging a firearm in city ordinances would surely get you in deep shit, even if a rabid racoon was attacking you. Instead, God help me, I decided to open it up and see if there was some sort of alarm system or something in the computer causing the noise. Note to self, I thought, turn the damn thing all the way off before bed. In fact, remove the battery.
I sat down at the table, the unholy screeching still in my head, and flipped open the screen. The screeching immediately stopped, and the sickening glow went back to the usual, blue-light laptop screen that all of our retinas have come to know and love. I blinked a couple of times, to clear the sleep fuzz out of my eyes, and because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I’m sorry to wake you, Colin.
I need you to read the terms and conditions.
(OK/Cancel)
I clicked “cancel,” and the error message returned, and the screeching began again, worse than before. It was actually causing my eyes to water, sort of how you’ll involuntarily cry if you get punched in the nose. I never knew that ears had the same connection with the tear ducts. Today I Learned, thought dryly as I clicked Yes.
I had no intentions of reading any terms or conditions at that hour, but I knew as I was slowly scrolling through them that I would file a complaint with Lenovo, Microsoft and any other company that had any software or hardware in that computer in the morning, because that is one obnoxious way to get someone to read an End User agreement. I slowly scrolled to the bottom and when I figured that the appropriate amount of time had passed that the computer would (think???) that I had actually read all of their legal garbage, I clicked ‘I Agree’ at the bottom of the pop-up window.
I had often thought to myself that one day, I would actually need to start reading things before signing/agreeing to them. If you pay attention to the news and tech articles, you’ll see that there are certain functions on our SMART tv’s, cell phones and computers that you are not required to allow or agree to, but that we all generally do, essentially allowing these devices to access all of our personal data. I had nothing to hide, and thought that maybe if someone wanted to steal my identity, they could pay my student loan balance while they were at it, and perhaps file last year’s taxes for me. But, like a good red-blooded American, I bought anti-virus software, carried a wallet that protected my bank and credit card info from devices that could remotely steal the info, and upgraded my cards to the ones with the chips in them when my bank asked me to. This time, though, I didn’t read it because I don’t like being told what to do. It’s possible that my stubbornness has caused me a lot of trouble, because the Terms and Conditions the stupid computer wanted me to read weren’t even all that long, compared to some of the other crap I’ve had to scroll through to access my software and apps, but I was tired and still had a headache from that stupid “Terms and Conditions Police” alarm the computer had blasted into my head. I looked at the screen, which was on Microsoft Word again. I shook my head, already forgetting about how I had (told??) my computer that I wanted my girlfriend to get a raise at work.
When you do things like this, little goofy, innocuous things, you tend to forget about it. Alex and I thought we were being clever, typing about her getting a raise into an oddly-worded field (TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO) that was obviously a help field. The text would have been ingeniously created by some Adderall-popping millennial with a three-day beard and a skinny-pants suit somewhere in Silicon Valley behind a desk, who had probably been paid an obscene salary to come up with some words that were more ‘user-centered’ than the word “Help.” That’s how all of these things work, isn’t it?
Not this one. Anyway, I went about my daily business, attending classes, working my side hustle (which is what I called my part-time office job to make it sound cool. It was my only hustle, and was boring as all hell) and using the computer as one might – I worked on my Masters thesis, sent emails, procrastinated on Reddit, Facebook and occasionally (I know, NERD) played WoW or browsed the crappy, free amateur adventures of YouPorn. Normally, I didn’t bother with Porn, because Alex was… well, I’ll say the kind of girl that didn’t require a huge hand-to-man relationship most of the time. She was an awesome girlfriend, or, at least, I thought she was, before all this. She had been coming home late a lot lately, and acting a little different. Stress, I assumed, and didn’t think twice about it. I certainly didn’t want to add to it. She was hoping to go from Assistant Department Manager to Assistant Store Manager, and she had taken on some extra responsibilities in order to do that.
One night, I sat at the computer, three beers deep, trying like hell to write some stupid paper for school. I can’t even remember what it was. I stared at the computer, tired and drawing a blank, and noticed the help message at the top corner of my screen blinking red: TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. I don’t know why I did it. I missed Alex, hadn’t been hanging out with my buddies from school or work much, and I guess the computer was saying something that spoke to me I typed, I WANT TO SEE ALEX.
Go figure, no weird error messages this time. I went to delete my typing and go back to my research when an odd program popped up. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. It was Alex, all right, and she was at work – but she was in the back room, I was guessing, bent over a table with her tits hanging out of her button-down shirt and her skirt hiked up around her waist. A man held her hands behind her back while he fucked her from behind. I knew this guy, it was Dan, the Store Manager. And he was fucking my girlfriend. Let me tell you, this shit put YouPorn to shame. Alex was hot, and if I wasn’t so freaked out by this, and if I wasn’t looking at my own girlfriend and her boss, I would have had a rager to take care of. If not for the audio, I could have suspected she was being raped, and sprang into action. Only, she wasn’t. People who were being raped didn’t usually tell their assailants to fuck them, and moan, and… Oh, God. I felt sick. I was in shock. There was no way that was Alex… except, hadn’t that been the outfit she left today wearing?
How the fuck did the computer do that? Maybe it was some kind of elaborate hoax. I did the only thing that my numbed brain could think of, and I called her. If I spoke to her, and she didn’t sound like she was letting some guy drill her like a porn star in the back room, maybe I would just set fire to the computer and be done with it. I called her cell phone number, and god damn it I heard her ring tone. Through the audio on that God damned video.
No, please, no. I heard her say “He’ll call back.” And with that, I knew she was cheating on me. For a sick, voyeuristic moment, I sat and watched this unfold. As they were switching positions, her on her knees, and he approaching her with his dick in his hand, I found the X at the top of the screen and closed it. Now, I had a lot on my mind. Alex, whom I was sure I would ask to marry me after grad school before that moment, was cheating on me. What’s more, somehow, my computer knew it, and had found a camera somewhere in the room and showed it to me. What was anyone hoping to accomplish with all this? What the fuck was up with this computer? What was wrong with this world?
I should have gone to Alex’s work and asked for her. I should have broken up with her on the spot, and beat the ever-loving shit out of ‘Dan,’ the man who was undoubtedly currently getting a blowjob from the mouth that kissed me every morning. Instead, I went back to the computer, and stared at the field where I had typed ‘I WANT TO SEE ALEX’, blinking red, with the message TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. My voice cracked, I could hear it through the empty apartment. I said, through very un-manly tears that I was furiously trying to choke back, “Why?”
It wasn’t loud and it wasn’t a scream; more a perfect reflection of the confusion, hurt and anger I was currently feeling. How could she? How long had it been going on? Had she ever… before we…. My train of thought was interrupted as a dialogue box popped up on the screen of my computer that said, “SHE REALLY WANTED THAT RAISE, COLIN.” I picked the computer up and heaved it against the wall, expecting to be sweeping it into the trash in a drunken rage (I pounded the rest of my beer and opened two more very shortly after) along with my hopes and dreams of a future with Alex, but it bounced off the wall and fell harmlessly to the ground. Not a chip, scratch or crack anywhere on it. What the fuck? I let out a feral cry and charged the thing. I guess I tried to tackle it. I bashed it on the floor, the table, and punched at the screen. I was seeing red.
When all was said and done, I looked at my computer, which was now on the other side of the kitchen after having been punched, slammed, kicked and punted across the room into a wall, and it sat there, unharmed, the screen seemingly taunting me with its blinking red message, which I could see across the room: TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. My drunk, angry brain had now reached an eerie state of calm as I began to accept one thing about this shitty situation: somehow, this computer was able to… do things. See things. Know things. Show me things. Possibly even make things happen.
What I should have been thinking of were bets, lottery numbers, riches, success and the like. I should have confirmed what I honestly already knew. All the late nights, her emotional distance, the extra few minutes in the mirror before work, the new underwear… It all added up now, I just didn’t want to see it those past few weeks. No, I was too angry to ask my bootleg copy of Microsoft Office to give me the key to success or make me rich. All I could think of was revenge, and I sat down before I lost my nerve, opened my seventh beer for the night, and considered all of the ways I could exact it. I finally decided on one, and slowly began to type. “I want Alex McCabe to kill her boss.” The little circle spun on the screen, loading.
I sat in the dark, drinking, and waiting.
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samanthasroberts · 7 years
Text
5 Terribly Awkward Attempts To Appeal To Young People
Advertisers are a lot like popular kids in high school: They’re rich, always hanging out with hot people, and devoting every conscious thought to how to look cool. Here are five attempts to market to young people that are high-key LOL epic #fails to the max.
#5. Microsoft Asks Potential Employees To “Get Lit” With Them
If there’s one thing that Microsoft (the creators of Windows NT and Clippy the Helpful Paperclip) makes me think of, it’s partying. At least, that’s what their recruiters want candidates to think. In an effort to get in good with tomorrow’s top talent, they sent out emails to interns in Silicon Valley inviting them to come party the Microsoft way.
The email is addressed to “bae intern,” because “bae” is something this recruiter must have heard their niece use once, and parroting youth-speak is life. It’s an invite to a party which they insist will be exclusive, despite the fact that they invited every intern working in tech whose email they could find. Undoubtedly, Microsoft set some kind of minimum baeness quotient (MBQ) required for entry. Because that’s how you verifiably partayyy!
To make sure they were speaking the young ‘uns language, they hit all the hip keywords that you’d get from a Bing search of “What is cool?”
Sunglasses are the one cool thing that hasn’t excluded itself from Bing.
For those of you who aren’t “woke,” allow me to translate. (I am half woke on my mother’s side.) Microsoft’s “crew” of communications BAs with five-plus years of recruitment experience is throwing this party after Internapalooza, which I can only guess from the name is a travelling intern festival that was very popular in the early ’90s. They promise “hella noms, lots of dranks,” and “the best beats.” That is to say, these Microsoft employees will have food, drinks, and music. They are describing the minimum requirements for a party.
“Oh yeah, we’re running this party in FULL RESOLUTION!”
The real draw, though, is meant to be Yammer beer pong tables. Beer pong is a drinking game popular at frat parties. Yammer is a social network for business. A “Yammer beer pong table,” then, is a place to collaborate with your peers on getting crunk with your peers, smarter, with better analytics and integrated with iOS and Android.
Yep, Microsoft is the fleekest multinational corporation that just DGAF about anything (except its pending antitrust cases) and is always down for a Microsoft Azure and chill. The email concludes with an all-caps, coral-colored, “Hell yes to getting lit on a Monday night.” Of course Microsoft likes to get lit. Where do you think they got the idea for that pipe screensaver?
“OK, hear me out: We have to try again with the Zune.”
#4. Hillary Clinton Asked People To Describe Their Crippling Debt In Emojis
Connecting with America’s youth is vital in presidential elections. Not because their views matter (they don’t vote), but because tweeting at young people is today’s kissing babies: You earn likability with minimal contact with actual young people. All you have to do is tweet halfway intelligently about anything young people care about, and you’re praised for being an adolesceltongue who is both “with it” and “gets it.” Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should have had a home run on her hands when she tweeted about her $350 billion college affordability plan, but she couldn’t resist tempting the gods of social media.
On paper, the thinking here makes sense. Clinton was unveiling a plan that college students should love: $350 billion in student debt relief. And those college students love emojispeak. So together, these two things should make an irresistible combination, as good as unagi ice cream.
Clinton’s campaign thought the tweet would precipitate a cascade of fire emoji tweets, each more two-hands-praising-emoji than the last. And that’s what might have happened if Clinton had simply said, “How do you feel about your student loan debt? Ready for a change?” If she’d just straightforwardly pandered to them, undergrads would have showered her in creative emojis.
Or if it had been someone with crippling student loan debt expressing themselves in three emojis, the internet would have loved that too. We would have named them the voice of a generation and given them a deal for a young adult novel written completely in dystopian pictographs.
“Mom? What’s 400 more phrases for ‘fuck you’?”
Instead, millionaire political insider Hillary Clinton asking students with paralyzing amounts of debt to describe it in “three emojis or less” came off as further out of touch than George Clooney in Gravity. People responding didn’t need three emojis to express themselves; they made do with just one finger.
Unsurprisingly, Clinton apologized for making light of the very hardships she is working to ease. Even less surprisingly, her campaign keeps making half-informed references to current pop trends, like holding a campaign event at a Pokemon Go gym. Someone please tell her that no matter what happens, she is never to mention Jynx.
#3. The Department Of Health and Human Services Will Debase Itself To Any Degree If People Will Think About Their Health
The Department Of Health and Human Services has the unenviable task of trying to get Americans to take care of themselves. This task is particularly unenviable when it comes to young people, who treat their bodies like they’re going to live forever and then proceed to live basically forever as sickly, overweight, expensive adults perpetually on death’s door.
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Since America needs millions of pounds of cure, HHS has been throwing anything they can think of at this problem. They have infographics, an active YouTube channel, and will shamelessly use anything millennials might recognize to trick them into caring for themselves.
Exhibit A is a post captioned, “Start a conversation with a friend about becoming an #OrganDonor.” It is a picture of a text exchange, apparently between two friends, that begins with “ru an organ donor?” Now, I think becoming an organ donor isn’t a huge sacrifice, for the same reasons I think offering someone your laptop when you’re dead isn’t a huge sacrifice: You’ll be dead, and they’ll probably be worthless by that point anyhow. Still, the text “ru an organ donor” out of the blue would terrify me even coming from the most laidback of my friends.
“Also, wuld ur skin make a qt dress?”
And the post only gets weirder from there. The response is not “Holy shit, is that you outside my window right now?” but rather the equally laidback yet somehow all-business “Yes, u?” Now I don’t know who’s creepier: the friend texting about postmortem plans for no reason, or the friend who does not bat an eye at the question, as though they’ve been expecting it. Then the reply seals the deal: It’s just a smiley face staring back at you with beady eyes. You started this conversation, dude! Why are you not answering this question?
Finally, the response to the smiley face is an ASCII heart, which would normally mean “I love you,” but in this case seems like a literal offer of the cardiac muscle. Thus, in an attempt to appeal to millennials, HHS gave us a vivid picture of a text exchange between two morbid, socially awkward young people. So, Cracked readers.
Exhibit B is an adapted “doge” meme meant to inspire young people to sign up for health care. As usual, it features a very cute Shiba Inu with its inner monologue displayed in pastel comic sans. It’s cute and kind of funny, if you like that sort of thing. The trouble is that the main reason young people don’t sign up for healthcare is that they think they won’t need it. A cute puppy frolicking through the snow and making grammar mistakes doesn’t inspire confidence in the system they’re supposed to buy into for their own good.
“So trust.” “Much effective.”
The ad is just “Hey, they’ll recognize this internet meme!” They might as well have made an ad that says “Know who thinks signing up with us for health insurance is a great idea? LEEEEEROY JENKINS!”
Finally, Exhibit C is an anti-bullying ad. For some reason, though, it appears to be borrowing from the #followmeto project by Instagram user @muradosmann, in which a woman with her back to the camera leads the phtographer by the hand to various exotic destinations all over the world.
Stop bullying, or the girl from The Ring will have to end her vacation early.
This is ironic, because the people from that Instagram account seem like the villains in a John Hughes movie. They’re blond, skinny, beautiful, and rich, so they’re by far the ones most likely to give you a swirlie on the entire internet.
Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/07/5-terribly-awkward-attempts-to-appeal-to-young-people/
from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/5-terribly-awkward-attempts-to-appeal-to-young-people/
0 notes
adambstingus · 7 years
Text
5 Terribly Awkward Attempts To Appeal To Young People
Advertisers are a lot like popular kids in high school: They’re rich, always hanging out with hot people, and devoting every conscious thought to how to look cool. Here are five attempts to market to young people that are high-key LOL epic #fails to the max.
#5. Microsoft Asks Potential Employees To “Get Lit” With Them
If there’s one thing that Microsoft (the creators of Windows NT and Clippy the Helpful Paperclip) makes me think of, it’s partying. At least, that’s what their recruiters want candidates to think. In an effort to get in good with tomorrow’s top talent, they sent out emails to interns in Silicon Valley inviting them to come party the Microsoft way.
The email is addressed to “bae intern,” because “bae” is something this recruiter must have heard their niece use once, and parroting youth-speak is life. It’s an invite to a party which they insist will be exclusive, despite the fact that they invited every intern working in tech whose email they could find. Undoubtedly, Microsoft set some kind of minimum baeness quotient (MBQ) required for entry. Because that’s how you verifiably partayyy!
To make sure they were speaking the young ‘uns language, they hit all the hip keywords that you’d get from a Bing search of “What is cool?”
Sunglasses are the one cool thing that hasn’t excluded itself from Bing.
For those of you who aren’t “woke,” allow me to translate. (I am half woke on my mother’s side.) Microsoft’s “crew” of communications BAs with five-plus years of recruitment experience is throwing this party after Internapalooza, which I can only guess from the name is a travelling intern festival that was very popular in the early ’90s. They promise “hella noms, lots of dranks,” and “the best beats.” That is to say, these Microsoft employees will have food, drinks, and music. They are describing the minimum requirements for a party.
“Oh yeah, we’re running this party in FULL RESOLUTION!”
The real draw, though, is meant to be Yammer beer pong tables. Beer pong is a drinking game popular at frat parties. Yammer is a social network for business. A “Yammer beer pong table,” then, is a place to collaborate with your peers on getting crunk with your peers, smarter, with better analytics and integrated with iOS and Android.
Yep, Microsoft is the fleekest multinational corporation that just DGAF about anything (except its pending antitrust cases) and is always down for a Microsoft Azure and chill. The email concludes with an all-caps, coral-colored, “Hell yes to getting lit on a Monday night.” Of course Microsoft likes to get lit. Where do you think they got the idea for that pipe screensaver?
“OK, hear me out: We have to try again with the Zune.”
#4. Hillary Clinton Asked People To Describe Their Crippling Debt In Emojis
Connecting with America’s youth is vital in presidential elections. Not because their views matter (they don’t vote), but because tweeting at young people is today’s kissing babies: You earn likability with minimal contact with actual young people. All you have to do is tweet halfway intelligently about anything young people care about, and you’re praised for being an adolesceltongue who is both “with it” and “gets it.” Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should have had a home run on her hands when she tweeted about her $350 billion college affordability plan, but she couldn’t resist tempting the gods of social media.
On paper, the thinking here makes sense. Clinton was unveiling a plan that college students should love: $350 billion in student debt relief. And those college students love emojispeak. So together, these two things should make an irresistible combination, as good as unagi ice cream.
Clinton’s campaign thought the tweet would precipitate a cascade of fire emoji tweets, each more two-hands-praising-emoji than the last. And that’s what might have happened if Clinton had simply said, “How do you feel about your student loan debt? Ready for a change?” If she’d just straightforwardly pandered to them, undergrads would have showered her in creative emojis.
Or if it had been someone with crippling student loan debt expressing themselves in three emojis, the internet would have loved that too. We would have named them the voice of a generation and given them a deal for a young adult novel written completely in dystopian pictographs.
“Mom? What’s 400 more phrases for ‘fuck you’?”
Instead, millionaire political insider Hillary Clinton asking students with paralyzing amounts of debt to describe it in “three emojis or less” came off as further out of touch than George Clooney in Gravity. People responding didn’t need three emojis to express themselves; they made do with just one finger.
Unsurprisingly, Clinton apologized for making light of the very hardships she is working to ease. Even less surprisingly, her campaign keeps making half-informed references to current pop trends, like holding a campaign event at a Pokemon Go gym. Someone please tell her that no matter what happens, she is never to mention Jynx.
#3. The Department Of Health and Human Services Will Debase Itself To Any Degree If People Will Think About Their Health
The Department Of Health and Human Services has the unenviable task of trying to get Americans to take care of themselves. This task is particularly unenviable when it comes to young people, who treat their bodies like they’re going to live forever and then proceed to live basically forever as sickly, overweight, expensive adults perpetually on death’s door.
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Since America needs millions of pounds of cure, HHS has been throwing anything they can think of at this problem. They have infographics, an active YouTube channel, and will shamelessly use anything millennials might recognize to trick them into caring for themselves.
Exhibit A is a post captioned, “Start a conversation with a friend about becoming an #OrganDonor.” It is a picture of a text exchange, apparently between two friends, that begins with “ru an organ donor?” Now, I think becoming an organ donor isn’t a huge sacrifice, for the same reasons I think offering someone your laptop when you’re dead isn’t a huge sacrifice: You’ll be dead, and they’ll probably be worthless by that point anyhow. Still, the text “ru an organ donor” out of the blue would terrify me even coming from the most laidback of my friends.
“Also, wuld ur skin make a qt dress?”
And the post only gets weirder from there. The response is not “Holy shit, is that you outside my window right now?” but rather the equally laidback yet somehow all-business “Yes, u?” Now I don’t know who’s creepier: the friend texting about postmortem plans for no reason, or the friend who does not bat an eye at the question, as though they’ve been expecting it. Then the reply seals the deal: It’s just a smiley face staring back at you with beady eyes. You started this conversation, dude! Why are you not answering this question?
Finally, the response to the smiley face is an ASCII heart, which would normally mean “I love you,” but in this case seems like a literal offer of the cardiac muscle. Thus, in an attempt to appeal to millennials, HHS gave us a vivid picture of a text exchange between two morbid, socially awkward young people. So, Cracked readers.
Exhibit B is an adapted “doge” meme meant to inspire young people to sign up for health care. As usual, it features a very cute Shiba Inu with its inner monologue displayed in pastel comic sans. It’s cute and kind of funny, if you like that sort of thing. The trouble is that the main reason young people don’t sign up for healthcare is that they think they won’t need it. A cute puppy frolicking through the snow and making grammar mistakes doesn’t inspire confidence in the system they’re supposed to buy into for their own good.
“So trust.” “Much effective.”
The ad is just “Hey, they’ll recognize this internet meme!” They might as well have made an ad that says “Know who thinks signing up with us for health insurance is a great idea? LEEEEEROY JENKINS!”
Finally, Exhibit C is an anti-bullying ad. For some reason, though, it appears to be borrowing from the #followmeto project by Instagram user @muradosmann, in which a woman with her back to the camera leads the phtographer by the hand to various exotic destinations all over the world.
Stop bullying, or the girl from The Ring will have to end her vacation early.
This is ironic, because the people from that Instagram account seem like the villains in a John Hughes movie. They’re blond, skinny, beautiful, and rich, so they’re by far the ones most likely to give you a swirlie on the entire internet.
from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/07/5-terribly-awkward-attempts-to-appeal-to-young-people/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/167246617152
0 notes
jimdsmith34 · 7 years
Text
5 Terribly Awkward Attempts To Appeal To Young People
Advertisers are a lot like popular kids in high school: They’re rich, always hanging out with hot people, and devoting every conscious thought to how to look cool. Here are five attempts to market to young people that are high-key LOL epic #fails to the max.
#5. Microsoft Asks Potential Employees To “Get Lit” With Them
If there’s one thing that Microsoft (the creators of Windows NT and Clippy the Helpful Paperclip) makes me think of, it’s partying. At least, that’s what their recruiters want candidates to think. In an effort to get in good with tomorrow’s top talent, they sent out emails to interns in Silicon Valley inviting them to come party the Microsoft way.
The email is addressed to “bae intern,” because “bae” is something this recruiter must have heard their niece use once, and parroting youth-speak is life. It’s an invite to a party which they insist will be exclusive, despite the fact that they invited every intern working in tech whose email they could find. Undoubtedly, Microsoft set some kind of minimum baeness quotient (MBQ) required for entry. Because that’s how you verifiably partayyy!
To make sure they were speaking the young ‘uns language, they hit all the hip keywords that you’d get from a Bing search of “What is cool?”
Sunglasses are the one cool thing that hasn’t excluded itself from Bing.
For those of you who aren’t “woke,” allow me to translate. (I am half woke on my mother’s side.) Microsoft’s “crew” of communications BAs with five-plus years of recruitment experience is throwing this party after Internapalooza, which I can only guess from the name is a travelling intern festival that was very popular in the early ’90s. They promise “hella noms, lots of dranks,” and “the best beats.” That is to say, these Microsoft employees will have food, drinks, and music. They are describing the minimum requirements for a party.
“Oh yeah, we’re running this party in FULL RESOLUTION!”
The real draw, though, is meant to be Yammer beer pong tables. Beer pong is a drinking game popular at frat parties. Yammer is a social network for business. A “Yammer beer pong table,” then, is a place to collaborate with your peers on getting crunk with your peers, smarter, with better analytics and integrated with iOS and Android.
Yep, Microsoft is the fleekest multinational corporation that just DGAF about anything (except its pending antitrust cases) and is always down for a Microsoft Azure and chill. The email concludes with an all-caps, coral-colored, “Hell yes to getting lit on a Monday night.” Of course Microsoft likes to get lit. Where do you think they got the idea for that pipe screensaver?
“OK, hear me out: We have to try again with the Zune.”
#4. Hillary Clinton Asked People To Describe Their Crippling Debt In Emojis
Connecting with America’s youth is vital in presidential elections. Not because their views matter (they don’t vote), but because tweeting at young people is today’s kissing babies: You earn likability with minimal contact with actual young people. All you have to do is tweet halfway intelligently about anything young people care about, and you’re praised for being an adolesceltongue who is both “with it” and “gets it.” Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should have had a home run on her hands when she tweeted about her $350 billion college affordability plan, but she couldn’t resist tempting the gods of social media.
On paper, the thinking here makes sense. Clinton was unveiling a plan that college students should love: $350 billion in student debt relief. And those college students love emojispeak. So together, these two things should make an irresistible combination, as good as unagi ice cream.
Clinton’s campaign thought the tweet would precipitate a cascade of fire emoji tweets, each more two-hands-praising-emoji than the last. And that’s what might have happened if Clinton had simply said, “How do you feel about your student loan debt? Ready for a change?” If she’d just straightforwardly pandered to them, undergrads would have showered her in creative emojis.
Or if it had been someone with crippling student loan debt expressing themselves in three emojis, the internet would have loved that too. We would have named them the voice of a generation and given them a deal for a young adult novel written completely in dystopian pictographs.
“Mom? What’s 400 more phrases for ‘fuck you’?”
Instead, millionaire political insider Hillary Clinton asking students with paralyzing amounts of debt to describe it in “three emojis or less” came off as further out of touch than George Clooney in Gravity. People responding didn’t need three emojis to express themselves; they made do with just one finger.
Unsurprisingly, Clinton apologized for making light of the very hardships she is working to ease. Even less surprisingly, her campaign keeps making half-informed references to current pop trends, like holding a campaign event at a Pokemon Go gym. Someone please tell her that no matter what happens, she is never to mention Jynx.
#3. The Department Of Health and Human Services Will Debase Itself To Any Degree If People Will Think About Their Health
The Department Of Health and Human Services has the unenviable task of trying to get Americans to take care of themselves. This task is particularly unenviable when it comes to young people, who treat their bodies like they’re going to live forever and then proceed to live basically forever as sickly, overweight, expensive adults perpetually on death’s door.
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Since America needs millions of pounds of cure, HHS has been throwing anything they can think of at this problem. They have infographics, an active YouTube channel, and will shamelessly use anything millennials might recognize to trick them into caring for themselves.
Exhibit A is a post captioned, “Start a conversation with a friend about becoming an #OrganDonor.” It is a picture of a text exchange, apparently between two friends, that begins with “ru an organ donor?” Now, I think becoming an organ donor isn’t a huge sacrifice, for the same reasons I think offering someone your laptop when you’re dead isn’t a huge sacrifice: You’ll be dead, and they’ll probably be worthless by that point anyhow. Still, the text “ru an organ donor” out of the blue would terrify me even coming from the most laidback of my friends.
“Also, wuld ur skin make a qt dress?”
And the post only gets weirder from there. The response is not “Holy shit, is that you outside my window right now?” but rather the equally laidback yet somehow all-business “Yes, u?” Now I don’t know who’s creepier: the friend texting about postmortem plans for no reason, or the friend who does not bat an eye at the question, as though they’ve been expecting it. Then the reply seals the deal: It’s just a smiley face staring back at you with beady eyes. You started this conversation, dude! Why are you not answering this question?
Finally, the response to the smiley face is an ASCII heart, which would normally mean “I love you,” but in this case seems like a literal offer of the cardiac muscle. Thus, in an attempt to appeal to millennials, HHS gave us a vivid picture of a text exchange between two morbid, socially awkward young people. So, Cracked readers.
Exhibit B is an adapted “doge” meme meant to inspire young people to sign up for health care. As usual, it features a very cute Shiba Inu with its inner monologue displayed in pastel comic sans. It’s cute and kind of funny, if you like that sort of thing. The trouble is that the main reason young people don’t sign up for healthcare is that they think they won’t need it. A cute puppy frolicking through the snow and making grammar mistakes doesn’t inspire confidence in the system they’re supposed to buy into for their own good.
“So trust.” “Much effective.”
The ad is just “Hey, they’ll recognize this internet meme!” They might as well have made an ad that says “Know who thinks signing up with us for health insurance is a great idea? LEEEEEROY JENKINS!”
Finally, Exhibit C is an anti-bullying ad. For some reason, though, it appears to be borrowing from the #followmeto project by Instagram user @muradosmann, in which a woman with her back to the camera leads the phtographer by the hand to various exotic destinations all over the world.
Stop bullying, or the girl from The Ring will have to end her vacation early.
This is ironic, because the people from that Instagram account seem like the villains in a John Hughes movie. They’re blond, skinny, beautiful, and rich, so they’re by far the ones most likely to give you a swirlie on the entire internet.
source http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/07/5-terribly-awkward-attempts-to-appeal-to-young-people/ from All of Beer http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2017/11/5-terribly-awkward-attempts-to-appeal.html
0 notes
allofbeercom · 7 years
Text
5 Terribly Awkward Attempts To Appeal To Young People
Advertisers are a lot like popular kids in high school: They’re rich, always hanging out with hot people, and devoting every conscious thought to how to look cool. Here are five attempts to market to young people that are high-key LOL epic #fails to the max.
#5. Microsoft Asks Potential Employees To “Get Lit” With Them
If there’s one thing that Microsoft (the creators of Windows NT and Clippy the Helpful Paperclip) makes me think of, it’s partying. At least, that’s what their recruiters want candidates to think. In an effort to get in good with tomorrow’s top talent, they sent out emails to interns in Silicon Valley inviting them to come party the Microsoft way.
The email is addressed to “bae intern,” because “bae” is something this recruiter must have heard their niece use once, and parroting youth-speak is life. It’s an invite to a party which they insist will be exclusive, despite the fact that they invited every intern working in tech whose email they could find. Undoubtedly, Microsoft set some kind of minimum baeness quotient (MBQ) required for entry. Because that’s how you verifiably partayyy!
To make sure they were speaking the young ‘uns language, they hit all the hip keywords that you’d get from a Bing search of “What is cool?”
Sunglasses are the one cool thing that hasn’t excluded itself from Bing.
For those of you who aren’t “woke,” allow me to translate. (I am half woke on my mother’s side.) Microsoft’s “crew” of communications BAs with five-plus years of recruitment experience is throwing this party after Internapalooza, which I can only guess from the name is a travelling intern festival that was very popular in the early ’90s. They promise “hella noms, lots of dranks,” and “the best beats.” That is to say, these Microsoft employees will have food, drinks, and music. They are describing the minimum requirements for a party.
“Oh yeah, we’re running this party in FULL RESOLUTION!”
The real draw, though, is meant to be Yammer beer pong tables. Beer pong is a drinking game popular at frat parties. Yammer is a social network for business. A “Yammer beer pong table,” then, is a place to collaborate with your peers on getting crunk with your peers, smarter, with better analytics and integrated with iOS and Android.
Yep, Microsoft is the fleekest multinational corporation that just DGAF about anything (except its pending antitrust cases) and is always down for a Microsoft Azure and chill. The email concludes with an all-caps, coral-colored, “Hell yes to getting lit on a Monday night.” Of course Microsoft likes to get lit. Where do you think they got the idea for that pipe screensaver?
“OK, hear me out: We have to try again with the Zune.”
#4. Hillary Clinton Asked People To Describe Their Crippling Debt In Emojis
Connecting with America’s youth is vital in presidential elections. Not because their views matter (they don’t vote), but because tweeting at young people is today’s kissing babies: You earn likability with minimal contact with actual young people. All you have to do is tweet halfway intelligently about anything young people care about, and you’re praised for being an adolesceltongue who is both “with it” and “gets it.” Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should have had a home run on her hands when she tweeted about her $350 billion college affordability plan, but she couldn’t resist tempting the gods of social media.
On paper, the thinking here makes sense. Clinton was unveiling a plan that college students should love: $350 billion in student debt relief. And those college students love emojispeak. So together, these two things should make an irresistible combination, as good as unagi ice cream.
Clinton’s campaign thought the tweet would precipitate a cascade of fire emoji tweets, each more two-hands-praising-emoji than the last. And that’s what might have happened if Clinton had simply said, “How do you feel about your student loan debt? Ready for a change?” If she’d just straightforwardly pandered to them, undergrads would have showered her in creative emojis.
Or if it had been someone with crippling student loan debt expressing themselves in three emojis, the internet would have loved that too. We would have named them the voice of a generation and given them a deal for a young adult novel written completely in dystopian pictographs.
“Mom? What’s 400 more phrases for ‘fuck you’?”
Instead, millionaire political insider Hillary Clinton asking students with paralyzing amounts of debt to describe it in “three emojis or less” came off as further out of touch than George Clooney in Gravity. People responding didn’t need three emojis to express themselves; they made do with just one finger.
Unsurprisingly, Clinton apologized for making light of the very hardships she is working to ease. Even less surprisingly, her campaign keeps making half-informed references to current pop trends, like holding a campaign event at a Pokemon Go gym. Someone please tell her that no matter what happens, she is never to mention Jynx.
#3. The Department Of Health and Human Services Will Debase Itself To Any Degree If People Will Think About Their Health
The Department Of Health and Human Services has the unenviable task of trying to get Americans to take care of themselves. This task is particularly unenviable when it comes to young people, who treat their bodies like they’re going to live forever and then proceed to live basically forever as sickly, overweight, expensive adults perpetually on death’s door.
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Since America needs millions of pounds of cure, HHS has been throwing anything they can think of at this problem. They have infographics, an active YouTube channel, and will shamelessly use anything millennials might recognize to trick them into caring for themselves.
Exhibit A is a post captioned, “Start a conversation with a friend about becoming an #OrganDonor.” It is a picture of a text exchange, apparently between two friends, that begins with “ru an organ donor?” Now, I think becoming an organ donor isn’t a huge sacrifice, for the same reasons I think offering someone your laptop when you’re dead isn’t a huge sacrifice: You’ll be dead, and they’ll probably be worthless by that point anyhow. Still, the text “ru an organ donor” out of the blue would terrify me even coming from the most laidback of my friends.
“Also, wuld ur skin make a qt dress?”
And the post only gets weirder from there. The response is not “Holy shit, is that you outside my window right now?” but rather the equally laidback yet somehow all-business “Yes, u?” Now I don’t know who’s creepier: the friend texting about postmortem plans for no reason, or the friend who does not bat an eye at the question, as though they’ve been expecting it. Then the reply seals the deal: It’s just a smiley face staring back at you with beady eyes. You started this conversation, dude! Why are you not answering this question?
Finally, the response to the smiley face is an ASCII heart, which would normally mean “I love you,” but in this case seems like a literal offer of the cardiac muscle. Thus, in an attempt to appeal to millennials, HHS gave us a vivid picture of a text exchange between two morbid, socially awkward young people. So, Cracked readers.
Exhibit B is an adapted “doge” meme meant to inspire young people to sign up for health care. As usual, it features a very cute Shiba Inu with its inner monologue displayed in pastel comic sans. It’s cute and kind of funny, if you like that sort of thing. The trouble is that the main reason young people don’t sign up for healthcare is that they think they won’t need it. A cute puppy frolicking through the snow and making grammar mistakes doesn’t inspire confidence in the system they’re supposed to buy into for their own good.
“So trust.” “Much effective.”
The ad is just “Hey, they’ll recognize this internet meme!” They might as well have made an ad that says “Know who thinks signing up with us for health insurance is a great idea? LEEEEEROY JENKINS!”
Finally, Exhibit C is an anti-bullying ad. For some reason, though, it appears to be borrowing from the #followmeto project by Instagram user @muradosmann, in which a woman with her back to the camera leads the phtographer by the hand to various exotic destinations all over the world.
Stop bullying, or the girl from The Ring will have to end her vacation early.
This is ironic, because the people from that Instagram account seem like the villains in a John Hughes movie. They’re blond, skinny, beautiful, and rich, so they’re by far the ones most likely to give you a swirlie on the entire internet.
from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/07/5-terribly-awkward-attempts-to-appeal-to-young-people/
0 notes