Sometimes as a blogger you write a post (or posts) that you’re really proud of. Personally, I’m fond of my recent 4th of July post (the banner image is amazing…) as well as a few others. There are also a few posts that you don’t really think are that good, especially in retrospect. Usually the posts I make about daylight savings time, calendars, or other shit are kinda lame and boring; I understand why these posts aren’t that popular. Sometimes I find myself writing posts such as those just to post something. They’re posts I’m not that into and know they’re not going to be popular, but since they fit in well with the theme of this blog there isn’t a reason to not post them.
I’ve noticed a strange thing checking my WordPress user feedback data over the past few months that I never would’ve expected; somehow my post on picking out watermelons is continually the most (or one of the most) read posts week after week and month after month. At first I thought it might just be a fluke as if people in the world somehow decided to look up information about watermelons and stumbled upon my post. I even thought it might be a summer thing where, naturally, people might Google watermelons more than they would in December. This didn’t seem to be right and after a couple of months I just accepted it: my watermelon post is somehow my most popular post.
Here’s an example of the screen I’m talking about. As you can see, it is ranked second after my stupid post about Apex Legends, but it’s still up there. Making this even more pronounced is the fact that the Apex post is relatively new as it was written in March 2019. The goddamn watermelon post was written two damn years ago! In third place is the Little Mermaid post which might still be experiencing a boost from it being a recent topic on social media. I expect that to be completely forgotten in a few months though. So why is the watermelon post so popular and why does that suck?
As hinted at earlier, us bloggers have certain favorite posts that we’re proud of and other posts that we’re not so proud of. I think this is true of any artist; the musician has songs they like and the painter has artwork they like. One theme that seems to come up when you hear about artists with options of their own work is that they seem to consistently misjudge what is popular and what isn’t popular. Artists like works of theirs that the general population doesn’t while the general population likes things the artist themself isn’t fond of. It’s a well-known example that the band Black Sabbath recorded the song Paranoid as a quick-and-easy album filler song; the song has with time become one of their most popular songs. Kurt Cobain famously said that Smells Like Teen Spirit was just a Pixies rip-off song.
I suppose that’s how I feel about The Watermelon Post (although I don’t mean to imply it’s a masterpiece like the examples above). I went back and reread it to see if there was any sort of magic behind the post: I couldn’t find a damn thing special about it. I recall that I did have fun writing such a stupid post and I ran with it’s subject matter in a ridiculous way, but I don’t think that qualifies as “magic” at all. Maybe my lack of giving a shit slightly altered the tone of the post and made it fun and light-hearted? Maybe it hit that magical middle-ground of being both fun and informative? In the grand scheme of how I feel about my blog posts I’d put The Watermelon Post in the middle of my writings: I don’t hate it but I don’t think it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever written. To me it’s kinda a mid-tier, meh, so-so sort of post. Just like the example with musicians, it’s a post that I didn’t expect to be popular but somehow is.
I don’t know if there’s any sort of lesson to gleam from this fact or not; for the most part I find it amusing and fucking stupid. It’s hilarious to spend hours making a “good” post only for it to receive lukewarm reception whereas a quick “throw-away” post can find long-term success. If anything I guess it cements the fact that you can’t really write something good on purpose seeing as you are not the intended audience. While the blogger can have a fairly good idea of what will be successful we are not our own audience so there is some disconnect that occurs. You can’t totally get out of your head as a writer/artist to see how your art will be received. You can’t be sure what will be successful and what will fall flat on its face. If anything this somewhat stresses being passive about your work. As a throwback to my last post on publishing ebooks, if you get your hopes up too high about a project you risk disappointment if it fails to meet your lofty expectations. Conversely, you could have a project that you’re not really into turn into a huge hit for some unforeseen reasons. At the end of the day you need to just keep writing, blogging, making music, or whatever the fuck it is that you do. Because while you think you’re making a shitty Watermelon Post the world might actually find something of worth that you overlooked. It’s this inability to judge how your work is from an outside perspective that really sucks.
Last week I was on vacation and as an attempt to save myself the self-hatred and directionlessness that I feel while on vacation I made it a goal to finally finish and publish an ebook. I’m proud to say I’ve accomplished this but at the same time any actual “victory” seems to not be much of a victory at all. While I’ve finally published a book, it really doesn’t mean much in the long run and surely isn’t an instant ticket to success even though I wasn’t really expecting it to be.
What did I write about? I wrote about Facebook. I elaborated in a fewrecentblogposts about how I was thinking of collecting my Facebook Sucks posts into an ebook: it would be easy to do and I wouldn’t have to feel any pressure for it to be perfect. Perfection is always a hurdle when doing anything for the first time. For my first ebook why would I want to spend months or years making it perfect when it would surely end up as trash and not sell? By gluing blog posts into a book I wouldn’t be making a masterpiece but I could take the first step needed to actually be a writer.
I want to cover two things here: how it was actually writing an ebook and how it was publishing that ebook. Luckily (for this blog at least) each aspect sucked giving me plenty of content to write about!
You’d think that gluing individual blog posts into a book would be really easy but it wasn’t. Each blog post was written as its own stand-alone format; when you try to smash them together as “chapters” in a book you’re left with a really disjointed book. It sounds like what it is: a bunch of shit just tossed together. While most of the content was already written I still had to reread and edit all the posts to be “chapters” instead of “blog posts.” This wasn’t really difficult but wasn’t exactly as easy as I thought it would be. I also had to give some thought as to the general flow of the book, how the chapters would fit into the entire project, and edit them accordingly.
And obviously you can’t just slap a handful of blog posts into a book and call it day either! You need to make it, well, like a fucking book so I had to write an introduction and a few more “body” chapters to ease into where the blog post chapters were taking me. As before this wasn’t exactly hard (mostly as bitching about Facebook comes as naturally to me as breathing or eating does) but it was something I didn’t expect to be as laborious as it was. In fact I think previously written blog posts made up less than half the book; I tired to write an “easy” “blog-based” book and ended up writing a book that had a few blog posts for chapters. Most of the book was totally new content so that was more work than intended.
Then there’s editing the damn thing! You have to pour over the entire document proofreading for proper spelling, punctuation, grammar, as well as making sure you don’t sound totally fucking stupid in your writing. This part could’ve been avoided by finding a “proper” editor instead of doing it myself; that entails its own list of bullshit like being social and actually talking to people. While I wanted to finally write an ebook I wasn’t trying to be social or anything and wanted to rely on others as little as possible.
Along with everything else, actually publishing wasn’t too difficult but still tossed up its own unexpected troubles here and there. My book was ready to go but was there anything else I had to worry about? Yes. Consider a book cover: this is the first and usually only thing people see about your book. If you fuck it up the cover one will think about reading it. It could be the next Great Gatsby but no one will read it because the cover is shit. I felt immense pressure trying to make a decent cover and while I think I did a decent job it still looks unprofessional. If you totally forgot the fact that your book needed a cover you’d be in a difficult spot trying to publish a book.
My book cover. Kinda cool but kinda amateurish at the same time.
Kindle Direct Publishing throws a few more immensely important tasks at you beyond the book cover. What is your book’s keywords going to be? This is how Amazon relates search terms to actual products so these have to be dead on accurate. Even worse is you only get seven terms to use. Each one has to be near perfect. The same is true for your book’s category: it has to reflect what the book is about. Plopping a fantasy fiction book in the “technical writing” section of Amazon simply won’t do you any favors and I ran into trouble at this point. Was my incessant ranting about Facebook a “social science” book on the effects of social media, or was it a commentary on internet and computer culture? I still feel bad about the categories I selected because they don’t seem to reflect the book at all. Hell, I don’t even remember what categories I slapped my book in.
You also have to write a “summary” of your book which, after the cover, is the second most important thing people use to decide when purchasing a book. After going through the exhausting process of writing and editing and making a cover you probably don’t want to write more in a desperate last-minute effort to summarize your book. If you’re thinking of publishing write a fucking summary ASAP. At the very least have an idea for one in your mind.
After dealing with all of that intense decision making you upload your book (in a .doc file or whatever) and check out how it’s formatted. I didn’t have any issues here. The rest is pretty simple: pick a price for your book and all of that shit. After a 24 hour(ish) period your book appears and, well, you’re now a published author. Congratulations! But you probably don’t have long to feel accomplished because you probably won’t actually sell anything…
I shared my book to the Everything Sucks Facebook page as well as my own personal page. I figured at least a few of my friends would check out my cheaply-priced $2.99 ebook because they were curious or felt some sympathy for me. Even a week later my sales stand, pathetically, at zero. Check this out:
If this picture looks bland it’s because I didn’t sell any fucking books.
It’s hard not to feel like shit over this, especially after doing all the work to actually write a book. I recall when one of my Facebook friends made an ebook (it was a single short story too, not even a real fucking book); I paid the 99 cents to support him because I’m a nice guy like that. Of course a bunch of other people also supported him and he was just amazed at the positive feedback his book received! I figured I could count on selling at least a few copies out of “support sympathy” or whatever you want to call it, but nope. The goddamn book only got two likes on my personal page. Fuckers.
I guess I don’t want to bitch about my friends not buying my book because you can’t be a successful author limping along with your only reliable readers being your friends/family. But I do want to bitch about the fact that doing anything is fucking hard. And, once again, doing something for the first time is the hardest. Doing anything for the first time usually involves the greatest amount of effort because you don’t know what you’re doing at a time when you have zero self-confidence keeping you motivated and focused. When you do persevere and accomplish your “first” the reception is usually either luke-warm (or nonexistent) and this can totally crush any self-confidence you’ve accomplished at achieving your goal. This is a really risky and dangerous time because if you’ve busted your ass to make progress and have had no success afterward, why would you want to continue?
Luckily I don’t think I’m dumb enough to fall for that trap again and am already working on a second ebook because who gives a fuck? Sometimes I think the real measure of success is just chipping away at something because you don’t actually care if it’s received well. I could stress out constantly over the fact that no one will probably read anything I publish and hate myself for it, or I can say “Fuck it. I’ll publish another one.” and shrug it off. What else is there really to do except make progress? So while I’ve accomplished actually publishing, had it be recieved anticlimactically, and feel kinda shitty about it I know that I need to keep moving forward because the first of anything is usually shit. So, yeah, publishing (and selling) an ebook kinda sucked.
If you want to actually check the book out here’s the link. It’s only $2.99 so it shouldn’t break your bank account.
Yesterday the family and I went to Six Flags Great America, an amusement park in Gurnee Illinois. I’ve been there a handful of times throughout my life, but I can say for a fact that yesterday I did not have a good time. Amusement parks might be one of those things that sours with age (or maybe it’s my perpetually shitty mood) where most adults suffer through a near hell for the pleasure of their kids/family because that’s what it was: a near-hellish environment of starvation, sunburn, dehydration, walking, price-gouging, and perpetual line-standing. Sure the rides — when you actually found yourself on one –were fun enough but everything else you had to deal with outweighed any small amount of fun you found yourself having. And, oh God, the people. You can’t forget the people…
Tickets? Membership? Season Passes? Flash Pass? What?
With amusement parks the bullshit begins well before you arrive: purchasing tickets. It’s not so much purchasing the tickets that is bad, it’s trying to navigate through the maze of pricing options to find what is actually the cheapest. Take a look at their website for yourself. This is obviously done on purpose to confuse you into “the best deal” where you inevitably pay more than you probably should. They have tickets at the gate ($79.99), tickets you buy in advance for a specific day (Advance Purchase Ticket: “as low as $59.99”) and tickets where you can go on any day you want (Any Day Ticket: a lone “Buy Now” button with no price listed). There are season passes (Standard and Gold), and memberships (Gold Plus, Platinum, Diamond, Diamond Elite), and parking tickets/passes, and there is even a fucking food pass where you supposedly get a free meal each day you’re at the park. I’m sure the food pass also has tiers for some reason.
It’s not so much the options but finding what option is best for you with the confusing and convoluted marketing terms tossed at you. (For example prices given in “per month” terms, or the banners stating “BEST DEAL!!”/”BEST VALUE!!”, “prices as low as…”, etc. I’ve even seen something that stated “As low as $7.99 per month” which alternatively stated means “the cheapest version is $100 and lasts for a season.”) If you’re going for a single day, the single day ticket is the best, but this is cheaper if you preorder online! The season passes are only slightly more pricey (on purpose) to entice you into buying one of those. Making this even more confusing is the fact that a season pass actually makes sense if you go to the park more than once. It’s simply exhausting trying to figure out the cheapest way to do what you want to do as you’re continually being tempted by other offers. And the cheapest offers are somehow well-hidden on the website.
Expensive Everything Actually
An expected trait for any amusement park/theme park/carnival/movie theater/anything is that everything is expensive as fuck. Like everything: food, drinks, merchandise tickets, and anything else they can find to charge you for. This begins with the park entrance/parking fees and continues through everything else. A fucking order of nachos is over $10. A 20oz bottle of water is $5. Some of the stupid carny games and go-karts actually cost extra besides the park entrance fee! A drink with free refills (seasonal or daily because I guess there are multiple tiers of fucking drinks. “Pay a little extra for a better deal!”) costs like $15-25. Souvenirs and all the other shit you can buy naturally apply here, but I can’t give any prices. I didn’t buy anything because I knew it would be ridiculously expensive. Oh yeah, Dippin’ Dots (ice cream of the future since 1988) are only $10!!!
Besides the ridiculous prices, note how the drinks are sold. Prices are given on a “per cup average” if you buy more than one. So, yeah, they are cheaper on average but you’re still paying nearly $60 for three drink cups.
This technique works — especially for food — because of the park’s policy of not allowing “any outside food or drinks” into the park. I’m sure if you asked someone about this they’d give a very PR answer referring to “safety reasons” but the cynic in me believes this policy exists to price-gouge you as much as possible regarding food. Instead of toting in a few 2-liters of soda and peanut butter and jelly sammiches you’re forced to buy a $20 chicken sandwich with a $15 Coke. The truth is after 8 hours of walking around you simply don’t care about saving $40 because you’re fucking starving and about to die of dehydration.
Lines, Queues, and Other Forms of Waiting
When I think back to previous trips to amusement parks I only remember the walking and the rides. At the end of the day my fucking legs killed me but other than that I remember the rides. This was some hindsight bias or some glitch in my memory because most of my actual time at the park, besides walking, was waiting in a fucking line. As a kid I never recalled that experience much. For research purposes I totaled up my time in lines: 155 minutes. This is almost three hours. Making this even worse was that I rode five roller coasters. Estimating that each ride lasted one minute you get a ratio of 1:30; for each 30 minutes I waited I got to enjoy one minute on a coaster. Fuck.
This isn’t even that bad either! Some rides had wait times around 70-80 minutes. We only rode rides that had estimated wait times of 45 minutes or less. If I can say one positive thing about the park it is that the estimated wait times were actually pretty accurate and if anything they erred on the side of caution. Usually an estimated wait time of 45 minutes ended up being only a 35 minute wait. I do appreciate that although I’m sure there is an ulterior motive to the park making money or keeping people happy or something. While they’re not doing this for our benefit it is nice seeing accurate wait times.
But wait! There is a way to not wait in line! The park sells “Flash Passes” that allow you to skip the line almost entirely, but you know this huge benefit isn’t without a cost. Once again I don’t know the exact number but I would guess a Flash Pass is around $100 per person two people (I checked). Whether you want to spend another $100 on top of the initial $100 to get into the park/park your car is up to you. At the very least its another great example of Six Flags stealing your money as efficiently as possible. Think about it: they’re charging people to not wait in line. It’s genius really.
Walking Forever
So I spent a total of three hours being on roller coasters and waiting in lines, but what was the rest of the time spent doing? We were there for about seven hours so there are still four unaccounted hours. What happened during those? Walking happened. Even if it wasn’t necessarily walking it was what I’d call “navigating the park.” Traveling to rides. Checking the map. Pissing. Finding a water fountain. Trying to navigate the crowds of people. Shit like that.
The park layout isn’t exactly intuitive either. There’s a handful of main paths that kinda meander around as the park isn’t meant to be a fucking efficient interstate highway for people. No, it’s meant to be laid out in a way that slows you down and gets you into shops, food stands, and whatever other places can steal your money. While a roller coaster may literally be close enough to hit one of its occupants with a rock you’d need to take a half mile path around the park to find the entrance to the ride. Considering the numbers above, I’d say about 45 minutes of walking is required, on average, to stand in line for 30 minutes, to ride a ride that is one minute long. That is brutal.
I’m not sure if the map makes the park appear more of a mess than what it is less. Either way the map is much cleaner than the park layout actually is. Also note how everything is numbered; this is a pain in the ass.
After about 6 hours there I started to get that old people feeling of needing to sit down on a fucking bench. At that point I didn’t give a shit about riding rides, eating food, or anything. My legs were dead and I just wanted to sit and “rest up for just a bit.” I almost didn’t want to make the near-mile trek to the car because it was so far away. But given that was my way to safety, freedom, and comfort I summoned the remainder of my energy to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Survivalism
This is my own fault, but I didn’t want to eat food or buy any drinks while I was at the park. They’re just too damn expensive and I didn’t want to piss away $50 on a soda and nachos especially after pissing away $400 for everyone just to get into the park. No, I’d rather starve and deal with being miserable than to be price gouged some more. I already mentioned how much walking you must do and how you must stand out in the sun and with all of that physical activity you start to get hungry, tired, and feel all-around shitty.
A big loophole in the “no outside food or drink” policy is that they don’t say a damn thing about “drink containers.” Me being not that much of a dumbass I brought in a water bottle that I could fill up: you either hydrate or diedrate bro. So while I was hydrated I was still starving and getting baked by the fucking sun.
I am blessed with DNA that gives me -25 points to sun damage but for everyone else there? Fuck. There were handfuls of people that were both pasty white and seemingly not fond of sunscreen: they were basically walking lobsters by the end of the day. I don’t know what they were thinking but I’m sure they’re regretting it today. Even me with my classic farmers tan going on still garnered some mild sunburn around my neck and I can only feel bad for those pale lobster people and their burgeoning skin cancer.
All of this isn’t too bad on it’s own but mixed together you have a whole pot of shit that makes you feel awful. You can’t (or won’t) eat because the food is too pricey, you drink water when you can find a fountain, and you’re standing/walking in glaring sunlight all day in the middle of the summer. Luckily the humidity wasn’t an issue yesterday but consider that as well: heat, humidity, sunshine, constant walking, starvation, and you have a situation that I’d imagine is similar to survival after an airplane crash. But really, people need to bring sunscreen to amusement parks.
People
And holy fuck let’s not forget the people! People individually seem to be pretty cool, friendly, and “good” but in large groups (like you find in an amusement park) are fucking animals. There are no rules for walking or managing right-of-way so you get groups of people/kids/whoever just darting out in front of you, almost running into you, or randomly stopping in the middle of a path. Kids were bratty and cranky especially as the day became late. People didn’t seem to be outright rude, but they were like you’d expect them to be: animalistic.
There’s also a special kind of anxiety you get when you’re standing in line surrounded by and with strangers. Queues have this characteristic zigzagging motion to pack as many people into the smallest area as possible while remaining in a line. When you move forwards you get to see the people behind you and in front of you and it’s hard not to make awkward eye contact with them every time the line moves. Making this even worse is that fact that you see the same people over and over as you zig and zag towards the ride itself. I have a mild form of social anxiety where I’m scared of people but not dysfunctional and I found myself getting rather jittery over the whole ordeal. Sunglasses work great as you know that people can’t see you and you can act like you don’t see them either.
In case you needed a picture for how this shit works.
In Closing…
I suppose it isn’t that I didn’t have fun it’s that the amount of fun I had didn’t justify the massive cost to get into the park, the hassle of driving to the park, the amount of walking/line waiting required to obtain the fun, and the masses of people you must deal with. It’s like a 1% fun to 99% pain-in-the-ass/boring ratio which isn’t great. I think my age might have something to do with my lack of fun as well. As a kid/teenager you’re excited and eager to ride some scary-looking coasters while now I just know they’re not scary or dangerous; part of the fun is overcoming the danger and fear you have (real or perceived). Since this fear is mostly absent, they’re not something I feel the need to “conquer” or whatever and it’s hard to justify the line-waiting with that mindset.
Riding roller coasters is one of those things that would be really amazing to do if you didn’t have to deal with people. Given the opportunity to endlessly ride whatever coasters I want without the lines of people and the near hours waiting I’m sure I’d have a fun time. But then you’d probably have too much fun and the coasters would be boring! As much as I hate people and waiting in line I think this is part of the “amusement park” experience and I can’t help but think that a large portion of the people at Six Flags actually enjoy all the shit that I hated about the place. The same is true with county fairs and parades and people who like the 4th of July. Are there some people that like the large crowds, the expensive food (just splurge a bit and have fun!), and the hassle of it all? If there are, I certainly am not one of them and the thought of going to an amusement park anytime soon gives me an immense sense of dread. I’ll stay at home thank you. Amusement parks suck.
Goddamn this entire topic is stupid. Initially I was pissed over the entire “debate” about what race Ariel should be in the upcoming live-action Little Mermaid movie, but the more I thought about it the more pissed I became at social media and people in general. Without social media people probably wouldn’t be foaming at the mouth over something so fucking trivial, pointless, and stupid. I think the “debate” of the Little Mermaid casting choice isn’t the actual problem here: it’s just a symptom of the “outrage culture” that is enabled by social media and especially Facebook. It’s nearly a perfect example of how social media can whip people into a frenzy over something that isn’t a big deal at all.
Let’s also not lie here: this is currently a Hot Fucking Topic and I want to rake in viewers/readers/subscribers while the going is still good. Let me in on all the drama while things are still hot. You know people will totally forget about this in a week so time is of the essence.
To recap a bit: Disney loves making stupid-ass live action movies lately. I’m assuming there are a few reasons for this. They’re cheap to make (they don’t need to make a totally new movie), they can capitalize on nostalgia, and who the fuck knows, maybe Disney is simply getting lazy lately. Either way they’re churning out live actions films that no one really seems to actually be asking for and The Little Mermaid is one of the upcoming ones. Whatever.
Apparently people are going rabid over the fact that Ariel — a white girl in the original film — is now being played by a black girl. HOLY FUCK GUYS, HOL UP! There are a wide-range of arguments going around both for and against this choice: Originalists want Ariel to be white simply because she was white in the animated movie. Fair enough. These people have no real racist motivations to be against a black Ariel, they just think the remake should be as close to the original as possible. Other socially progressive people think that, sure, an African Ariel is also okay as it really doesn’t matter who the hell plays a goddamn mermaid: it is just a movie. I suppose I can see a little truth in each sides’ arguments (At least the typical ones I’ve heard. There are a few raving racists talking about “white culture” being stolen by blacks or some shit like that, but fuck those guys.) but have stayed mostly neutral over it because it is the stupidest thing you could ever argue about (besides the color of a striped dress. Those were the good ole days).
A realistic depiction of “dolphin Ariel.”
Let’s also visit what is being discussed real quickly: the race of a mermaid. I’m sorry to disappoint anyone, but mermaids aren’t real. If you want to really get technical, an aquatic human/fish hybrid probably wouldn’t have any pigment in their skin at all and might look the color of a damn dolphin, once again, if they actually did exist. They wouldn’t be white or black but a kinda cloudy-day-grey color if they actually did exist. This is just me guessing by the way. The fact that people are pissed over the race of a mythical creature is insane. It’s like being pissed if someone put a blue unicorn in a movie. “But unicorns aren’t blue!!!!” What fucking color would they be then? (I think a blue unicorn makes sense: it would have perfect camouflage for flying in the sky. This could help the species evade it’s natural predator, the fire-breathing dragon. Dragons would also probably be blue for the exact same reason lions are orangish.)
Another reason I’ve heard against an African Ariel is some overarching idea that Disney only made this choice for politically correct/public relation reasons, sort of pandering to others so they company appears “racially conscious” or something like that. Implicit in this is the idea that Disney is pandering to a minority of people (blacks) at the expense of pissing off a majority of people (whites). This belief states there is a right and a wrong choice by equating Disney’s pandering with a lack of sound financial reasoning. Basically if Disney really wanted to make a ton of money — according to this line of thought — they wouldn’t piss off white people by making Ariel black. But this doesn’t make sense if you think it through: Disney is a huge, take-over-the-world type of company that (especially since they’re publicly traded, ticker of DIS) wants to rake in as much cash as possible. This is literally their job and they have tons of resources to allow them to do this as effectively as possible. Disney has a small army of smart, talented, mathematically-inclined people accompanied by sociologists and researchers collecting tons of data and doing surveys to find out the exact risk/reward of a black Ariel and have found that it is a net positive for the company. If anything pissing off white people and making Ariel black clearly makes the best financial choice because this is what they decided to do. Disney is in this to make money, and they’re not going to take some feel-good, PR/PC choice if it will lose them money. I honestly think this choice will not backfire on them in any way.
I suppose I view the entire issue as Disney’s choice/problem anyways. They own the rights to the movie so could cast a fucking Indian midget for all I care. I mean it wouldn’t make sense to me, but it’s their movie so fuck it, they’ll do what they want to do. While Disney (the huge company) isn’t a genuine artist (what with all of that money-raking/keeping shareholders happy thing going on), I put all artistic decisions on the artist. It’s their work and they’re in control of whatever they want to do. They are beholden to no one because that’s not how art works. Not that a live-action remake of The Little Mermaid is necessarily high art but you get the idea.
And to bring this back around, it’s probably social media’s fault anyways. It is the venue where all of this bullshit drama can actually take place: people wouldn’t get this fired up if they had to actually have a conversation about it. I imagine a conversation would go something like this: an Originalist would say “I think Ariel should be white — not because I have anything against black people — but simply because she was white in the original.” And the other person could say “Hmm. I guess I understand that, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals of the story. It isn’t hurting anything for her to be black. It gives black girls someone to identify with.” And they could agree to disagree with a little appreciation for the opposing view. On social media it’s just posting/sharing foaming-at-the-mouth posts that just piss everyone off who disagrees with you. As always there is no real conversation and is just people shouting what their beliefs to others. We pick our sides, start posting/screaming, and hope to drown out the opposite view through shear force and the consensus of the crowd.
And then there’s me: a person who is complaining about people complaining about a silly topic on social media. The irony isn’t lost on me either so no need to point this out. If you guys want to start a dumpster fire in the comments below or on this blogs Facebook page with your Hot Opinions, go right ahead. It’ll be fun to watch. The Little Mermaid Sucks.
It’s that time of year again: the 4th of July. Also more appropriately known as Independence Day for obvious reasons. It was 243 years ago that the Declaration of Independence was signed where we (The United States) basically told England to go fuck themselves because we didn’t need them and their yuppy-ass tea anymore. Americans take this day off work to sweat in the July heat, grill out, and drink copious amounts of beer/alcohol while trying to blow their fingers/hands/arms off with fireworks that may or may not be illegal depending on what state you reside. When you look at what people actually do on Independence Day and compare it to the actual meaning of the day you’ll end up confused. But all of those things are somehow really stereotypically American so maybe it is fitting after all. Maybe July 4th is just a day for Americans to be unashamedly American drinking beer, grilling, and lighting off fireworks that came from China.
Perceived History Sucks
A quick history lesson: nothing really happened on July 4, 1776 besides the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Looking back this was important but the US wasn’t exactly “founded” on this day as most people seem to believe. The battles of Lexington and Concord (the start of the Revolutionary War) took place in 1775 and the Revolutionary War ended in 1783: over seven full years after the declaration was signed! Even more silly is the fact that the modern U.S. Constitution was a mulligan because the prior Articles of Confederation was dogshit and it was ratified in 1790: 13 fucking years after the Declaration. From an actual historical perspective July 4, 1776 — while a big deal — wasn’t as big as a few other key moments in our nation’s early history. I wouldn’t call it “the beginning” of the U.S. of A. at least.
A shirt that depicts the “U.S.A. began in 1776” ideal even if not explicitly stated.
Not that any of that matters because I doubt the average ‘Merican has any idea about what actually occurred 240ish years ago. We drink beer, grill, and blow shit up. Who cares? I imagine the typical ‘Merican believes that July 4 was the day that George Warshington rowed his boat across the Mississippi River, chucking tea overboard, while an eagle flew overhead with a 50-star red, white, and blue flag in its proud talons. He went to Warshington Dee See and wrote the constitution himself with an eagle-feather pen. Shortly after that, Samuel Adams created Budweiser Beer. That’s how ‘Merica really began.
Partying Sucks
Another traditional part of the July 4th celebrations is partying. People usually invite over their friends (or get invited over by friends if they don’t have their own homes) and sit around and drink beer or something. White People usually listen to radio-friendly 70’s or 80’s rock music where the same Motley Crue song you’ve heard 1,000 fucking times is played so you can hear it for the 1,001 time. I’m very glad we live in a more “ethnic” area of town; lucky there isn’t any White People around blasting their goddamn Dad Rock and drinking Budweiser while they wear wife-beaters and american flag shorts.
(I should note that I myself am white and even I hate the typical White People culture. Were fucking stupid sometimes.)
We apparently have quite a few Mexican (or hispanic) families that live near us because we’ve been hearing that typical ethnic-latino music all day today. It’s actually refreshing to hear something other than typical White People music and I can’t help but admire Mexican families for their ability to have real parties. White People parties are usually only like 10 people sitting around in lawn chairs not saying much to one another and it’s borderline depressing. Mexicans play music where the bass (It’s always really uplifting too. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a depressing Mexican Party Bass Line) can be heard all over the neighborhood and they always look like they’re having a real party. There’s people swimming and dancing and jumping and smacking pinatas with sticks/bats/whatever and the kids are running around the yard like they’re on crack or something. It’s great to witness. 4th of July is no exception and the Mexican Bass is envelops the neighborhood like the July heat does except that it’s refreshing. It’s kinda ironic in a way that Mexican families pull off Independence Day better than White People do. Somehow I feel more American hearing Mexican Bass Lines on July 4th.
Fireworks Suck
We went downtown where the fireworks shot off are almost exactly the same as they have been for the past decade. I knew this before we even saw them, but nobody had to tell me in advance; they’re always the same thing. There are some small variations but they are minor and I just can’t bring myself to be excited that they made smiley-face fireworks this year. I quit being excited for fireworks when I was about 16 and I don’t see how anyone older than that still enjoys them. Over the people, traffic, and bullshit that they must deal with do these people really enjoy it still?
We parked a half-mile away and started on our hike to our traditional viewing spot; a spot a quarter-mile from where they actually shoot the damn things off. We get as close as possible to the river that splits our city in half, and across that river is where they shoot the damn things off. We can’t sit right next to the river because that is some special, locked-off area that only paying customers are allowed access to. I’ve never understood why people sit there as our free spot is just as good, but perhaps they offer beer or some special crowd experience. I don’t know. Either way we started walking to our traditional spot.
On the way to our traditional spot a few teenagers started following us. One was a really talkative teenager while his friend seemed to only listen; I never heard him say a damn thing. This isn’t notable at all until I really listened to the talkative one: he seemed to say the word “bro” at the end of every sentence like it was a period. I’m not joking, every sentence ended in “bro” and it only took three sentences for me to know something was comically wrong with the way he talked.
“Man, fuck that shit, bro.”
“I do what I want and no one is going to tell me otherwise, bro.”
“Yeah I know, bro! That’s what I’ve been fuckin’ trying to tell you, bro.”
“I know but you’re not listening to me, bro! I said fuck ‘em, bro.”
It happened like that for at least 10 minutes. I laughed my ass off every time he finished his sentences. Making this even funnier was the fact that this “teenager” was really only like 10, maybe 11. He was cussing like a sailor and saying “bro” to end every sentence. People really exists like this? This teenager boy isn’t being ironic? Bro.
“I do what I want and no one is going to tell me otherwise, bro.”
-Some Kid at the Goddamn Fireworks
Anyway, we get to the fireworks and they start on-time at 9:30 after mentioning the sponsors. I’ve never noticed it before but apparently the fireworks (called “SkyConcert 2019”) are broken into three “acts,” each separated by a mention of the sponsors. I don’t know if all cities do this but Rockford, Illinois always has some synced music to the 30-minute firework display, once again called “SkyConcert 2019.” The songs played were the same: the show always begins with the National Anthem, features “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong somewhere in the middle, and ends with the “1812 Overture” by Tchaikovsky. I didn’t even know the closing song was the “1812 Overture” but a quick Google search for “firework finale songs” pointed me right at it. I mean it’s a perfect song for it, but currently it’s too perfect and now just expected at the end. Every firework “SkyConcert” I’ve seen has had this song plopped right at the end. Obviously.
Other typical songs are Katy Perry’s “Firework,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” and a handful of country songs that I don’t know the names of (because I don’t listen to shitty music). Since I was paying attention, I was actually surprised that the second “act” nearly all consisted of Shitty Country Songs, some kinda slow and emotional and others a bit more upbeat. It makes a sad sort of sense though; country music is by default the music that represents the U.S. of A. even if it is trash. I don’t know how this happened exactly, but it sure is shitty.
I was also surprised to not hear Katy Perry this year. This is one of those small, subtle changes that you don’t really notice and is what differentiates SkyConcerts from other SkyConcerts. I guess Katy Perry isn’t big enough to be in firework displays now?
Normally I despise people who take pictures/videos of fireworks, but this is mostly because they don’t account for the unique lighting situations that occur during in-air explosions. They slap their phone onto “auto” and smash the “photo” button and never look at what is actually captured. So you get overexposed and backlighted images that are garbage and people spam this shit on social media for some reason. Anyways, rant over, here is my best picture which looks like an electronica album cover ala Animal Collective.
There were little fireworks, big fireworks that go BOOOOM, smiley-face fireworks, red white and blue fireworks, sparkly fireworks, glittery fireworks, and fireworks that sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies cereal just after milk has been added. The finale sounded (like it always has) like every explosive device they had as a spare standby was lit just to get rid of it with a constant rumbling ROAAAAR over the city for a few minutes. As a naive kid I actually thought they lit off spares at the finale while now I know it is all perfectly programmed to perfection with zero randomness. If anything I get joy out of seeing a firework explode way too low where you know it was a genuine accident because the rest of the show is so damn banal now. It’s cool seeing shit explode, but seeing it year after year so rehearsed and programmed makes it boring.
In Closing
So I went home and drank a Joose and Bud Light Chelada. I really went with Joose because I was in the mood to be as trashy as possible with my drinking today. I wasn’t trying to lie to myself here: I wasn’t happy and I felt dirty and I knew I had to drink as part of my 4th of July duties. Budweiser would’ve been the most patriotic choice, but Joose seemed a natural go-to as it offers 14% alcohol by volume, is cheap, and has a note on the side of the can that states: “PREMIUM MALT BEVERAGE WITH NATURAL FLAVORS….” Premium Beverage my ass, it’s trashy as fuck (I was going to post a photo but even that was too trashy.). But that’s how I’m closing off this shitty holiday. Have a fun and safe 4th everyone even if it is over. This holiday Sucks.
I hopped on Facebook a few days ago and was greeted by a friend request. This actually kinda surprised me because I’m kinda a loser and no one actually requests me. Either that or people are more scared of social interaction than I am so I have to request them, but I’m doubtful of that. Anyways, I click the fucking icon to see this person:
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before on here, but I live in Illinois. You might be shitty at geography but Maine is nowhere near Illinois. According to Google maps it’s about 1,100 miles from where I live. This is kinda strange but not unheard of; perhaps an old high school friend of mine moved to Maine? The only problem with this is I don’t know of anyone by this name and her face doesn’t look familiar at all. The picture itself almost seems too perfect in a way. More on that later…
It doesn’t take much longer to realize what’s up. All I did was scroll a bit further down past the non-existent friend list to see this post:
NUDES!11! XD
Apparently this person who is, I suspect, “newer” to Facebook would like to post a link to NUDE VIDEOS!!! for her first post. No friends, requesting a dude who lives 1,100 miles away, and a link to nudes. Sounds a bit fishy huh? It’s because it is! This person is actually a “person” because they’re not actually real. I’m sure the girl in the profile picture is real but she isn’t this person named Alicia from Maine requesting me as a friend. She surely exists but the “person” who this profile represents is just that, a “person.” Fuck, they might even be a bot who requests random people based on some algorithm. I don’t know how bots and shit work really, but at the very least I’m aware this profile isn’t a “real” profile: it’s not an actual person.
I suppose this isn’t a problem as hitting the delete button is easy enough, but I think what bothers me most about these fake profiles is how obviously fake they are. It only takes a passing glimpse of the page to realize that it’s fake. I mentioned it earlier but take a look at their profile pic: it’s too perfect! Scroll through your actual friend list and notice how people usually have some shitty selfies for their profile picture. Bonus points if these selfies are of a very over-exposed, shitty, Snapchat filter that makes their eyes bigger and mouth poochier. Extra bonus points if they have that fucking dog face and ears. These are what real people use for their profile and the flaws and stereotypicalness of them makes them real.
This person looks like their pic came from a stock image site under “pretty brunette girl” or something like that. It looks like a professional photo. While there are real people with photos like that usually they aren’t the first picture someone uses. The entire profile is sparse making it seem like she is new to Facebook if she was a real person. New profile, professional profile pic. Hmm.
The type of likes she has listed are also pretty fishy. There doesn’t seem to be any consistency in any of it and I’m sure if you looked into things you’d find exactly that. Like I don’t know exactly where these football teams are but there doesn’t look like there’s any pattern at all going on. She doesn’t seem to like her supposed hometown teams or her current town teams and it seems like a robot just went and liked random ass pages to make things seem legit. I think it was from Red Dragon or some shit where the dude realized the killings looked too random to actually be random and that it was “fake randomness” or something like that. It’s the exact same situation here. The likes are fake-random.
Stupidest of all are the people who accept this person as a friend. Usually these fake profiles with pretty females promising “free nudes” have tons of scuzzy looking guys as their friends. While at first you might believe this adds some legitimacy to the page (as they have actual friends) the type of person their friends are is a dead give away. These guys are usually stupid or silly looking and look like the gullible, lonely, or perverted people that would accept a random, unknown female with a “free nudes here!” without asking any questions. They’re the kinda dudes who at work say slightly dirty and wrong things to attractive women that while aren’t blatantly harrasive are still pretty suggestive. They’re the type of guys that if a girl looks and smiles at them then she must “totally want them” or something like that. Seeing a collection of these guys on pages like this makes me what to laugh or frown, I usually don’t know what to do. Maybe just smile, put my eyebrows up, and shake my head.
Sadly her page doesn’t have any of these scuzzy looking dudes so sorry that I can’t provide examples.
No fwiends. 😦
This isn’t a big problem by any means and Facebook seems to be doing a good job at filtering these fake people out somehow. A year ago I would get these requests almost weekly. I just check my friend list and she’s gone already: it took less than a week for this profile to disappear. Facebook is on their game recently.
I think what is shitty about this is how obvious it is that this person isn’t real. That’s okay (I guess) until you see a mountain of gullible, horny, loser-looking dudes on their friend list. These guys either don’t care that the page is fake or actually think this is some attractive girl showing nudes and wanting to meet up or something. It’s just a fucking joke. These people have no fucking clue.
The name of this blog is Everything Sucks so everything has to begin this way. But a full disclaimer on this post right away: I actually like Apex Legends to the extent that I play the game all the time and I think I enjoy myself (mostly) while playing it. I suppose I’m trying to say that I have nothing to fault the actual game for, but the type of game it is has some glaring fucking problems that make the experience less than enjoyable sometimes most of the fucking time. You’ll see what I’m getting at in a bit.
Apex Legends is another one of these battle royale games that has became immensely popular in the previous year or two with games like Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds — affectionately known as “PUB-G” — and Fortnite being, well, immensely popular. Since they’re so popular it’s no surprise that EA, the infamous video game company, also had to jump on board with its own battle royale game called Apex Legends. Another disclaimer is in order here: I’ve never played a battle royale game before Apex so my gripes are probably applicable to other games as well only this is the first time that I’ve experienced them personally. Let’s get into it!
Being the Jumpmaster
The first way this game suck is that it forces one of your three members to be something called “the jumpmaster.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: you’re the one in charge of deciding when and where to jump into the game world which isn’t a trivial thing. Really it isn’t too big of a deal as any good player can make any location they land at work, but to the inexperienced person this seems like a huge fucking deal. It’s anxiety-inducing if you’re new to the game and find yourself as the one to decide where in the world to land your team and how they’re at the mercy of any shitty choice you make in the matter. Like I said it isn’t too big of a deal but this also plays into the next part a bit.
The Butterfly Effect
The butterfly effect (roughly) means that any small choice or action can have huge ramifications in the future. Apex is a perfect example of this in a tiny, “fun”, and easy to understand fashion. For example, think of the jumpmaster from the previous section. If you land in a good location you might find good armor, fewer enemy teams, and this might set you up in a small but decisive way that allows your team to win the game. Conversely, if you make the choice to “hot drop” into a zone where half the other teams also drop there will be a bloodbath and you most likely will die in a few minutes. This is why being the jumpmaster really sucks because where you decide to land could actually determine if you win the game or die within 30 seconds.
That was just one example but these “small choices are a big deal” difficulties are all over the game. Like going into one door could mean you find an enemy squad and get shot in the face and die while another door could mean you find the best armor ever that allows you to barely not die when you do face that enemy squad. The tiny percentage of health that you don’t restore could be the tiny but deciding factor in you and your squad’s demise. I’ve had so many games where I didn’t do anything useful at all only to revive the one person on my team that wins the game for us making me, in retrospect, immensely important to winning the match. Each game you play leaves you wondering “what if?” with every little choice you make having huge implications for the rest of the match.
Randomness and Luck
The weapon, armor, and item spawns are random (more or less I guess) so luck plays a big part in the game. This is nice for inexperienced players as they could accidentally stumble upon an amazing weapon and this helps cut down on the edge good players have. (They can’t just drop where their favorite weapon is every game and dominate.) But it is frustrating when you hot drop into a death zone and upon running into a building to find a weapon — ANY WEAPON AT ALL! — you find two or three totally useless sniper stocks so when you see an enemy in the next 5 seconds you have no way to defend yourself and are instantly dead. This plays into the butterfly effect thing above, and I suppose randomness really drives it, but sometimes the spaws just suck, you find yourself with zero luck, and you die.
I Just Can’t Quit
I’ve had more “Just one more game” syndrome in this game than I’ve had in any other game, including Don’t Starve with the similar “Just one more day” syndrome. It’s so hard to quit when playing this game. This is due to the majority of the games — like 90% — you play being total shit where you die in the first minute due to the reasons mentioned above and below. It’s so hard for a game to be satisfying to ever call it “the last game” where you quit and go about your day. You just can’t end on a low note or even worse an average note. Some games you die before finding a gun, sometimes someone sneaks up behind you and kills you, sometimes your teammates are brand new and are worthless, sometimes your teammates run off and leave you or even exit the game leaving you alone; so much can go wrong that it’s hard to have a game that is decent and an acceptable “last game.” Speaking of others in the game…
I’m Really Bad/Others are Really Good
Part of the addictiveness of the game is the fact that I’m terrible at it. I should say that I’m not terrible at it but I’m not really good at it. I can sort of hold my own and support my teammates but I certainly can’t carry a team with two shitty players.
On the opposite side of the same coin is the fact that there are some really good players out there. It’s one thing to be good against single-player AI in games but it’s a whole other deal playing against actual people who have brains and can think more swiftly than you can about how to surprise and kill their opponents. I’m kinda busy with kids and a job so I can’t play very much but imagine that 12-year-old kid who every damn day gets home from school and plays Apex for six hours straight. Everyday. And this kid has also been playing Fortnite, Call of Duty, PUB-G, or Overwatch for the past five years nonstop. He’s going to be fucking amazing and at the very least way better than most people. It’s these type of people that can and will kill you in less than a second and leave you feeling like dogshit with your playing abilities.
It is pretty amusing when a 10-year-old kid carries your team to victory though.
Awful Teammates
By far the deciding factor in any Apex game is your teammates. If you play with friends you’re probably fine as you most likely have good team chemistry and know what the others are going to do, but if you play with random people you will most likely have a shitty game. I’d say 60% of the games I play are straight-up bullshit, 20% are average, and 10% are decent. This is mostly due to who you get stuck playing with.
The game pairs you up with two other people and just imagine how that can go? Like think of your coworkers and choose two at random that you have to work closely with as a team. You have to protect each other, stick together, and travel together while every other group in the world is trying to fucking kill you. Most of your randomly chosen coworkers will fucking suck; even if you have a few that you think you could work with the majority of them are asshats that do everything wrong. This is exactly how teams in Apex Legends are.
Sometimes you have an inexperienced group that insists on hot dropping and dying instantly because none of them can barely aim a weapon or run but somehow think they can solo 6 other 3-man teams. And then there’s the one guy in the group that thinks he’s a total badass and flies halfway across the map leaving you and your other member just shit out of luck when you get attacked. It’s possible to survive that situation if you’re really fucking good but in a battle royale game like this sticking together is one of the best things you can do to stay alive. Usually the person that goes rouge-solo is either actually really good or really fucking bad but really selfish. Either way it does nothing for the well-being of the group and everyone loses.
I’m not good at the game but I know I’m not as awful as some of these other players are. If I see my squad has shitty armor I’ll point some better stuff out to them and sometimes they just ignore it! Sometimes I’ll point out enemies to my squad and — especially if they’re new — they’ll just run across open ground in view of everyone and just start shooting! This inevitably leads to the entire team’s death in less than a minute because everyone knows where we are and can fish-in-a-barrel us from everywhere. And let’s not forget the people that just ignore you if you’re fallen or dead and give zero fucks about trying to revive you or to save you. Fuck you guys, you’re the worst.
People are usually the main reason anything sucks as we’re a varied species. For every person you get along with that isn’t an asshat there are at least 10 others that fucking suck. We’re talking drivers, workers, people at the store…shitty people are everywhere and Apex is no fucking exception. Most games I play I have average or sub-par teammates that can and will utterly fuck the game up for the team. But sometimes, rarely, you get a good team where everyone has complimentary play styles and everything fits together like a puzzle or a well-oiled and tuned machine. Sometimes everything just works and it’s amazingly fun.
And that’s what makes this game enjoyable to play: searching for that good damn game. Because when the stars do line up and everything works — your teammates are good and take care of each other, you get a good drop, a good weapon, come out on top in an early fire fight, find good loot, and just get plain fucking lucky — the game is fun as hell and amazing. You feel like you’re on top of the world. It’s the fact that so much can, will, and does go wrong that when everything goes right it’s an amazing feeling. Having that game where you and your three-man team comes out on top of 57 other people is a great feeling and leaves you playing over and over again. Apex Legends doesn’t really suck, or maybe it does and that’s why it’s such a fun game to play.
