The Real Guy

I always considered the we didn’t start the fire as a rebellion song PRECISELY because it doesn’t need to have “proper” lyrics talking about stuff but it feels literally like scrolling through news article headlines and it’s one bullshit after another until the chorus where you get to the rage of the person watching it all happen. It’s a BRILLIANT concept for a song

it’s SO funny that the phrase “among us” is like permanently ruined for everybody now

living through the pandemic has affected me in profound ways, including the desire to wear a mask whenever I’m in public spaces. it’s also a desire that I seem to share with exactly twelve other people in the entire country

in retrospect, video rental stores *would* probably still exist today in some capacity had it not been for blockbuster. the nostalgia for the blockbuster browsing experience undermines the reality of how aggressively the chain snuffed out smaller video rental stores and would eventually become notorious for its abusive late fee collection policy once there were no significant competitors standing. the rise of streaming is often attributed to blockbusters demise, but what’s not often recognized is how netflix’ earliest (and most successful) marketing tactics were in fact advertising the absence of the aforementioned terrible late fees as opposed to the convenience of not having to go to the store. I was actually surprised to find out how much of blockbuster’s demise can be attributed to spiraling out of control as it attempted to manage viacom’s ever increasing debts than to the fact that people just naturally gravitated towards streaming (which is not to say that it wouldn’t have happened eventually, but).

see also: borders / barnes & noble with bookstores. amazon’s original pitch was probably more “look how convenient!” than it was “look, you can avoid the awful sterility of the inside of a barnes & noble!” but it’s interesting that with its aggressive tracking and tailoring of recommendations amazon is having machines do (in an impersonal and invasive way) what the staff at a local, non-chain bookstore would do, which is match their selection to your preferences

Ohhh that last line.

i'm so fucking tired of international media reporting on the philippine election with the undertone of "poor uncivilized savage uneducated little brown asian country is so so sooooo stupid for electing a dictator's son" as if there aren't thousands on the streets protesting it, as if there isn't electoral fraud, as if there aren't people staying at voting precincts for over 24 hours just to be denied their right to vote, as if this isn't a product of decades of US-backed imperialism and as if foreign powers don't have a hand in this decades-long project of historical revisionism. if you aren't reporting about the philippine election with these contexts in mind then don't report at all because fuck you we do not need your pity nor your "help"

you’re telling me THIS guy’s voicing Mario?

The thing that seems to make people talk about “giving up,” mostly, seems to be that things are going to be more slow-paced. The thing is, another word for slow-paced is leisurely.