Social Media Rant

Yo, it’s rant time baby. Have any of you noticed how bad the major social media platforms have gotten lately? I mean things got a lot worse after the 2016 election, but I feel like the last six months have somehow fallen even further.

For me, it started with Tumblr. Tumblr used to be a place where you would find some ridiculous political/social posts, a bunch of adult posts, and a ton of “toxic fandom”, but also some really funny jokes and some solid art and photography. It was one of my favourite things to scroll, met lots of fun people on there, and found so much great art and nature shots and pretty models and stuff. Tumblr also used to have this big problem of porn bots spamming people, and at the end of 2018 they started to purge all adult content. I thought it would take care of the spambots but the rest of the site would remain the same. What actually happened is any artists who ever drew nsfw stuff got banned, same with any models whoever posted a single nude photo, and any regular/funny account who reposted anything NSFW also disappeared (banned or just left). The spambots kept going. The horrible political posts also keep popping up.

Facebook and twitter have both gotten worse and worse. I’ve noticed a lot less of normal friends sharing about their lives, and a lot more people complaining about politics or sharing really stale/basic memes. Sometimes there will be a funny joke or two, but often it’s like the same stuff over and over. Lots of like “I like dogs more than people” or “I eat chicken tenders/nuggets for every meal”. Its better than the uninformed political stuff but it gets boring fast.

Then there’s instagram. Hoo boy. It used to be my favourite social media. It was just selfies of friends, cute girls, nature pics, good looking food, and a lot of like updates on people’s lives… even if they are like sort of fake to make everyone’s life seem perfect. Then it started to shift. First it was friends using their personal pages to promote their businesses (which I support wholeheartedly), but then it started being more and more friends making business accounts (which is also cool imo). Then after following a few of those, I just started to get tons of companies trying to get me to follow them, to the point where my feed was more business updates than actual social media/friend updates. Then instagram started adding in more and more ads so it’s ads for businesses, ads for friends’ businesses, with an ad from a sponsored company in between. Same with stories. Then I started getting a slew of spambots and catfish types hitting up my dms.

I like social media to scroll through when I’m bored. If I’m waiting for someone or watching tv or something, its really nice to just look at what’s going on with my friends but lately, I’d rather just sit there and literally do nothing at all than look at social media the way it is. Snapchat has been okay but a bit of a ghost town. Reddit is also not too bad but I find a lot of people on Reddit are kind of annoying so I try not to read any of the comments.

Well friends, do you agree with my take on social media? Is there any tricks you know to make these sites a little more bearable? Any new sites that I should check out? Hit the comments dawg

Assassin’s Creeds and British Repo Shows

Whats up piiiimps. That was a weird intro, oh well too late to change it at this point.

Lately, I’ve been trying to save money so I’ve been spending more nights at home. Instead of writing, working out, watching movies off of my ever-expanding list, or doing anything remotely productive, I’ve been really hooked on playing the new Assassin’s Creed.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is possibly one of the best games I’ve played in recent years. The play style is fun, the story and the characters are interesting and well written, and the world is so beautiful and fleshed out and really cool to explore. I got the platinum on it (meaning I finished the game and got every achievement in the game), pumping in over 130 hours (spaced out over the past two months), and still want to keep playing it. It takes place in Ancient Greece and gets a lot of the historical info right and blends in the mythology in a fun way. It’s stirred up this real curiosity in me to learn more about Greece and Sparta and all that stuff.

However, while playing the game, there are large parts where I’m just running or fighting where I can listen or sort of half-watch something else. You know… multitasking. I started on youtube with my normal channels I follow. Then I started getting recommended these frozen food reviews by this dude brutalmoose who is pretty fun and does really funny editing. Then inexplicably I started getting a recommended a whole bunch of British reality shows. And not like Love Island or British Kitchen Nightmares. No, all the ones I’ve been getting are based around the theme of going broke. There is Nightmare Tenants and Slumlord Landlords about people who don’t pay rent and won’t leave or landlords who screw their tenants over. Can’t Pay Well Take It Away is about British High Court bailiffs who go into people’s houses and just start taking stuff until they get enough to pay off whatever debt the person owes. Call The Sheriff which is basically the same thing except focused more on the person who the money is owed to. Nightmare Neighbours which is just stories of people who get in fights with their neighbours and then have to move. Then also The Housing Enforcers and Scrappers UK but I haven’t actually watched either of those ones yet. The whole theme of these shows is just like… crippling financial worries and how the UK might be a horrible place to live? The people in these shows keep getting jerked around, the police never help, and if you owe somebody money they can pay to take it to the High Court which doesn’t even have to give an eviction notice.

I don’t actually like watching these shows but the youtube algorithm has been so weird lately in that once it starts recommending me a certain type of video, it completely fills my recommended with those videos. Also I find that I often associate a game with a certain show or youtube channel and until I’m actually done playing that game, it just feels natural to also keep watching that show.

I’ve been really wanting to start writing more so hopefully I can do that this week. And maybe spend a little less time exploring ancient greece while watching poor people cry while fat British dudes steal their stuff with government authority.

Is End Game the End of the Blockbuster?

I want to talk about something other than my fluctuating mental health or about how I have nothing to write about. I want to talk about movies!

Last week (or I guess earlier this week?) I watched a movie review by Red Letter Media on youtube and Mike Stoklasa made an interesting point that End Game is the end of the blockbuster movie, that the hype of that movie will never be reproduced again. I think it’s a really interesting idea and I want to talk about it.

A blockbuster is a movie with big stars and a high budget designed to generate a lot of excitement and ideally get a line-up on opening weekend. Sometimes the movie is also a critical success and other times the movie is garbage but the marketing tricks people into piling in on opening weekend. No movies have done this quite as well as the recent Disney stuff, especially the Marvel Studios movies. The most successful of these is probably End Game. Not only does it bring together tons of big name actors and characters from 10 years worth of big blockbuster movies, but it also follows up on Infinity War, which had one of the craziest endings of all time. Anybody who is even marginally interested in these movies, probably felt some need to go see End Game.

It’s kind of a blockbuster perfect storm. I mean there were so many reasons to go see it and it took 10 years of set up. It set the bar so high, its hard to really imagine ever feeling that kind of hype again. Disney tries to hype up all of its movies and some people go for it every time but not everybody. For example, although some people are excited, I have no real desire to see Toy Story 4, Frozen 2, or the new Star Wars. And I know I’m not the only one. The new Lion King might be good? As for non-Disney stuff, Godzilla King of the Monsters got a bit of hype but not a ton. I took a look at the list of everything else coming out this summer and nothing seems that exciting.

Still I don’t think that the blockbuster is completely gone. I just keep thinking of two James Cameron movies that were absolutely massive blockbusters (Avatar and Titanic). Neither of them had the build up of Avengers but still generated massive interest when they came out. Both movies were highly ambitious projects that “broke new ground” when it came to movies, with Titanic having those wild practical effects and a nearly 2 hour action filled climax in a simple love story and Avatar did 3d in a way that no movie had ever done before.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the next big blockbuster will be Avatar 2. But I’m optimistic that some director will have a simultaneously ambitious idea that might open big. That or… Disney brings back the Avengers in a couple of years and the short attention span of general audiences will drive up the hype all over again.

Writer’s Block

ME: Hey I should really write a blog post about this thing, or this movie, or this idea I had, or maybe a book review.

ALSO ME: I never have anything to write about!

I don’t know what’s going on in my brain lately. I’ll constantly get ideas about things that I’d like to write, but the second I get some free time in front of my laptop… I just got nothing. I’ll think of an idea that would make for a decent article that I could post on here and use as a sample for when I’m applying for writing jobs, or like good trending topics that would maybe serve as good SEO material and attract new readers to the blog, or even just like an issue that I feel like I could wrestle with through writing and maybe challenge people to think differently or encourage a discussion that would change my view on the topic… but then when I get my wordpress open I just end up typing “Well life’s been kinda boring lately” and that’s all I got.

I think part of it has a bit to do with how I manage my time and also how I manage stress. I love my job, but things lately have been stressful enough that I’m debating looking for something new. And when I get home after an emotionally tiring/stressful day, it’s really hard to do something mentally engaging or that requires any level of creativity.

I’ve been really into the new Assassin’s Creed game lately (Odyssey! It’s ancient Greek themed and it’s really really cool) but there have been a few evenings where I’ll get home from work and turn on the playstation, and before I know it, it’s bed time. I don’t want to waste all my evenings like that but I really don’t have great ways to unwind after a frustrating and long day.

As I write this post, a few of the things I wanted to talk about have come back up in my brain. I want to talk about the different social media platforms and why they are all kind of bad right now. I want to talk about a couple of podcast ideas I had. I want to talk about an idea I heard on Red Letter Media’s recent Godzilla review about how End Game is “the last true blockbuster” in the sense that no movie will ever get the hype up to that degree ever again (I could make a case for and against that idea). I also really want to talk about Assassin’s Creed Odyssey once I finish the game.

So stay tuned and hopefully I will actually have a less foggy brain next time I try to write something!

Summer Fun vs Student Debt

So lately I feel like life has been a little boring and I had this idea that this summer I would try to go out and do more stuff just to have some more fun, maybe meet some new people, and get my social media popping again. I was making big plans and had some fun ideas… but then this morning I checked my bank account.

Folks, let me tell you something about student debt… it stinks. 5 years ago, I was completely debt free. But I decided to go back to university and some bad luck, some bad timing, and a couple of bad decisions has led me to a point where I’ve got some serious debt. I wouldn’t say I am deeply in debt but I’m definitely in debt enough where I feel it. Out of my monthly income, I’d say about 40% goes to bills, 40% to debt payments, and that only leaves 20% for gas and food and fun.

I have to dedicate the summer to saving and making money… But that doesn’t mean I can’t also have some fun right? So for the next three months, I’ve decided I’m going to try to do one fun/new thing that costs under $10. I’m going to explore the city and areas nearby that I can go to that will cost less than $10 in gas to get there. I’m going to try reconnecting to friends I haven’t seen in a while, visit parks I haven’t been to, and attend free events around the city.

I was recently talking to a girl I have a bit of a crush on and she asked, “How was your weekend? Did you do anything fun?” and I had nothing to tell her and I felt so boring. I’m going to change that this summer. If you have any suggestions of fun on a budget, then hit the comments!