Is it my imagination, or have there been more stupid Guinness World Records being set lately? It seems like I can’t log onto the internet without learning of a silly achievement being recorded for posterity: edible cars, origami dogs, chili peppers, and Middle Earth dioramas. I get it, we’re all bored, but can’t we go back to Animal Crossing and sourdough starters?
Is it just me, or is there a lockdown activity annoying you? Pandemic baking, Tik Tok challenges, music parodies? People like me bitching about other people doing whatever they can to push through the monotony?
Appropriate – band name and song subject
Good lord, that LOTR build. Huge.
Haven’t noticed the Guinness stuff, but I just tend to ignore it whether or not we’re in a pandemic, I guess.
Muppets. I’ve noticed more Muppets. The clip above reminded me that Sesame Street characters had a role in a Super Bowl ad. DoorDash, maybe? As much as I love Super Grover, maybe this isn’t a super great trend. Disney pimping them hard.
I love the muppets too but I agree. I hope Disney doesn’t make me sick of them.
We are having somewhat of a “good pandemic” but we’re an old married couple so the fact that Manhattan is in lockdown by Emperor Cuomo diktat doesn’t really faze us much. We used to be avid restaurant- and theater-goers and bars and parties, but even pre-pandemic we scaled that down quite a bit. I’ve been working from home (“working”) for a decade now, and The Better Half now for over three years, and we like to entertain, so we bring the party to us. There is now no party to bring, temporarily, but we find endless ways to amuse ourselves and The Loyal Hound is a soothing and entertaining presence.
However, gripe I must. A year ago no one had ever heard of Zoom and video-conferencing was done rarely and with reluctance in corporate conference rooms with awkwardness all around. No, the real business got done via in-person meetings, phone calls, group phone calls, follow-up emails, etc. Now, the Better Half is dragged into, and even worse, initiates more video chats than even the thirstiest vlogger/social media influencer.
“A year ago this was all done over the phone. Now you spend ten hours a day tethered to a screen with your headphone like Penny the Time-Life Operator. Jesus.”
Here’s what I’m talking about. There’s not much Penny in it but if you were sentient in 1983 it might bring back fond or disturbing memories:
I was sentient in 1983 but have no recollection of that commercial. The 80’s may be the worst hair style era ever.
Oh I disagree! The “modified Di’s” for men and women (George Michael had a great one.) The mullets! The perms. The luxurious manes teased into confections with hair spray that created a hole in the ozone layer, causing them to be banned. The Pomade and Dippity-Do hair gels.
Have you forgotten the bangs?
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/73/80/83/73808355a424e3e63b3c028d8be9c2f5.jpg
The best thing about the 80s is that they are over 3 decades away…
I remember all those interminably long Time-Life book collections. I particularly remember the one that advertised the Old West book collection (bound with the feel of hand-tooled saddle leather).
I remember Penny! Not fondly, but I remember her!
We used Zoom at work before the pandemic but largely just as a chat function. We constantly sent jokes back and forth during meetings and whatnot, with the goal of making someone burst out in laughter at the wrong moment. A former manager would get incensed, knowing that most of the jokes were at the manager’s expense.
My biggest peeve right now is keeping a headset on for more than about a half-hour. It starts to hurt my (admittedly large) ears.
I didn’t even know that Guinness was still a thing, other than the beer and even that I don’t hear about much. I’m just sick of hearing about TikTok in general. My daughters think it is the only source of news and entertainment, my eldest even saying “I learned more from TikTok than I ever did from school”. My wife constantly quotes TikTok crap. I always tell them most of this shit is staged and not real but they just get mad at me spoiling what they want to believe.
How is it different for Instagram? Is it just the new and shiny toy that everyone wants?
When Facebook bought Instagram they made it uncool & started hardcore marketing bullshit like Facebook I believe. I have never had any accounts on any of those platforms.
An hour after reading Coffee Break I saw this on CNN:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/07/entertainment/ariana-grande-20th-guinness-world-records-tnd/
I mean, are those like “World Records” as opposed to just chart records? IDK.
I suppose anything could be a world record if you want to designate it as such. Maybe I could set one for Most Bitching About Inane World Records.
@MegMegMcGee It does seem weird to give out a World Record for something already acknowledged.
Also I don’t think this is up for any records but did you guys see the MCM Mini house?
The woman needle pointed (is that a phrase) all of the little rugs. The amount of detail is crazy.
I like the tiny little Farrah Fawcett poster, lol.
An acquaintance of mine has fallen deep into the wingnut QAnon hole. I shouldn’t have taken a look at his facebook feed, but I was curious (I should have remembered it killed the cat.)
He’s rarely had the best judgement and has been quite racist towards natives (which isn’t odd as he’s dated outside his race.)
The saddest part is that he uses the same justifications that people use against QAnon to support QAnon. He claims that the people in reality are coping with Biden’s loss and he’s the realist (again, he’s the poster child for Dunning Krueger.)
I ended up just unfriending him.
Wait, what? I’m delusional because I believe Joe Biden is the 46th President of the United States? I guess it’s possible. Is it a mass delusion or am I imagining that everyone believes the same thing as me? Are you even a real person @ManchuCandidate?
No, I’m not a real person.
I’m actually a Russian bot that specializes in playing cynical middle aged Asian males on the internet.
Is Deadsplinter real? I never thought I was creative enough to come up with all this in my own head.
Joe Biden is NOT the president and I know because I just paid a large chunk of money at the Trump hotel for his inauguration on March 4!!!
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/7/2014589/-Trump-s-D-C-hotel-nearly-triples-its-rates-for-his-second-inauguration-on-March-4?detail=emaildkre
PT Barnum had nothing on trump.
I have been seeing a lot of, I don’t know what you’d call it, toxic positivity? online lately. This push to be productive, to be WOKE especially, during the pandemic. If you haven’t been DOING SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE, losing weight, calling your congresspeople, hustling, becoming a better person, sparking joy, minimizing clutter, learning a language, baking fucking bread, then you are USELESS and should be ashamed. I am seeing it from many directions. Some of us are just trying to not panic every second of the day.
@PumpkinSpies YES! And it is of course performative. It’s not even enough to do these things but you have to make sure everyone knows your doing these things.
These idiots/people have nothing better to do based on the principle of “Smelt it, dealt it” aka “I know what you are, but what am I?”
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been happy to get some shit done over the Pandemic, but what one does with one’s time/energy is their fucking business and no one else’s.
I think there was some pretty non-progressive controversy about her recently (although, I can’t remember specifically what it was right now… TERFy? racism? something else?), so I haven’t read anything of hers in quite a while, but I used to like some of Barbara Ehrenreich’s books, and especially “Brightsided” which was kinda a take on the damage done by the insistence on constantly-on positivity.
I’ll be the contrarian counterpoint here: I appreciate Guinness World Records, even — or maybe especially — the dumb ones. Yeah, many get co-opted in eye-rollingly corporate ways, but I love the idea that some rando is so driven and singleminded/crazy that they’ll be in for an insane diorama or having 17-inch fingernails or the world’s largest ball of chewed gum. I’m in favor of the idea of human memory having space for those who weren’t the fastest or prettiest or richest or smartest, etc. etc.
I get your point, but it seems like every day I’m reading about a new crazy world record. If there’s a new one tomorrow did today’s matter? Not that any of them really matter but you know what I mean.