movies – The Yankee Privateer

There is nothing more irritating to me than the near complete disappearance of anything even resembling values and acceptable public behavior norms. I will admit, I am online way too much. I am just as addicted to my smart phone as the next person, and I probably have a skewed view of society writ large due to my time on social media. That being said, social media has become a market, and the most influential influencers are a clear gauge of where we are headed as a society as they are just giving the audience what it wants. Can’t really fault them for it any more than we can fault sports contracts that reach astronomical levels. If people are willing to buy the tickets and the jerseys, then the people are largely to blame. Same can be said for clicks, likes and subscriptions. The only way to turn the tide, is to be more vocal about how idiotic a lot of these people are. I am starting to see some of that. The comment sections on a lot of these accounts are pure gold, as I am clearly not the only one tired of watching Idiocracy play out in real-life in real-time.

There is a guy out there who makes videos where all he does is go to stadiums and talk smack to the home fans dressed up as a fan of the team they are playing that day. I admit, it is sometimes pretty amusing because tuned up sports fans with liquid courage can be rather goofy. That being said, the premise of each video is basically “watch me talk shit.” Ok. It get’s old quick. I submit, that if he didn’t have a camera on filming the entire thing, he’d probably be in an iron lung right now as again, alcohol and sports can lead to a rise in emotions that can lead people to do some pretty reckless stuff. He has an air-tight business model as long as stadiums sell booze and people tailgate. If everyone he encountered asked him, “so what is your plan B after this gets played out?” instead of just screaming at him about the game, he’d eventually have to stop. That would be fantastic. That is what I mean about radical sophistication. We need to become etiquette zealots. Society desperately needs it.

There are a lot of couples on social media who do cutesy little skits about married life, raising kids or generally just living with a significant other. Here’s the thing; nearly all of their videos follow the exact same scripts. Which can be broken down to this basic framework:

We are young and relatively attractive (some of us)
*everytime I get out of the shower my husband be like*
LOL we are so nutty
*sigh* happy wife happy life!
*sigh* man, my husband is stupid but oh welllllssssiiiieeeesssss
OMG we are basically like rabbits if ya catch my drift winkwinkwinkwinkwinkwinkwink
MY KIDS TOTES NEVER EAT THEIR DIN DIN!!!! Lollerskates, I guess it’s another nuggie night!

We get it, your marriage and family lives are unfulfilling, so you require the adulation of strangers to validate you. It’s actually profoundly sad. These people are making money though, so I guess they have found their racket. Admirable, I suppose. However, if the most interesting thing about you is an exaggerated, cartoonish glimpse into your home life, then I can’t wait to read the books your kids write about you. Ignore these people. They are the same ones who show up to parties with chilled champagne. Nice gift that they firmly intend on partaking in. Awful.

Mukbang sounds like a kind of anime. So, immediately I am inclined to be revolted, but it is actually much worse. It is people eating in their cars and talking about it. Some of these slugs actually enhance the sound of their chewing. I can’t understand that. Who in their right minds wants to hear every moment of someone else chewing their food? Anyway, most of these people give quick reviews and then a numerical score seemingly based on the One Bite pizza scale. Not for nothing, but all of these reviewers owe Dave Portnoy royalties for their videos considering he popularized the food review video genre. The problem with a lot of these videos, is that the person giving the review is just some dork sitting in a car. It is not like we are talking about trained chefs, food reviewers etc. They are just regular folks. Which, I am guessing is what they are playing off of to lend their reviews some sort of weight. Just a regular-ass dude, ya know? Nothin’ fancy! Great so then why the fuck am I paying attention to you? I can eat nachos also. It’s not a skill, Skeeter. If your math professor told you that they had no formal training in teaching or in mathematics but that they’re “just an honest, regular person who adds and subtracts from time to time” you would have gotten up and walked out. I hate to say this as well, but it is just a matter of time before one of these people either nearly or fully chokes to death on camera. Eating alone in a car isn’t the most dangerous thing in the world to do, but it is not without its risks and frankly, I don’t want to see any of these people get hurt even if they annoy me. Next time you see someone filming themselves eating in their car, employ radical sophistication. Knock on their window and ask them if they are ok. When they tell you that they’re just filming a video… let them know how many people die of choking each year and that they ought to be careful. Maybe it will lead them to a re-evaluation of self. Being polite and spreading life-saving information is the pinnacle of sophistication.

The crown jewel of the downward trajectory of society, however? Italian American stereotype influencers. I have Italian friends. These clowns have done more to hurt Italian Americans than all of the over-the-top mob movies and hatred of Christopher Columbus combined. Again, I have some good friends who are Italian, and their take is a lot less vitriolic than mine. Possibly because they are closet fans, but to hear them tell it, it is because they know better than to pay attention. Still, they deserve better. Can you imagine the absolute rage that would take you over if you were standing in line at a bank and heard that “ha ya dunnnnnn” line behind you? Not sure it wouldn’t lead to fisticuffs. Radical sophistication would dictate that these people ought to be met with societal ostracization. It should be an act of Congress. Interacting with them in any way should be met with a significant fine and possible jail time. Is St. Helena still available for exile? If not, can we make it so?

Fight fire with water and fight classlessness with biting satire and spite. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

This morning, I read an interesting article about three movies which debuted in American theatres over the Memorial Day weekend which flopped awfully. The first, “The Machine” starring the painfully unfunny Bert Kreischer raked in about 5 million bucks. Which in terms of an opening weekend for a movie, is a really disappointing return. The second, “About My Father” starring Sebastian “we get it, you’re Italian” Maniscalco and the perpetually whiny bag o’ bones himself, Robert DeNiro took in about 4.3 million. Again, a bad opening. The third, “Kandahar” starring, Gerard “he’s still around?” Butler was the loser in the clubhouse bringing in a measly 2.4 million. Blech. What a sorry trio of duds. But what is more important and what the article points out pretty well is that “off-brand” movies don’t seem to have much of a chance these days against powerhouse production companies that seemingly only make movies about superheroes and enchanted bullshit. Which is why I believe that we as a western society, can pretty much hang it up and just ride it out at this point.

We aren’t even pretending to be a sophisticated, intelligent group of humans anymore. The only time anyone attempts to show their smarts is in online arguments or real-life arguments over political and social issues. The kicker is that normally either one or both of the argument participants usually have little to any clue what they’re talking about and even less personal stake in the issue. It is a sad state of affairs when human beings are only interested in interacting with each other outside of the normal reasons of attraction or desire for connection for the purpose of using folks to bolster their street cred. “Dude, I totally destroyed this moron on Twitter the other day”. “So, I basically humiliated this jerk handing out pamphlets in front of Walmart the other day, you should have seen it, people were actually taking videos of it.” Etc. etc. You catch my drift.

There is nothing wrong with a good action flick with a ton of CGI. Superheroes are fantastic for kids. They fly around, they beat up bad guys and they generally win the day for righteous reasons. This is all well and good. But the fact that more adults are going to these movies than children is a pretty rotten commentary on where we are as a society. How can I tell? Because the Little Mermaid brought in 95 million over the weekend. While I am sure that a ton of moviegoers saw the Little Mermaid with their children, I am equally sure that a lot went solo and with their friends because they had nothing else to do and were actually excited to see the movie. We have become a group of escapists. We are living in the most advanced and comfortable time in the entirety of human history. Yet for some reason, western adults feel the need to retreat to when they were 10 years old again, in order to find respite from modernity in a memory bank filled with magic wands, trucks that turn into giant robots and superheroes that can bend metal and fly. It is pathetic. Taking your kids to these movies in order to give them some entertainment for a couple hours and to make memories is one thing. If your major motivation is to perhaps spark interest in something that you yourself loved as a kid, I guess that is alright as well. But if you are going to these movies with your friends because you are desperate to see your favorite space mutant kick some serious butt, you might want to take stock of your life.

I blame the Big Bang Theory. Not the one that explains how we got all this celestial bric-a-brac, but the one that was on for a few years that normalized being a total beta male dweeb. Not everyone is a Navy SEAL, I get it. I sure as hell am not. However, living in a perpetual state of arrested development, wearing Ghostbusters tee shirts and being proud of never getting laid is not a good look for a society. Sorry, it just isn’t. The fact is; my mindset and observations on this are clearly in the minority. The next generation of western adults are embracing being absolutely monumental dorkuses. And you might be asking; so what? Bill Gates was a dorkus, and take a look at him now. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, etc. etc. were / are all major dorki, and they’re doing pretty well for themselves. Sure, that’s true. But ask any of them to build a bridge and I don’t mean on a computer. Now, ask all of their acolytes and the scads of folks who bind their aesthetic and world-view to theirs to take care of the world’s infrastructure and watch the whole fucking thing collapse in a weekend. Remember the old phrase, “the world need’s ditch diggers, too”? Well it’s absolutely more true than ever now. And frankly, the ditch diggers are worth their weight in gold in contrast to the never-ending supply of the way-too-online activist crowd.

We can’t fathom the idea of a movie not made by Marvel or not based on a fantasy world. We can’t read anything longer than a tweet and we sure as hell can’t be bothered to look into anything deeper than a headline. That is the awful way that it is these days, and I don’t see it getting much better any time soon. I might be reading too much into this, but in true 2023 fashion, I am going to stick by my argument and do literally no actual research into it. Huzzah!

We are in Idiocracy… just ask our taste in movies!
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