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Comments
I know, but I don't feel like that makes it any better. Personally, if I'm going to post a comment on a video, I'm going to say everything I want to say about the video. I'm not going to leave one of my remarks out just because someone else said it before me.
Exhibit A(use walking cane that's actually meant for mountaineering, fruity drink and ornament stolen from Christmas tree to distract from the wonderful match between the shirt and the fedora):
What kind of party are you attending and were there mind altering substances besides booze involved?
Isn't IA Dutch?
Things are different over there.
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure snorting coke of a stripper's ass is still generally verboten.
>It's so much easier to just sit back and criticize other people's creations. This movie is stupid. That couple's kids are brats. That other couple's relationship is a mess. That rich guy is shallow. This restaurant sucks. This Internet writer is an asshole. I'd better leave a mean comment demanding that the website fire him. See, I created something.
Oh good fucking lord, really? This is pretty much just an armchair psychology version of 'let's see you do better!' Yes, those people criticizing you are all just filling in the holes in their life. Makes it so much easier to ignore bad reviews. See I can faux-psychoanalyze too.
If you mean that I avoid them because I don't want to be lumped in with the majority of fedora wearers nowadays, who wear them poorly, I guess that's a nice side effect of not liking fedoras, but that ties into the actual main reason I avoid fedoras, which is that they don't go with the rest of my outfit, nor do they complement most other people's outfits in the slightest.
IA does it properly in his picture, I think, but for God's sake, people, don't wear one with a graphic tee.
I've only met one dude who ever wore a fedora in the typical nerd fashion.
And honestly he was unbearable.
^I've met like 4 at this point.
And the only one I've actually talked to is unbearable.
Also, what All Nines said.
Okay deciding to check out the video out of curiousity, but then I remembered I have trouble with their video viewer and that was the main reason I stopped.
Out of people I remember who've worn fedoras . . . they're honestly not all bad, but none of them do themselves favors by wearing fedoras, and there's at least one self-aggrandizing shitlord who comes to mind, and my Anime Boston roommate who kept calling me a "pansy beta faggot" but who was otherwise empathetic.
I imagine they're mostly nice dudes who just make poor fashion choices, and I'm not really fashion saavy myself so I don't give it too much care, especially since there are nerd activities that are way worse.
Yeah, they're certainly not all on the level of the people who get posted to that fedora-hating tumblr. It's just kind of an easy indicator of (lack of) self-awareness/fashion sense, which is kind of a classic nerd trait anyway.
Yeah, that's my main thing. I've heard more vitriolic responses to fedoras than seen people wearing fedoras.
@IA: swag
Anyway, fedoras can be cool if worn properly, but they are definitely not something to wear with typical everyday clothing (which most fedora-wearers do). I don't get to see many people who wear fedoras over here, but last summer I saw a bunch of hipsters sitting on the pavement and drinking beer near an indie venue. One of them had flip-flops, cargo shorts, a plain white T-shirt and a fancy grey fedora on top of that. Needless to say, he looked like a tool.
Really, it's kinda like wearing Hawaii shorts with a tux top.
My favourite "David Wong gotta david wong" moment is
in response to Cracked commenters deriding this John Cheese article as shit
(ps: don't read david wong)
>Reads Cheese article
>He has a shitfit over overused jokes. Amongst them, puns.
Goddamn it, Cheese. Don't you know humor is subjective?
I admire Wong's effort to try and promote the DIY aesthetic. Though his attitude and overall world views could use some improvement.
If I'm correctly remembering John Dies at the End as actually being a good book, then I really wish he would just stick to writing books, so that he doesn't have to stick a pointless rant into the text.
http://www.cracked.com/article_16272_the-top-7-secrets-to-writing-cracked.com-top-7-list.html
He also suffers from this. A LOT.
So I guess he hates this entertainment on a free website because he's unable to create and is a spoiled teenager?
I liked bum reviews from the nostalgia critic since, aside from the gimmick that gets old over time, they seem to be pretty good reviews.
I remember when Spoony was just a youtube LPer, his The Thing videos were actually pretty fun to watch. It seems like everything went downhill after that though.
I never understand why people go to The Thing when Phantasmagoria 2 was his masterpiece.
I resent David Wong's stance on this pretty heavily, since he reduces all arguments to two stances. It's a clever move insofar as politics is concerned -- that is, getting people to agree with this -- but it's highly dishonest and doesn't make room for perspectives that have legitimate criticisms of his position. At the very least, he infantilises people who disagree with him.
Many young people in their teens and twenties both are at a stalemate with conflicting cultural and economic factors. Our Western society promotes, heavily, self-expression and individualistic freedoms. The amount of power employers have in the workplace turns those social values on their head though, because employers have the power to pick and choose only those people whose expression satisfies them. I daresay many young people would have no problems with shitty jobs as long as they pay decently for the age group and level of skill involved -- if only they could actually get those jobs.
In my experience, most young people don't want to be spoon fed and I think David Wong has forgotten this. Or perhaps he never knew it, for all the time he spent on his friends' couches at night and unemployed. Most young people very obviously do want jobs and education when it pertains to their point of interest, but they rightly want to avoid all the bullshit that our society attaches to those things. I'll never forget a job ad for an unskilled customer service job that insisted that the applicant be "passionate about customer service". Few if any people are passionate about customer service, because they have their own interests they want to pursue, and they don't want to live their lives being passionate about the whims and needs of an employer. Not that they won't take a customer service job, but making people pretend to like it -- or even legitimately believing someone wants to do customer service above all else -- is a perfect expression of the contradictions in play here.
Be yourself, be an individual -- except don't, because employers define the means of mainstream fiscal reward. So we have a situation where the wealthy or the otherwise privileged can afford the personal expression our society espouses, but the larger part of the population can't afford it. Because employers determine how they must present themselves, behave during most of the day and even in some cases what they must (pretend to) be interested in. And as far as I know, David Wong isn't doing medical science or food production or water sanitation or anything of actual productive significance. He's putting down his asinine thoughts on a humour website and expecting people to take it on good faith, when it's clear that he's mostly reveling in self-loathing against his former self.
What David Wong writes essentially amounts to "nut up or shut up", and I'm pretty sure we're all aware of how regressive that perspective is. Which is a shame, because John Dies At The End was an awesome book.
Or, you could say that he's basically violating Ebert's Law. Not Ebert's own definition of Ebert's Law, but the "you don't need to be a chef to know if a dish sucks, or be a director to know a film is bad" definition. Although I rarely see it used to deflect criticism of other people's work. This (the "you're just a critic because you're jealous of people who can actually make something" notion) is pretty much BS, as it disregards the point of an audience for the things people create.
I really like Alex's statements. Stuff like his 'why karate kid ruined this generation' and 'how the last generation ruined us' articles speak to pseudopsychology and imposing an entitlement mentality when the truth is far more simple. The last generation screwed us up by not ensuring a stable job market and pushing into an unsustainable economy based purely on consumption.
Another thing that gets me is his complaints about the Cracked formula. Buddy I'm not fan of Cracked.com, but they are a humor site and bitching that they talk about movies with ninjas in them rather than important news stories is missing the point of a humor site.
Though come to think of it, none of Wong's articles are funny. Not that they fail, they don't even try.
If I may armchair psychology again, it might be that Wong is trying to convince himself he's an important writer and that that article is to criticize those who don't appreciate how important a medium Cracked is for bringing across ideas that will communicate to the adrift twent- ok no I can't go on with this, not even in sarcasm.
The violation of Ebert's Law always has a hint of accusation of jealousy which then gets into classist assumptions that people who aren't artists are unfulfilled which is of course horseshit. Speaking as someone with pseudo artistic aspirations, I am jealous of Michael Bay and Brett Ratner that they get to make goofy action movies I'd like to make myself. This is true. I'd love their job.
But does make what I have to say about their poor film making any less true?
On the subject of NC, I watched his return video. There's a couple point where he says it has to be for his own artistic edification rather than popular demand and that his desire to quit had more to do with burnout and feeling trapped. I think I've stated before that I feel the biggest problem with Doug's work is that it seemed to become a job to him (for obvious reasons)so if this is really something he wants to do that's great. Those could just be things said for ass-saving though so only time will tell.
Where I stopped reading and prepared for the oncoming apocalypse.
Fun fact: Alex and I disagree like all hell about Star Wars and moe but with politics we're pretty aligned.
Can't hear you over the sound of raining meteors, sorry.