It is now 2018. Its been two years since I graduated from undergrad. It has been 5 years since I graduated from high school.
Everyone I’ve met during those times have all left each other, and we’ve all gone down our separate paths. Some of us are better off than others, some of us found jobs, some of us created companies, some of us found ourselves and some of us are still out there searching for ourselves. Many of us have changed in unbelievable ways, almost certainly unrecognizable from our old selves. Change is good. Despite how we feel about it, change is inevitable. But we should never lose sight of ourselves, never lose sight of our goals, never lose sight of our values, and never lose sight of morality.
So, where are we now? Did we find ourselves? Did we make peace with that inner critic living within each and every one of us? Are we still wallowing in fear, and lack of self worth? Or did we make it?
I would like to apologize for always refusing to watch 3D movies. However, I'd like to think this is totally justified since 3D is bullshit and adds absolutely nothing to cinema experience. So, please, let's enjoy our 2D movie -- because it's cheaper and much less obnoxious.
The car hit Alan and flung him up in the air, then sped away. The paramedics rushed him to the hospital, where he slept and lived thanks to tubes and machines.
"Nurse! When will he be able to give a description?"
Alan slept on.
"We don't know, officer. Soon, I think."
That night, Alan dreamt about escaping from a huge prison where all the corridors looked the same.
The machines by his bed beeped and breathed.
Every day, his granddaughter came.
"When will he wake up?"
"When spring arrives, my dear. I'm sure," said the nurse.
Alan slept on and dreamt of snowy lands and caves of ice, and the machines by his bed beeped and breathed.
Every weekend, his granddaughter bought him fruit and teddy bears.
"Will he wake up?"
"We can't really say, my dear." And Alan dreamt of arms and legs growing from the earth and heads growing from trees and bears scratching the windows and trying to get in.
The machines by his bed beeped and breathed, and once a fortnight, his granddaughter came. But the nurses said nothing now. They only smiled, and hurried away.
The girl looked down at the head on the pillow and cried and said, "I love you, granddad."
Alan dreamt of nothing that night. The hospital called the next day.
The first cuckoo of spring had woken him, and they pushed him through the gardens in his wheelchair. Flowers and trees swayed in the breeze, and the sun shone on bright young leaves.
Disclaimer: This is my first attempt at writing a fictional short story.
Is it inattention from others that makes us vague and distant? A scene from a restaurant.
"Her hands are like icicles on the horizon," he said and took a drag of coffee. She nodded blankly at him, barely registering the observations that swayed his tongue and flavored his mouth.
"Do you see how she's shaking?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the porcelain doll ordering dinner across the room. He fumbled down distractedly to the table, found his plate, and devoured a fry in the half-reflective way that dressed all his actions.
To this, she murmured a vague, "Mmhmm..." It was enough of a reply to fill the empty space he controlled over the table, but still enough to be non committal and inattentive. She reached through the maze of their cups and plates to spear a French fry from his plate. She shifted her weight. The chair rocked under her, threatening her already uncertain balance and attempted grace in one blow. She shifted the feet of the chair, hoping to find some sort of equilibrium, but again the seat rocked under her, still precarious.
"Look at the angles to her face," he went on, working his words around mouthfuls. His eyes never wavered in their stiff critical stare of wonderment and interest. "There's just something about her that screams vulnerability."
"Hmm." She swallowed the hot, gritty remains of her tea. Her cup clunked as it hit the table, jolting the settled objects, but his attention never strayed from the wonder. She picked up her croissant, then lowered it back to her plate, seeing the tanned lines of her knuckles holding her fingers in place. She turned her palm up and followed the trained lines that traced her destiny.
"You really have to wonder about people like that," he continued in the silence. "How they think, how they feel, how they see the world. Don't you ever just wish you could go up and introduce yourself to a stranger and learn their entire life story?"
She repossessed her croissant and took a voice-saving mouthful, nodding her head disjointedly in case he possessed the consciousness to glance at her tongue-trapped tangle on the other side of the table. She sneakily slid her feet out of her shoes and flexed her toes in their freedom under the tablecloth-tiered table. The ache wrenched in her bones and her thoughts drowned in the haze of mid-stride wonderment, but not before the emptiness and pain of dismissal.
"I guess it's time to go," he said finally, still not moving his unblinking eyes or shifting his stranger-struck body.
She mumbled affirmative and followed through her purse. The crowded bag jostled against her hand in the fruitful search for cash. Dumping the entire contents out for the finding and usage of a pen, she scrunched up her eyebrows, figuring the total into halves.
"Mind getting this one for me?" he asked, raising himself up to gather his belongings before heading out the door. Still his attention wandered over to the daisy, blooming at the opposite table. "This was fun. Let's get together again sometime soon, okay?"
She fell back in her seat, drowning in the whirlpool of inattention. Establishing their funds, she turned to see herself in the shadowy glass window reflection, and saw herself slipping away.
Today at Starbucks, I was trying (and failing) to be productive. An older white-looking gentleman approached me and asked if he could sit next to me. I smiled and said of course.
He then asked me if I’m from China. I knew where this conversation was going. He proceeded to mention that Chinese women are attractive (and that he “dated one”) and asked if all people in China eat dogs.
In these situations, which I’ve gotten pretty used to, I try to discern whether the person is being malicious or naive. It’s usually somewhere in between. But I’ve always believed in giving people the benefit of the doubt, even if they don’t necessarily deserve it.
I smiled and began responding: “No, I was born in Taiwan, what about yourself?” He mentioned that he was born in São Paulo, Brazil and left 40 years ago. He said that he hasn’t been back because it’s too expensive and that he misses home.
I learned that he’s a widower, doesn’t have any family here, and retired as a mechanical engineer. I corrected things he mentioned, such as “all people in China eating dog” (again, problematic that he asked me, but while I’m at it, might as well correct the record).
After 20 minutes, I needed to leave. He asked me to guess how old he was. I told him that he doesn’t look a day over 30 (he’s 82), he laughed, and I said I’d see him around. I can’t say that my approach is right, it’s a nuanced issue on how to respond to these interactions. But I’ve always believed that it’s more productive to find common ground to educate. And I at least left with a greater empathy for the situation he’s in without friends and family, instead of carrying a caricature of what he’s about.
It’s why last year, when I was at Starbucks speaking to a friend and an older lady stopped us and started arguing about why she dislikes people like us, I started sharing aspects about my background, asked her about her upbringing, and started making connections between our experiences. I ended up going to church with her once. When I see her around San Gabriel, I still give her a hug and ask about her niece’s upcoming high school graduation and her nephew’s recent marriage.
It’s why a few weeks ago, when a custodial staff member at a middle school that I was speaking at stopped me and started arguing that California was filled with “entitled liberal snowflakes,” I spoke about my friends from across the political aisle who work hard to give back to their families and I asked him about his family, which got him to smile and start talking about his new wife.
Yes, I think there are malicious people out there and it’s useless trying to talk to them. But I think for the vast majority of folks, once you find common ground and you both view each other as multifaceted people, it becomes easier to address misunderstandings. Of course, you don’t owe it to anyone to educate them. This is just the approach that I’ve taken throughout my life and I think I’ve lived a better life because of it.
Even if you are tired of getting junk mail, go ahead and open it. If there is a return envelope with the "No Postage Necessary if mailed in the United States," game on. Cram as much into the envelope as it can hold. It should be WAAAY overweight. The company sending the junk mail then has to pay the difference in postage because of the weight.
There's no such thing as luck in this world. Rules, prerequisites, psychological states... There are any number of invisible factors that combine to produce an unpredictable but inevitable result. The victor of a game is decided before it even begins. There is no chance.
For example, what's the probability of drawing the Ace of Spades from a deck with no Jokers? One in 52, right? But what if it's a brand new deck? The positions of the cards in a new deck are generally always the same. If you take out the Jokers and draw the very bottom card, it's the Ace of Spades almost 100% of the time.
But wait. I didn't say a word about it being a new deck. In other words, you didn't know. That knowledge turns the probability from 1.92% to 100%. Thus, the person with that knowledge is the inevitable victor.
The first time I was bullied was when I was 4 years old, in preschool. A couple kids took a toy that I had brought for show-and-tell, and basically played Keep Away for a good five to ten minutes until an adult came and got my toy back for me. I always just thought this was teasing, but I’ve been told this counts as bullying, too.
In elementary school, I was short; shorter than almost all the other kids. Add this to the fact that I had parents that couldn’t speak English very well, and it’s pretty much the perfect recipe for getting bullied. But it wasn’t really anything bad -- just name calling. “Short.” “Loser.” “Idiot.” “Stupid Asian.” “Go back to Taiwan.” Etc.
However, in 4th Grade, the bullying escalated. Some of the kids started throwing stuff at me. Some would pick up wood chips from the playground to throw. A few kids in my class threw sharpened pencils and eraser bits -- one kid threw his brand new scissors at me. Teachers would often step in to stop the other students, but that always caused the bullying to escalate further. Towards the end of 4th Grade, a classmate, during an in-class group activity, grabbed my hand and a stapler, and stapled my thumb. The staple hurt more coming out than going in.
When I was in 5th Grade, a person that I called my friend stole my key for the lock on my bike. I chased after him, around the whole school. Suddenly, a teacher started shouting at us and, while I turned my head to look at her, the person let me trip over his leg and I fell on my knee. Later, in the nurse’s office, the teacher came and told me I was getting suspended for a week because of “fighting.” The thief received no punishment, and I never got my bike back.
Middle school contained perhaps the worst bullying experiences I’ve ever had, but I’ll let you decide that for yourself. In 6th Grade, after being the only student in the class to receive a passing grade on a test (History on Ancient Civilizations), a classmate pushed me down a flight of stairs. My head bled for a good half hour from hitting the edges of some of the steps during the fall.
That same year, some kids asked me if I wanted to hang out with them after school. They had been really nice to me all year, so I thought I could trust them. We were roller skating, next to a steep ramp. Everything was fine, until when I was skating near the ledge of the ramp and one of the kids pushed me down. I tumbled down the ramp, collided with the railing at the bottom, and cut open my left shin. The scar is still there.
In 7th Grade, I joined an orchestra for the first time -- my middle school’s orchestra. I was placed in the 2nd Violins’ section, and was often made fun of for it. Other than that, the year went pretty uneventful.
In 8th Grade, I was upgraded to the 1st Violins. Halfway into the school year, I was named the new concertmaster. I guess some of the other students were upset by this, because one of the other violinists took a metal spoon that someone had brought for lunch and cut my frenulum (the fold that connects the tongue to the floor of the mouth). The cut healed on the surface, but I can still sometimes feel a sharp sting when I’m speaking or eating.
In freshman year of high school, a couple upperclassmen snuck up behind me and knocked me out during lunch. I woke up hours later, blindfolded in a trash can with a bunch of unfinished food on me. Aside from that, high school was fairly uneventful with just the typical people throwing stuff, calling me names, etc.
The last biggest instance of bullying was during the graduation ceremony. Class of roughly a thousand students. I was called up to receive my diploma. As I walked onto the stage, various students (who were also graduating) began to throw things at me. Most of the things thrown were stuff I was already used to -- food, crumbled paper, etc. What really hurt was when a rock hit me, right between my eyes. Seconds later, I was being stoned by half of the graduating class. One rock was large enough to knock me out and give me a concussion. By the time I woke up, I had already missed most of Grad Night.
I experienced, and still experience, bullying after high school, but nothing on the scale of what’s mentioned above. Personally, I don’t think I’m any better at dealing with bullying now than when I was in grade school, though I have become a lot more violent. Having said that, I honestly don’t think I’m the best person to be giving any sort of advice.
However, what I will say is this. If you’re bullying someone, think about how you would like it if the same thing happened to you. Throwing stuff at people might seem fun to you, but what if someone else starts throwing things at you? Suddenly, it’s not fun anymore with you being on the other end. If you’re being bullied, find a way to stand up to them. Don’t wait for someone to help you. Even though it’s likely that someone will help you eventually, that help might just give the bully a reason to go after you even more, as it was with me. If a physical confrontation happens, let it happen. You may not be able to stop the bully, but you can at least show that they can’t -- and don’t -- scare you.
If you see someone getting bullied, step in immediately. Do not just sit in the sidelines, watching like it’s some sort of 4D movie. Do something. Either get someone who can stop the situation, or stop it yourself. As for teachers and schools, there were numerous times when I’ve been in a situation where I’m getting picked on, and as soon as a teacher or staff stepped in, one kid would say, “Alex started it,” and I end up getting yelled at. And the bully gets away. If you see a fight happening, listen to both sides of the story. Don’t just blame one party or both. Every fight happens for a reason, and you need to understand the reason before you can punish either side.
Lastly, for those who are indeed being bullied, it gets better. You probably don’t believe me. I can understand that. If someone had told me that in middle school, I wouldn’t have believed them either. But I encourage you to just trust that, one day, you’ll be away from the bullying, and it will all just be memories of a past that you can safely shove away into an empty corner in your mind.
What’s in a Scene? How SAO Became the Worst Anime Ever
Sword Art Online is ass. OP to ED and everything in between, the whole thing stinks and I hate it. But I didn’t always. As a matter of fact, when the series first started airing, I thought, “This is okay. I mean, I’ve seen better, but I’ve seen worse, too. I’ll see where this goes.” Somewhere between that and this, though, that stopped being my response to the show. At a certain point, I could no longer form words and was mostly just vomiting blood for the duration of each episode. And I’m not alone in that. Pretty much everyone over the age of 12 agrees that this show sucks.
What they don’t agree on is WHEN it started sucking. When did Sword Art Online get terrible? Some would say it happened when they locked the only likeable character in a rape dungeon and made Kirito’s sister want to fuck him. Others would point to the gratuitous tentacle rape scene, and boy, gee whiz, there sure is an excessive amount of sexual assault in this show. Then there’s the “I told you so” camp who say it was terrible all along and all of the bullshit just made you realize that after the fact.
For me, there’s a precise moment when Sword Art Online goes from being okay to being one of the worst fucking shows ever, and it’s all Yui’s fault. Yeah, you heard me: your innocent daughteru ruined fucking everything. Let me explain.
In the beginning, Sword Art Online had some stuff going for it. Not a lot (the fight choreography was always pretty bad, the cast was always bland, and the premise was never original), but it had a solid sense of tone. We’d seen “trapped in an MMO” stories before, but never with this kind of horror tinge to them. The world of Aincrad had this oppressive air hanging over it. From very early on, there was this sense that just about anyone could die at any moment. The first few episodes do a great job of establishing that. And while it didn’t break any new ground in terms of character writing, it had some good stand-alone episode plots, like the one where all of Kirito’s friends got murdered, and the whole murder mystery thing where they’re trying to figure out how somebody was breaking the rules of the game, and… Actually, those were the only really interesting episodes, but hey, lots of okay show have had less.
The main thing that the show had going for it early on was that underlying sense of dread. It felt like something where nobody, except for this one guy, was ever really safe. Nobody important died after the first few episodes, but that was fine...for a while. If the show was kill-happy all the time, that would be a problem in itself. You’ve gotta pace these things. It’s hard to get attached when characters are going in and out through a revolving door.
Still, by Episode 10, there had been enough near misses that it seemed like Kirito and his harem might be a little too invulnerable. It seemed like the right time to kill someone off to raise the stakes. It’s at this point that they chose to introduce Yui.
If you don’t know (congratulations, you’ve saved yourself from a shitty show), Yui is a little girl who Kirito and Asuna find wandering around the woods near their home and decide to adopt as their daughter. She’s sweet and innocent and might as well be walking around with a timer counting down to her sad death. It’s cheap and lazy enough to introduce a pure cinnamon roll character purely for the sake of killing them off, but that’s not nearly bad enough writing on its own to drag this show down to the total dog shit territory it now occupies.
The bigger problem with this is tied to what Yui is. Yui is actually a fully-sentient AI, which means that she’s the only character in the entire cast who, if killed, could be brought back. And that’s very, very bad for the show because if Yui dies and is then brought back, that renders the threat of death from a narrative standpoint permanently meaningless.
Remember: as of this episode, that’s the ONLY interesting thing about SAO. Death in media isn’t interesting because, “Oh, they’re dead! That’s sad! I’m sad!” It’s interesting because it inherently changes the dynamics of a story. A character who was once a force in the narrative now ISN’T. Any arc that they might have been going through is cut abruptly short, and from this point forward, the writers can’t rely on their presence to move the story forward or build up other characters.
Most stories never pull that trigger, and I’m cool with that because, like I said, it’s hard to write around. I’m okay with a show being a little toothless as long as the story is engaging and the characters are fun. Also, there are plenty of ways to make your characters suffer without killing them off.
However, when a show acts like death means something and then does something that very transparently reveals that the writers aren’t willing to sacrifice potential plot lines, it’s like watching Mickey Mouse take his head off at Disneyland: it ruins the magic. There are RULES against this kind of shit. If a character dies and is then brought back, you might as well write, “And then they got on a bus for a couple of weeks,” for all the fucking difference it makes.
Obviously when the show was airing, I was really dreading this prospect. I was hoping that the show would pull something out of left field, maybe fake me out and kill Asuna or Kirito off, instead of do the stupid, obvious thing that it was definitely going to do. But then, I got to the end of Episode 12 and I watched Kirito and Asuna mourn for little baby Skynet, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
IT WAS WORSE! They don’t just kill Yui off in the most trite way possible; they do it while immediately undercutting all of the dramatic weight of the moment because, as Yui is being deleted, Kirito pulls some techno wizardry out of his ass to store her in an inventory item. And because of that dumb dragon feather episode, we know that means she’s coming back. They could AT LEAST have left it ambiguous as to whether or not they could bring her back, but, “Nope! Can’t let anyone think their waifu might not come back! They might stop watching and giving us money!” However, even that isn’t the most asinine thing about this scene.
In this moment, as they reach the game master’s console in the depths of this dungeon, Kirito reveals the heretofore unknown fact that he’s a PhD-level programmer, thus irreparably ruining his character forever. Kirito was already stupidly overpowered, but at least it made a bit of sense. He was a beta tester, so his base skill level being higher than most other players’ was justified. Doing Kendo in real life gave him good reflexes. He also spent, like, the first year of the game solo queuing instead of socializing to reach his ridiculously high experience level. That became less believable as he also proved to be the most eligible bachelor on the entire Internet, but you can at least justify that as girls having a crush on him for saving their lives, rather than that coming down to any innate social skill on his part. It’s easy to justify a lot of things about Kirito because he has no defined personality at all. However, when you add to those traits the fact that he’s got the scripting skills to not just hack the game from inside it, but to custom-write code in the space of a few seconds to store data as an in-game object, I’ve gotta call bullshit.
Hacking games requires time and at least some knowledge of the source code. There’s no way Kirito has that. Even if the thousand or so carefully selected beta testers for SAO were data-mining the shit out of the game, they only had it for a little over a month during summer vacation and they only saw a fraction of the content. It would be hard to get a full picture of how the game works in that time frame under NORMAL circumstances, but SAO is also the first game of its kind, built from the ground up for incredibly complicated, brand-new proprietary hardware.
Already, Kirito’s doing something that nobody outside the company should know how to do, but even if we assume that there’s a command already in place to store a script as an in-game object, think about what he’s storing. Yui is a fucking AI, the most complicated kind of program conceivable. Her code needs to be immense to account for the broad variety of situations she might need to deal with, and it also needs to be capable of rewriting itself on the fly in real time. Kirito is taking that huge, complex code, saving its current state of operation, and converting that information into a custom item in a game whose script he must be figuring out in real time, all in the space of a few seconds. NO! NOT FUCKING POSSIBLE!
In this moment, Kirito ceases to be a real human being and I lose all suspension of disbelief for this entire show. It’s just not believable that any person could be capable of pulling off the shit that we’ve seen him do up to this point. Maybe some of it, but not all of it, and especially not A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD FUCKING CHILD!
Also, as if he wasn’t special enough already, the scene establishes a few moments earlier that he and Asuna are the only people to ever experience love or joy in SAO during the entire two years that the game has been running. This is so fucking stupid, it hurts!
This scene amazes me for how thoroughly it manages to ruin the entire show. It would be bad enough to ruin the whole story by implicitly admitting that they never plan to kill off anyone who’s had any kind of character development ever again (unless dying is part of their story arc), but in doing so, they also manage to make it impossible to relate to their PROTAGONIST. From this point forward, the show has no dramatic stakes. It CAN’T have any. Kirito’s been established to be able to do basically anything, and we now know for a fact that no one important will ever really die.
Furthermore, if you want to nitpick, this scene raises a ton of questions, too, the big one being, “WHY?! Why is THAT what Kirito did with his backhand access?” If he had the time to isolate a huge, complex program and store it as environmental data and write a custom script to save that file to his personal computer, why didn’t he, I don’t know, globally reactivate the game’s logout function? He had access to the fucking source code! And that would’ve been a lot simpler! There was probably just one value he needed to set from True to False, or maybe a few lines of code that had been commented out. Comparatively speaking, it would have been easy, and he’d have been saving, I don’t know, upwards of, like, 7000 people’s lives? But no. Preserving his wife’s Tamagotchi is a lot more important than that.
There’s been a lot of complaining in this review and not a lot of hard analysis, but that’s because there’s not much in this scene to analyze. This is one of the most flat, boring scenes that I’ve ever watched in anything. Every shot is static and dull, especially the obvious, predictable reaction shots that it uses to ham-fistedly attempt to tug at your heartstrings. Furthermore, the set is a blank, white room with nothing going on. There’s basically nothing to even look at here. That said, if nothing else, I guess I can take solace in the fact that nobody was even trying when they made the scene that ruined the whole show.
Why Do So Many People Love SAO? The Art of Mass Appeal
Hey! It’s okay! You are allowed to like Sword Art Online. I feel like I needed to explain that before somebody gets the wrong idea and thinks this is just me saying, “I don’t understand how somebody likes an anime that I don’t like!”
I just want to put this on the record: You’re not a bad person for liking SAO. You don’t have shit taste, and you’re not stupid. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to like this show, and, for this review, we’re going to be exploring what those reasons are because any show that can reach over a million people has to be doing something right.
No, this isn’t going to boil down to an insulting and reductive conclusion, like, “Thirsty weebs need wish fulfillment,” although I do think that is part of it for some people. This is a serious, analytical look at the series. The mechanics of mass appeal have always fascinated me, and SAO’s lacking qualities in other departments make it easier to isolate those mechanics than it would be looking at something like FMA.
You really can’t understate the impact that SAO has had on popular culture. It takes a lot of brand recognition for an American product to get a shot on network television, let alone a Japanese one. Much as critics like to downplay popularity as a measure of quality, success like that doesn’t just come down to random luck.
That said, luck is a major factor. SAO is often lauded for its great premise, but that’s only half the story. The most obvious factor in SAO’s whirlwind success is that it hit on the right premise, at the right time. When SAO came out in 2012, eSports and Free-to-Play games were becoming huge in the public eye. League of Legends had overtaken WoW as the most-played PC game of the year, and WoW’s death grip on the MMO market had loosened enough so that the landscape of online worlds was becoming more expansive and varied than it had ever been before. It was the perfect time to release any story about hardcore gaming, hardcore MMO gaming in particular, and with the Hunger Games phenomenon just starting to “catch fire” thanks to the first movie’s release, the market was hot for death game stories in particular. Add to that the exploding popularity of the then-new Game of Thrones and Walking Dead, and any series with a similar sense of lethality was bound to do well. Just look at how many articles at the time compare Attack on Titan and SAO to those two shows.
On top of that, anime was about to blow up in a big way in the West. Crunchyroll came to my attention in Fall of 2011, when they acquired the rights to Fate/Zero. I was hooked enough on the series from watching it on their ad-supported site to bite the bullet on a subscription just to get one episode ahead, and I don’t think I’m the only one. From 2011 to 2012, Crunchyroll began offering a serious value proposition by doubling their seasonal anime library, and becoming the go-to place for basically everything coming out of Japan by the Summer of 2012. It might not have been Fate/Zero specifically, but between huge series like HunterxHunter and quality niche stuff like Space Brothers and Kids on the Slope, the streaming service finally had enough content to pull in and sustain a hundred thousand subscribers by September of 2012, and two hundred thousand by March of 2013. Crunchyroll had become the service of choice for the then-niche community. SAO hit right in the middle of the surge in anime’s Western popularity, right at the point when Crunchyroll had enough content to be worth a subscription, but before it became totally unreasonable to watch everything on the service.
As one of the biggest fish in a rapidly-expanding pond, SAO both benefited from and helped spur on the service’s growth. Since it was one of the most popular shows on the service, Crunchyroll naturally put it at the forefront of their marketing push, which only increased its brand caché among anime fans and casuals alike. At this point, SAO was huge in Japan, and within the niche of Western anime fandom. It had proved its market viability enough to become a flagship title for the recently revived and redesigned Toonami block on Cartoon Network in Spring of 2013, and it was both relevant and popular enough to be added to Netflix in 2014, right in time to hype up the second season.
Anime had become a massive wave, washing over popular culture. Like 2013’s Attack on Titan, SAO had the good fortune to start riding that wave while it was still small, and go all the way to the top. The two series’ similar tone, and similar lethality, meant that fans of one were likely the fans of the other, and the cross-pollination only helped them both.
However, if good timing and an enticing premise were all it took for a show to embed itself in the popular culture, we’d be staring down Season 3 of The Unlimited Hyoubu Kyousuke right now. As much as it pains me to admit it, SAO does do some things very right when it comes to its execution that primed it for its whirlwind success. One of the biggest factors in this regard is the look of the show. A1 Pictures has faced a lot of criticisms from anime YouTubers and critics in general for the uniform look of its productions, and indeed, it can get pretty tiring to see the same faces, in nearly identical art styles, over and over again. However, that’s not going to be a problem for the casual anime fan, whose only seen a few dozen series. Their shows might look pretty similar, but they all look polished and professional, assuming they’re given enough time in production. They might not look or feel as nice as something from Ufotable, Kyoto Animation, or Bones, but they can get most of the way there in less time with a smaller budget, and that’s impressive. People like things that feel polished and professional.
If you haven’t seen a million shows like it before, SAO looks really clean and cohesive. It looks like what you expect a good anime to look like. The lineart is sharp and crisp, the characters blend with the environments well (at least, when the characters aren’t moving), and you can freeze on almost any frame and use it as a pretty decent wallpaper, which is all that many casual anime fans look for in a show’s visuals.
A1’s visual style is also very versatile. Its characters look cool, but they’re still very expressive. The girls can be moe cute, the heroes can look badass and youthful, and the adults can look old and hardened, and they all exist within the same world. Despite its “same-face syndrome” problem when put next to other A1 anime, SAO’s main cast has impressively diverse and easily recognizable character designs.
On the subject of design, while I do think that SAO would be a crappy game in real life, I will credit it for looking very visually appealing. The environments are super varied and interesting, from the flower dungeon, to the ice peak where they fight the dragon, to the trippy cave system where they find the Gleam Eyes. As VR spectacles go, this world would be a hell of a draw. The show’s visuals can really pop with vibrant colors, without looking too silly, and those can be muted down for more serious scenes without it looking incongruous with the rest of the show. SAO manages to sell moe, horror, action, and even Looney Tunes-esque cartoon comedy at times, and it all feels like roughly part of the same series.
That highlights one of the show’s other big strengths: plot variety. Because of the longtime scale of its storyline and the way that its setting creates a sort of blank slate for adventure, it can dabble in lots of different plot concepts, and even genres. One episode might be a short tragedy about Kirito watching all of his friends die, while the next is a cute story about saving a little girl’s pet and beating up some cackling Team Rocket villains, and that can be followed with a two-parter murder mystery, and after that, why not, let’s go on a side quest for crafting materials that blossoms into a short unrequited love story.
None of these individual stories have to be particularly great, hell, they don’t even have to make much logical sense because each one is so different from the last that it’s kind of fun to watch just for the surprise of finding out what they’re going to do next. Even if you really hate one storyline, you can rest assured that something new is on the horizon within an episode or two, and there’s a good chance that at least one of the many things the show tries will work for you.
Because Kirito’s character arc is about learning to open up to other people, all of those different plots feel like they’re moving the central plot forward, or at least a little, even if they’re really just filler. That results in a show that feels like it’s moving forward at a good pace. Emphasis on “feels” because if you look at the actual storytelling and logical structure of events, it’s an absolute mess. Just look at the final fight between Kirito and Kayaba Akihiko, it just comes out of nowhere on Floor 75 and it doesn’t work at all. However, if you’re just sitting down for entertainment, how a show feels to watch is paramount, and what sense it makes doesn’t matter so much.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that it’s dumb to enjoy a show on that level. There’s value in sitting down, turning your brain off, and simply being entertained for the sake of relaxation. Analyzing anime can feel like work. For some, it is work. In SAO, it feels like at least one really important thing happens every single episode, and there’s usually a really cool-feeling action scene every two or three episodes to keep the excitement up. As a result, the show has momentum. Once you start watching, it’s very easy to keep watching without getting bored or confused. The show is consumable, like popcorn or other A1 Pictures shows like Gate.
The show suffers, a lot, when it loses this forward momentum, which I think is a big part of why even fans of the series acknowledge that the Fairy Dance arc kinda sucks. Kirito has a clear goal there, with an obvious solution in trying to rescue Asuna, which means that any diversion from that goal, like going off to fight a random guy in PvP, feels like a true waste of time. Furthermore, Kirito’s character is entirely static during that storyline. He doesn’t grow or change at all. Neither does Asuna, nor anyone aside from Suguha, and even then, only kind of. Therefore, even when the story is moving forward, it feels kind of flat.
Gun Gale fixes this problem in a kind of artificial way of giving Kirito sudden onset PTSD to get over, but it does help the story feel more substantial, and fans reacted positively to that. When it does work, even if it doesn’t actually have any idea where it’s going, SAO’s story moves forward with a bold sense of confidence and purpose.
Speaking of boldness, SAO also excels at setting a strong tone for whatever is happening in its story at any given time, particularly early on. Not necessarily the most appropriate tone, but a tone that is powerful and striking nonetheless. The monsters feel scary and intimidating, the comedy feels fun and lighthearted, the romance feels heartwarming and intimate, and deaths feel tragic and poignant. If you’re not invested in the story and characters, a lot of this can feel cloying and emotionally manipulative, but until something happens to take you out of that (like Yui’s death did for me), watching SAO is an emotional rollercoaster.
A big part of that is Tomohiko Ito’s direction. He is really good at placing the camera and cutting in a way that draws out the maximum possible emotion from any given scene. He needs to work with great source material, like Erased or Gin no Saji to really shine, but even working with Reki Kawahara’s leavings, he does a good job. The use of reflections in windows while Kirito listens to Sachi’s last message to him is legitimately incredible filmmaking.
The emotional impact of the series is further enhanced by the work of Yuki Kajiura, Tomohiko Ito’s most favorite composer, who also crafted the amazing soundtrack of Erased, as well as Tsubasa, Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero, Kara no Kyoukai, and some of the Xenosaga video games. Yuki Kajiura is one the most singularly talented composers working in the anime industry today, and it’s hard to understate just how much of an impact I think she’s had on the perceived quality of SAO. Her compositions for the show give it an air of cinematic quality, but they also feel distinctly, and very appropriately, video game-y. In particular, I’d argue that she is the primary reason that people say SAO has good action scenes. Her compositions make fights that are actually pretty stilted and janky, outside of a few sakuga cuts, feel incredibly bombastic and slick. When SAO’s music kicks up, it gets your pulse pounding, and it’s hard to resist getting caught up in it or even humming along to that memorable hook. Watch these fights without the music, and they kinda suck.
Kajiura’s abilities don’t just improve the action scenes, though. Her work is an integral part of that emotional roller coaster effect, heightening the emotion of each scene and connecting the emotional beats so that the shifts in tone feel less jarring than they might otherwise feel. She makes the scary scenes feel scary, the sad scenes feel much, much sadder, and the romantic scenes feel powerful and moving. That brings us to the big reason that I think people love SAO.
Most of the things I’ve talked about so far aren’t totally unique to SAO, and though they are important factors in getting people interested and keeping them invested in what’s going on, they’re not enough on their own to make people care so much that they’ll tell me to kill myself when I badmouth it. To evoke that kind of emotional response, a show really needs to get its audience to say, “Fuck yeah!”
The thing that makes a lot of people say that, myself included when I first watched SAO, is the fact that Kirito and Asuna get together in Episode 10, after several episodes of buildup where other characters notice they have a thing for each other, and it’s just really cute. That’s just not a thing that happens in anime. Even in shows with a clear OTP relationship, nine times out of ten the romance will be drawn out to its breaking point, and the characters will only hook up right at the end of the story, which isn’t just a lazy way to create an emotional arc, it’s tedious to watch.
The “will they, won’t they” is a story we’ve seen a million times, while the equally interesting story about what happens after, the trials and tribulations of actually dating and being in love, is almost never touched upon. You can justify that in a romance anime where the story is about characters sorting out their feelings and finally getting together (Toradora does that and it’s just about perfect), but even there, after a while you start to crave shows that buck that trend, like Ore Monogatari, My Little Monster, and Golden Time.
Also, with shows that have other things driving the plot, there’s really no excuse. There are few things that could really improve on Fullmetal Alchemist, but Winry and Ed hooking up earlier in the story would probably be one of them. Look at how many people loved Mikasa’s confession to Eren at the end of Attack on Titan Season 2. That was beautiful!
It’s a very pleasant surprise to see two main characters of a show like SAO commit to a monogamous relationship this early in the plot, and I think that most people who love the series do so because, in this respect, it doesn’t waste their time. This plot turn changes a lot of story dynamics, too, since Kirito and Asuna can be explicitly motivated by their love for one another, and that love can be made much deeper than the obvious mutual crushes that drive shows less willing to pull that trigger. For a story so driven by its emotional content, that one change makes SAO feel very different from just about everything else a casual fan is likely to have seen, and from what you would probably expect going into the show.
Now if you’re like me, and you think a lot about story structure and plot logic, that effect of that change doesn’t really last. Reki Kawahara is totally unwilling to abandon his harem anime nonsense, so every arc sees Kirito introduced to a new hot girl who wants to jump his bones. In terms of narrative structure, that really undercuts the importance of his commitment to Asuna.
However, if you’re just watching the show to enjoy a show, then it feels very substantial, to the point that fans get very mad at me when I call this harem anime a harem anime, in the same way that all of the deaths early on make the show feel very lethal and dangerous, so long as you don’t realize that all of the key characters have plot armor. If you do buy into it, the scenes of Kirito and Asuna being a couple and enjoying each other’s company are extremely emotionally satisfying. By the same token, if Yui doesn’t bug you the same way she bugs me, her relationship with Kirito and Asuna is adorable. Hell, Asuna and Kirito’s romance is the only part of the movie that I think really works. To get more cynical for a moment, for the segment of the audience that does use this show as pure escapist wish fulfillment, the fact that Kirito can have an emotionally fulfilling relationship with his wife, while still being chased by hotties all because he’s so dang good at video games that he’s basically invincible, those aspects only improve the show for you.
However, I don’t think that most people who love SAO love it for those reasons. I think they love it because it managed to get them deeply invested in its main characters through one very bold plot turn, and once you care about those characters, seeing Kirito be an unstoppable badass stops being eye-rolling, and starts being cool and fun. I think they love SAO because the world that it creates seems like a very appealing place on the surface to spend time in, and you can imagine yourself being one of the NPCs going off and doing something that’s not vital to Kirito’s plotline, like that guy who’s fishing, for some reason. I think they love SAO because it came at the right time in their lives, right when they were getting into anime. If you’ve seen hundreds of anime, then yeah, parts of it are going to feel played out, but if you’ve seen just a handful, SAO is going to feel fresh, and new, and exciting.
Considering that it’s at the forefront of the anime fandom, even today, I think it will be among many people’s first anime for many years to come, and I think that ties into why so many of us so passionately hate this show as well. Because when we discovered it, it had all of this promise and potential, but at one point or another, be it a poorly-executed death or a very, very poorly-executed rape scene, it let us down profoundly, and we were left unable to enjoy this thing that, at one point, seemed like it could be so great, that was, at one point, so enjoyable for us. That disappointment is a lot more cutting than the overt and unsurprising terribleness of something like The Asterisk War or Akashic Record.
But not everyone was disappointed in it in the same way. While I do think it’s fundamentally poorly made, SAO does some things right that are going to be more important for some people than the things it does wrong are for me.
Every day we're met with conflict. Decisions we have to make. People with whom we must converse. We have a thousand complaints. A thousand obligations. And with that, a thousand voices we must consider. But we don't.
We put on our faces. Masks of proclaimed sincerity that hide our true feelings. Yet, our naiveté protects us from the realization that everyone else is doing the exact same thing.
We force ourselves to show up to weddings and funerals, baptisms and births, court proceedings and divorce hearings, art show galleries, birthdays, t-ball games (etc.) because we "care."
Yes, we care. But is this the way to show it? By taking a few hours out of our hundreds of thousands, then lending them to our friends and family?
We mail letters. Hand out Valentines. Sign Hallmark birthday cards. What do you expect from a mass produced society but mass produced sentiment?
Yes, we care. But we can't find the words to express it. Our passion can't be reached because our perspectives can't be breached. Our perspectives are impenetrable from both inside and out. They are our sacred firewall -- our greatest weakness.
Yes, we care. And while we are limited, at least we try. But we have to remember: profundity is a result, not of experience, but of passion.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to be a good Arena player. I also do not claim to be good at Hearthstone in general. Everything written in this post is simply what I’ve found to be true based on my own experiences in Arena.
Introduction
While the outcome of your Arena will always be influenced by luck (as is the case with everything in Hearthstone), your drafting strategies, knowledge of game mechanics, and experience play a much greater role. Since the Arena costs gold or real money, you should have a solid understanding of the game mechanics before going into it. This, as well as good knowledge about each class, is required to form a competitive deck.
Hero Choice
Every hero class has the potential to win as long as you understand the mechanics of the class and have good knowledge of the class specific cards. You should keep in mind that regardless of which hero you pick, your goal will be the same -- getting the best value out of your cards, creating card advantage, and keeping or establishing board control. By choosing your hero, you also decide roughly which drafting strategy you will follow, but again, this requires good knowledge of that class.
Card Choice
In principle, you should always pick the card that gives you the most value for its cost. That said, you cannot focus exclusively on the 3 cards presented to you, and you must also take your mana curve into account. Briefly put, you should try to maintain a balanced mana curve for your deck, which means that there should not be any mana-cost for which you have very few or no minions or spells.
Minions and spells that cost 2 to 4 mana should generally be quite numerous, since it is during this part of the game that you need to be able to establish board control (and repel enemy moves that can have repercussions on the entire game), while higher-costing cards (6 or higher) can be fewer in number.
Minion Choice
When choosing a minion, you should consider what impact it will have on the board once it is played. A good rule of thumb is that each minion should cost half (or less) of the sum of their attack and health. For example, the Chillwind Yeti costs 4 mana, and his total stats are 9, making him quite efficient. In addition to this rule of thumb, you have to consider other factors. Minions who have other effects in addition to their stats will generally have lower stats or a higher cost. While their effect sometimes makes up for it (as in the case of the Defender of Argus), it does not do so other times (as in the case of the Ironforge Rifleman).
You will need experience in order to form an accurate opinion of the value of each minion, since only by playing it and having it against you repeatedly will you realize its strengths and weaknesses. I will give you a few other examples below to show you what sort of aspects you should take into account.
Priority should be given to health over attack in Arena, as high health makes your minions difficult for your opponents to remove. Minions with high attack power may seem appealing as they are able to deal a lot of damage, but without the high health to back it up, they are much less likely to actually survive for a turn to be able to attack, meaning they have less impact on average. For example, a Magma Rager may look attractive, as it offers 5 attack for 3 mana, but its low health means it will die to any removal spell, any minion, even 1-cost minions, and many classes' hero powers. Booty Bay Bodyguard is another example; it may seem like a powerful minion on the surface, but its 4 health means that it will trade down with many 4-cost minions, and even 3 mana removal spells like Shadow Bolt.
The exception to this rule is when minions fall below 3 attack. Although allowances can be made for early game cards, starting a 3 mana, you ideally want all of your minions to have at least 3 attack. The reason for this is that low attack minions, even if they have huge health pools, are easily traded into by multiple minions on your opponent's side, leaving them all alive. Conversely, although these minions often have enough health to survive to your turn, they do not have enough power to make any impactful trade, or to creat any pressure.
The reason the Chillwind Yeti is strong is because his 4/5 stats mean he will not only be able to take out 3-cost minions, but he will also be able to survive them. This almost ensures t hat he will end being a "2-for-1" (killing 2 enemy minions himself) or better.
It is for this reason (lack of survivability) that 1-cost minions are not desirable in general. There is no reason to pick a 1-cost minion unless they come with a very beneficial additional effect. For example, the Murloc Raider is a complete waste of a card. The Abusive Sergeant, however, can be quite valuable since he will buff a minion, allowing to make a very favorable trade (for instance, he can help your 2-cost minion kill a 5-cost minion). Another example of a rather valuable 1-cost minion is the Worgen Infiltrator. This minion has Stealth, meaning that it can lie in wait for a turn or two, impervious to damaging hero powers, until a 2 or 3-cost minion with two health is played, which he can then assassinated in a favorable trade. The Elven Archer is also a decent trade, since its Battlecry can be very useful early in the game to finish off an enemy minion, although it is not a card I would advise taking unless the other 2 options were quite poor.
The Bluegill Warrior is quite weak given what I have said (it only has 1 health), but the fact that is has Charge means you can use it aggressively to remove an enemy minion early in the game. You could consider it a 2-damage nuke for 2 mana.
When considering cards with Taunt, you need to realize that their main purpose is to protect and delay the game. For this reason, minions like the Goldshire Footman or the Frostwolf Grunt are not as good as they may seem (their cost/stat budget ration is quite good) because their low health means they will not fulfill their primary purpose. They will almost always die to a single attack.
The Silverback Patriarch has good health, but its attack is so low that it provides almost no threat to your opponent whatsoever. The Tauren Warrior may appear good thanks to his Enrage, but this is not the case. He costs 3 mana, but he will not be able to kill most other 3-mana minions (unless you manage to enrage him first, which is not easy for most classes), and will generally die to the first attack (especially if he is enraged.)
On the other hand, the Sen'jin Shieldmasta is an outstanding Taunt minion, since its very high health (for a cost of 4 mana) will most likely require more than just one card to deal with.
Other minions that may appear strong, but which are not, are the Windfury Harpy, the Dalaran Mage, and the Thrallmar Farseer.
Class-specific minions follow the same rules. Some of them are outstanding for their abilities (like the Water Elemental), while others might not present you with the value you seek for their casting cost.
Class-Specific Cards Choice
Each Arena deck, regardless of the class you choose, should have a good portion of spells to help you establish or maintain board control. Unless you have the option of picking a very strong minion (given what I outlined earlier), it is preferable to choose a spell that will grant you card advantage, or that will allow you to delay your opponent considerably.
Regardless of your class, you should pick several spells that control early to mid game (spells that cost 1 to 4 mana) as they will either help you maintain pressure (assuming you have a minion on the board and you do not need to trade it once you remove your opponent's threat), or they will simply help you establish early board control (such as removing your opponent's minion, removing their pressure and establishing your own), even if such cards are only a 1-for-1 trade.
Extremely powerful class-specific cards, such as certain Paladin or Warrior weapons, or various AoE (area of effect) spells such as Flamestrike, Holy Nova, and Swipe will often be 2-for-1 or better trades. Getting high-value class-specific cards that trade themselves for more than 1 card is essential to card advantage, and to establishing and maintaining mid to late game board control.
Synergies
In general, having synergy between most cards in your deck is a good idea, since this increases their individual value, and it sometimes allows for devastating combinations. That said, in Arena, you should always avoid picking cards that are only worth taking if they have a synergy with a card that you do not already have. This is because you have no guarantee that the needed card will ever come up in your draft (and if it does, it might be mutually exclusive with a much better card). A good approach regarding synergies in Arena is that you should pick cards based on their individual value, and should you get a card that will form a good synergy with a card you already have, then you can pick it as well and safely form the synergy.
Some cards, such as the Shattered Sun Cleric and the Dark Iron Dwarf offer synergy with many cards, and they are always a valuable pick since they will work well together with any other minion you have in the deck.
Other cards will limit you or force you to pick specific cards, which is generally a bad idea for a drafting strategy. For example, Murlocs will always be a bad idea to pick as all the common ones have bad value for their cost, and you would need to rely on the rare Murlocs in order to form a synergy between multiple cards. Even if you start by getting an outstanding rare Murloc, it would be wiser to pick another rare with better value than the Murloc, as it can happen that there will not be many (if any) common Murlocs available to form the synergy with the rare one you drafted in the early stages.
Since the release of various expansions to Hearthstone, the issue of synergy has become even more important in Arena. Since each of the expansions so far have had a strong focus on a particular type of card (Deathrattle minions, Mechs, and Dragons respectively), many more synergy focused cards have been introduced into the game. As a general rule, the Naxxramas Deathrattle cards are very strong picks, since they are still individually very strong minions. The same can be said for many of the Mechs introduced in Goblins vs. Gnomes, Mech minions are usually high enough value to justify picking on their own (Mechwarper, and Spider Tank for example), meaning you can happily pick up a few Mech cards throughout your draft and treat any synergy that does form as a nice bonus. The Dragon cards introduced in Blackrock Mountain are a somewhat different matter though. Many of the cards introduced in this expansion, such as Blackwing Technician and Blackwing Corruptor, rely on having Dragon synergy in your deck to make them powerful. Since you are unlikely to have numerous Dragons in your finished deck, you should avoid taking these cards if at all possible.
Conclusion
Arena can be a powerful tool for new players to gain experience in the game while simultaneously building a card collection for use in Constructed play. As with everything in Hearthstone, you will need experience and familiarity with the mechanics and the cards in order to succeed, so do not be discouraged if your first Arena experiences are not very successful.
If you enjoy playing Arena and if you wish to improve, spending your gold on Arena is always a better investment than simply buying card packs.
Maybe you get bad customer service because you’re a bad customer
I could have taken a picture of you and posted it here to publicly shame you, but I didn’t. That’s because I am not trying to be vindictive. I’d merely like to answer that question you posed.
See, I was in line at that particular fast food establishment today. You probably didn’t notice me. In fact, I assume you didn’t notice any of us from the way you blatantly barged to the front. I was about to tap you on the shoulder and politely explain how lines are supposed to work in a civilized society, but I could tell you were in the throes of an ungodly rage. I figured this must be an emergency. My god, you were practically foaming at the mouth. I thought maybe someone at the counter had killed your dog, or framed you for a murder you didn’t commit, or urinated in your oatmeal this morning. Obviously something serious was going on.
Then you suddenly screamed, “NO ketchup! I said NO ketchup!”
Okay, so maybe this wasn’t a dire situation. It was a condiment situation. Not exactly life or death, but close enough, I guess. The girl at the cash register looked confused. I don’t blame her, some irate middle aged woman just barreled in the door yelling about ketchup. She asked you for some clarification, which was reasonable, but apparently you didn’t think so.
“What’s wrong with you people?! I just sat in the drive thru for ten minutes and now I have to come in here because you guys can’t understand fucking English! I ordered this burger with NO ketchup but of course I get it with gobs of ketchup. Unbelievable. This happens every fucking time!”
Wait, it’s unbelievable yet it happens every time? Hmm. And your ketchup specifications are this important to you, yet you continually come to the one place in town that apparently has a ketchup obsession? There are literally six other fast food joints within a two mile radius, but here you are at the one place that screws up your order “every fucking time.” Interesting. Logical thinking isn’t exactly your forte, is it?
The poor girl at the counter, who likely had no hand in this ketchup fiasco, offered to give you a new burger, plain and dry, just as you prefer. But that wasn’t good enough, was it? Their failure to obey your demands must be punished.
“No, I don’t want a new burger. Give me your name and the number to corporate. I’m sick of this shit. Give me my money back and the number to your corporate office! Why can’t I ever fucking get good customer service?!”
And the exchange went on from there. You, of course, handled yourself like a woman of culture and dignity, while the fast food employee and her manager tried everything to find a remedy for the “Tragic Ketchup Calamity.” It ended with you promising to get them all fired as you stormed out. Then I finally had my turn at the counter. I ordered a burger. With extra ketchup.
Now, I replay this back to you because I realize you probably scream profanities at minimum wage customer service representatives every time you run an errand or grab a bite to eat, so you might not recall the specifics of this one incident. And that brings us to the possible answer to that query you posed in the midst of your ketchup rant. You asked: “Why can’t I ever fucking get good customer service?” Well, that might have something to do with you being a vulgar, miserable, malicious person. Maybe you get bad customer service because you’re a bad customer. Did you ever consider that possibility?
I get it. “You’re the customer so you’re always right.” They work here so they have to bend over backwards for you “because that’s their job.” Well, you’re partially correct about that. Yes, you are a customer and, yes, they do work here. But it’s actually not their job to deal with psychopaths. They aren’t hostage negotiators, they’re fast food workers. And even if the powers that be at these corporate chains push this “customer is always right” crap because they’ve decided it’s good business to placate horrible jerks, in the real world, outside the land of plastic chairs and soda fountains, adults who throw temper tantrums in public are never right about anything.
I’m sure some people might take your side. They might come to your defense by telling their own horror stories about all the times when customer service has failed to live up to their standards. Those folks are under the same delusion as you. They think their hallowed “customer” status somehow gives them the right to treat everyone with a uniform and a name tag like garbage. They think their past encounters with sub-par service makes it acceptable for them to fly off the handle about ketchup every once in a while. They think the rules of basic decency and respect come second when they are “The Customer.” And they’re wrong.
Do you ever wonder why we have so many atrocious politicians? Well, you shouldn’t wonder. Just look in the mirror. Bad politicians are generally bad because they can’t handle power. It goes right to their head and they become narcissistic, petty, controlling sociopaths. But at least it’s a lot of power so the temptation to be corrupted by it is almost understandable. You, on the other hand, become a maniacal tyrant when society hands you temporary and meaningless power over 17-year-old fast food cashiers. I shudder to think what you’d do if you had an army at your disposal.
We all get a little unwanted ketchup every now and again, and we are all expected to handle it like mature and decent adults. Some of us manage to make it through our whole lives without ever feeling the need to berate restaurant or retail employees over some small and fixable mistake. Other folks, such as yourself, seem to get into a customer service battle royale every time they step outside their house. Maybe it’s because the universe is against you guys. Or maybe — just maybe — it’s because you behave like selfish obnoxious bullies.
Just something to think about.
Oh, and I’m betting you actually forgot to say “no ketchup” when you placed your original order. Wouldn’t that be a totally expected twist to this captivating saga?
If you call me out, I'm usually going to leave immediately. Lurking is just part of how I watch Twitch. I'm not on display. You are. If you and whatever you're doing is interesting enough for me to want to engage you, great. Otherwise, you do your thing and I'll let you know if and when I want to become an active participant. I can’t speak for everyone else, but it sounds reasonable in my opinion. If you're calling people out, you're taking away their ability to choose to engage you on their own terms. Once you do this, my options are then to engage you in uninterested small talk to alleviate the awkwardness or leave.
I lurk in some streams that I'm subscribed to. Others I'm not even subscribed to and I type as fast as I think. It all depends on how the vibe in the room is for me. I like different streams for different reasons. Sometimes I want to interact in that environment. Sometimes I don't. If I'm lurking and you call me out, I'm most likely going to leave because I don't feel like being forced to interact nor do I want to seem like a douche for not doing so.
When you're feeling under the weather so you go to CVS to buy medication, but walk out with ice cream instead. I am feeling better, so talk about affordable healthcare.
I can't say I hate reading. I'm just really selective about what I read. I'll read the mini synopsis on the back cover of a book before determining if I'm interested or not. Don't expect me to read something just because you've stuck it in my face.
Just SomeGuy Ranting @someguyranting1 - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
