MossyFeathers

joined 2 years ago
[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 29 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (12 children)

I think I understand what they're saying. Replace the "belly drumroll" thing with your favorite hobby; and "status-quo" with "normies".

The first message is pretty straightforward. The consumer wants the best but has an ungodly number of options to pick from.

The second message builds on the first, establishing that this character (lets call him Bob) is a "normie". Bob thinks OP is a weirdo because they find something mundane, like belly drumming, to be a fun hobby. OP tries to convince Bob that it isn't the belly drumming that OP enjoys, it's the hobby that OP enjoys. It's the people around it, the culture that surrounds it, and so on. This concerns Bob because OP has just admitted that they aren't really into belly drumming, it's everything around belly drumming that they enjoy. Bob is even more concerned about OP when OP tries to share the hobby with him. Bob then gets confused when OP ditches Bob and finds a group of friends who appreciate their enjoyment of belly drumming.

The third message then complains that, at some point, belly drumming might become a fad, at which point people who are only into belly drumming as a fad, become the main voice in the hobby; destroying whatever culture the hobby had built up.


I think there's another message missing somewhere in there that OP either meant to write but forgot, or they went full ADHD and just didn't properly connect their thoughts (it's okay, it happens a lot to me, that's probably why I feel like I can understand this lol). I'm guessing this is closer to what OP was trying to say:


People who enjoy the status quo, aka "normies" (actually lets call them Bob again), tend to look at a particular thing and, if they desire it, want to jump to the best. However, when Bob approaches an enthusiast or hobbyist for advice, they get many conflicting answers (because it often comes down to personal taste regarding "the best" of a thing). When Bob probes further, they may find that many of the enthusiasts don't actually give a shit about the thing itself, but instead they enjoy the act of finding "the best" thing.

One example that comes to mind is the running gag that hardcore audiophiles don't actually listen to music, they listen to their hardware. They spend hours and hours fine-tuning their setups using special audio tracks for calibrating your speakers, room, and so on; only to listen to a song or two to confirm their choice. They then return to tweaking their setup, spending more time placing crystals, buying outrageously expensive cables, and so on. These are people who enjoy the hobby itself more than the actual subject matter, and that's okay. As long as they know that the crystals and cables are placebos at best, then that's okay. Maybe they just want to support their favorite audiophile blogger, or think the cables or crystals are very pretty but feel silly for spending $200 on a 3ft cable; so they come up with a story about how it makes the sound better. As long as they're aware that the cables probably aren't doing anything special, that's okay.

(Edit: I can say from experience that when you get into a hobby, you tend to be more willing to spend more money on something than necessary if it means you're helping to support another enthusiast, group of enthusiasts, or small hobby company that you like. I'm guilty of doing this myself and I'm sure many of the people here are guilty of it too if they're honest about it.)

However, people like Bob get confused by this. Why would someone spend thousands of dollars on something they don't care about? Bob doesn't understand that the rituals are what makes it fun for this individual (lets call them Joe), not the objects themselves, and he thinks this is strange. So Bob makes fun of Joe for spending thousands of dollars on something they supposedly don't even like. Joe tries to introduce Bob to the hobby so that Bob might understand why Joe finds it fun, but Bob, not wanting to spend the time to commit, just gets even more confused.

"This is boring", says Bob, "I want to listen to music, not frequency sweeps playing through standalone phono preamps to find the one with the most accurate RIAA curve."

Joe gets tired of Bob mocking his hobby, ditches Bob and finds a group of friends who can appreciate Joe's hobby, even if they don't actually enjoy it themselves. This makes Bob very upset.

However, this isn't the end of OP's saga. OP then goes on to talk about how, at some point, Joe's hobby becomes a fad. Sarah, armed with Beats by Dr. Dre, believes that this is what being an audiophile is. She thinks Beats are the best-of-the-best and that anything more expensive is a scam. She thinks buying whatever is marketed as "the latest and greatest" is truly, the latest and greatest. She believes that this is what audiophiles do. They buy $200~$300 headphones and listen to their favorite music all day.

As such, she gets confused when she runs into a "true" audiophile like Joe. She's more likely to talk over Joe and "fadsplain"(?) the hobby to others because "audiophiles don't listen to frequency sweeps, that's what weirdos do". Furthermore, she's likely to mock Joe for being "behind the times" once the tide goes out. As such, Joe's hobby has been ruined.

I think there's also an implied message that consumers tend to trigger fads if enough of them are looking for "the best" of a thing, but it's vague enough that I'm not confident about that.

Edit: missed a bit; I think the last message is also trying to reference the first message with the "drum was always attached to their belly" thing and is saying that the hobby was always there, but the fad was started because Bob wanted an easy answer to his question and the market replied. Bob is happy with the market's answer, but hobbyists aren't because it redefined the hobby.


I dunno if I 100% agree with the message, but I probably agree with about 90% of it and can sympathize with OP.

Edit: accidently swapped Bob and Joe at the end, should be fixed now.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 3 points 11 months ago

Is the theme by Rob Zombie?

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 56 points 11 months ago (9 children)

Why does everyone find the "hawk tuah" meme funny? It's probably one of the lamest, most forced memes I've heard in a while.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 16 points 11 months ago

I dunno, those all sound like fun things to say. If you're not having fun with profanity then what's the point?

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 67 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Imo Steam should tell people whether or not a game actually requires Steam (or another form of DRM) to run. I know they already do it for things like Denuvo, but they should also note if the game actually uses Steam as DRM or if the game can be launched without it.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 6 points 11 months ago

That's okay, I like pushing revolving doors, they're fun to use!

(Yes, I know this is probably supposed to be a commentary on freeloaders in general, but revolving doors are fun)

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 11 points 11 months ago

But I just need you to know, chopping that final A off cloaca made me incredibly, viscerally uncomfortable.

You're gonna regret giving me this level of power.

Sadly though, as wonderfully upsetting as it might be, I can't take credit for that expression; I stole it from Jabroni Mike.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 37 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

The dinosaur's derrière is so well preserved, researchers could see the remnants of two small bulges by its "back door," which might have housed musky scent glands that the reptile possibly used during courtship — an anatomical quirk also seen in living crocodilians, said scientists who studied the specimen.

How do you know they weren't testicles? I wonder if it's possible that dinosaurs started out with external testes that migrated inward as the climate cooled.

None of the reproductive soft tissues (like a penis) were preserved. So the researchers can't say whether the dinosaur was male or female. Even so, this dinosaur likely had copulatory sex, unlike some birds that bump butts when they do a "cloacal kiss" during reproduction, Vinther said.

Why? Too big? Body the wrong shape? Not flexible enough? I'm actually curious about this. It's been a question I've had for a long time but I feel like I never get a satisfactory answer. I know a lot of paleontology is guesswork based on extant/recently extinct species, and that a lot of the guesses involve "cloacal kissing" due to the fact that most birds and many reptiles reproduce that way. However, theropods, the seemingly most likely candidate for the "cloacal kissing" route due to their suspected relationship with modern birds, had ridiculously big tails which were likely feathered. To me, that raises the question of whether or not theropods truly started the tradition of "raising tail" among birds, or if they were more like ducks but reduced tail size made obscenely large, prehensile penises obsolete because they could go cloac-to-cloac. The tails seem like they'd be too big to "go cloac-to-cloac".

Also, since I did a quick Google search to try and find the answer before posting, here is some dino porn, courtesy of the BBC

Hot theropods in your area!

Big Sauropod Rails Scaley MILF

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 36 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

I unironically want to go back to the days where ads told you what the product was, what it cost, why you should buy it (compared to competitors) and where to buy it. All the cutesy "we're gonna tell a story" advertising falls flat on its face because, as much fun as the "real deal" can be, 99% of it is designed by committees to reach as big of a spread as they can. It's soulless. I'd rather my soulless advertising be straight and to the point than some eye-rolling, meandering, soul-sucking corporate garbage that takes 90 seconds to say what it could have said in 15s.

Hey advertisers, quit wasting my time, and your money and quit fucking doing it. The reason why the, "narrative advertising" or whatever you call it, works is because it's made by a small company and targeted at an equally small community. Chances are, it's enthusiasts selling to enthusiasts, and they know the people they're targeting better than you ever could.

You. are. not. a. small. company. You. are. not. enthusiasts. Stop it.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's zoboomafoo from PBS! It was my favorite show as a hatchling.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

screeches excitedly

I loved zoboomafoo!

Me, and you, and zoboomafoo~!

Come along, let's see what's new,

We're doing the things that animals do!

Me, and you, and zoboomafoo~!

Come along, let's see what's new,

At animal junction, we're waiting for you!

Zoboomafoo!

Edit: it might help explain how I ended up a furry.

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