Oh, come on! Stupid trends, anyone?

There was an AITA (am I the asshole) reddit thread where the guys wife was fridge scaping and she got mad at him for disturbing her “art” when he wet to get a soda. He was definitely NTA

This is the first I’ve heard of this trend, and nothing in that quote strikes me as pretentious. She’s having fun with some design elements and making arrangements that are aesthetically pleasing, without harming others or doing anything stupid like other TikTok pranks or harassing people in the street for content. I find the pictures nice to look at myself and tastefully done. Who cares?

Fridgescaping, though, does seem pretty stupid to me.

Wow, is this thread ever full of the “anything teen girls like is shit” vibe.

I don’t understand why someone would want to look at arrangements of items in a tub, or listen to monologues from someone putting on makeup. Those things aren’t for me.

I also don’t understand why people go to the opera or drink wine. Doesn’t mean I put up reviews that say, “the wine they served tasted stupid” or “the screechy singing gave me a headache,” it just means that I pick other things to occupy my time.

Most of my flying is short trips where I just get drinks and snacks, but on my recent trip to Iceland/Glasgow I flew business class and got real meals. I must say that IcelandAir really went all out with the presentation of the meals. I was not, however, tempted to photograph them.

And speaking of photographing your meals, I’m getting a bit annoyed at DoorDash asking me to take and post a photo of my food before I eat it.

Well, to go all the way to the other end, kids posting their poop in the toilet. Popping their pimples.
Or my favorite, what’s under their bed. Gahhhh!
My kids know underbed cleanliness is top on my pet peeve list. So they show me these to hear me scream.

That cow hoof trimming guy has a surprisingly large audience, most of whom I suspect aren’t cow hoof trimmers. He just seems to love what he does and it comes through.

I’ve never actually photographed any of my airline food, either, but I can excuse those who do, because as I said a lot of the arrangements are interesting and the pictures plus commentaries do provide useful information about the quality of an airline’s food. Here is a site, for instance, that hosts over 53,000 pictures and reviews of airline meals from 764 different airlines and routes.

What I cannot stand, however, is idiots taking pictures at a sushi bar or at a Japanese omakase table. Yes, the stuff is beautifully presented, but the whole point of omakase is that there are many, many courses and you are meant to sit back and enjoy the experience of the courses or sushi or sashimi items arriving one by one. Constantly taking pictures destroys the experience and turns what is supposed to be a pleasurable experience into work, as if it was a photo assignment. It may be amusing at first to fellow diners, but eventually becomes annoying. Besides, what are you going to do with those pictures? The answer is probably “post them to Xitter” to get “likes” and thus we have the curse of social media again.

Probably an anti-theft measure, to ensure that your order for eg. 3 chicken strips actually contained all three, without the driver sneaking a piece for themself.

You seem quite knowledgeable about the details of stuff you say you don’t want to watch.

Hint: they’re showing up in your reels because you’ve been watching similar content.

You just need to see one to know it’s not for you.

And omg, they’re allover the internet. No wonder makeup and hair stores are gold mines.

To be honest, I’m so happy I stopped using algorithm-centric social media like Twitter ages ago. I don’t really let dumb trends bother me that much given I don’t pay attention to many of them, and some of them (like “skibidi toilet” and other such content) I laugh at ironically if anything. We were all kids at one point, yeah? I consider getting mad at today’s kids a fool’s errand.
That being said, we should consider how it all affects kids and such. We should push newer parents to be more active in their kids’ lives, instead of just puttin’ them in front of an iPad all day since needless to say that does jack squat for their development.
And of course, the beauty industry with its trends is a complete sham, but it’s pretty much always been, no?

The decline of society made a sharp turn downward when digital cameras were married to the ubiquitous cellphone, and the phone was placed i to the grubby little hands of preteens.

I remember our oldest granddaughter (COTU#1), who was around 11 at the time, explaining to her Grandpa, how she needed to “grow her brand.” She didn’t have a clue as to what this really meant, but I would guess her friends were discussing what you needed to do to become a “social influencer,” and make a lot of money.

Digital cameras allow anyone to take pictures of anything. LOTS of pictures, of LOTS of anything. I get to tell stories of “back when I was a kid,” and explain how we had to buy the film for the camera, then send the exposed film off to be developed and printed. And it all cost money! And all the printed pictures have been saved through the years, so people now have boxes of pictues of God knows who, at God knows where, doing God knows what.

The demise of modern society can be traced to cell phones with digital cameras, combined with social media.

What was the question again?

~VOW

I don’t necessarily think smartphones themselves were a mistake, but I definitely think that social media on them WAS a mistake. I miss when the Internet was a “place” that you went to (a large computer at a desk), and when you were done, that was it. You “left” the Internet for the day. Now it’s everywhere and you can’t escape it.
I do like to think progressively on stuff, but I think it’s undeniable that modern social media as it is today was a mistake. I miss forums and stuff (well, I am in this one, but still you know what I mean).

The medium changes but the idea remains the same:

A Table of Desserts by Jan Davidz de Heem - 1640

I’ve noticed a trend on social media where grumpy old people make posts on social media complaing about grumpy old people making posts on social media complaining about trends on social media.

(My post is my cite.)

That’s pretty stupid.

Sandwich
Now trending on social media

Absolutely this. Finding opportunities to make art in settings that are otherwise banal (a fridge) or actively soul crushing (airport security) is ancient tradition.

Do in think it’s silly as hell? Sure. But so is literally everything that kids do, right up until some of that stupid shit suddenly becomes bedrock culture.

The comparisons I thought of were the art of Japanese flower arranging or the Japanese tea ceremony. Neither strike me as particularly interesting, but if you want to do it, knock yourself out.

Who are those kids and why are they on my lawn ?

I did something. Just to discover what was really out there. I took one for the team.

Late last night I woke up. Got the tablet up and typed Trending on YouTube.

Om freakin’ god.
(Eh, weren’t that bad)

But what I did notice. There are some weird ones. Slick, with a video of something with a professionally sounding(I assume AI) voice over, explaining the video you’re watching with obviously added video that doesn’t go with the previous video.
At the end there’s a quick flash of an ad for something.
I decided after watching 10 of these it is encrypted message. I think it tried to take over my mind.
The droning voice, the perfectly timed video. A faraway ringing bell sound. "push subscribe, push subscribe, push like and subscribe
I wanted to touch the screen …lightly with my fingers …snap out of it, beck!

I finally broke the spell. Pressed power off. Put the tablet in the drawer. After a minute or two of conflicted and confused thinking …I woke up.

Yeah it was a bad dream. Whew.

Allow me to enlighten you, then.

Let me stress in advance that I don’t demand that everyone like the things that I like. To each his own, of course. But the reason that people go to the opera is because there is pleasure to be derived from watching the combined product of writers, composers, and performers at the absolute top of their game, possessed of seemingly superhuman abilities to affect our emotions. It’s not unique to opera. It also applies to great theatrical performances, great movies, and great orchestral performances.

People drink and enjoy wine for the same reason they’ve been doing it for millennia, and for the same reason that great effort has been invested through those millenia to improve the varietals and the wine-making process itself, and that these ever-superior products actually enhance the taste and enjoyment of good food and help create a mellow dinner atmosphere.

How this relates to arranging junk in an airport security tub or “fridgescaping” is, fortunately, not apparent to me and I hope it never will be. People have always done stupid things and always will. Social media just enables a lot more of it.

And this is the bias you are showing. It is “junk” not a spacial arrangement artist at the top of their game.

And when instead of deriving pleasure the singing gives me a headache? All of those people must really suck for putting out this kind of junk, it’s just a vast conspiracy to torture audiences convinced they’re experience high art; what a bunch of gullible masochists. See, I can claim stuff liked by insert group is shit. I can even acknowledge that some people must like it, but at the same time imply those people are stupid for liking it.

This is so often just shitting on things that young women, teen, and tween girls like. At it’s best, most of the arguments in this thread sound elitist and condescending.

And condemning all of online video over some video trends you don’t understand or find entertaining is about as intelligent an argument as declaring all TV is worthless because one time you were bored by televised golf. Also: Sturgeon’s law.