Shit I See On My Facebook Newsfeed #1

I see a lot of shit on my Facebook newsfeed ; cat pictures, random doodle comics, passive aggressive status updates, melodramatic status updates, attention seeking status updates, jokes that are so dumb they're actually funny, pictures of macaroons (seriously what is the big deal) and buttloads of Instagrammed things. I usually scroll past all those fairly easily, and they don't bother me all that much. What really gets on my nerves though, is shit like this, and the thousands upon THOUSANDS of likes and shares they get :




Citation required.
No, seriously. I'd love to have a look at this "psychologic" study that so clearly and firmly delineates the time span of your emotions and levels of attraction to someone, with seemingly no due importance given to individual context or circumstances. And stop trying to distract me with candy-coloured font. It's not going to work.




Dear "Male" Who Wrote This,
I too, am fedup. Utterly fedup. Done. Finished. I am fedup with this never ending whinefest about how girls only go after assholes and jackasses and the nice, sweet, sensitive guys never win. Generalizations and simplifications don't help anyone. Both men and women are capable of treating each other like crap, for one thing. For another thing, there are about 3 billion or so "Females" that populate the planet, and we are all -shock horror gasp- different. We all want and like different things, and make different decisions because we are people who have gone through different, unique experiences and not a homogenous collective organism. Hell, there might even be some of us out there who are in relationships with nice, sweet, sensitive guys. You're not looking hard enough. Or just not looking? Sure, there might be some girls who get attracted to a certain brand of a-hole, due to whatever issues or complexes she may be dealing with, but that's her business. Or maybe, consider the utterly radical notion that maybe she just doesn't want a relationship with you.




"Every girl's dream"? Really? Really? Really? If a guy ever calls me at 3am, EVER, there had better be some crazy ass life/death situation going down. Sleep is of supreme importance to me, and I don't take interruptions very well. Mats Hummels could be serenading me outside the window at 3.30am on a school night with a Nutella sundae in each hand and even he would very likely get punched in the face for all the trouble he took. I have no objection to the ice cream and cookies (or the "I love you"), just bring them to me during regular office hours, or with a minimum of one hour's notice. 3am my ass.




Ah see, REAL boyfriends, as opposed to FAKE boyfriends (really, how old are we, twelve?) calls and texts you ALL THE TIME (to find out exactly where are you are what you're doing who you're meeting?) CRIES when he doesn't get to see you, gets JEALOUS (when he sees you having any form of social interaction with people who are not him?) is OVER PROTECTIVE (once he starts telling you where you can go and who you're allowed to talk to, we're in trouble) and LOVES YOU (aww). I'm sorry, I may be reaching here, but none of this comes across as warm, healthy or loving to me. I actually laughed out loud the first time I read it. This is crossing over into clingy, hysterical, emotionally unstable stalker territory.If this is what a REAL boyfriend does, I'll take the fake one any day of the week.




Oh dear. I never realized there was a set of Facebook viral image-approved criteria I had to meet in order to be a woman. Gosh, I don't think I'm doing enough to really be called woman. I'm just thinking about all those times I pulled on doors that said PULL. Or that time I walked into a room and totally knew exactly why I was there. Or that other time when I was really upset about something and I called my mom to talk to her about it. Because these are all things that PEOPLE do, or don't do. Oh and there was that time - HOLY CRAP WHERE DID MY VAGINA GO?

Also ; "I count on my fingers in math". Because delicate ladybrains just aren't equipped to handle hardcore complicated shit like NUMBERS, am I right, girlfrandz??? LOL xoxo!!




Now this is some generic sitcom level comedy right here. The PREGNANCY = DUMB WOMAN bit is particularly infuriating, because to me it somehow implies that the dude was smart enough to get laid, the woman was stupid enough to be seduced AND presumably not remember to use contraceptives. I realize this is just some silly meme diagram and there's no room to include things like "what if the woman made a perfectly independent decision to WANT to have sex?" and "uhh, since when was remembering to practice safe sex the exclusive responsibility of the lady, here?". And of course, everyone knows dudes and their bodily fluids don't contribute a thing to babymaking. No. Immaculate conceptions all around, thanks very much.
The MARRIAGE = DUMB MAN bit isn't any better either. It's 2012. Are we still going with the whole idea of men are commitment phobic caveman slobs who will avoid being tied down for as long as possible? Stereotypes don't help ANYONE, guys.






Credit goes to Jennifer for calling bullshit on this one a few weeks ago. In her own words :

"The chances of a smart girl going out with an asshole is very slim. Hence, smart. I blame movies for that stereotype. '95%' is bullshit. So degrading la this formula. And as a general, all girls who're smart and nice are ugly? Or hot and nice are stupid? Or smart and hot are mean? Assholes should stop making up facts like these just because they can't get any. Utter nonsense."


The prevailing nonsense that guys make better friends than girls has been infuriating me for years already, and this post was the last straw. Here's what I had to say about it when I first saw it :

"This photo pissed me off, so I had to say something about it. I've been seeing this sort of thing waaaay too many times on my newsfeed. No. Just NO. PEOPLE can be fake. PEOPLE can be petty, competitive, jealous and prone to gossip. Starting "useless drama with you" is not a trait that is exclusive to girls. "Having fun" is not something only guys are capable of doing.
See, being male does not automatically make guys ideal friendship material. And ladies, having a female friend does not mean she is going to, at some point, attempt to steal your man or bitch about you when your back is turned. If you can't get along with a particular girl, have you considered that maybe, just maybe, you can't get along as individuals? Being a guy or a girl has nothing to do with it. The kind of friend you are depends on the kind of person you are. Whether or not you have a vagina is irrelevant".


Now, I can imagine what sort of reaction this may get.
1. That I have no sense of humour.
2. That these are just jokes, and a little bit of fun, and not meant to be taken seriously.
3. That I have no sense of humour. And I'm bitter. And probably a virgin. I am a humourless bitter virgin.

To which I say;
1. I urge you to read the rest of my blog, for you will see that I have a spectacular sense of humour.

2. The very fact that these things are treated as jokes is infuriating to me. The more you dismiss shit like this as irrelevant to the way people feel, think about, and relate to men and women in the real world (and it is SO relevant, I say to thee) the easier it becomes to throw around generalized, shallow, stereotyped and often plain offensive statements disguised as jokes or "fun" [bitch, go make me a sandwich, etc], that don't do anyone any favours.  And I am not laughing at any of this. Not even a bit. And I have not even talked about the -mostly female - population of my Facebook feed that take images like this SERIOUSLY.

I already have a folder of similar images and posts saved up, which is actually somewhat depressing, but I'll be here to call out all the bullshit so you won't have to.

The Art of Deutsching

I took my German Level I final this morning, and despite the handful of grammar questions I may or may not have gotten completely wrong, and the fact that I only got one hour of sleep after trying to memorize verb conjugations at the last minute, I left the exam hall feeling - dare I say - just a tiny bit triumphant. Fourteen weeks ago, my knowledge of the German language was essentially limited to football terms and the Der Guten Tag Hop Clop song from The Producers. This morning, I read and understood entire paragraphs of grammatically perfect German. PARAGRAPHS.

I speak three languages already, but I never had to learn them according to a structured curriculum, or from a textbook - I suppose I simply absorbed everything, from daily conversations to cartoons and books, to the point where I was already more than fairly fluent by the time I set foot in kindergarten. And that is essentially the case for most Malaysian kids - the majority of us speak multiple languages, and we learned them all in the most informal of ways, in early childhood. Which is why sitting down in German class at 8am and attempting to differentiate between the nominative and the accusative cases was such a tremendous pain in the ass. I had never cared about grammar and rules before. And the language itself did not help you out much - three different genders for nouns, verbs that could break in half and wander off to separate ends of a sentence, and more structural rules than you can shake a bratwurst at.

No Germany, fuck you.

But the rewards that came with doggedly learning up charts, and listing conjugations until your brain is reciting habe-hast-haben-hat-haben-habt-haben on zombie autopilot? Worth it. When you finally understand what the overly-chirpy people on the lesson CD-ROMs are talking about. For every grammatically perfect sentence you write out. For every set of verb conjugations you can rattle off without, for once, glancing at your notes. Re-watching X-Men : First Class and realizing that you now pretty much understand everything Kevin Bacon and Baby Magneto were saying in the opening concentration camp scenes.Learning a new language has been tremendously satisfying, and the most exciting part is that there is still so much left to learn.

The downside to spending so much time on grammar is that we kind of lost out on the vocabulary portion. It was only when conversations like this started happening;

roommate : Oh you're learning a language! That's so cool! So what's cat in German?
me            : ....I may have to look that up. Thank you for your enthusiasm.

;that we realized how many more words we still have to learn. I'm all for it though ; I've got a dictionary, and audio lessons on my laptop, and holidays coming up. It's the perfect opportunity to improve on my elementary German and become one step closer to seducing Mats Hummels. Because that was the plan all along, you know.

Graffiti has never before been so utterly relevant to my life and its priorities.

Now, I leave you with my favourite German word of forever.

BAP's Favourite German Word of Forever

Der kugelschreiber.




There's nothing inherently special about the word. It's just incredibly hilarious when you yell it at people. No really, try.

KUGELSCHREIBER!


Now who wants to sign up for Beginner's Spanish with me next year?