Welcome to lifejak

This is what happens when a scene becomes bigger and women start getting involved..

It's like being in a band. You're seventeen/eighteen/nineteen and you start a band. There are three or four of you. You're all mates and you're into the same music. You have your little in-jokes. Everything is about the music, and you all share the same dream. You start rehearsing, you write a few songs. You maybe get a few gigs. Everything's going great

..then one of the band members gets a girlfriend.

Let's say it's the lead singer, and the girl is "Chloe". Suddenly she's hanging around all the time and giving her opinions. Then, one day, you come into rehearsal and the singer says, "We've got a new band logo, we're gonna put it on all our fliers." And ..or course, you can't say anything, as the logo was designed by Chloe. She just took it upon herself to make one. You're then in the position where you either just accept this, and allow the aesthetic of the band to be ruined. Or, you say something, cause a big drama, and look like a bad guy. As Chloe was "just trying to help." Plus, "She's spent all this time making it, and it looks great!" The singer blinded by his infatuation, even though, deep down, like everyone else, he knows it's just not that good, and that if anyone else had made it he'd be much less enthusiastic.

Anyway, this all has that vibe.

And before any woman reading this gets completely irked off, I'm not saying women can't be in bands, or can never be part of the gang. If you're in a band and you need a drummer, and someone says, "Michelle's a drummer, she's looking for a band," that's different. In that situation Michelle is playing drums because she wants to, and she's now in the band because you need a drummer. It's not a boy/girl thing, and Michelle is being judged by the same criteria any other drummer would be judged by - i.e. is the music good, is the vibe there.

It's similar with memes. Obviously, everyone - male and female - is free to draw memes and upload them online. The problem here is that women are getting a free pass, because men are attracted to them. So we have a situation where more women are entering the space, plus more people in the space are getting wives and girlfriends. So, like the singer, they're allowing their boy/girl tendencies to skew their judgement. It's understandable, but it's not aesthetic, and someone needs to say it 😠

Normie Swarm

It's also got to be said that the meme popularity is partly a consequence of more normal people entering the space. There's nothing wrong with being normal, most people are normal, but if you like things to be a bit more interesting it's not so good. As everything ends up a bit Facebook or Saturday Night TV.

Earlier memes were good because they were insightful. Like the soyjak meme was good because it distilled down to a meme a type of person we were all familiar with, but didn't have a name or clear archetype for.

For instance, I remember the first time I saw the meme. It wasn't even the actual soyjak, it was just an image where someone had cut and paste together lots of people making that face.

My natural reaction was, "Ha, that's true, those people do actually make that face."

I'd seen people making that face before, but had never actually thought about it. It was only when I saw the meme - that is, when someone else pointed it out to me - that I consciously noticed it. And this is the thing. It's easy in hindsight to see these things, but it takes a bit of insight to be the first person to see it. To be the first one to notice the pattern and then point it out to other people, in a way that's easily communicated.

It's like stand-up comedy. A good comedian makes an observation about life, articulates it, then we, the audience, get the, "Haha, yeah, that's happened to me too." It's like a little lightbulb is turned on in your head, where suddenly something becomes much clearer. Thanks to the comedian's craft and insightfulness. Lesser comedians tend to be derivative though. Repeating familiar, well-trodden observations or formulas. So there's less originality and true insight.

Like when Peter Kay originally became massive. "GARLIC BREAD! ..Garlic? ..Bread?!" It was funny because he was original and he had his own style. He was the first person to do that sort of stuff in that sort of way. So we'd never seen it before. However, five or six years down the line, when you then get second tier, copycat versions of Peter Kay, doing that same sort of stuff if just gets tired.

It's the sort of, "Remember this from your childhood..", or, "My family member does this.." stuff you see getting shared on Facebook every day.

These memes, likewise, are just, "My wife says this..", only with a wojak in the picture.

Again, there's nothing wrong with this. Most people like familiar things. We can't all be on the cutting edge of the zeitgeist 24/7  ..and yes, I'm definitely being a bit of a dick pointing all this out. If people are enjoying it I shouldn't be whinging about it. No one's forcing me to join in. Plus, everything runs its course. The era of wojaks was never going to last forever.

I guess it has to go down as a win too really. Didn't we want the normal people coming round to our way of thinking? Wasn't that the hope?

I just wish it was on Facebook and not on my Twitter feed.

I'm Expanding My Water Portfolio

My anger about the potential fluoridation of our water has subsided somewhat. (That's not to say I'm now content to lie down and accept it. It will remain a key pivot going forward.)

Most of my annoyance stemmed from the fact itself: that the government have the nerve (and think they have the right) to medicate me against my wishes. This was amplified by the wider observation that so few other people seem to care. The post-Covid barnyard effect everywhere to be seen. Demoralised and confused people. Heads in the sand. "La la la, if I pretend this doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter" attitude. It's not that they are pro-fluoridation; that I'm right and they're wrong. It's that they don't have an opinion. They literally do not care what comes through their taps every day and into their bodies. Like a dog at its bowl, oblivious to how the water got there.

Obviously, I'm being very harsh here. Clearly my anger hasn't completely gone :)

Still, noting this though, I've moved on to doing what I do best - looking out for number one. My attitude now being, "Okay, I'm forced to live in this barnyard nation, how do I minimise the impact on myself?".

Water Diversification

My thinking is just to diversify things more. I already do this to some extent anyway. I drink bottled water at work and tap water at home. My rationale being that they'll somehow offset each other. The plastics in bottles can't be good, but at the same time how much faith can you have in tap water. So instead of going all-in on one option - the fear being that you'll pick the worst of the two - I mix it up. Hedge my bets. I think all things in moderation is probably a good general rule. I'm sure the body can cope with some degree of impurities and toxins. You just don't want to overdose.

Obviously (at least in my opinion), the addition of fluoride makes tap water less attractive ..and less trustworthy. So if we do get fluoridated I won't completely stop drinking it, but I will drink less. That means more of the portfolio will need to be dedicated to other sources. The easy thing is just to drink more bottled water, and to start buying bottled water in glass bottles too.

In fact, one of the things that currently limits the amount of bottled water I drink is my guilt about the impact it has on the environment (see, it's not all about looking out for number one!). Buying yet another bottle of Evian feels a little indulgent when I can just turn on a tap and fill a cup or water bottle. If fluoridation comes the guilt goes though. So it'll move from luxury to everyday essential.

I've also being looking online at water filters. That too is a potential option. Instinctively it doesn't appeal to me. Partly because of the hassle. It's one thing going to the effort to do something when the novelty is there, but once that wears off you'll soon get lazy. Good lifestyle habits should be as easy and as seamless as possible I think. Also, though filters undoubtedly remove stuff from water, you wonder what's added. So I definitely wouldn't want to go all-in and start getting 100% of my drinking water that way.

Perhaps it could be 10% of the portfolio.

Finally, I've even be watching a few YouTube videos from people who drink rainwater. I think it's unlikely I'll be drinking rainwater anytime soon, but it's always worth thinking outside the box. After all, it does fall freely from the sky. So in a world where money becomes tight, or other options are restricted, it would at least be an alternative.

Perhaps 2% of the portfolio ..growing to 50% when society eventually collapses.