Source: Screenshot via ABC News
Posted on 11/11/2021 4:01:15 AM PST by Kaslin
Source: Screenshot via ABC News
A year ago or so, even if you wanted to, you couldn’t escape something called “The Tiger King.” Remember that? The weird cast of characters obsessed with tigers and other big cats interwoven with disappearances, murder, and all other manner of insanity. It was all the rage, people loved the whole thing, going so far as to push for a pardon for the star, who’s in prison for trying to hire someone to kill his rival. Now, not that long after, Tiger King is nearly forgotten. While crazes quickly fade, they’re always replaced. The current craze iteration is something called “Squid Game.”
Squid Game is a Netflix show that, if you’ve been on social media at all in the last couple of weeks, you’ve been unable to escape. You may not have watched it, but you almost couldn’t avoid hearing about it.
I had no idea what it was, other than South Korean. Eventually, I watched the trailer and thought it could be interesting. But I was in no hurry to watch the show. A few weeks later, I did. (I won’t ruin it here, I’ll just say it’s pretty good, provided you don’t mind subtitles or 70s kung-fu movie level English dubbing.)
One of the beauties of streaming services is their existence removes any sense of urgency from watching a TV show. Gone is the concept of “water cooler moments,” the idea that there was something so amazing, shocking, or hilarious that occurred on a TV show that everyone at work the next morning would be talking about it.
COVID may have killed the water cooler, but streaming killed the concept.
The Tiger King and Squid Game spikes in social media mentions are as close as we’re likely to come to a water cooler moment for at least a while. On demand viewing is a great innovation, but it did remove a collective bond in our culture. I know lots of people who love the show Ted Lasso, myself included. It’s a great show. But I only went through experiencing it for the first time with my wife. It was just there, able to be watched at any point. There was no discussion with friends after each episode, every episode of season 1 was devoured in one lazy Saturday.
That was it. I told people about it afterwards, turned as many people as I could onto it (yeah, it’s that good). But there was no discussion after each episode because everyone consumed episodes at their convenience and own pace.
That’s a good thing for individuals, probably less so for our society. Collective moments bring us together, wipe away our differences and highlight our commonalities. We have one political party determined to rip people apart, to focus almost exclusively on differences in order to manipulate them; to obsess on things like skin color rather than our similarities. Collective moments undo some of that damage, and Democrats can’t have that.
Think about an amazing moment we should all be happy we were alive to witness: the great William Shatner, Captain James T. Kirk himself, going into space. Unless you are the permanently bitter George Takei, who could watch that whole episode unfold and not be in awe of it all? What a time to be alive!
What did we get from the left? So-called “think pieces” and angry monologues about how some rich with guy, Jeff Bezos, spent a fortune on a vanity project to send another rich white guy into space, blah, blah, blah. How do you look at Captain Kirk going to space, and the unbridled joy of Shatner speaking upon his return, with anything other than joy? I almost feel sorry for anyone who did, but only almost because they did it to themselves.
I don’t have any problem with some miserable leftists being miserable, often times I laugh at it because they did it to themselves. The problem is they insist on disheartening everyone else too. They want to drive people apart while ensuring the only collective experience we have is misery.
Perhaps it’s a leap from a couple of TV shows to the destruction of the country, but everything that brings about commonalities is important. We are a nation of individuals, it’s our identity. But we have a lot in common. That one political party views the obstruction of similarities, even if only in part, should disturb everyone.
End of common experiences?
Wasn’t having “common experiences” the point of “we’re all in this togther”?
and
“Everybody mask up!”
and
“roll up your sleves??
“It takes a village.”
Silly article, I thought this would be about Americans and liberals trying to at least live together in one country.
I have seen this coming for a long time.
Common experiences, a glue that keeps a society intact, have been removed.
Technology is partly to blame. Everything from people listening to the same music on the same radio stations or watching the same silly things on television, or...getting the same version of news from the same people on the same channels is gone.
For example, there were songs that people could sing together. Everyone knew the songs, and everyone knew the words.
I read a book recently "Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korea 1950" and in the book, the author described the scene as their transport ship left San Francisco in those early, desperate days of the Korean War when the North Koreans had invaded the south and were running amok, WWII Marine Reservists from all over the country were being recalled and frantically thrown together, loaded on rusting troop transports, and sent across the Pacific to save what they could.
The ship pulled out at night, after dark. In those days, families and friends could go right down on the dock next to the ship as she got underway to wave tearful goodbyes to those Marines lining the rails. It was dark, and the lights of the city and habitations surrounding the pier were dotted with the lights of houses and buildings, and the sky above was filled with stars.
As the ship cast off with the men going to war, many of them to never return, the crowd of people on the pier, joined in unison with the Marines on the ship tearfully in singing a popular song of the time "Goodnight Irene":
Goodnight Irene
Written by Leadbelly, modified, performed and popularized by The Weavers
LINK: "Goodnight Irene" as performed by The Weavers
Irene, goodnight
Irene, goodnight
Goodnight, Irene
Goodnight, Irene
I'll see you in my dreams
Last Saturday night I got married
Me and my wife settle down
Now me and my wife are parted
I'm gonna take another stroll downtown
Irene, goodnight
Irene, goodnight
Goodnight, Irene
Goodnight, Irene
I'll see you in my dreams
Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in town
Sometimes I take a great notion
To jump in the river and drown
Irene, goodnight
Irene, goodnight
Goodnight, Irene
Goodnight, Irene
I'll see you in my dreams
Stop your rambling
Stop your gambling
Stop your staying out so late at night
Go home to your wife and family
Stay there by the fireside bright
Irene, goodnight
Irene, goodnight
Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene
I'll see you in my dreams
Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene
I'll see you in my dreams
I went to the effort to have the lyrics and music available, because I feel sure there are many people who will pooh-pooh the opinion I express here as just that: pure dog-eared sentiment.
But if one takes the time to read the lyrics, listen to the tune, and imagine this troop transport full of fated men going off to war, with the canopy of stars above, a mantle of light pinpoints on the hilly shore, all reflected in a dead calm sea with that song being sung in emotional tear-filled unison by the people of the day who all knew the popular song...well, none of them apparently forgot that for the rest of their lives, some being shorter than others on the shores of the Chosin Reservoir in Korea.
I wish I had the book in front of me so that I could do the author justice, I can only paraphrase the words and sentiments written in the book. When I read that, my own eyes, nearly fifty years after the event described for which I was not even born at the time, filled with tears and I felt the raw emotion in my heart. Imagine the superglue that must have been to tie all those people together. That is a glue, a societal glue, the kind of which we will never see again in this country due to a variety of factors. And this is just a single example. There are thousands of others, demonstrating things which no longer unify us as people.
The point of all this is that the lack of this glue means our commonality with those who are ostensibly our countrymen no longer exists. We are separate people, with separate experiences, and separate lives.
As I said above, technology is partly to blame, but ideology has had a powerful, intentional, and malignant hand in all of this.
There was a time when at least sporting events might bring people together, but that has been destroyed by the Left. It has been politicized to the point many of us have to make choices, principles or sports. With the primarily (though apparently, not universally) Leftist cudgel of COVID mandates and passports, we are being driven even further into estrangement from our fellow humans. As if that were not enough, we have had masks imposed on us to more deeply isolate us not only from our fellow citizens, but from our fellow humans.
This trend is an evil cancer, and I see it as being driven primarily by the Left, who seem intent on isolating people, Balkanizing them, pitting them against each other. I think it is a grave mistake, and we all make it, to think this is an accident or coincidence.
Russia Gate was a common US experience. Impeaching a president....twice over very questionable evidence.
The psychological damage done when the casuals figure out it was all a World Wide Wrestling Federation sized put on to take down a political party might have impact, or 85% of the viewers dont remember what happened last week and last season. But then again am going to go count my retirement in Bennie babies, Pet Rocks, Jordash Jeans, 2600 games, Betamax and cabbage patch kids.
And don’t get me wrong-I am against the concept of everyone getting their news from the same source by the same people-I believe that is one of the main reasons we are where we are.
Too many of us, for good portions of our lives, never dreamed we would be openly lied to by those we thought were tasked with delivering us information.
We see too late, that much of it was quite different from “information”, being closer to manipulation or indoctrination.
‘Wasn’t having “common experiences” the point of “we’re all in this togther”?’
that particular phrase, which will live in my private hall of shame forever, was devised by the preening nags in the medical community, who then instructed the pragmatic politicos, with their moistened index fingers awaiting orders, to become purveyors of fear for fear’s sake...it was the very essence of the turpitude of infantilization, replete with it’s own attendant list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ that we used to see written on the blackboard in the second grade...
the last two years should serve as a lesson for future generations of why we shouldn’t treat adults like children, but it won’t; we have always done so, if one cares to look at history closely (the 18th amendment, anyone...?) and with the heightened influence of females in the body politic, we shall continue to do so...
We could start having common experiences by having a strong border and actually defining ourselves as one great melting pot that is Americans. Then by teaching our kids about why this is a unique and great country, a place to be proud of. By building a culture that raises up contributing to society, getting an education, a good work ethic, the nuclear family, law and order... and putting God first above all.
The author is right about shared experiences, it’s a symptom of a something sickening our great country.
Anyone else remember from the 1970s the common experience of the new Saturday morning cartoon line up? Pretty much all kids in America were watching one of 3 channels every Saturday morning.
‘...Goodnight, Irene...’
this brings back memories of one of the most influential novels I have ever read, Ken Kesey’s ‘Sometimes a Great Notion’...yeah, Kesey may have been a froot loop, but while committed to getting thoughts and themes on paper, he was brilliant, Faulkner minus the obsession with geneaologies...
‘and putting God first above all.’
there have been some odd four thousand deities devised by humans throughout history, and the putting of one first over another has caused innumerable woes and irreparable social clefts...
when we are advised to avoid talking about religions to strangers, one can hardly take that wise counsel as a unifying moment...
Thank you for that reference...I have never read it. I have come to depend on FReepers to help me expand my horizons in this respect, and have not been disappointed. Thank you...
“Common experience “.
One word - football.
And we will all be shivering in the cold this winter because Brandon cut off the gas.
The all-powerful Democrat/Communist Party isn’t interested in a “village”; they prefer “the collective”.
I must live under a rock. And I have to say I like it.
While I heard folks talk about TK once in a while, I never felt compelled in the least to join in.
Squid Game? Never heard of it.
Want to stream the best kept secret out there? The app is free!
It’s The Chosen Give it 3 episodes and you will be hooked. Use the captioning..the dialogue can be hard to follow at times.
#ComeAndSee
I knew I wasn’t cut out for the corporate world when I quickly got tired of the banal sh!t that passed for “water cooler conversation” in my office.
In a just world you’d be the writer of the title piece, and Mr. Hunter’s efforts would be post #5. I read his tepid composition twice and still had trouble finding the protein among the carbs he stuffed into it.
I have to be frank-I didn’t read the whole thing-but I felt that I knew exactly what he was trying to say...
Thanks for that compliment, FRiend...
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