Daniel O'Brien's Blog, page 28

I dunno if you ever felt awkward in high school or college or anything but just know that now, in your mid twenties, you are killing it. You're smart and funny and cute and original and make me wish I lived in New York so that we could run into each other

Hi thank you that is very kind of you to say! I know it’s not like, edgy comedy anymore to talk about how you feel bad about yourself. The hip thing now is to be incredibly cocky because we live in a culture that wants you to hate yourself so the only true act of rebellion is to shout about how you are the hottest thing on two legs and constantly wear crop tops. BUT all I can do is stand in my truth (a dude on Tinder messaged me this week “Good morning, Hallie! Are you living your truth today?” and I was like YEP and then immediately unmatched him) SO here are some true thoughts that your message made me think:

Keep reading

I dunno if you ever felt awkward in high school or college or anything but just know that now, in your mid twenties, you are killing it. You're smart and funny and cute and original and make me wish I lived in New York so that we could run into each other

Hi thank you that is very kind of you to say! I know it’s not like, edgy comedy anymore to talk about how you feel bad about yourself. The hip thing now is to be incredibly cocky because we live in a culture that wants you to hate yourself so the only true act of rebellion is to shout about how you are the hottest thing on two legs and constantly wear crop tops. BUT all I can do is stand in my truth (a dude on Tinder messaged me this week “Good morning, Hallie! Are you living your truth today?” and I was like YEP and then immediately unmatched him) SO here are some true thoughts that your message made me think:

Keep reading

I dunno if you ever felt awkward in high school or college or anything but just know that now, in your mid twenties, you are killing it. You're smart and funny and cute and original and make me wish I lived in New York so that we could run into each other

Hi thank you that is very kind of you to say! I know it’s not like, edgy comedy anymore to talk about how you feel bad about yourself. The hip thing now is to be incredibly cocky because we live in a culture that wants you to hate yourself so the only true act of rebellion is to shout about how you are the hottest thing on two legs and constantly wear crop tops. BUT all I can do is stand in my truth (a dude on Tinder messaged me this week “Good morning, Hallie! Are you living your truth today?” and I was like YEP and then immediately unmatched him) SO here are some true thoughts that your message made me think:

Keep reading

I dunno if you ever felt awkward in high school or college or anything but just know that now, in your mid twenties, you are killing it. You're smart and funny and cute and original and make me wish I lived in New York so that we could run into each other

Hi thank you that is very kind of you to say! I know it’s not like, edgy comedy anymore to talk about how you feel bad about yourself. The hip thing now is to be incredibly cocky because we live in a culture that wants you to hate yourself so the only true act of rebellion is to shout about how you are the hottest thing on two legs and constantly wear crop tops. BUT all I can do is stand in my truth (a dude on Tinder messaged me this week “Good morning, Hallie! Are you living your truth today?” and I was like YEP and then immediately unmatched him) SO here are some true thoughts that your message made me think:

Keep reading

I dunno if you ever felt awkward in high school or college or anything but just know that now, in your mid twenties, you are killing it. You're smart and funny and cute and original and make me wish I lived in New York so that we could run into each other

Hi thank you that is very kind of you to say! I know it’s not like, edgy comedy anymore to talk about how you feel bad about yourself. The hip thing now is to be incredibly cocky because we live in a culture that wants you to hate yourself so the only true act of rebellion is to shout about how you are the hottest thing on two legs and constantly wear crop tops. BUT all I can do is stand in my truth (a dude on Tinder messaged me this week “Good morning, Hallie! Are you living your truth today?” and I was like YEP and then immediately unmatched him) SO here are some true thoughts that your message made me think:

Keep reading

Alex Schmidt brought this sports shoe ad featuring Marvin the...

Alex Schmidt brought this sports shoe ad featuring Marvin the Martian and Blakegriffin the Human and I had a lot to say about it vis a vis its relationship to the larger Looney Tune/Basketball canon.

Photo

Have you really not read Harry Potter? Or is that just your After Hours character?

I haven’t read a single Harry Potter book, though I make sure AH Daniel is definitely slightly more ignorant than I actually am. Like, I can pretty easily explain to you the basic plot of Harry Potter because I’m a human being with functioning ears and eyes and have been alive in the world for the last few decades. It’s hard not to be at least tangentially infected with Harry Potter, but it’s more fun for the show (and podcasts) if I’m guy who doesn’t know/like/care about Harry Potter.

I have seen The Half-Blood Prince. I don’t know why, that was just the only Harry Potter movie I saw. Eh.

cracked:LOS ANGELES: we’re bringing The Cracked Podcast to UCB...

cracked:

LOS ANGELES: we’re bringing The Cracked Podcast to UCB Sunset​ next Wednesday! Tickets are just five bucks and will go fast, get one at this link before it’s too late.

For the second time in a row, I learned that I’m a part of the live Cracked podcast by following the Cracked Tumblr. I’m positive at some point I said “Yes, sign me up, I’ll do it” and then immediately forgot. This has been a very handy reminder.

But, you know, GO! We sold out pretty early last time, so get your tickets as soon as you can. It’ll be fun and funny and we can say “HI” after.

Hey DOB, huge fan here. As my favorite source of Presidential opinions, how do you feel about Trump being first in the republican rankings right now? What do you think that says about our country, because I can't think of anything positive about the situat

Thanks for the kind words and a fine question.

[NOTE: There is a huge chance that Trump doesn’t actually intend to run for president and is only posturing for one of two reasons: 1) To curry favor in the republican party by creating an out-of-touch and too-far-right bigot that OTHER candidates can stand against to seem MODERATE, MODERN and LEVEL-HEADED by comparison, thus sneaking the GOP into the present. 2) Free media coverage for several months. 

For the purposes of this particular Tumblr ask, I’m going to ignore this and pretend that Trump is ACTUALLY running for president in earnest. {Even though I am legit certain that he isn’t.}]

I see where you’re coming from. It’s easy to read a bunch of headlines saying that Trump is leading in polls and feel just devastated, or confused, or bummed about the state of our country, but you can put away those concerns, because Trump’s apparent surge in popularity isn’t a symptom of our country falling into a giant pit of stupid, it’s more a symptom of “the way the media works.” If you have a minute, I’d love to talk to you about polls. 

A fine thing to do is always always always ask “where are these polls coming from?” The news will tell you that Trump is gaining momentum in “the polls,” but “the polls” could mean whatever the media wants it to mean. For example, Trump is leading the polls among people who are, historically, unlikely to vote; the kind of people who will, in a poll, say that they are more likely to vote for Trump, are the kind of people who are making their decisions because of Trump’s name recognition, or because they want to be ironic or snarky. The Republican base, meanwhile– the group that any potential republican candidate NEEDS to even come close to winning an election– does not support Trump.

For whatever the polls say, Trump doesn’t have a strong base among tea-partiers, or the religious right, or– and this is important which is why I’m saying it again– any other single existing Republican base. In a poll of people who don’t pay attention to politics and don’t vote, Trump is in the lead, but in a poll of voting republicans, Jeb Bush is, hands down. One of those groups might actually make a president, but one of those groups makes a more exciting story, so guess which one the media will cover?

If you want a soundbite to ease your worried mind, “Trump is trending well amongst misinformed people who will likely not vote in the next election.” 

It leads to polls that seem contradictory; Trump is the leading candidate amongst “people who take polls,” but in a separate study focusing on who would win in an actual presidential election, Trump falls short. This is because Trump’s poll victories are based on name recognition and an overabundance of media coverage that makes it SEEM like he’s on fire right now. At the end of the day, there is not a large enough group of people not just in the Republican party but in America that would support Donald Trump. There just isn’t. Here is a handy little chart that explains things. Trump has a lot of media coverage, and Trump has a whole lot of people googling “Trump + President,” but there are no reasonable polls suggesting that he will actually win his party’s nomination.

Trump is a non-issue. Once you understand that, the question becomes “Then why are we being fed this false story that makes it seem like Trump could actually be president one day?” Great question! It leads us to the OTHER thing you need to remember about polls, politics and the media. “Election Season” is Black Friday to a lot of news outlets. Without question, more people pay more attention to more news outlets during an election than at any other time in any other year. Remember that CNN and FoxNews and all of the other news outlets aren’t just independent satellites reporting the news out of the kindness of their hearts, they’re owned by corporations and they are broadcast on television, which means they live and die by ratings (because having a lot of viewers means you can charge more for commercials, which means you can make more money, and ta-da, that’s how the world goes). This means that it is more beneficial to a news outlet to make an election seem INTERESTING than it is to report it authentically. No one will watch a 24 Hour News Channel covering a landslide election, but they WILL watch a 24 Hours News Channel covering a horse race. If you turned on your TV and your news anchor of choice said “Donald Trump claims he’s running for president but has absolutely no chance so ignore everything he says for the next several months,” would you keep watching? Of course you wouldn’t. But if your news anchor said “Donald Trump is GAINING IN THE POLLS and TELLING IT LIKE IT IS,” you’d keep watching because suddenly it’s a soap opera. Even if you HATED Trump, you’d watch out of that perverse impulse that makes us watch things we hate. Hell, it’s got you riled up enough that you sent me a message asking about Trump’s chances. You’re invested because the media wants you to be.

SO, it behooves CNN and Fox and HuffPo and everyone else who relies on ratings (or traffic) to make it seem like every election is a horse race that will go down to a photo finish. If CNN came out and said “Trump is running but statistically has no chance of winning his party’s nomination let alone the presidency and, in fact, [X candidate] is the only candidate who COULD conceivably win, unless some huge scandal happens,” well, then, no one would have any incentive to keep watching election coverage, right? So these networks need to convince you that every single election is a slobberknocker, an all-out brawl against two worthy competitors. That is the narrative that will always make the most sense for these companies. Even if it isn’t true, it’s smarter for the networks to behave as if the presidency could swing either way, any minute.

So what YOU can do, is find out where the polls are coming from, whose taking the polls, and who benefits the most from the polls singing a particular song.  Rarely do the polls exist to inform the voting public, which means they exist to serve some OTHER purpose. And if the polls aren’t helping you become a more informed voter, a) why would you listen to them and b) whose narrative ARE they serving?