The World has Gotten a Little Weird

I wanted to post multiple times this past week – unfortunately circumstances kept interfering. Many trips upriver were required and the weather hasn’t made that easy.

On top of that I have an INSANE puppy. A man on the Island has a sibling of mine and apparently she is the same. We’re going to have to lock them into a basketball court and hope they wear each other out. Or maybe I could find him a job.

It takes a long time for Fish to wind down enough that I can go to bed at night – this means I doze in the chair waiting for him to discover sanity. The TV is typically on while I do this, usually tuned to YouTube. Now, if you don’t take control, this particular area of the interwebs will decide on its own what you should be watching. I have learned many things.

For some reason YouTube thinks I should watch the gossip channels (they “spill the T”) and the drama which erupts in the makeup/influencer/mlm/ etc., subcultures is fascinating but very high school. What is not high school is the amount of money these young people make every time they post a monetized video. There are a lot of young millionaires on YouTube. Good for them.

One major source of recent drama (because of course I’ve tried to keep up with it, I’m hooked now) is taking place in the Mukbang arena. Imagine somebody not eating for a couple of days and then consuming at least 4,000 calories while livestreaming themselves stuffing their face loudly. If you’ve ever watched a baby eat applesauce with its hands – that’s Mukbang. Gross.

It originated in Korea but has taken off in other parts of the world, particularly the US. You watch for free but, because some of these streamers have millions of viewers, they get paid by advertisers. A lot. One guy (at the center of a recent drama) has over 2,000,000 subscribers and can make well over $100,000 per video. For eating like a pig and talking to whoever decides to watch. It’s a whole new world out there and it’s weird.

I got Fish a big stuffed dinosaur/unicorn at Christmas. It’s twice the size he is. I haven’t named it because he/she/it hasn’t indicated a gender and I don’t want to offend them. Also I can’t think of anything appropriate.

When I told him to get a job Fish indicated that he and his friend could make money on Youtube. I have my doubts. In any case, they’d be more suited to a porn channel for interspecies drama. I may not know its gender, but the cats and I can testify he/she/it is no longer a virgin. Maybe there’s a YouTube genre for that.