Before I continue this post, watch the below video of a person breaking a mochi mallet either with or without sound. It’s 26s. Shouldn’t take too long.
THEN, spend a few seconds to a minute just thinking your thoughts about what your impressions about is happening and the aftermath. It seems silly, I know, but I have a point to make with this.
Note this is the first time I have played with embedding a video directly. If that embed doesn’t work above, hopefully the link above it will work. I do not know the source of it since all attribution was stripped when it was posted, but here’s hoping.
Reddit Reacts to Rice Pounding Mishap
When you have your own impressions, go and read the reddit thread about this “Tourist Broke Mallet While Trying to Pound Rice Dough“. Think about how much the general flavor matches what you did or didn’t feel.
A few sample screenshots with names redacted is included below. I’ll pull a few quotes for those that don’t want to click on the thread and can’t read or see graphics but I will not copy/transcribe everything. Keep in mind that it is a live thread so this means it could be different a little or a lot by the time you click on it. Or gone.
- “It’s the smiling afterwards that pisses me off” [this was given 20 awards]
- “I’m British but live in SE Asia now and this reminds me of young single western backpacker women who think the entire region just exists to serve their ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ journey of self discovery. I once saw a woman destroy a small independent travel shop window display after she dropped her $1 chap stick down the back of her seat and took the shop apart trying to find it.” [1 award]
- “While I can’t say they are not assholes, smiling and laughing is a natural reaction to shame and danger. There was a great lecture of a local psychologist that got stuck in a boat with a local after a tsunami in Thailand 20-ish years ago. That was the scariest and funniest time of his life simultaniously [sic] because humor thrives in the area of discomfort. The thing in this video that makes me bring this up is the fact that the local owning the rice pounding thing appear to also be happy and could have been the one making the tourists loosen up and laugh it off. I don’t think people should be to quick to judge…[cut early for space]” [this one got 6 awards]
- “Not one ‘I’m sorry’.” [4 awards]
- “Take one look at this dude, why would you expect him to do anything athletic?” [4 awards]
I won’t type them all out but several “That’s a guy?” and “That’s a they/them” and such.
- [in response to this being the sort of person picked last for gym] “Picked? No no. This is the one that doesn’t get picked at all, and by default goes to the team that has a space remaining – even then, that team is disappointed to have them. They’d rather just be one man short rather than have this person that lowers any sized groups average level of athleticism by 75%.” [1 award]
- “You break you buy!” [1 award]
- Redditor posting “Worse that Epstein!?” graphic to mock the other comments.
- “That old man was PISSED!”
- “The rage of his ancestors was in his eyes”
- “Does he not seem to be smiling when he’s talking to the other guy? Maybe a bit aghast at the awful form but it seems like he might not be as mad as everyone thinks. I think that everyone is projecting their rage at the embarrassed tourist not having the appropriate reaction onto the older guy.”
- “Are 95% idiots or bots in the comments. In a tourist place a tourist had a tourist activity and an accident, which most likely happens from time to time, happend. [sic] Do you all really think some tourist came up to an old guy pounding rice dough, stole his mallet and broke it?” [1 award]
- Not pictured, but in response to that to the response about the old man laughing underneath: “Thanks, I didn’t realize he was laughing. At first glance I thought he was just standing there in disbelief and despair. It does look like he’s laughing and he’s okay with the situation which makes the tourists behavior more acceptable.”
- “Why is everyone acting like the old guy isn’t smiling and everyone around them isn’t laughing? It’s a tourist spot with a replaceable piece of wood, not ‘😲 super sugoi ancient Japanese ritualistic temple like in my animes! How dare evil invader they/them ruin senpais 300 year old mallet😡’ it’s like the 30 year old male nerd version of a pick me girl”
Doug Reacts to Reddit Reacts…
To ape the meme: First off, what the fuck?
We have sexism, racism, transphobia, and a stack of what could at best be called “self-hating redditor behavior.” The glorious rendition of the “Expat hates tourists” genre. Even allowing that (a) it is reddit where people get votes largely by going with the flow and will absolutely dogpile a pile of trash thinking it is a dead horse [e.g., the pre-release discourse about Odyssey], (b) some redditors watch videos without sound so might have missed some of the aspects, and (c) there are going to be some bots there: it is one of the strangest reactions I have seen in a year where just about every online reaction seems so very strange.
Even with (d) the fact that a fair number of people were pointing out the flaws in the discourse [usually with much fewer upvotes/awards and some downvotes].
I’ve said many variations of this, but reading online discourse this past year or so has started to make me feel like I have some form of the condition formally known as Asperger Syndrome. Or worse, that my ability to process reality on a fundamental level is so flawed that these extreme, deep-seated-well-of-anger type responses are justified but I cannot see it because I’m hallucinating a reality that is less harsh. More humane, perhaps, while less human.
Keep in mind that (in principle) reddit awards cost real-world money [presumably you can once again get them through premium]. Multiple people (20 as of the last check, maybe more now) spent some variation of real world money to upvote “the smiling is pissing me off.”
FUCK.
Maybe your take on the video matches the negative quotes above, but let’s give you my take.
Doug’s Watching of the Video
Person swings the mallet and greatly misses. It’s unfortunate. You can hear multiple people laughing, especially whoever is holding the camera. Person’s companion looks a bit shocked and immediately embarrassed. Person looks a bit confused but is kind of laughing along with the crowd.
Older man running the stall is laughing a bit. Person is saying something to the man. A few people say “awwww” but we can’t hear whatever is being said. Tour guide/translator comes up and talks a bit. Person walks off and gets a bit of comfort from Companion who seems to downplay and then Person waits and keeps talking [face now somewhat obscured by the flag].
It’s an accident. A goofball moment where people are actively laughing both with and at the Person. We don’t see any aftermath to know if Person paid for the damage or any wider pan to see the group.
Even if I watch it without sound and miss the group laughter and chatter, I can still see Person talking, not just standing there smiling.
Take Care of Your Very Online Folk
This is getting brought up as an example to a particular call to action by me to you: Take care of your very online folk.
Have a coworker who suddenly is convinced that the RAM shortage is a massive conspiracy to destroy white people? Have a family member who is absolutely furious about a teacher in Iowa despite you having no connection at all to Iowa? Someone you know just suddenly deciding now is the time to talk about trans folk? The stock market? Some bullshit conspiracy theory?
In more general terms, have you seen someone start spending more and more time online, possibly losing more and more sleep, because their ability to handle stuff around them seems to be deteriorating? Echoing bot-like comments? Trying to assign everything a thumbs-up vs thumbs-down style response?
Maybe, if you can, just reach out a bit. I’m not saying to tell them to touch grass. I don’t know them. But maybe just a bit of encouragement to try and center themselves on something at least outside the internet. Movies and books without feeling the need to read comments to know if they should like it. Walks where there is no one to talk to… move away not only from the brain rot, but specifically the kind of brain-rotting aspect of online discourse where everyone feels they have to have a response to everything.
Sometimes people just glitch out and break a rice mallet. Doesn’t mean anything. It especially doesn’t mean your anger issues about the way your sister broke your favorite CD were justified. You know who you are.
Don’t just say, “But it’s REDDIT!,” while the person you know is drowning in such a place. It cannot be healthy and it cannot take too long before someone takes upvotes and downvotes [from bots, bot-like comments, extremely online people, trolls, paid agitators, stealth marketers, and all the like mixed in to varying degrees with more legit discourse] as some sort of indicator of personal sense of worth.
A personal sense of worth that can and has historically lead to pretty massive things.
It’s like the meme/joke about dreaming something and then being mad at their partner. Only it’s a significant portion of some folks’ every waking moment.
Just a couple of days ago I saw a person say that we need to eat more fiber because of rising colon cancer rates in the relatively young and it took about one gorram reply before a commentor went off on an hour long rant about how “eat more fiber” was downplaying COVID. Responder eventually started calling OP “ChatGPT” [despite OP not in any way sounding like an AI-bot and being fairly anti-AI] and constantly moving goalposts about the conversation. “You are calling COVID just a cold” [OP wasn’t] got changed to “All I was saying is that some forms of colon cancer might be caused by COVID” [responder absolutely wasn’t “just” doing that, at least not at first].
It is easy to get into a place where you see someone saying “eat more fiber” as a personal attack but like…take a damned second.
BONUS: The Comments on Short
Go to this Youtube short and find the comment that I highlighted [second from top for me, right now] and click to read that reply chain:
I’m not sure if it’s because people think everything is content or if people think everything is a game to be won, but holy hell.
