The 4chan Mentality

Hello, eyes and ears. How've you been? That's good. How am I doing? Weeell, I've mostly been chilling watching TobyGames videos (L.A. Noire and Fallout: New Vegas specifically) and learning all sorts of new parapara dances for the new dance troupe I'm in. (We also have a Facebook page.) Oh, and I went to a crappy anime convention and Jonathan's wedding all in one weekend, and the wedding was definitely the better part of the weekend. Luckily, me and Presto are officially going to San Japan! One day only, but still better than nothing.


Everyone hears about cyber bullying. You hear on the news that some girls at a sleepover thought it'd be funny to tell a girl over MSN or Facebook message how ugly, fat, and/or stupid she is, and that that message was just the straw that broke the camel's back and the girl kills herself. "We didn't mean for her to do that," they say. A new trend (or a trend that's been going on all along but society just started caring) that's been appearing is gay teenagers committing suicide from bullying and overall pressure from everyone and everything. I'll tell you I've seriously considering suicide when I had depression, but never been anywhere close to actually doing. (They say the steps to suicide are contemplating, planning, and carrying out--I only ever got to step one.) Of course, I felt like everyone hates me because I dressed in black and was different. I openly told people that I was "emo" and my favorite thing to do at recess was sit there and cry or pretend to cut myself (by pretend I mean I would take a pencil or paper to my wrist, but somehow I still manage to have one scar,) hoping someone would say something to me. I had a lot of "haters" you could say, lots of people that thought I was a weirdo or creepy, but I never had it as bad as all those people that actually have been bullied to death.


The thing is all those stories you hear on the news sound so false. Like, why would someone ever do that to someone so directly? Or maybe that's just me.


Everyone knows about Rebecca Black and "Friday." I'll admit the song is stupid and the autotune makes her voice grating. But did you see this video of her actually singing for reals? She can sing. Whoa! Btw, she didn't write the stupid song. Her parents paid some producers to write this dumb song that caused so much hate. I'm not blaming anyone (okay, I guess the producers are kinda at fault for writing a stupid song and Rebecca's at fault for not realizing how stupid the song was,) but in another life she could've been popular with not nearly as much hate. And for whatever reason, people are still blaming Rebecca for all the awfulness. In her new song (which isn't half bad--but I really wish they'd get rid of the autotune, she sounds fine without it) and even her friendly introduction to her new channel is getting so many dislikes and hate comments it's ridiculous. People are confusing hating someone with hating a song a person sung.


If you go to any YouTube video with any sort of recognition, there's going to be ton of hate comments. No popular video on YouTube has 100% likes--there are always gonna be some dislikes, no matter how good you or someone else thinks the video is. (Now, why do you think Facebook won't add a dislike button? I personally like it better how it is--keep the positivity up!) Why? Who knows.


Thing is, everybody does it. Maybe not to that extent, but to some extent for some reason all kids and teenagers at some point are going to sounds somewhat rude or even full-out hate on something or someone. Like I said, YouTube is a perfect example, but even Facebook and forums are active examples. I'll admit to being rude to some people I don't see in my daily life or I'm not friends with on Facebook and I recently posted a thread on the Cosplay.com forums with a huge rant, and instead of focusing on the topic on hand, they just judged me for my rant even though that obviously wasn't the point.


I said earlier that I've been watching a ton of TobyGames videos. Someone posted a comment that I responded to, and they responded back, quite rudely correcting me. I responded again, politely, and they were very polite back to me. Why? I have no idea. But I've done the same exact thing on YouTube--maybe because it's a lot easier to treat the person like an idiot instead of being polite.


Preston and I refer to this as "The 4chan Mentality." If you don't know what 4chan is, it's just a huge stupid pointless forum dedicated to idoicity. No, really--that's the only feasible way I can describe it. It gave birth to all the biggest memes on the internet (if you don't know what a meme is, it's basically a big inside joke that's either a phrase or image or video) like so i herd u liek mudkips and Rickroll. (Ironically, KnowYourMeme is actually a pretty intelligent website that I use quite often.) 4chan is also basically a big excuse to make fun of everything and everyone. This really sucks for anime fans because we often get thrown into the mix of these 4channers because both are from Japan. There's even a kid in my high school anime club that is a big 4channer who shoves his iPod with thousands of pictures of macros (think LOLcats,) into peoples faces and literally has said, "I don't know about anime, but I know way too much about the internet to not be here." Not the same thing. At all. And then there are the people that talk in memes and the people that still think The Game is funny...let's not even go there.


We've been hearing forever about how the internet's basically the end of society. What with all this talk of zombies, Uncanny Valley and homosexuality ending the world, sounds like it's coming up pretty soon, don't you think?

Creationist, Evolutionist...Who Cares?

If you know anything about me, you know I'm a Christian. I grew up in the church my Dad's been the pastor at for the last 25 or so years. I go to church almost every Sunday and I go to all the youth events. My tagline even says I'm "Jesus-loving!" How more Jesus lovin' can you get?


I've noticed lately that people, Christians and non-Christians alike, sometimes substitute the word "Christian" with "creationist" and "atheist" with "evolutionist." I can only begin to explain how wrong this is. Those terms above are NOT mutually exclusive.


Although people (specifically people I go to church with or other Christians) are usually taken aback when it comes up in conversation that I don't believe in the story of Adam and Eve. Maybe I'm just a silly teenager that likes to be different than everybody else, (Though, quite honestly, as a teenager being a Christian already makes me different.) but hear me out.


Preston always says everything in the Bible is "God-breathed" and that although it was written by flawed humans, all of it is fact. "What kind of God of Love would confuse us with giving us a misleading holy book?" he says, and when he says it like that I really want to believe him. Honestly I'm starting to believe the majority of the Bible when I used to have the ideology that lots of teenagers have, "It's written by humans, it can't all be right." But the story of Adam and Eve sounds so much like an ancient Indian legend we read in elementary school outta those thick literature textbooks where it explains how the Grand Canyon was created or something. Seriously? "We're gonna punish you by making child birth painful?" Just no. But this isn't about my opinions.


Going back to the "everything in the Bible is God-breathed" ideology, I can understand what Preston means by that. But think about it: This was supposed to happen at the beginning of the entire universe. With the first two people on earth. Do you think there was a scribe writing this all down? Do you think Eve kept a diary? No. This story was probably passed down for a very very long time by word of mouth until someone thought, "Hey, maybe I should write this down!" As we all know from gossip, word of mouth can really screw up a story. I'm sure at the time there were hundreds if not thousands of variations. I believe that if Adam and Eve really happened, it was a whole lot different than the story we have today in our Bibles.


But "what kind of God of Love would confuse us with giving us a misleading holy book?" Just pause for a moment--does believing in Adam and Eve really determine our salvation at all? Pretty sure the Bible says, "If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Roman 10:9)" (That's my favorite Bible verse by the way.) So what else is there to do? Technically, nothing. Sure, there's baptism and communion and well, living like a Christian (though a lot of us seem to forget that part,) but I believe that if you believe you're saved you desire to do those things as a result of your security in your afterlife.


I know plenty of people that say they're Christian that either think they're going to hell or they're not sure where they're going. First of all, if you think you're going to hell, why in the world are you a Christian?! Honestly, that makes absolutely no sense at all! Secondly, if you believe God is a god of love, why would you think that he would ever send you to hell for, I don't know, doing something? What happened to forgiveness and all that? Humans seem to forget that God forgives us because we can't forgive ourselves--I know I've been guilty of that one on more than one occasion. The weird part about that verse? People don't even know it's there.


Like I said, that's my favorite verse in the whole Bible--because it's so simple. So simple. Like it's almost too easy. But having faith even when things are going really really bad and you almost can't take it? That's hard enough.


So the next thing people always say when I say I don't believe in the story of Adam and Eve is, "Well, then what do you believe?" And all I can say is, "I have no idea." And does that really matter? Just because I don't believe one story in the Bible happened exactly how it did as it was written doesn't mean God's sending me to hell. I'm not going to waste my time researching it to "find out what I believe" either because that would just be a waste of time, because who cares? My God sure doesn't.

Hair Cut

I got a haircut last Wednesday. The last few years or so I've gotten a haircut about once a year, occasionally sneaking in a cute little style based off an anime character's for about six weeks till it starts looking bad and I have to cut it again. The last couple times I cut my hair was for cosplay. Before, it was for Haruhi Suzumiya and now it's for Yui Hirasawa from K-On! I pretty much do any cosplay where I can use my own hair. Plus Yui's friggin' adorable. 


The reason I chose now to cosplay as Yui is because my friend that's going to the same convention as me soon did a Mio cosplay. I wanted to cosplay as Yui as soon as I saw her design before I had even seen the anime/read the manga--now, I've watched most of the first episode and read the first two volumes of the manga. I'll watch the anime when it comes out in English. (I also dragged Erinn into being Ritsu since their hair is pretty much exactly the same.)

HOW ADORABLE CAN YOU GET?

Though, truth is if I could buy a wig, I'd totally cosplay as Azusa instead.

I just answered my own question.

Well, really the real reason I'm not cosplaying as Azusa is because I didn't even know she was a character till I read the second volume of the manga. I had seen cosplayers of her, and went, "Who is that? Mio's long-lost twin sister or something?"

"Oh, I'll just give her pigtails to differentiate between the two. And give her a different colored ribbon than the rest of the girls (FOR NO APPARENT REASON). YEAH!"

Azusa's basically the character that everybody swoons over for being so frickin' adorable. Before that, it was Mio. I guess by the second volume the mangaka got tired of torturing probably the most mature member of the group and brought in Azusa.

Proof:

Her nickname is Azu-nyan for goodness sake's.


So my Mio and I were chatting, and she reveals to me that she wishes she could cosplay as Tsumugi. Apparently she's her favorite character. That's great, because nobody wants to cosplay as Tsumugi; we can get another Mio easy. If we just got someone to be Yui (if I got an Azusa wig) or Azusa, we'd be set.


Anyway, that's not actually the point of this post at all.


I'm to the point where I can make my own hair appointment. Heck, I had to call her back after I "figured out my work schedule." (Oh, by the way, I got a job.) I made my appointment sitting in the car waiting for my mom to get some medication from the pharmacy. Sitting in the driver's seat, of course, since I was driving and all. (I'm so cool with my driver's permit.) I had nothing better to do, so why not?


I've gotten my haircut at the same place my whole life. In fact, I had the same hairstyle up until 3rd grade when I decided to grow it out to the small of my back.

Left: This was the girliest any of my outfits got back then.
Right: I'm seriously wearing those pants right now.

Anyway, even though I've always gotten my haircut at the same place, I haven't had the same hairdresser. It seems like every time I make an appointment, I have to meditate on, "Paula cuts my hair, not Susan" because I will accidently say Susan. It's happened before. Okay, not while I was making an appointment, but just talking to my mom. It sounds like I have Alzheimer's or something.


I love Paula because she's such a perfectionist. Also, she is honestly surprised when I don't bring in a picture of an anime character for reference. With the combination of those two things, she will be one of the few people I will trust to give me as-accurate-as-physically-possible anime-styled haircuts.


As everyone knows, hairdressers have the life-long stereotype of talking to their clients about all their hopes, fears, joys, and concerns while they cut her hair. This is one stereotype that is absolutely true. Thing is, they expect you to start the conversation. Usually that's a middle-aged lady thing--are teenagers really expected to do the same thing? When I got my hair cut every six weeks, I was too busy playing my Game Boy Color to say anything. My mom sorta does that thing when she gets her hair cut, but it's pretty basic stuff that people like hearing: "My son's getting married" is pretty customary to get people excited. Actually, that was brought up when my mom was talking to another customer she knew. As soon as Paula heard it, she goes, "Oh, is that coming up soon?" "Yeah, next weekend." ...


"You're awful quiet today." "I guess I'm just tired."


I guess she just had a memory relapse and forgot that I don't talk when people cut my hair except to say "That's good" or "Can you give me layers, too?"


All in all, I was satisfied. I have cut hair now and I'm so ready for Anime Overload III. :D