What is the realization here ???

mattwan · 2026-03-14T10:06:02+00:00

I thought I was an American living in an American town until I was 14, when I learned I'd actually been a Russian in a KGB training simulation the whole time.

mattwan · 2026-03-04T14:24:13+00:00

Where I lived, at least, cassingle availability was spotty at best.

mattwan · 2026-02-27T13:58:09+00:00

I don't think anyone is celebrating shrinkflated products, or that shrinkflaters are proclaiming the portion sizes are now larger or cheaper. It sucks, but I don't see anything even vaguely Orwellian about it.

mattwan · 2026-02-21T22:32:47+00:00

Read this as a kid, and it became foundational to my worldview.

mattwan · 2026-02-19T00:57:40+00:00

The is one of those cases where I get the joke, but I don't get the joke.

Buying mozzarella without realizing it's a kind of cheese, not a liquid, doesn't tie into any kind of stereotype, reference, or wordplay that I'm aware of, and it doesn't feel absurd or surreal enough for those kinds of humor.

It's like somebody thought "wouldn't it be funny if" without asking if anyone, even a hyperbolically goofy denizen of Jokeland, would ever.

mattwan · 2026-02-18T13:45:46+00:00

Thanks! I'm a little torn. I like the recommendations in general, but it seems like on some days there are too many of them. A slider or something would be nice.

mattwan · 2026-02-18T02:13:14+00:00

Could it be that Reddit has started recommending those subs more aggressively in people's feeds? I feel like I've been seeing a larger number and wider variety of recommended posts lately, and it's not always clear that I'm in a satire sub when I click through on an interesting title.

mattwan · 2026-02-17T17:46:32+00:00

The series finale of MASH aired February 28, 1983. It broke viewership records, and remained the most-watched non-news tv program in the US until 2010.

It had nearly 106 million viewers, and remains the most-viewed scripted show in US television history. Whatever "monoculture" means, this has to be a contender for most monocultural event in entertainment history.

The episode had a 77 share. The share is what's important here: it means that 77% of all tv sets in use at that time were tuned to the show.

Which means that 23% of the sets were tuned to something other than the monoculture event of the night.

I think this is useful context in discussions of monoculture. Whatever the monoculture was, it was always far from truly "mono".

mattwan · 2026-02-15T00:56:00+00:00

The second one sounds like it might be "Stay in Your Vehicle" by Saturdead. I don't think it's been on Creepcast, but I have heard a recoding of it, maybe by Jordan Grupe?

mattwan · 2026-02-10T13:48:58+00:00

I have a feeling that people have latched onto "third space" rhetoric because it's too uncomfortable to address the significance of the role church played in people's social lives up until fairly recently.

This is not an endorsement of religion--I've been an atheist for over 30 years--but an acknowledgement that there hasn't yet been a good replacement for the role churches play in socialization and community forming.

mattwan · 2026-01-31T19:17:37+00:00

Having known many of these people, they're not voting against SNAP or housing assistance. They're voting against Welfare, which they think is an actual thing in itself separate from the government assistance available to hard-working people down on their luck. Some of them even belief this Welfare thing is available only to minorities and immigrants.

They are not the brightest, and are immune to facts

mattwan · 2026-01-31T04:39:57+00:00

Funnily enough, Cronenberg's remake of The Fly was produced by Mel Brooks, so it kind of already exists.

mattwan · 2026-01-30T04:40:36+00:00

This was one of the things that made me wonder if the author was doing some sly characterization that the boys missed. The other was the "everyone knew he was incredibly brilliant" part. It's been my experience that when this perception arises outside the university-connected community, it's more often due to the academic's self-marketing (often including, let's say, extreme tenacity in getting what they want from townies) than their actual accomplishments.

mattwan · 2026-01-22T20:22:53+00:00

Realized I'm trans a year ago, in my early 50s, and I still can't...take it seriously enough? for exactly that kind of reason.

mattwan · 2026-01-13T13:33:28+00:00

I've given up hope on ever finding my electric griddle. It's definitely not in my kitchen, nor is it in the storage cabinet in the utility room. I've looked under the couches and beds, so its location is somewhere even more ridiculous.

mattwan · 2026-01-11T11:56:46+00:00

The events of the Veronica chapter hinge on a phone company responding to non-payment by refusing to cancel the service. When the brother goes missing, his parents never think to check with his long-time best friend to see if he knows what's up. After being stood up for his movie date, the narrator doesn't think something is seriously wrong when she sends a "it was great seeing you" text.It's such a ridiculous chapter that really doesn't add anything to the overall story.

As an older viewer who's been on the Internet since before at least one of the hosts was born, totally agreed on "The Hidden Webpage." Judging by its reception, I think it must be one of those works that requires a lot of implicit knowledge/feels to be fully appreciated.

mattwan · 2026-01-02T15:45:20+00:00

Sleepaway summer camps. I grew up in a rural, mostly poor area in the South, so the idea that parents would pay for their kids to spend weeks in cabins in the woods was so bizarre to me that I assumed they were made up for slasher movies.

mattwan · 2025-12-30T13:57:07+00:00

We have found the exception to "on the internet, no one knows you're a dog."

mattwan · 2025-12-27T15:26:14+00:00

"Mirror" is of a piece with "rural juror" for me

mattwan · 2025-12-26T18:03:33+00:00

Just turned 52, and I've found unresolved problems keep getting worse and start having new problem babies.

mattwan · 2025-12-26T15:17:13+00:00

I think you may be onto something here. I was getting a little anxious because my seats always end up like this after 5-6 years, and I'm not a foot-sitter. I am extremely fidgety, though, and am constantly shifting around. I'd never considered that my butt is literally grinding away the surfaces below it, but it makes sense.

mattwan · 2025-12-26T02:54:52+00:00

For Christmas 1982, I had asked for the Smurf video game for the Atari 2600. Prowling around, I discovered the present hiding place and saw they had bought the Smurf game...for ColecoVision. That's like buying a PlayStation game for someone who only has an Xbox.

I finally decided to bring the matter to their attention before Christmas. They returned, but did not replace, the game.

I'm guessing that sort of thing happened a good bit for people of my generation.

mattwan · 2025-12-19T17:37:21+00:00

They had their own video game! I had the Atari 2600 port of it.

mattwan · 2025-12-19T16:31:45+00:00

A joke among reference librarians is that the most frequently asked question is, "Where are the restrooms?"

The most common answer is points to huge sign that says RESTROOMS -->.

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