Rebecca Black – Friday

The internet sensation, and I use that word loosely, “Friday” from Rebecca Black has been one of the most, or rather LEAST, successful videos on YouTube in a long time, depending on your definition of success.

The video at the time of this post has 2,044,396 dislikes, making it the most hated video in the history of YouTube. However, to rack up the dislikes, the video also had to have gotten a lot of views. Over 101 million views.

Those viewers have spawned countless parodies and dubs, including a failed lip readers interpretation “Gang Fight”, a dub called Brock’s Dub that includes a guy doing a Christopher Walken impression and twisting words in the song, even a death metal version.

Friday, while the lyrics may be interesting, involves a singer with a horribly whiny voice, and the lyrics and storyline don’t match up with the early pubescent people involved in the video. It even involves several 13 year old children standing around “their” cars at a party, and a couple of these children even “driving”. Not likely.

It also has a lyrical turn about which seat she would take in the car. However, it is a convertible and it has five seats, and there are already four people in the car. Really? REALLY??? Sorry.

There are plenty of things to be concerned about in this video, but to be honest, I feel sorry for her. This was probably a case of an adult taking advantage of a naive child, and getting infamous for it.

And whats worse is that EVERYONE KNOWS HER REAL NAME. That will never go away.

With more views than the population of several small countries, so many people have seen the video, and the song is very catchy and will be stuck in peoples thoughts for weeks, months, or even years to come.

My Idealogical Redefinition

A little back history on me.  I was raised in a house where religion wasn’t a big deal.  We tried around with churches for a few years and ended up deciding that it was a waste of a full day, and stopped going.  Every now and then we would go to an Easter service, but most of the time we spoke very little about religion.  By default, I considered myself a Christian and held on to a thin, faint idea of what God should mean.

In middle school, as I began to notice conflicting evidence in history and science classes, I found myself questioning passages we read in Sunday school classes and church Sunday mass.  I was worried what my parents would think if I just decided that I no longer thought a higher power or omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God existed at all.  We didn’t talk about it much, but most, if not all of my friends, thought that they believed in God as well and I thought that it would be socially wrong to “come out” against Christianity.

In a way, it is a socially unacceptable thing to do if you do it in a hateful or spiteful way, but more about that later.

In high school, my freshman history teacher did a section on religion around the world.  During this section, he had a lecture that basically didn’t call anyone out, but wanted to make it clear that if we believe something, we need to believe it, not without thought, but after contemplating what it really meant to believe.

This sent me into a brainstorming session with myself.  If I was to come out and officially no longer be Christian, and not believe in a higher power, what would I be considered?  I landed on Atheist.

In high school, the word Atheist sounded pretty cool.  It had that sort of non-conformist ring to it.  But as I grew up, my dad, who also happens to not believe in a higher power, warned me about labeling myself as an Atheist.

I began to realize that the word had a strong taboo about it.  Many religious people automatically lump atheists into a immorality cluster, thinking that without religion, all morals are lost.  However, Christianity did its job to teach me right from wrong, and now that I know right from wrong, I need no higher power to fear but my parents and my government.

This doesn’t help the taboo of the word, so last week I sat down late at night and did a little research into atheistic religions and other names for atheism.

What I came across was surprising and satisfying.  Buddhism and Hinduism both have sects of members that do not believe in gods, but in moral guidance and paths to enlightenment or ways to better your life and come back in a higher place in your rebirth.  This sounds a little out there for me still, so I kept digging.

There are also several branches of moral atheism called secular humanism.  This philosophical group is a non-religious group that believes that morals can be determined through sets of societal rights and wrongs.

A branch of this group is called the Free-Thinkers.

Wow.  What a great name, straightforward and to the point.

This group was founded and spread to the US by German immigrants who are only inclined to believe things for which there is empirical evidence for the existence.

This is exactly how I think.  If you can show me empirical evidence of the existence of a higher being (show me a picture, describe to me how this works, etc.), then I will believe willingly.  This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in things I cannot see.  If there is evidence to the existence of an object via a scientific study performed by reliable sources with viable procedures, then I will decide as to whether I believe it is possible or not.  But I am not inclined to believe that the Earth was created in 7 days by a single being, and that it has only existed a few thousand years.  There is a gigantic amount of scientific evidence that shows that the Earth is well over 4 billion years old (that’s 4000000000 years for those of you not savvy to math).  And while there are things called theories that are reasonably well founded enough for a large portion of people to believe, I think that Christianity, Islam, or any other religion based on the hallucinations of individuals (in my opinion, please do not flame me for this) are not evidence enough for a theory.

Now, all that being said, I do not pretend to be the authority on religion, nor do I pretend to know everything about the Earth and it’s inhabitants, but I am fairly certain that there is evidence to support everything that exists in some form.  I do not want people to be angry with me about this, because I am in support of the freedom of religion, but I also believe that there is an implied part of that that leaves room for the freedom from religion.

So don’t tread on me, and I won’t tread on you.

Baseball Cap Stickers

/rant

I don’t want to sound racist, and I guess its more of a style choice over a race thing, but every black guy I see with a baseball cap tends to leave all of the stickers on it.  Personally, I wouldn’t buy a hat with stickers on it unless it was like a NCAA or league branding sticker.  But even if I did, I’d take the stickers off.

Today I saw three guys, all sitting with their flat-brimmed baseball caps, all with the holographic branding sticker on the brim.  I’d seen this before and always wondered, “What’s so cool about keeping the stickers on the hats?”

One thing that blew me away even more way that all the stickers UNDER the brim were still there too.  The bar code, the consumer warning, the washing instructions and whatnot.  Are they leaving them on there so that they can return them when they run out of money or need some extra cash?

I really don’t want to come across as racist, and I am certainly not prejudiced, but I do notice when people feed into stereotypes.  Not to get off subject too much, but when I was working at Martins Food Store last year, every black family or person that came through the line either had a watermelon or a box of fried chicken.  I’m sure if there were more African American families that shopped at the store I wouldn’t be able to say that, but it came to fruition every time someone came through.

So, my question to you.  Why do people like to leave the sticker on the cap?  Who started that?  Why do people still do it?  Was it a rapper that made it cool?  Let me know in the comments.

/endrant

Turn Signals Are Only Useful When Used Correctly

/rant

Okay.  Something that I have been noticing a hell of a lot more lately is the blatant lack of turn signal etiquette on the roads near me recently.  I mean how easy must a concept be for everyone to understand before everyone does it.  I’ve just been finding that a ton of people either:

a. Don’t turn on their turn signal to turn on a street when there is clearly someone behind them (namely me)

b. Don’t signal to make a lane change when there is clearly someone in the lane they are changing into (namely mine)

c. Turn on the wrong turn signal to accomplish the tasks in a or b

d. Forget to turn off their turn signals after changing lanes or taking a sweeping turn

e. Drive for MILES without noticing d

I have experienced all of these in the course of maybe the last four days.

I understand that things may be distracting in your life.  These are also things you should avoid while driving:

a. Being blind

b. Texting

c. Constantly looking in your backseat

d. Talking on the phone while driving on busy highways or backroads

e. Otherwise not paying attention to the action at hand (driving)

On occasion I make a slip in judgement as well, but if I happen to be noticing everyone’s slips in judgement, I am either one of the luckiest or unluckiest people on the planet.

/end rant

Reach

Okay, so I got Halo: Reach. I know, some people will call me a bandwagon jumper, but I was a fan of Halo, Halo 2, and Halo 3, and owned them all at one point or another, so that accusation would be quite false.

Anyways, as most people know, these titles are rated M for mature. This means that noone under 17 should be allowed to purchase this title without a parents discretion. Okay.

You’d think this would deter a large number of young kids from playing. Wrong again.

In my course of playing in matchmaking, the majority of people playing with a mic have been under 14.

What’s worse is that they are snotty brats with little manners and no common sense.

So if you’re gonna play an M rated game online and you’re under 17, at least hit puberty before you pick up your mic.

/end rant

Blog Site for General Rants

Okay, so this is my umpteenth attempt at getting started with blogging.  I am going to use this site to share what is going on in my life that I find particularly interesting or that I want to rant about.  Honestly,  a lot of people may not want to hear a dude complain about his life or talk about things only about himself.  If that’s the case, the back button is right there on your screen.

My name is Casey Ferguson and I am a gamer and college student.  I’m not very deep, but I am rather opinionated and I like to talk about the things that interest me.  I’ll try to keep things pretty general so as not to stir the shit too much, but I do like to be right and try my best to convince people otherwise.  One thing you will not find me do on this site is argue religion with a believer, argue over politics, or carry on any other kind of baseless argument.

However, if you have something to share relating to a post I put up, or want to connect, that is one reason for the page.

Alright, here we go.

/end rant

World of Warcraft

This is the first of many posts you will see from me concerning World of Warcraft.

I play this game on a very regular basis.  I consider myself a nerd as do many other people.  However, I am not a geek, or a fag, or a dork because I play WoW.  It’s a video game I enjoy very much.  Just because it is a fantasy roleplaying game, it comes with the stigma attached that just because I play the game a lot, I am a super-obsessed ultra-nerd.  There are people that act out their characters roles in real life.  These people are mentally ill and should be treated as such.  I am not one of them and never will be.  I have played Dungeons and Dragons.  This does not make me a weirdo either.  There are plenty of normal human beings that enjoy creating an alternate persona to act out in a gaming setting.  You do not need to dislike your current life to enjoy living out an alternate reality (The Sims, anyone?)

If you have never tried WoW, I encourage you to give it a shot.  Get past the stigma (over 12 million other people have, after all) and play for at least 2 hours.  If you do not enjoy yourself, you can then have a leg to stand on in an argument, but I have found it very rare that a person does not find it in some way enjoyable.

The stigma is slowly lifting, but in order for it to lift entirely, there needs to be a wider acceptance of these types of games by more than just 12 year olds, old guys reliving the good old Dungeons and Dragons days, and potheads.  If more average Joes played, it would become much more commonplace and less looked down on.

/end rant

/afterthought

By the way, my character’s name in World of Warcraft is Gratheron, and he is on the realm Korialstrasz, Alliance.  Look him up.