Brief backstory: When I moved to Chiang Mai and then later to Vietnam, I decided to back out completely of traditional social media. I deleted my IG and I deleted all but one photo (of Nadi) on my FB profile. I would have closed that as well but I still have a lot of friends and relatives that absolutely refuse to communicate by any means other than FB.
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I then never posted any personal information and instead, if I wanted some people to see a picture of something I did I would send it to them directly. This resulted in my wasting considerably less time online and getting a lot more done in my life. It also kept me out of the petty, mostly political in nature, squabbles that would take place between friends that have known one another for a very long time but would say the most awful things in a public forum about the other person because they had a difference in opinion over some politician. Truly fucking stupid behavior and I want nothing to do with any of it.
Now, when I have time to waste I look at 9Gag for memes and while the bots are doing their damndest to invade that space with political horse-crap as well, the users can kind of dictate what gets seen much like we were meant to be able to do here.
Anyway, these are the memes that I found that made me smile or made me think in the past however-long-it-has-been.
Although it doesn't really qualify as a meme because it is just a headline and a photo from a fake news website, I appreciate it because someone wrote an article about something that seriously grinds my gears about being on flights. People just turn into irrational friggin animals on planes. I will never understand the frantic nature of people to stand and retrieve their bags immediately upon the plane landing, sometimes needing to be reprimanded like children by the flight staff for doing so. There is nowhere to go, the door isn't open, the people in front of you have to leave the plane first, what the hell are you doing?
While it doesn't happen to me very often since I don't talk to very many people that are 20 years younger than me, the chat abbreviations are always evolving and man, I don't even care anymore. I'm not going to learn the new stuff. A few friends of mine that are around my age try in vain to adapt the talky patterns of younger people and in my eyes, just look like jagoffs for attempting it. You are older bro, just accept it. When they integrate this way of speaking with me in person or online I will swiftly clap back at them and make fun of them for trying to be a "fellow teenager."
This hasn't been relevant in my life for quite some time but I remember it well. I went to business school and we were frequently put into teams because the professors told us that this will prepare us for the working world. I believe what is really accomplished was to help the professor do less work and get paid the same amount. I always felt like my peers were smarter than I was in college, but no matter how my groups ended up being I ended up being on a team of morons who were more of a burden than anything else. I'm so happy I am not in college anymore and if I had the opportunity to return on someone else's dime I would decline.
I've been succeeding at losing a lot of weight lately. In the past I think it has been 4 months I have lost nearly 15 kg. Some of my friends send me links to various fitness things but the stuff that I really enjoy are the silly ones like this. it's a crazy meme, but in all honesty, this would work a lot better if weight loss was your only concern.
This one also is not relevant to my current life but for the 11 years that I lived in USA before moving away to Asia, it was a very important, nay, essential part of my life. You basically MUST own a car if you live in USA and are not in NYC or Chicago. I didn't have enough money to have a car that was brand new for most of those years and it seemed after a while that my car, and almost anyone else I knew their cars as well, were out to get us. It's like they could sense that we were finally getting ahead on our bills and maybe have some spare money to put into savings and then the check engine light comes on or some mystery clicking sound starts happening when you turn.
it was so frustrating having it be necessary to own a car and this is one of many reasons that I am happy I no longer live in such a society. Here, I have two bicycles and a scooter, and I rarely use the scooter because why the hell would I dive and contend with traffic and absurd parking when I can get a taxi for $1-2?
This is not a meme and was shit on by a lot of the 9-gag community for not being one. For me though, I thought these were pretty profound words although the figures that the person suggests are so far out of reach for most people that he may as well be talking about 800 trillion dollars. The point is still very valid though.
I like to think about Forest Gump's statement of "mama said a man only needs so much money...the rest is just for showing off" and I totally agree. I am not wealthy, I am not rich, I am financially comfortable though to the point where I do not aspire to buy a Porsche and wouldn't know what to do with one if I had it. Even if I could afford 1st class tickets I still wouldn't buy them because they are a massive ripoff.
I think that so many people focus on having fancy things to the point where they never start to realize that it is by virtue of having this fancy things that they will never achieve financial peace. If you have a million dollars, which is what I am told you have to have in order to retire in USA and most of Western Europe (yikes) that you can live out the rest of your life without much worry. Now move to somewhere like Thailand, Vietnam, most of central America and Mexico, and you can live extremely well with that much money. I'm doing it with substantially less than that.
This last one and all the other heartwarming/breaking memes that are like it, make me sad and also fill me with dread about the coming 3-5 years. There is very little that I wouldn't do for my dog, Nadi but I also know that when we celebrate her 12th birthday in December of this year, that the clock is ticking since that is the average lifespan of the breed that she is. I know that we are running out of time as far as this is concerned and because of that I try to give her all that she wants in the time that she has left. We can no longer say "oh i'll wait until cold season before I bring her to the beach" because each cold season that arrives could very well be her last. We go NOW.
Anyone that has ever had a cherished dog would do what the maker of this tweet/meme or whatever it is, is doing. I know I would. I torment myself with the inevitable decision that is going to have to be made at some point in the next 3-5 years. 3 years seems like a lot of time when you are young, but it just flies by as you get older. It is irresponsible to keep a dog alive by medical means once they can't live without it... if you do that, you are doing it for YOU, not the dog.
Sorry to leave you on a sad note but to make up for it here is a cute picture of my sweety-pie Nadi
This is from several years ago at a pizzeria that had a strict "no dogs" policy that applied to every dog other than Nadi. We have abandoned the long ear hair policy because it gets on her old lady nerves. Now we go for straight comfort.