Welcome to #SMH Fridays! Obviously, that’s Internet speak for “shaking my head” Fridays, but you already knew that.
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Here at Red Alert Politics we spend entirely too much time on the internet and some of the things that we see out there are just absolutely astonishing/mind-blowing/horrifying/disgusting/trendy/weird/insert any adjective here. As such, we have decided to start #SMH Fridays as a way to share those stories with you.
In this weekly series, our staff members will share their favorite “That’s So Internet” story in this post, along with their unfiltered commentary. Here’s last week’s edition for a gist of what it’s all about. Enjoy!
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The “promposal” trend has officially gone too far.
“Promposals,” for those of you who are blissfully unaware, are outrageous ways of asking people to the high school prom. It’s mashed up with the word “proposal” because that is the size and scale we are talking about here.
For a group of teens in Georgia, one promposal also included, as the Washington Post so perfectly put it, “teen love, crime and a goat.”
A group of teens set off to steal a goat last Saturday night, according to a Milton Police incident report, but they made too much noise. A neighbor caught them and called the police. As the teens rushed to escape, one dropped his wallet, though they did succeed in stealing the goat.
An officer found the wallet when he arrived on the scene and caught up to the group. He also discovered the stolen goat in their possession.
When the officer asked them why they stole it, this is the the answer they gave, according to the report:
Despite that brilliant excuse, the teens were arrested for theft of livestock.
Remember kids…puns never lead to anything good.
The Internet is freaking out about the wrong thing on this one. It has been for months.
It was announced last year that the “Ghostbusters” franchise would not get a sequel (the passing of Harold Ramis all but ended what chance there was), but would instead get that ubiquitous Hollywood word: “spin-off.” Whatever negative reaction existed came about because of … gender. The stars will be all female, and it’s an all-star lineup of comedy: two Saturday Night Live players (Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon), and two of the most prominent comic women in movies today (Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig).
“The Internet is really funny – I love it, but I hate it at the same time,” the film’s director, Paul Feig, told Variety. “The first wave when you make an announcement like that is overwhelmingly positive. Everyone’s so happy and you’re like, This is great. Then comes the second wave and you’re like, Oh my God. Some of the most vile, misogynistic s— I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Zip ahead to this week. Deadline confirmed news from the Sony leak last year that Channing Tatum was making plans to develop a male-led spin-off of “Ghostbusters.” The emails then revealed that it was Tatum and Pratt’s idea; the news from Monday was that Sony is developing a new branding line to promote the “Ghostbusters” franchise, including a Tatum-produced film.
Naturally, I’ve seen some headlines, like this Playbuzz quiz: “Is An All Male Cast In The New Ghostbusters Film Blatantly Sexist?”
No. No no no. We can’t get bogged down in a stupid and unnecessary culture war here. The Wiig cast has abundant talent and the potential to make something really funny, and given Tatum’s involvement with “21 Jump Street,” a project involving him could produce the same.
The issue is that what began with Bill Murray is going to be spun-off (Wiig) and, at least according to the Sony emails last year, rebooted (Tatum).
Rebooted, just like what happened with Michael Keaton and Christian Bale. And Christian Bale and Ben Affleck. And Christopher Reeve and Henry Cavill. And Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. And William Shatner/Leonard Nimoy and Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto. And Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy. And Eric Bana and Ed Norton. I’ll stop. These re-castings aren’t really the continuations of stories — even a franchise like “James Bond” pulled a “Skyfall” only once in its 25-film history — they’re origin stories, or starting over. A flimmaker takes a character or the suit that he or she wears and just reimagines the entire thing.
I understand we’ve been doing this for centuries. I understand there have been eleventy billion ways to interpret and tell Romeo and Juliet. The problem is that we’re not talking about Shakespeare, here. We’re talking superhero and action franchises as if we’ve run out of ways to create a new superhero or a new action star.
That needs to be our complaint. Stop being dumb (and coincidentally predictable), #Internet, and demand something new!
“One new Ghostbusters movie isn’t cool. Do you know what’s cool?”
“What?”
“A billion new Ghostbusters movies.”
— Mike Ryan (@mikeryan) March 9, 2015
Let me be honest: Anyone who defends Hillary Clinton for that atrocious press conference Tuesday is going to get my head shaking.
Almost every sane individual not employed by the Clintons — yes, even Jon Stewart — has recognized that Hillary’s “inconvenience” excuse for using solely a personal e-mail address while at the State Department is itself not purely inconvenient but utterly ridiculously unbelievable.
But Bill Maher doesn’t think so. Not only does Maher apparently have no problem with the fact that the former Secretary of State didn’t want to have a government e-mail address because she would have had to lug around two phones, but he actually thought Clinton’s news conference to announce such an outlandish excuse went well.
“Good,” in his exact words.
Press conf was good 4 Hillary cuz showed she can take a beating from infantile press over utter bullshit and thats all our politics is about
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) March 10, 2015
Oh, she took a beating alright.
As one responder on Twitter wrote oh so eloquently in reply, “[I] can’t wait to see you defend this.”
The Lammily doll, a doll that comes with cellulite and acne stickers in order to be more “real,” got a lot of press when it launched last fall. “I wanted to show that reality is cool,” their creator said.
This month, they unveiled their first video ad, so naturally the press had to scramble to be super-impressed all over again. This ad is “a clever appeal to embrace your imperfections,” says Elle! “Absolutely incredible,” says Time!
First, some sexed-up dolls twerk and do other demeaning things to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 (?) while a sad Lammily doll who thinks it’s a good idea to wear jean-on-jean to the beach gets very distressed — until, joy of joys! She discovers a beach full of other dolls, wearing adult diapers disguised as swim suits and proudly displaying their cellulite:
Also, another doll appears to have just gotten out of surgery, for some reason?
While others have acne and/or leprosy?
Anyway, they all dance around on a beach to some more weird music and then Lammily encourages the viewer to “#DoYou.” Because nothing says “empowerment” like focusing on and marketing to flaws that the average child would otherwise never notice. How many six-year-olds have any idea of what “cellulite” even is?
Watch at your own risk:
