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the truck exhaust gender reveal party

I can’t stop watching these videos. They succinctly illustrate the present era a of participatory media better than anything else I’ve seen; how social media encourages us to make an event out of everything. They are the last grasps at gender rigidity and the internal combustion engine.

Let’s begin with a simple example of the genre:

What a way to combine your love of your toys and your children into a simple video to share with friends and family. Lest you think that this is a party with only trucks, you can announce your offspring’s genitalia with a burnout on your motorcycle too:

It could even gain you a mention on your local network affiliate for “going viral”.

Why stop at indoctrinating your child into your love of trucks and impart a political orientation?

This one is like the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon of truck exhaust gender reveals. It’s a pastoral static shot of blue powder falling in slow motion from the pipes of a huge semi.

Sometimes it doesn’t seem to go well at all. This one is so low-key its depressing; no cheering, no fanfare. Do these people even care about their baby’s gender or what?

More recent videos introduce a lot of production value. With this one they either found a cousin who owns a DSLR, gimbal and is a bit dangerous with Adobe Premiere, or they brought in Robert Zemeckis.

I’ll leave you with the first one I saw and still the best, for reasons that will be self-evident:

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ideas for human evolution

  • bigger ass to handle sitting at computer all day
  • smaller ears to block out dissent and diversity of ideas
  • foam layer in skull to cushion inevitable blunt force trauma and prevent the ensuing brain damage
  • larger middle finger on dominant hand for emphasis

This will be a continually updated list.

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the ambient show

So I’m at the ambient show—total ripper—and there’s this drone metal act killing it. Great sense of dynamics and atmosphere but going all way in on the theatrics (QT forest nymph on ethereal vocals, complete with True Detective S1 leaf crown) but something was missing: fog machine. You can’t have drone metal without some smoke emerging from whatever bog you crawled out of. Do us all a favor and head on over to Long and McQuade and properly set the scene.

Then, right as the dronetown headliner starts their singular note of the evening this guy in front of me presents, I shit you not, a full bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos and starts eating them one by one. I’m trying not to just totally lose it laughing my ass off.

I look around and suddenly the magic is gone. The whole room smells like too many masters degrees. Everyone has found a way to stand in an even more awkward way than the person next to them. I start to hear that note again and it’s suddenly a dialtone.

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