Pause Patrol
My case for an 'Ally of the Year' nomination
There’s a guy whose YouTube Shorts I end up watching a lot called ‘PhatVick.’ He mostly eats chicken wings, always starting a video by dividing up the total price of the order by the number of wings and thus stating the ‘cost per wing,’ and then will do this thing where he rotates the drum through his teeth while constantly biting up and down, so that it becomes a kind of rotisserie situation. His mic picks up alarmingly clear frequencies of slurping, chewing, crunching, etc. Here are the top comments on one of his videos:
I also kind of like ‘HowKevEats,’ this Persian dude in LA who is another standard food-in-car TikTok reviewer. What I have to get past, though, is that he is constantly editing those “Daddy, chill!” and “Pause” clips in when he says something about throats or length or moist or whatever. Here’s what most of the comments on his videos look like:
Concurrently, this is what has become of much of sports coverage online:
I am going to stand up for wokeness here: I think we gotta nip this in the bud. It is probably true that the internet is responsible for the regression of the average male intellect, but at a certain point, we have to say: enough is enough. Somehow, these feel worse and dumber than when people used to go around saying “no homo,” and that at least rhymed.
Similar to Ock Sportello’s excellent theory of “banger-hunting,” I would posit a corollary: that we are a nation currently afflicted by a deadly crisis of “pause-hunting.” In desperate search of virality, both our athletes and our humble content creators are manufacturing moments to have the camera zoom in as they widen their eyes and go “ayoooo.” People seem to be going out of their way to say something like, “This meat is so moist” in a food review just so commenters can say that was “out of pocket” and call out the fact that they just said something so lowkey gay dude 😂😂😂
What this does, in turn, is forces everyone’s brain to become exponentially dumber. We are being conditioned to have the same mimetic reactions to a series of cheap signals. There is now a broad and rapidly growing lexicon of Sus Phrases/Words, any one of which, if uttered, will trigger a Pause Moment and force the audience to block the PM with an Ayo/Bruh Defense.
“Meat.” “Size.” “Length.” “Moist.” “Hard.”
“Ayo.” “That’s INSANE.” “____ is crazyyyyy.” “Out of pocket ☠️☠️☠️.”
The modern language of bro internet can be reduced down to a simple mix and match of those phrases, a call and response, with everything being communicated and nothing being gained. In addition to being being inherently homophobic, here’s a simple fact: this shit is just not funny. It is so, so stupid. We are all so fucking stupid. I guess this is the logical endpoint of gif reactions and meme responses, but what else is there for us on the other side? What becomes of communication via language after this?
Here is where I come to a new way of thinking, and decide that we will, cravenly, use this for our own benefit at Low Lift Ask. Pretend I never said anything critical or disparaging about this phenomenon.
I love thinking LONG AND HARD about different things on the internet on this Substack…..with varying (low- to mid-) levels of critical thought used each week……..
It’s a place for me and Ritam TO EXPLORE “DUDES” AND WHAT MAKES THEM TICK……….;)))))))
It would be so fucked up if you guys screenshotted some of the stuff I’m saying in here and said “Ayo” or “😅😅😅” in response.
I dare you guys to “re-stack” some of those things I just said and add on, “explore dudes is insaneee bruh ☠️☠️☠️.”
It honestly would be wack if you all did that 😂 and whatever consequences may befall us would be well-deserved 😂😂😂 whether that’s critical feedback or an uptick in overall engagement/subscriber numbers…
No..Don’t!!……👀
Ritam’s Footnote
A strange return back to the gay panic of the aughts. Let’s return back to the gay RIGHTS of the 90s!