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New and slightly more dangerous fads
06/27/06
by Shaw
If your school was like mine, you had some kind of lesson in middle school history involving the word "fad." They taught you the definition, and then gave some colorful examples. That was it. Only for some reason, I remember this lesson more clearly than almost anything else I learned before high school. Perhaps it was the collection of fads they described... every time I hear the word, I think of the precise three things that my teacher mentioned in class: Goldfish Swallowing, Mahjong, and Flagpole Sitting1.
It was always these three things, and the fads were described in the following terms:
Goldfish Swallowing
Popularized by fraternities in the 30s and 40s as a dare or part of a hazing ritual.
Starting early
Mahjong
Ancient Chinese game introduced to the US in the 1920s and played by youths in college circles. Rules are so complex that it is said that no person knows every single rule of the game.
In this game of strip Mahjong, the guy on the left is down to only his watch.
Flagpole Sitting
Popular fad in the 1920s; at its peak several flagpole sitters held weddings atop flagpoles.
Aside from illustrating the point that people are idiots, what sticks out from this description? To me it was always, "How the hell do you sit on a flagpole?" Especially, especially, how do two people and a preacher get on top of a flagpole? And, isn't this a little dangerous? Were there any flagpole sitting deaths?
Finally technology has caught up with my 5th grade brain and I was able to ask Wikipedia about flagpole sitting:
Pole-sitting is the practice of sitting on a pole for extended lengths of time, generally used as a test of endurance. A small platform may be placed at the top of the pole.
The world record for pole-sitting was set during the World Championship by Daniel Baraniuk, from Gdansk, Poland, who sat on a 16-by-24-inch platform on an 8-foot pole for 196 days from May 15, 2002 to November 26, 2002. Short breaks were allowed every 2 hours.
Flagpole-sitting was a fad from 1924 to 1929. The fad began when a friend dared stunt actor Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly to sit on a flagpole. Shipwreck's initial 1924 sit lasted 13 hours and 13 minutes. It soon became a fad with other contestants setting records of 12, 17 and 21 days. In 1929, Shipwreck decided to reclaim the title. He sat on a flagpole for 49 days in Atlantic City, New Jersey, setting the enduring record. The fad died out after 1929.
First of all, a platform MAY be placed at the top of the pole? Is this even possible without the platform? No way. Secondly, why should I be impressed with the "world record" flagpole sitter Baraniuk? He got a break every 2 hours! I have to assume this guy was homeless or the pointlessness of his whole venture would have driven him to suicide by flagpole.
It looks like the three representative fads above fall into three categories: 1. things that are stupid and involve physical feats but are not dangerous (e.g. Goldfish-Swallowing), 2. things that, rather than involving physical feats, utilize the mind or involve collecting (e.g. Mahjong), and 3. idiotic feats of strength that could very easily result in death (e.g. Flagpole-Sitting).
In recent years, the fads have been similarly stratified:
1. (physical, less dangerous): Competitive eating has, for some reason, become totally hip these days. They're showing the tournaments on ESPN2 sometimes, and the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest has been international news of late. Not that I don't believe the sport is difficult or that it's not something to be respected, but it's really disgusting to watch someone eat 20 pounds of food in a matter of minutes. I don't even like watching Takeru Kobayashi dip his hot dog buns in water.
Amazingly despite the fact that he ate the buns and dogs separately, Kobayashi's
vomit reconstituted itself as dogs in buns.
2. (non-physical):
Pokemon: This TV show is un-f***ing-watchable. The movies were ludicrous. The toys are a colossal threat to landfill space in the next 10 years. Any parent that allows their kid to get involved in collecting Pokemon crap nowadays should be careful, because if they're not, their kids could end up with those weird glazed Japanimation eyes for real, and you don't want that.
Tamagotchi: Do you remember these things? They are those little keychain LCD screens that simulate being a baby that you have to feed and give naps to and hug and scold so that they can "grow up" to a healthy adult Tamagotchi. I once babysat a whining brat who couldn't give two sh**ts about another person in this world, he complained all the time and never once did a single thing his mother told him to. Ironically he was a great parent to his Tamagotchi. There you go: proof that your stupid toy doesn't work.
Tamagotchi's slogan should be "If you don't feed them, they die! We promise!"
Beanie Babies: There is a common theme in some of these fads that if you stockpile inane regalia, it will someday be valuable, so people try to COLLECT these things, and hope for someday some other jackass to buy it from them. But here's the problem: this crap is only valuable while the fad is going on, so once the fad is over, the s**tty toys are valueless. A quick search of Ebay reveals this fact: search for Beanie Babies, and you will find hundreds of them listed for upward of $100 (and a few for over $1000, including three at $5000)... BUT there are NO bids on ANY of them. The only thing to do with Beanie Babies is to videotape yourself murdering one with as much fake blood as possible, and bribe someone at NBC to play it on the TV in Times Square. Here's what you should NOT do with Beanie Babies: become a cop in Greenbelt, MD and put a pile of 20 of them in your rear windshield. I live right next to the police station, and seriously, there is a cop car with 20 beanie babies in the back staring at you. I keep hoping that they got left there accidentally by a perpetrator, but they haven't removed them yet after two years so I am starting to doubt my hypothesis.
Here's what they're good for: sitting on a shelf.
3. (idiotically dangerous physical things that people take too lightly) Admittedly, it is a stretch to place the next two items in this category, but while neither is likely to cause immediate death, they both share the property that is in parentheses above. Also I should mention that I almost never watch television; I am almost always listening to AM talk radio, but in that market, every commercial break contains at least one advertisement for each of the following:
LASIK: Corrective Laser Eye Surgery is the new botox: you hear an ad for someone that claims to do the cheapest LASIK, the most patients in the area, the fastest surgery, with the latest equipment. Oddly, you almost never hear someone advertising the safest surgery, the cleanest operating room, or the most accurate vision correction. The ads make it sound like the decision to get LASIK is on the same level as deciding to go for a run today: you owe it to yourself, if you don't do it, you're cheating yourself at happiness, and it's so affordable right now, come in TODAY! It sounds so simple, but really imagine it: they PIERCE your EYEBALL with a F***ING LASER!!!! It's the kind of thing aliens do in abduction movies. It can't be as easy as they say it is, it's just plain impossible. And in fact, here is some evidence: note, I hate Kathy Griffin as much as any other person with respect for humanity, but on matters of LASIK, when she isn't trying to be funny, I think you should listen to what she says. Just don't look at the pictures and try not to hear her voice out loud when you read her site.
And finally, sedation dentistry. When did we become a nation of pussies? When I was a kid, I had a dentist who yelled at me for not brushing my teeth enough, held my mouth open with her hands if I didn't open wide enough, and refused to believe me when I said that my Novocaine shots hurt ("what you're feeling, that's not pain, it's pressure..." as far as I'm concerned she ignored the important category of "painful pressure"). This taught me a healthy fear of angering my dentist, and whipped me into shape. I didn't go to the dentist for 3 years because I couldn't afford dental insurance, but when I got my insurance back, I went straight into the office and took my fillings and one crown and my wisdom tooth removal like a MAN. Now every time I turn on the radio I hear ads for sedation dentistry:
Are you afraid of the dentist? Do you have anxiety about dental work? Drs. MacMillan and Winkler offer sedation dentistry at competitive rates. Just take a pill and you'll wake up with a brand new healthy smile, no pain involved.
Screw that, you're SUPPOSED to be afraid of the dentist. How else are you going to learn to brush your teeth every day? If there are no consequences for your actions then you'll never change your ways. Sedation dentistry is like pleading "not guilty by reason of temporary insanity." It's just plain bulls**t.
Got any interesting fads to discuss? Discuss it at our message board.
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[1] I just talked to my friend Japes, who went to middle school (and nursery school, elementary school, high school, and college) with me on the phone for a minute, and during our conversation, I randomly asked him if he remembered the unit on fads from middle school. His response: yes, and the three fads he named? Flagpole-sitting, goldfish-swallowing, and Mahjong. After some prompting, my friend Bob just named the same three.