Monthly? Meme dump

Ever since departing from "traditional social media" like FB and IG I find that I waste considerably less time in my life. I never get into political discussions with strangers online and I don't endlessly scroll through shite and advertisements. I have noticed over the years that a great many of my friends have followed suit and abandoned social media and this makes me very happy. I feel as though things like FB and what not are not good for mental health and contribute massively to depression and anti-social behavior.

Now when I have a bit of downtime I look at mostly memes on 9Gag. There is still plenty of political propaganda there but thankfully you can filter these out by eliminating tags from your feed. If people intentionally mislabel a post to try to spread political shite the posts get downvoted to oblivion by the community. This is a wonderful and simple feature of that community and it simply works.

Still, I only rarely look at it and it is only when I am doing something like lying on the sofa anyway, or am between sets at the gym that I even look at 9gag. I don't know any of the people that are commenting so there is no real world animosity possible and to me this is even better if the topic is something controversial.

Here are some of the memes I saw that I either found funny or compelling enough to save.

This reminds me of a lot of people I have known in my life and also a lot of people in the expat community in all the places I have lived in Asia. The drinking culture is very big here and for many people, it is the only aspect of their lives. I recently tried to branch out a bit so that my life isn't centered around drinking. Drinking is very inexpensive here in Vietnam so chances are it isn't going to break the bank. However, I do know a few people that are always broke and borrowing money.... I'm sure it is just a coincidence that these same people are always at the pub.

This one hit a little close to home. I haven't owned a car in a really long time but when I was a teenager and in my early 20's I was a poor college student. In USA you basically MUST own a car and I did, but just barely. Out of necessity I would have a go at fiddling with my Ford Escort GT because the alternative was to not have a functioning car. The amount of "rigging" I did on my car was pretty profound in order to make it capable of getting down the road. Eventually I would have enough money to take it to a mechanic and their reaction to the "fix" I had done was always something like this.

I guess you could say that I was kind of proud of myself for figuring things out as well as I did because it's not like we had a YouTube video for just everything you could imagine in the 90's.

This is not a meme so for many members of the 9gag community this is frowned upon. Since I don't have Twitter/ X I would never see these things otherwise and I found this idea something worth contemplating. When I was young and visiting all of my older relatives it didn't occur to me at the time what I was witnessing. They paid almost zero attention to their health the way that we do today. If they wanted pizza every day of the week that is what they had. Nobody paid any attention to calories or cholesterol, most of them smoked and drank, and any exercise they got was an accident. Yet almost all of my relatives lived into their late 80's with relative health. The difference between medical options from 40 years ago are pretty profound as well. Yet today we seem to have more health problems than before so I ask ye, what changed?

I think this one got upvoted mostly because the hilarious crudity of the edit. However, this is very true of potatoes. When I was moving apartments I found a potato in my fridge that had been there probably since I moved into my old apartment. It wasn't all moldy and gross and honestly, I probably could have still eaten it. I didn't of course because I have some standards. Low standards mind you, but standards nonetheless. Potatoes are basically the only vegetables that I keep in my house because at the grocery store I tend to have big plans for meals in the future that never come to fruition.

The title on this one is important to the context. It just said "College" above it and as I get older I have become more and more I guess "angry" at the educational system. I did what you are supposed to do and went to college after high school. I even went to graduate school as well. In all of those years of education I don't think I ever used any of what I learned (and got quite high marks on as well) in either my personal or professional life. The very first professional job that I got trained us all with their own interior system and if I could go back in time I would have just lied on my resume/CV and said that I did have a degree in whatever they were looking for. It's not like they are going to check or are even legally allowed to check.

I feel like the education system, particularly in the United States, is a business that treats teenagers as ATM cards. There are some exceptions like doctors and engineers but for the most part I think that college curriculums are completely useless.

I have a few friends in my life that are massive Apple fans. They have Mac computers and I-phones, they have those silly overpriced bluetooth earbuds too. I have always felt that Apple stuff is wildly overpriced and they intentionally fleece their customers. Recently the EU forced apple to make their phones be chargeable with standard phone chargers that are the standard with all other phones. When this happened Apple came out and tried to pretend to their customers that it was their idea all along.

This one is mildly political but it will make you think. For me it makes me think about the uselessness of government and how I am really happy that the government here in Vietnam has almost nothing to do with my life. I never see the guys or hear from them at all unless I am in line at Immigration coming or going from the country. When I hear from my USA friends about how they need a permit to do almost anything and how they are constantly getting fined for things that they didn't even know they weren't allowed to do, I am happy that I don't live there anymore.

I remember back when the USA really liked the Taliban. Hell, they made an entire Rambo movie about how great they are. Then they became the enemy and the world invaded. I don't know how close to "victory" the USA ever was over there but they obviously didn't win and this is why the news doesn't talk about it anymore. If the numbers quoted in that meme are even remotely correct, that is a really tragic thing indeed.

How about we just mind our own business and stop invading places? Wouldn't that be nice?

Sorry if that last one ruffles any feathers. Mostly I look at 9gag for the funnies.

This last one had no text on it and yet it was still on the top of the lists for the day. I'm not going to give any context but just say that "if you know, you know."

That's it for today!