The spat106 short longform #23

Overdone trends

You know there are some things that still exist this year that should have well and truly ended way before now. One of the things I have previously touched on was that when Jacinda Ardern got the Labour leadership and then Mark Richardson (a low rent Paul Henry who himself is low rent anyway), whose jobs include being the host of the Block NZ and a co-host of The AM (A MediaWorks) Show, asked her what her baby plans were on The A MediaWorks Show. She replied and pointed at him, telling him that type of question was unacceptable to ask a woman in 2017. While she was on that vibe she should have denounced dabbing as also being unacceptable in 2017. This is dabbing as meaning the dance move and not to do with putting a corner of cloth briefly on your eyes to remove some dust from it or point some ointment on your nether regions just for the sheer hell of it.

There are the other trends that should have died but still continue, so the following are what they are and what the alternatives are to replace them as people feel the need to be weaned off things. We can’t rely on John Key any more to kill trends, that was one of his powers that he had while he was Prime Minister of New Zealand. Some of the trends he killed were things such as the Gangnam Style dance, derp faces and planking.

This is not so much of a trend but people are still smoking cigarettes in this day and age. Governments including our own have had smokefree campaigns and with measures like no smoking inside of shopping malls, bars, offices and other interiors where non smokers often got their fix of second hand smoke, it seems like the number of people doing that activity has dropped right down. This is despite the programme Mad Men making smoking looking cool again, boy did they smoke like chimneys in the 60s. So to reduce smoking as such there are now e-cigarettes, the smoking of which is called vaping. So by 2020 New Zealand maybe smokefree but all 4 and a half million of us will be vaping, with the sweet smell of apples or some strawberry fragrance emanating from our vaping, the scent permeating throughout our homes. This will be be mixed in with the smell of the by-then decriminalised marijuana.

This is an old man yelling at the cloud section but the next two things I’ll discuss is taking photos and videos at concerts with an iPad and the use of selfie stick. These should be confined to the history books, sure recording a live concert you are at with a phone is annoying enough but recording it with a tablet looks absolutely ridiculous. And if you use a tablet most of the people sitting behind you have their view of the stage obscured by your screen recording the concert. They feel like their experience is almost good as being there. But they probably didn’t pay money for their seat to have an experience of almost being at the concert, they are more likely to have purchased tickets to feel like being there by actually being there. The selfie stick, where you pretend someone far away from you is taking your picture, that is both annoying and also can impale an extremely tall person who is walking between the person taking the shot and the phone itself. Therefore it’s more of a health and safety hazard. What are the alternatives then you may ask. Well instead of your tablet (let’s face it, it’s an iPad, no person worth their weight in Alan Sugar has anything else) is to by an Etch-A-Sketch and then draw on it what you are seeing at the time. Those people behind you will be more interested in your Etch-A-Sketch skills. And instead of a selfie stick get a drone, the buzzing will be annoying but you’ll have fun manoeuvring your drone with other concert-goers try to take it down by throwing their empty plastic cups and their tin foil wrapped packages of not as yet decriminalised weed at it.