There's a type
of person who continually tries out a combination of varied yet lame hobbies in
a quest to find something to replace the sense of endless possibility that died
long ago. I'm not sure what draws them to some of the least cool pastimes ever
created. But it is much more fun to sit back and watch as they attempt to
convince themselves and everyone around them that they are enjoying themselves
doing dumb shit like ...
#9. Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro's name might literally mean "Mountain of Greatness." This is totally ironic,
considering how crowds of people flock to its many easily-hikeable paths and
impressive-sounding name each year. For them, summiting Kilimanjaro is an
excuse to talk about training for months while only having to train for weeks.
It also offers the rare opportunity to use the word "summit" as a
verb, as demonstrated in the previous sentence.
For real, though, it's not as
difficult as the terrifying name makes it seem. The most popular path up
Kilimanjaro is derisively referred to as "the Coca-Cola route,"
on account of how it's jam-packed with tourists and gift shops the entire way
up. Yes, it's a long walk, one that takes around five days on average to
complete, but there's certainly none of that "stick a pickax in a jagged
ridge and hope it holds your body weight" stuff that you envision when you
hear someone say they're mountain climbing.
Oh, there's also a path that lets people drive most of the
way there. When they finally leave their air-conditioned moving
palace, the story they tell their friends is officially ready to begin. There
are a number of details they'll be sure to leave out. First of all, Kilimanjaro
rises at such an incredibly gentle gradient that the main challenge is to walk slowly enough up to avoid getting altitude sickness. One trail guide described the pace by saying,
"imagine an arthritic 90-year-old walking backwards -- that's probably too
fast."
Another detail "adventurers"
will leave out of the story of their "Kilimanjaro journey" is the porters-- or people they pay to carry their shit
for them while they focus on not walking too fast.
Of course, climbing Kilimanjaro
is not without its challenges. As this site explains, figuring out how much to tip the
guys who carry your bags and cook your food can be extremely tricky.
#8. Upcycling
Upcycling is when you take something old and useless and *gasp* turn
it into something pretty and useful. For most of the world's population, this
is just called being poor. It exists as "upcycling" for the same
reason ghetto tourism exists. Eventually, rich people get bored with doing rich
people shit and turn to "seeing how the other side lives" in the name
of entertainment. There's nothing trendy about having to dig through the
garbage for a kitchen table. That sweet find you took home, fixed up, and
flipped on eBay could just as easily have ended up in the home of someone who
needed a table but didn't have the resources to swing by IKEA and pick one up.
Poverty is not a hobby, and it's certainly not a vacation. Stop treating it
like one.
#7. Glamping
"Imagine visiting a remote island overlooking a tropical
jungle in your 4-star treehouse appointed with the luxuries you would find at
any high-end resort." -- Glamping.com
Well then you're not fucking camping, okay? That's a hotel room
that just happens to be located in a tree. For all you know, a tsunami put it
up there. It was probably in a Marriott once. Someone probably drowned in your
glamping tree, you savage.
(This
part of the article surprisingly said nothing about how only white people go
glamping, or implied only poor minorities camp. I didn’t have to change a
thing.)
#6. Home-Brewing Beer
Have you ever read The Jungle? We have
the Food and Drug Administration in this country for a reason. And recently,
the main reason seems to be that we need protection from thousands of men and
women who think they can make amazing beer in completely non-sterile settings
and with no knowledge of food science.
True story: A few guys Luis Prada knew bought one of those shitty
Brew Your Own Beer kits. The resulting brew was so revolting that it left all
of them spraying pure liquid waste from both ends for three days. Damn it sucks
to be them.
Another True Story: Luis Prada has a friend who tried making his
own beer with the intent of maybe, possibly, if everything went well, knock on
wood, being able to sell it to local bars so that he may one day, possibly, God
willing, leave his day job to become an independent brewer. A short while into
this, he said to Luis, (and he quotes), "My house smells like pussy."
This was not because his life had turned into a Budweiser commercial.
He hasn't talked about it since. He’s probably fucking white, too.
#5. Whittling/Woodworking
No matter how badass Ron Swanson
made it look, woodworking is not cool. Only Ron Swanson can make it cool, and
you are not Ron Swanson. Period. You are just a person making a birdhouse for
your grandmother. One which she'll likely just hang from a tree out of sheer
politeness, like a parent who puts their child's macaroni art on the fridge
door. Hell, you could carve an astonishing eight-person dining table from a
single red oak with a butter knife, and the most impressive thing about it
would be if people still liked you enough to eat dinner on it.
(Seriously, what
does Luis Prada have against whittling/woodworking? Luis even says I
hypothetically created an astonishing dining table, and still says people will
hate me for it. That sounds awesome! Why wouldn’t people want to eat at my
astonishing eight-person dining table carved from a single piece of red oak
wood? Is it because I’m white?)
#4. Adult Coloring Books
According to Johanna Basford,
the artist behind the coloring book Secret Garden, which
really kicked off this trend, "If someone saw you coloring in one of my
books, they wouldn't give you a weird look, because it's the same kind of
artwork you would see on a champagne bottle."
Is this one of those "white
people do something like X, but black people do something like Y" things?
Because when Jay Z looked at a champagne bottle, he decided to create his own brand,
not whip out some crayons in the club and start coloring it in. If he had done
that, I think people definitely would have given him some weird looks, no
matter how famous he is.
But that's kind of a "white
people" thing in itself, right? Finding your "inner child"? At
least, it seems that way to the rest of the world. Don't get me wrong; I
totally understand how we're stereotyping an entire race by saying that, and I
understand that it's wrong. Not all white people are in a struggle to find the
Little Timmy within. I'm just saying that if you gathered up all of the
adult-coloring-book-buying, inner-child-searching people into one room, that
room would be white as
fuck.
(I don’t even know how to change
this. This is just racist as fuck.)
#3. ROOOOAAAD TRIIIIIIP!
Get it? Because only white people
can drive to vacation destinations, apparently? Do People of Color not enjoy
driving? Is the assumption that they’re too poor to drive anywhere?
True Story: I have a black friend who took a
road trip to Electric Forest festival one time (I’ll admit, he did take the
trip with some of his white friends. I’m not sure who drove). He may have been
the only non-white person there at the festival; I hadn’t thought to ask at the
time.
#2. Board Games
Hey, remember
the first time America took over Puerto Rico? No? That's okay, because you can
relive it in all its colonial glory, just as soon as you get through the
27-page rulebook.
Or choose Monopoly, or Risk, or War On Terror
(A satirical board game created by two friends in Cambridge, England, which is
a cross between Monopoly and Risk, according to the Wikipedia page Luis linked
to). If it's something white people do in real life, just shrink it down, add a
winner at the end (because only white people are smart and rich enough to
create economic monopolies or attempt world domination ), and break
out the craft beer (Get it? Because white people drink craft beer) and salsa
(Get it? Because cultural appropriation), because it's motherfucking game night
and we're gonna have fun 'til our eyes bleed. I'm genuinely surprised there
isn't a board game called "Oppression."
Wait, there is? (From the EBay
link Luis linked to; “Oppression is a game based on everyday life in South
Africa. By playing this game oppression you will gain an insight into the
apartheid system which has wrought havoc with the lives of all people in that
country since it was introduced in 1948 by the architects of this inhumane
system.”)
Luis is complaining about an anti-apartheid game, just based off of the name.
#1. Drones (Droning?)
Let's get this shit straight people:
A drone is an R/C plane with a cooler name. For forever, the guy at the park
with the huge remote control with that gigantic antenna staring at his R/C
plane through his enormous bifocals wasn't considered cool, even though every
word of that description screams otherwise. But call that plane a
"drone," and everyone thinks they're piloting a robotic fighter jet.
They've all got "Danger Zone" blaring in their brains.
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| You know how many black people were in Top Gun(1986)? One. And that's terrible. |
