Excuse me one minute, I need to yell at some kids to get off my lawn.
Thank you. Now where was I?
Oh, yeah! I'm sick to death of those stupid reaction videos people are posting on TikTok and YouTube.
Actually, I'm sick to death of TikTok in general, but the reaction videos are the worst of the very worst.
Reaction videos are when someone records themselves watching another video and laughing, screaming, or over-emoting harder than a high school theatre group doing the musical version of All My Children.
They do something called "duetting," which means filming a side-by-side shot of themselves along with an original video.
That video could be someone singing, concert footage, a speech, or doing something completely stupid, while the other person laughs, sings along, makes "Ooooh!" faces, or stares open-mouthed like their dog just talked to them.
Even Gordon Ramsey duets videos, responding to people's questionable cooking skills, and his reactions are about as overdone as a deep-fried steak.
No, not that one. The other one.
Not her either.
There you go.
This unnamed candidate was participating in a debate, and she wasn't doing well.
But the debate moderator was really on the ball. If a candidate evaded his question, he would say they hadn't answered his original question and make them do it again, something we wish all debate moderators had the spine to do.
(Looking at you, every presidential debate moderator since 1960.)
The original video wasn't the problem. That would have been nice to watch all on its own until it got reposted on Facebook with the exaggerated headline, "This candidate was ABSOLUTELY HUMILIATED to within an inch of her life!" Only to learn the candidate had gotten slightly distracted when she stumbled over her words once.
What made this video so terrible was the dude duetting it. He was like that obnoxious kid in high school who fake laughed whenever someone smacked you with a Yo Momma joke.
That was it. The only thing he contributed to our democracy was being the mouth-breathing idiot in every teenage gross-out comedy.
The entire video consisted of a severely cropped feed of the debate and this guy's giant head roaring with laughter every second.
I tried watching it, but after 30 seconds of Giant Head Guy's fake horse laugh, I quit.
Look, I enjoy watching politicians of any party get humiliated because of their own boobery, but I don't need some pumpkin-headed idiot to tell me things are funny. That's what sitcom laugh tracks are for.
But mostly, I'm tired of society's obsession with recording themselves or taking selfies like they're the center of the universe. They can't just do anything for the sake of doing it, they have to take hundreds of pictures of themselves doing it.
I'm tired of photos of people pretending to fall into the Grand Canyon. Or holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Or pretending to pinch the Statue of David's — you get the idea.
Your friends don't want to see you that badly; they're too busy looking at themselves. And the rest of us don't want to see you standing in front of every notable landmark, looking like the Eiffel Tower is growing out of the top of your head. We don't need the obligatory photo of you holding up the sun or jumping on the beach.
Why don't you take photos of the things you're doing, but leave yourselves out? Like going to a baseball game, playing with your dog, or going on a hike. We'll believe you were doing that thing and I promise we won't forget what you look like.
Years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and social media was in its infancy, a friend joined a web service that would let you stream videos of yourself working in your office. Sort of like OnlyFans for productivity nerds.
You could create a video chat room where a friend could join you and work on their own laptop, and you could work together at the same time, even halfway around the world. Or if you had nothing better to do, you could just watch a friend stare at their laptop screen, read notes on the desk, and look up to talk to someone off-camera.
My friend lasted for three days before he declared the whole thing to be stupid. I think the service folded three months later when the rest of the world also realized it was stupid.
At least until they realized they could do the same thing with naked people.
Maybe I should just take a reaction video of me scrolling through TikTok going, "That's dumb. That's dumb. That's dumb, too. Oh, that's really dumb." Then I'll just get some pumpkin-headed idiot to guffaw and horse-laugh at everything I say.
I think it'll be a big hit with the kids on my lawn.
Photo credit: The Duet by Jan Miense Molenaer - Painter of the Dutch Golden Age (Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.