If owning and displaying a sword is now “cool,” can we please get some justice for Star Wars Kid?
Guy’s been in the neckbeard doghouse long enough, IMO. And frankly, if any one of us had those kind of moves, we’d be videotaping ourselves in the garage, too.
Must Read
“In Tunisia, Men Hunt for Random Numbers — Hoping to Fall in Love With the Women They Belong To”
If you’re a single guy here in the U.S., you can fire up your smartphone, pop open any number of dating apps and quickly be on your way to chatting with hot singles in your area. But in Tunisia, a predominantly Muslim North African country where apps like Tinder are taboo for religious reasons, hooking up with the opposite sex takes a bit of DIY finesse. Specifically, some resourceful — if not creepy and desperate — Tunisian men have begun resorting to farming phone numbers from public databases, scanning for nearby Bluetooth-connected devices and DMing on Twitter to strike up conversations en masse with women they wouldn’t be able to otherwise meet. READ MORE
And We’ll All Float on Okay
Twenty years after it’s release, even if you successfully nuke the rest of (the now very problematic) American Beauty from memory, you remember the plastic bag.
Much like how Taylor Swift recently ruined many of our favorite things, Miles Klee opines that, with a bit of twee dialogue and stale drama, American Beauty ruined what might otherwise be considered a beautiful example of nature’s invisibilia.
You May Take Our Crystal Stemware, But You Will Never Take Little Fido
Who gets the pets after a breakup? Whether it’s a beloved golden retriever or a loathed boa constrictor, here’s what to think about before deciding custody.
Sick Boycott, Bro
It’s becoming hard to ignore the sense that we’ve moved into a global era in which staging direct, neck-on-the-line action is the only way to get things done — just ask the Parkland Kids, Greta Thunberg and Egg Boy, to name a few. So is there any longer a point in meekly adding your name to an online petition, sharing a worthy hashtag or boycotting sweatshop-made clothes or palm-oil food products?
About Damn Time
In September, the FDA finally approved a condom for anal sex. Well, kinda — it’s called the FC2 Internal Condom, and while it’s not designed for anal, that’s what gay men are using it for. Marketing choices aside, why it’s taken this long for the FDA to approve an internal condom is the real question. And the answer requires a quick trip through the strange history of the FDA’s lack of chill when it comes to safe-sex regulation.
You Keep Using Those Words…
These days, the concept of “emotional labor” is typically (and virally) applied to describe the “unpaid labor expended by women to cement social relationships and keep households running.” But that wasn’t the original definition, which referred to the labor involved in regulating, evoking and suppressing certain feelings at work, and didn’t apply to a specific gender. While an argument can be made that emotional labor’s mutated definition has done some good in recognizing the thankless tasks women perform in their relationships with men, it also comes at a significant cost.
Not Hot, But Looking Good
Faced with handsome models wearing clothes you can’t wear, it’s easy to not give a shit about how you look. But even for those who don’t consider themselves conventionally attractive, it’s perfectly possible to still have at least a classic look. According to a personal stylist, with a few basic changes, and a reminder that lookin’ fly is all about self-confidence, even the schlumpiest among us can pull off good style.
Yeah, But is the Bathroom Nice?
Besides the kitchen, no room is as much an indication of how nice a place is as the bathroom. Any realtor will tell you, clean and well-appointed bathrooms seemingly have a psychological effect on home buyers that can make an otherwise so-so home feel new and shiny. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, and one that the self-care movement can take a lot of credit for.
Owning a Sword Does Not Make You a ‘Virgin,’ Say Guys Who Own Swords
On his 17th birthday, Quinn Myers received a huge, gaudy fantasy-style sword as a gift from his infomercial-loving grandmother. He hated it, and specifically what it would connote: That he was a Dungeons & Dragons-loving super nerd who didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to ever get laid.
When you were partying I studied the blade… from justneckbeardthings
But as time wore on, Myers realized that there were some significant positives to owning a badass-looking blade — its ability to deter burglars chief among them. And so, slowly but surely, he became a “Sword Guy.” And he’s not the only one willing to sing a sword’s praises.
Jeff Gross
Jeff Gross is MEL’s senior editor for social media and content marketing. His daily ICYMI column, which chronicles all things meta on the site, is the quickest way to catch up on MEL, and the funniest thing you’ll read all day. Follow him on Twitter.
