A Guide to Children’s Culture for Adults Out of Touch With Reality: What Is Competitive Hobbyhorsing?
It’s easy to point and laugh at the growing sport of competitive horses, but maybe you really should try it before you do. Maybe you should also ask the Starbuck barista to surprise you, relax at work on Mondays, and break through your neighbors fence like Kool-Aid Man. These are just some of the things young people are trying out this week, and while a lot of them are stupid, it’s better than doing the same boring stuff over and over again.
Viral video of the week: I mastered the most awkward sport in the world
How could you not watch a video called ” I mastered the most embarrassing sport in the world ?” The sport in question is “competitive skate” and that’s the real thing. Its popularity is on the rise, especially in Finland , and as the name suggests, it consists of participating in traditional equestrian competitions such as dressage and hurdling, except with a hobby horse between the legs instead of horse-horse.
YouTuber Cody Ko is a dude of sorts, and his journey into this quirky pastime began over a year ago when he posted a sports video, as you’d expect from a dude. The Finnish hobby champion apparently saw this and challenged Kou, “Why don’t you give it a try ?” To Koh’s credit, he did and found that high-level hobbyhorsing is surprisingly physically demanding and requires the same dedication, practice and precision as any other sport. It’s still kind of a joke because it looks so ridiculous, but because of the fear of looking ridiculous, you miss out on all the beauty in life.
Tip: Don’t fasten your seat belt during rides at the amusement park.
You don’t have to do all the ridiculous stuff you see on the internet, of course. You shouldn’t take off your seat belt during amusement park rides, as some TikTok users seem to advise. Videos have recently begun to surface on TikTok asking people to unfasten or loosen their seat belts in the midst of Guardians of the Galaxy, Mission: Breakout in Disneyland’s California adventure. Apparently, loosening your seatbelt gives you extra air time on the ride’s descents. In response to the trend, TikTok has reportedly taken down offensive videos, and Disney has posted a new sign on the attraction that reads: “Keep your seat belt securely fastened and tight around your waist. Failure to follow instructions may result in you being asked to leave the park.” It might be a little too Disney-esque, but the park didn’t have that problem when the attraction was The Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror.
Teens arrested for imitating Kool-Aid Man
Loosening your seat belt during amusement park rides is a meme no one should copy, but I haven’t decided if you should imitate Kool-Aid Man and run over your neighbor’s fence in the middle of the night. On the one hand, it’s a fun idea, any injuries you inflict will be your own, and your neighbor can be a real jerk. But on the other hand, this is not your fence, and you can be arrested. This is what happened to some teenagers from Long Island, New York this week. Police say they arrested the Kool-Aid Gang, made up of six guys aged between 12 and 18, after they filmed them damaging several fences, probably yelling “OH YES!”
“It looks like four houses were shot at that night and tied to these people,” Suffolk County Patrol Chief Gerard Hardy said in an interview with NBC New York . “It may sound funny and may be a prank, but it is a crime and they will be held accountable,” he added.
Although the authorities have mentioned the “challenge of TikTok”, I can’t find much evidence of such a trend, with a TikTok spokesperson saying that the trend has already been debunked before and that they “need to watch the video to fully comment. “I need to see the video to fully comment too. Please send.
Kids ask the barista for a ‘surprise’ from Starbucks
Social media users are engaging Starbucks employees in a new trend – the “surprise me” challenge. It works like this: you go to a Starbucks and instead of saying “get me a vente latte”, you say “make me a surprise” and let the overworked clerk serve you whatever he wants. If you watch videos tagged with #surpriseme, you will see that some people get really good drinks or get “super fresh” drinks . Some baristas are happy to showcase their creativity . But some people get a little treatment from baristas who don’t “pass the vibration test.”
Generation Z Workers Introduce “Minimum Monday”
I’m addicted to watching how people who just got adult jobs face the humiliation of modern employment. The new problem of the generation that brought us both “hustle culture” and “quiet quitting” is “low Monday.” As the name suggests, the idea is to work as little as possible on Mondays.
At first I thought it was because the job sucks, but it’s actually not just that. Created by TikToker @itsmarisajo, #bareminimummonday videos have received over a million views and offer philosophical rationales and strategies that target people who are overworked and stressed by work. It’s not about messing around on Monday, it’s about not being nervous on Sunday night telling yourself you’ll just make enough to get through the next day.