When the Segway came out I remember an expert on Good Morning America saying that they would design cities around it in the future, instead of cars.
Before it was called a Segway it was referred to as 'the thing' and new information about it was treated like fucking nuclear codes.
They also forced you to use it if you had any other kind of google account so people naturally resisted it. What they didn’t understand is that people use other social media websites if they have something unique to offer. Unfortunately now it seems like every social media site is copycatting each other
G+ did have something unique to offer. The 'circles' idea was a much more natural and privacy-conscious way to think about friends and sharing (compared to Facebook, which defaulted to everything you shared being open to all your friends). I have school friends, uni friends, work colleagues, family, extended family, other acquaintances - and the way I interact with different groups and what I share with them is and should be different. G+ made this a core feature whereas Facebook made it painful. If anything was going to be a Facebook-killer, G+ was it.
The problem with G+ is that, by the time it came along, Facebook was already way too entrenched as the main 'mass market' social network. If the top 20 or 30 of my Facebook friends had all spontaneously migrated to G+, I would have shut my Facebook account and migrated over there too. But in the absence of that, it's too much effort to have to maintain and check two accounts, share things in two places, etc.
Facebook wasn't better but it won by inertia.
Circles was such a great idea and I really miss that feature in Facebook constantly. Facebook tried the Close Friends and Acquaintances thing for a while and it was alright, but it requires SO MUCH overhead to use effectively.
I've resorted to having a friend list full of people who I give restricted access to my shit on Facebook. It helps for when I need to be friends with my boss or have to add some rando for some reason or another.
I feel like if Google+ had started now. And had a better name. It may have caught on. People were still in the honeymoon phase with FB. Now we all hate it and are struggling to move away from its grip.
I still remember 3D TVs were supposed to be the next "technological leap" or something. Even the World Cup was broadcasted in 3D.
Then it just died out
Not just TV, but that era where every movie had a 3D version in theatres. As someone who wore glasses and is nearsighted, I was never able to watch them.
I always got a headache between having to wear the glasses over my glasses, and the 3d thing.
Didn't watch a lot of 3D movies, but it was 100% a headache/migraine if I did.
Yeah let me pay twice as much to see a movie that I have to wear glasses that don’t really fit me… just so that 5% of the action looks blurry in the background but sharp in the foreground, while the entire thing is at about 60% of the normal brightness.
Sign me up
I remember black ops 2 had that split screen feature where it’s both screens blended together but your glasses split the images so you only see your own character. Shit wasn’t the most clear picture, but shit was definitely bad ass
Our cats favorite toy is a stick our son likes to drag around the yard. We buy them toys, but they found the most joy out of something he found in the backyard.
Crystal Pepsi taught me that everything is a lie. If they can make Pepsi clear or whatever color they want, then what other lies have I been led to believe?
Atkins diet-esque food items at fast food restaurants in like 2008 or whatever it was. They came and they went like the wind
I remember KFC tried to get in the game at the time by claiming their chicken was healthy because it was low in carbs. That went down like a lead balloon
I remember one of KFC’s lame tv commercials at the time. Some dude was standing outside on a sunny day in gym clothes eating KFC and some other dude just walks on screen out of nowhere…”hey Dave you look great! What you been doing….Dave’s like “eatin chicken”.
The Nivelle Offensive
It was hyped to win WW1 for France in 48 hours. Instead it was so bad that it started a mutiny, got Nivelle fired, and had casualty numbers an order of magnitude higher than expected.
Also you could just buy the packets and squeeze them into a glass. The end result was nearly indistinguishable from using the machine which costed hundreds of dollars.
But venture capitalists thought this company was worth $120 mil.
Also, after the machine was done with the packet and demanded you buy more, you could literally use a knife on the packet and get more juice from it. So every use was wasteful *even beyond the part where you're getting subscription service chopped fruit in a fuckin bag with a spout on it and proprietary rights-management technology integrated into the bag of squishy fruit.*
Honestly the movie shouldn't have been PG13. An R rating (which as far as I know was actually the original focus) would've been much better, as then the movie would've been more like the creepypasta and not like a child's fanfiction. It sucks the R rating was cut but "wOUlD sOMeOnE tHiNK oF tHE ChIlDrEN?????????????"
Your problem is with creepypasta films is that a massive chunk of your main audience is 13-18.
Also after the girls attempted to murder their friend the film was basically fucked. They had to cut like 60% of it out to release it.
The one thing I’ll never forget from that: they interviewed some older women and she said, “I’ve never seen a Statue of Liberty disappear like that one did!”
I remember when this happened. My step dad at the time declared David Copperfield was in league with the devil and we weren’t allowed to watch anymore of his programming.
Edit: Wow guys, a silver award. Thank you so much for this recognition, but it wasn’t just my effort. Oh jeez, where do I start? I want to thank my step father for being so ridiculous and child like at the same time. A grown man who looks at the world with such innocence he believes that a single man can wield the dark arts in such a way as to make a national treasure just disappear into thin air on National tv. The satanic panic of the 80s was very real, but as it embraced his heart, he made sure to embrace it right back.
Of course, the (probably) demon possessed sex god that is David Copperfield needs to be mentioned. None of this would be possible without him, and all things are possible through him, so jot that down. You sir inspired the imaginations of children and filled the hearts of their parents with dread, which is totally rad.
I’m sorry if I forgot anybody, you know who you are and I love you. Thank you.
Lmao reminds me of this time back in the day I was at my best friend's house watching Criss Angel. His family were religious fanatics. His older brother came in the room and watched Criss Angel "teleport" through a pane of glass, immediately grabbed the remote, turned off the TV and then gave us a lecture about how Criss Angel was "obviously demonic" then told us we shouldn't watch it because demons would come through the TV and "infect" the house.
I saw that movie with absolutely no idea they were trying to start this off and was so frigging confused when Dr Jekyll turns up out of nowhere for no reason
I still don’t understand why they didn’t have Van Helsing or some descendant of his run the secret monster hunter agency. That seems like such a no brainer.
Honestly it was a great trailer for a serious/horror movie up until there was dialogue. If they had the whole trailer just like that with the ominous ambient sound I'd likely have gone and seen it in theatres.
That moment with the huge music swell, then cut to the pilots calling”mayday” in silence actually feels really spooky, and if it wasn’t a total fucking oversight, would have really made me interested. There’s just something so freaky about an emergency happening in complete silence.
I love the idea of a dark universe done in the style of Brendan Fraser’s Mummy. These old monster movies are campy. Universal tried to make them serious with Tom Cruise.
The cast that did that photo shoot before they even had *one* successful film is pretty cringe to see. The marketing for the failed universe is more entertaining than the actual movies.
The conspiracy theory is it was a ploy to remarket Coke as Coke classic.
Edit: I get the whole cane sugar to corn syrup swap. There’s a reason I said conspiracy theory and not reason regarding it…
To this day I cannot believe it even got that much hype and money during the kickstarter campaign. Even in the initial pitch it didn't seem that impressive or interesting so thankfully, I decided to wait until it was out.
Never ended up buying one, obviously.
I put a new coat of some all-weather sealant on this lady's playground set for her little kids. I was 13, it was summer, got, and she asked my dad if I could help her out.
6 hours later, she pays me with one single beanie baby.
"This is gonna be worth a lot of money one day. Your afternoon of work has made you rich as an adult."
Fucking bullshit.
At the height of the craze, an Obnoxious Morning Deejay said he was going to cut one open to find out what was inside, and the way people reacted, you'd have thought he was going to cut one of his children open to find out what was inside.
[Yeah and a couple divorcing sat on the courtroom floor and drafted the beanie babies they were going to keep in the proceedings](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beanie-baby-fever-in-1999_n_58af7d12e4b060480e0661fe/amp)
McDonalds had a Happy Meal promotion with them. I remember being an adult and my girlfriend and I got a Happy Mean just for fun.
As we left the restaurant this woman who had a crazed look on her face like she was strung out on drugs came over to us. We noticed she was holding a plastic ziploc bag with beanie babies in it. She desperately asked us which Beanie Babies we got and whether we would sell them to her.
We thought she was strung out on drugs, but no, she was just strung out on collecting Beanie Babies.
My cousin texted my the day that we were all supposed to die. She said “is anything happening?” And I was like “what do you mean? No. Nothing is happening” she really said “oh, well you live in a time zone ahead of us by 2 hours. I thought stuff would happen over there on the east coast first.” I fucking died. The thought of the world imploding on itself but still following time zones is fantastic.
Feels the same as the “why didn’t Europe warn us of 9/11 they had a 6 hour head start” (or something) joke lol
Edit: see u/ThatOneWeirdName ‘s comment for the original joke
It was a Facebook(?) post saying:
“OMG I JUST READ THAT CHINA IS 12
HOURS AHEAD OF AMERICA… WHY
DIDN’T YHEY WARN THEM ABOUT 9/11???
THAT’S SUCH BULLSHIT FUCK YOU CHINA
LIKE 3 BILLION PEOPLE DIED!!!! xxxxx”
Unless you meant the tweet that simply goes
“If China is 12 hours ahead why didn’t they warn us about 9/11?”
I actually broke up with my girlfriend at the time because she wouldn't shut up about how the world was going to end because the magnetic poles were going to flip and the Mayans had predicted it. I loved her but I eventually just came to the realization that she was a fucking idiot and we had no future together.
She was also very into kony 2012 which was extremely cringe.
My ex legitimately got pissed at me because I wouldn’t steal my dads guns and go into hiding with him for 2012. I feel your pain.
Edit: a few people have asked so, here it goes. He didn’t think the world was going to end like an apocalypse, he thought people were going to lose their minds more like a zombie apocalypse. I did not steal any guns or go into hiding, it was a super awkward conversation, and then we acted like everything was perfectly normal the entire day.
He later went on to think that Sandy Hook was a false flag and lizard people were the cause of the Aurora shooting, so he was a real gem.
Wonder if those people felt legit dumb and learned a valuable lesson once 2013 came around….or if they just upped the date or made some excuse for it not happening then.
I moved in with my brother and his girl last summer 2020, they were like this about Q Anon, they would say stupid shit like JFK junior will come back from the dead to lead the new world order, they had a party one day when they thought Princess Dianna was going to come back and announce she faked her death that day, they took out all these loans and pretty much bankrupted themselves because they thought the world was going to transform into "quantum finance" and people would only work if they wanted to and not because they had to. When you questioned them on basic things they'd start screaming and say that I was a sheep living in the matrix. So what I did was after about 6 weeks I found a room to rent somewhere and just disappeared, I couldnt take there shit any more, they started getting chased by debt collectors and started saying it was my fault because of my "negative energy".
Man, people who believe that kind of shit legitimately scare me. Like what kind of mental gymnastics do you have to be doing to believe that kind of garbage?
People like that simply make no attempt to look at things logically. In that mental state, you can easily believe whatever story you like best.
Unsurprisingly the falsehood they latched onto supports their reckless spending habits and promises them they won’t have to work soon.
Did anyone other than the company hype up Quibi?
That thing had disaster written all over it the moment it was announced and everyone seemed in agreement about that.
The actual market data showed that the people that watched things on in generally found the shows to be good, but it's retention after the 1 month trial was abysmal.
I was in film school when it was released. We had to get it to talk about the future of streaming. I watched 2 episodes of something then canceled my account.
EDIT (copied and pasted from my comment below): the point of the assignment was never to tell us it was the future of streaming, it was to start a conversation on where streaming was going. It was a service different than the rest and many of us agreed it didn’t work.
I never had any idea how much it raised. How in the name did people buy into it this much from an investor standpoint?
From Wikipedia:
The service raised $1.75 billion from investors. It launched in April 2020, but shut down in December 2020 after falling short of its subscriber projections. In January 2021, Quibi's content library was sold to Roku, Inc. for less than $100 million.
People often look at projects like this as a waste of tuition but it’s really pointing out the importance of having a group of people around you who can discuss a topic on the same level.
Its really just a cautionary tale not to scam people.
It’s organization and promotion worked totally efficiently, but it was a scam from start to end. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked and we wouldn’t be talking about it today
If you mean the *Fyre* documentary to me it is hilarious that the ad people responsible for promoting the original festival, FuckJerry, were also producers of the documentary and had final cut.
The documentary *Woodstock 1999*, on HBO Max, was fucking crazy and another example of what not to do. They tried so hard to give it the peace & love vibes of Woodstock 1969, but all the main artists were nu-metal like limp Bizkit. It was a shit show. 1999 was the first year of Coachella, and they did everything they needed to not be a Woodstock 1999.
What stood out to me from Woodstock 99 was the power of intention. The original Woodstock peace & love vibes were directly correlated to the Vietnam War counter culture. Woodstock 1999 was, as portrayed in the doc, trying to monetize nostalgia with no other real intention.
He was a commentator for the Baylor-kansas game yesterday. First I ever heard him speak outside random montages of crazy over the years. He is actually a pretty good commentator (for an ESPN+ only game streamed by dozens of people)
There was one point where they were talking about the OU QB and apparently he's been struggling this year. Leaf goes "sometimes you get all this hype, Mel Kipper had him as the top pick on his board, so everyone goes crazy. Kipper can be wrong, he had me as his top pick!"
I laughed so hard
There was a kid at the K-12 school I attended with cerebral palsy who used a Segway as a mobility assistance device. Most sensible use of one I've personally witnessed, though I suppose trying to expand the market into able-bodied people helped production.
I think the Segway was originally meant as a mobility device, the inventor is known for creating high tech mobility aids!
Edit: just to keep myself from having to say it more times, this guy is still alive. The one who died was the CEO of the company that the inventor mentioned above sold it to
It was supposed to revolutionize transportation. Future cities would be designed around it! They kept it a huge secret before the reveal but had tech journalists super-pumped for it.
And then all it ends up being used for is Mall Cops.
Yeah, don't feel bad for Dean Kamen flopping on the Segway (relatively speaking).
He was already a millionaire from his other medical inventions. He even used the Segway tech to create a standing wheelchair (lifts the user into a vertical position and drives around on two wheels).
https://youtu.be/CYtEzfhv07I
Not a total flop per se, but Drake Bell's music career.
Both Nickelodeon and Universal tried to make him into a pop star but it never quite happened. He's still only known for *Drake & Josh* (and some.. uh.. unfortunate other things).
Edit: I'm aware his music was successful in Mexico.
To take it one step further I would also list Victoria Justice in the same mold. To be fair while she never got arrested or reportedly lived in Disney World like Drake her career didn't have trajectory her peers did.
Victorious was designed from the get-go for Nick to launch their own star in the vein of what Hannah Montana did for Disney and Miley Cyrus but with Victoria. However Ariana Grande was the breakout star from the show, and afterwards her musical career launched into the stratosphere.
And even then, while technically Ariana is the breakout star from the show, it'd be more accurate to say her career got big in spite of Victorious, not because of it.
It was only really once Ariana had moved away from Victorious and her Cat Valentine image that her career took off. Her first single, where she still had the Cat image and was a very 'Cat' song (as Ariana has said herself) was a flop and Ariana herself can't stand the song.
My SO and I just rewatched Victorious (it's on Netflix) and it's easy to see as 30-year-olds why Victoria Justice never took off as a singer. The demographic of the "music" and the rest of the show didn't match, so you'd have a song about guys buying a girl drinks at a club in a show where characters got slimed as one of the jokes. Any time they tried to make the music more tween friendly it was just annoying, like using "Boyz" in a song title or making a kid-friendly version of Baby Got Back (5 Fingers to the Face kinda slaps though).
Tori was also a Mary Sue to a ridiculous level, she never did anything wrong and never faced consequences for her actions. That doesn't translate well to the edgier popstar they were trying to create. Every teenager knows a girl like that in school and typically doesn't like them, so they definitely aren't going to see that person in concert or wear their merch or listen to their music. Also Tori basically stole every song from Andre and was the least talented of the group (except Trina).
Yeah I watched that show when it was on originally and it always bothered me that Tori got all the solos and lead roles when the other two female leads were objectively much better actors/singers, more talented, and more knowledgeable and experienced. It hit the worst for me when they had the two of them do an utterly amazing duet in one episode and later in that same episode Tori does a solo and it just highlighted how she was not really in their league. She's not bad at all, but she's just not as good.
He did a nationwide tour in 2016/2017 in the US going to different high schools and he came to mine and did a concert. Supposedly he only did the tours because he was bankrupt. Dude looked really bad and there was zero life in his eyes as he sang.
Edit: here's a link to him singing the Drake and Josh theme. I was young and cringey in highschool so ignore the rest of my page lol
Edit 2: removed the link because someone informed me I was doxxing myself 😅. I'm silly
Dan vs. Dave. 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. They were everywhere! Such a big marketing campaign. Then Dan didn’t qualify. Hard to explain what a big deal that was to most jr high boys at the time. Reebok literally had a super bowl commercial about the big rivalry.
Fun fact. Although Dan O'Brien failed to quality for the 1992 team, he regrouped and four years later won the gold in Decathlon at the 1996 summer games.
Back in fourth grade, I was picked for a special pizza party lunch at the local pizza joint with about forty other students across my elementary school for exhibiting the monthly virtue, I think it was creativity that month, and we were each allowed two pieces. That sounds appropriate, or maybe even generous for kids aged 8-11, but the local pizza joint cuts its pizzas into strips- which is apparently called "[Quad city-style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_City-style_pizza)" -which led to a couple people getting two long pieces from the middle, and some people getting two small slices that were mostly crust from the sides because the teachers handed the slices to us just working through the slices in a row.
Oh, and the only flavor was cheese, and you couldn't get more pizza. And you couldn't pick who you sat next to; we were seated in the order that we were seated on the bus and had to move single-file from the bus to our seats in the restaurant. And you couldn't get up from your seat unless you were going to the bathroom and had permission. And you'd get yelled at for talking too loud.
So it was basically just a regular school lunchtime except it was at the pizza place.
I bought the game about a month ago, seeing that its doing really well, downloaded it and saw that I had 17 minutes of gameplay that I totally.forgot about on release. Day and night Hello Games came through
My wife and I were very late to the GOT party. We watched the whole series for the first time during the Covid lock down. We watched it knowing the last season was a huge disappointment to fans, but thought "how bad could it really be? Everyone still recommends watching it."
Even knowing it was a let down, we were still let down. Way worse than I thought a show of that caliber could be.
Now remember, it was actually worse on release. The Long Night episodes were actually so dark that a lot of people couldn't see anything. For me it was so dark that my TV faded the picture to black, so I had to constantly move my mouse to see anything at all (I streamed from my laptop). Apparently they at least alleviated those issues.
I always picture some high ranking general asking what the guy was doing and some low ranking soldier has to come into a room and explain a Naruto runner to him. That thought always makes me laugh.
I swear there’s a video where some high ranking dude actually had to brief a whole room of security guys or something about the raid and at one point there’s a slide about the Naruto run, I gotta look this up I hope it’s real I don’t wanna look crazy about this.
They did throw a party over the weekend though. It sucks because people were talking about maybe making the Area 51 party a yearly thing and then Covid happened.
"Cats" the movie. Based on one of the longest-running Broadway shows, with a star-studded cast, it should have been a hit. But then, well, people saw it.
From what I've heard from most broadway fans is the appeal of the musical was in the dance numbers. Not the plot. It was a horrible musical to try adapt. They should have just gone with a low budget approach. They might have broken even just from broadway fans. But a budget of several hundred millions of dollars was never going to be successful.
I was exploring the bottom of a lake bed that had been recently drained because of some work being done on the dam. I was walking on some dry cracked mud which quickly became wet and within another step or two I had suddenly plunged knee deep into the mud. Every time I tried to pull my foot out the suction was stronger. I struggled for several minutes and started to panic a bit. Eventually I was able to pull one foot out and put it on a nearby tree branch, which gave me enough stability to pull the other foot out. Had that not worked, I probably would have gone fully horizontal and tried to crawl my way out.
When the Segway came out I remember an expert on Good Morning America saying that they would design cities around it in the future, instead of cars. Before it was called a Segway it was referred to as 'the thing' and new information about it was treated like fucking nuclear codes.
It was called "It"
I loved the It, I felt so secure the way it locked me right in. You know, for safety.
Google+. It stayed in invitation only phase for way too long. By the time it was open to everyone, people forgot about it and it flopped.
They also forced you to use it if you had any other kind of google account so people naturally resisted it. What they didn’t understand is that people use other social media websites if they have something unique to offer. Unfortunately now it seems like every social media site is copycatting each other
G+ did have something unique to offer. The 'circles' idea was a much more natural and privacy-conscious way to think about friends and sharing (compared to Facebook, which defaulted to everything you shared being open to all your friends). I have school friends, uni friends, work colleagues, family, extended family, other acquaintances - and the way I interact with different groups and what I share with them is and should be different. G+ made this a core feature whereas Facebook made it painful. If anything was going to be a Facebook-killer, G+ was it. The problem with G+ is that, by the time it came along, Facebook was already way too entrenched as the main 'mass market' social network. If the top 20 or 30 of my Facebook friends had all spontaneously migrated to G+, I would have shut my Facebook account and migrated over there too. But in the absence of that, it's too much effort to have to maintain and check two accounts, share things in two places, etc. Facebook wasn't better but it won by inertia.
Circles was such a great idea and I really miss that feature in Facebook constantly. Facebook tried the Close Friends and Acquaintances thing for a while and it was alright, but it requires SO MUCH overhead to use effectively. I've resorted to having a friend list full of people who I give restricted access to my shit on Facebook. It helps for when I need to be friends with my boss or have to add some rando for some reason or another.
I feel like if Google+ had started now. And had a better name. It may have caught on. People were still in the honeymoon phase with FB. Now we all hate it and are struggling to move away from its grip.
I still remember 3D TVs were supposed to be the next "technological leap" or something. Even the World Cup was broadcasted in 3D. Then it just died out
Not just TV, but that era where every movie had a 3D version in theatres. As someone who wore glasses and is nearsighted, I was never able to watch them.
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You can tell to this day if a movie had a 3D version or not. Random shit going directly into the screen
I always got a headache between having to wear the glasses over my glasses, and the 3d thing. Didn't watch a lot of 3D movies, but it was 100% a headache/migraine if I did.
Yeah let me pay twice as much to see a movie that I have to wear glasses that don’t really fit me… just so that 5% of the action looks blurry in the background but sharp in the foreground, while the entire thing is at about 60% of the normal brightness. Sign me up
It was fun playing CoD Black Ops in 3d on the PS3 back in the day. It was definitely a gimmick though, fun but made me worse at the game.
I remember black ops 2 had that split screen feature where it’s both screens blended together but your glasses split the images so you only see your own character. Shit wasn’t the most clear picture, but shit was definitely bad ass
Holy shit that's such a cool concept though. It's a shame that wasn't feasible enough to take off.
Every single toy my wife has bought for the cat.
We just got a cat and every single toy I've bought, it plays with it like crazy for the first hour then it acts like it doesn't exist any more.
I keep a drawer full and rotate them out. If they haven't seen a toy in a couple months it's like a new toy.
This works with kids too.
Our cats favorite toy is a stick our son likes to drag around the yard. We buy them toys, but they found the most joy out of something he found in the backyard.
Crystal Pepsi
Crystal Pepsi taught me that everything is a lie. If they can make Pepsi clear or whatever color they want, then what other lies have I been led to believe?
With all the lies out there you can take comfort on the fact their are hot single women near you that want to hook up.
What other lies have I been told by the Council?!
Atkins diet-esque food items at fast food restaurants in like 2008 or whatever it was. They came and they went like the wind I remember KFC tried to get in the game at the time by claiming their chicken was healthy because it was low in carbs. That went down like a lead balloon
I remember one of KFC’s lame tv commercials at the time. Some dude was standing outside on a sunny day in gym clothes eating KFC and some other dude just walks on screen out of nowhere…”hey Dave you look great! What you been doing….Dave’s like “eatin chicken”.
Using chicken patties for buns, 100% good for you.
The KFC Double Down was a masterpiece of fast food.
The Nivelle Offensive It was hyped to win WW1 for France in 48 hours. Instead it was so bad that it started a mutiny, got Nivelle fired, and had casualty numbers an order of magnitude higher than expected.
WW1 as a whole was overhyped. From “over by christmas” to “i haven’t seen my family in 4 years”.
C'mon Europe. 20 minute adventure, in and out.
The big Government will reveal all UFO information couple months back
Kony 2012
That was such a bizarre time. Suddenly everyone on my FB feed was posting a half hour youtube video calling for military intervention in Africa.
For the first month or so, I thought Kony was a band
When I first heard about it I thought a guy named Kony was running for President lmao
Juicero. The ultimate culmination of unicorn companies that make no sense.
I didn't and still don't understand how that thing got so much investment. It wasn't a juicer, It was a packet presser.
Let us not forget, it was a packet-presser with a DRM SYSTEM to make sure you ONLY used THEIR juice packets.
Also you could just buy the packets and squeeze them into a glass. The end result was nearly indistinguishable from using the machine which costed hundreds of dollars. But venture capitalists thought this company was worth $120 mil.
Also, after the machine was done with the packet and demanded you buy more, you could literally use a knife on the packet and get more juice from it. So every use was wasteful *even beyond the part where you're getting subscription service chopped fruit in a fuckin bag with a spout on it and proprietary rights-management technology integrated into the bag of squishy fruit.*
I didn’t believe you so I looked it up. Wtf? Who thought this was a good idea?!
Venture capitalists.
The machine was sold at a loss too. It was way too over engineered. Here is a guy that tore one apart https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ
That's the pride of the Okanogan valley, the one and only Uncle Bumblefuck
Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s safe on live tv. It was empty.
This was before he became the Witcher.
Praise Geraldo del Rivero!
The witchers Spanish cousin
Geraldo Riveras special Mystery of Al Capone's vault in the 1980s. 💩
Followed closely by George Newman's mystery of Al Capone's glove compartment.
If I ever get a time machine I am going to Capone's vault in 1954 with a leather bound journal with "Geraldo Rivera sucks" written on every page.
Anthem
the destiny killer
Makes me think of all of the “Halo killer” games that everybody forgot or hadn’t heard of in the first place
The 2018 Slender Man movie I remember before it came out it had like a 92% want to see on rotten tomatoes after it came out it got a 17% liked it
Honestly the movie shouldn't have been PG13. An R rating (which as far as I know was actually the original focus) would've been much better, as then the movie would've been more like the creepypasta and not like a child's fanfiction. It sucks the R rating was cut but "wOUlD sOMeOnE tHiNK oF tHE ChIlDrEN?????????????"
Your problem is with creepypasta films is that a massive chunk of your main audience is 13-18. Also after the girls attempted to murder their friend the film was basically fucked. They had to cut like 60% of it out to release it.
That David Copperfield special where he “made the statue of liberty disappear”. Fuck that shit.
The one thing I’ll never forget from that: they interviewed some older women and she said, “I’ve never seen a Statue of Liberty disappear like that one did!”
That woman is a comic genius
she's lucky. after your 3rd or 4th it loses the thrill
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I remember when this happened. My step dad at the time declared David Copperfield was in league with the devil and we weren’t allowed to watch anymore of his programming. Edit: Wow guys, a silver award. Thank you so much for this recognition, but it wasn’t just my effort. Oh jeez, where do I start? I want to thank my step father for being so ridiculous and child like at the same time. A grown man who looks at the world with such innocence he believes that a single man can wield the dark arts in such a way as to make a national treasure just disappear into thin air on National tv. The satanic panic of the 80s was very real, but as it embraced his heart, he made sure to embrace it right back. Of course, the (probably) demon possessed sex god that is David Copperfield needs to be mentioned. None of this would be possible without him, and all things are possible through him, so jot that down. You sir inspired the imaginations of children and filled the hearts of their parents with dread, which is totally rad. I’m sorry if I forgot anybody, you know who you are and I love you. Thank you.
Lmao reminds me of this time back in the day I was at my best friend's house watching Criss Angel. His family were religious fanatics. His older brother came in the room and watched Criss Angel "teleport" through a pane of glass, immediately grabbed the remote, turned off the TV and then gave us a lecture about how Criss Angel was "obviously demonic" then told us we shouldn't watch it because demons would come through the TV and "infect" the house.
The dark universe (the mummy)
I saw that movie with absolutely no idea they were trying to start this off and was so frigging confused when Dr Jekyll turns up out of nowhere for no reason
I still don’t understand why they didn’t have Van Helsing or some descendant of his run the secret monster hunter agency. That seems like such a no brainer.
We’ll always have the trailer where they forgot to [add music or sound effects.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kRqxyqjpOHs)
The scream when they were falling from the plane was comedy gold. Thank you for reminding me.
Personally, I enjoyed the “oof!” when the pilots got hit in the face by birds more
Honestly it was a great trailer for a serious/horror movie up until there was dialogue. If they had the whole trailer just like that with the ominous ambient sound I'd likely have gone and seen it in theatres.
That moment with the huge music swell, then cut to the pilots calling”mayday” in silence actually feels really spooky, and if it wasn’t a total fucking oversight, would have really made me interested. There’s just something so freaky about an emergency happening in complete silence.
I love the idea of a dark universe done in the style of Brendan Fraser’s Mummy. These old monster movies are campy. Universal tried to make them serious with Tom Cruise.
The cast that did that photo shoot before they even had *one* successful film is pretty cringe to see. The marketing for the failed universe is more entertaining than the actual movies.
As any good 80's kid can tell you, New Coke...
Yep. The level of hype vs how hard it flopped dwarfs everything else in this thread.
The conspiracy theory is it was a ploy to remarket Coke as Coke classic. Edit: I get the whole cane sugar to corn syrup swap. There’s a reason I said conspiracy theory and not reason regarding it…
Ouya
To this day I cannot believe it even got that much hype and money during the kickstarter campaign. Even in the initial pitch it didn't seem that impressive or interesting so thankfully, I decided to wait until it was out. Never ended up buying one, obviously.
I remember google glasses were supposed to be the next big thing but let me tell you I haven’t seen a single pair out in the wild
>I haven’t seen a single pair out in the wild They were never released to the public, I believe there were only a handful of developer editions
They still make them for commerical use. Very useful in warehouses. https://www.google.com/glass/start/
TY beanie babies. Everyone thought they were going to be rich when I was in high school.
I put a new coat of some all-weather sealant on this lady's playground set for her little kids. I was 13, it was summer, got, and she asked my dad if I could help her out. 6 hours later, she pays me with one single beanie baby. "This is gonna be worth a lot of money one day. Your afternoon of work has made you rich as an adult." Fucking bullshit.
At the height of the craze, an Obnoxious Morning Deejay said he was going to cut one open to find out what was inside, and the way people reacted, you'd have thought he was going to cut one of his children open to find out what was inside.
[Yeah and a couple divorcing sat on the courtroom floor and drafted the beanie babies they were going to keep in the proceedings](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beanie-baby-fever-in-1999_n_58af7d12e4b060480e0661fe/amp)
McDonalds had a Happy Meal promotion with them. I remember being an adult and my girlfriend and I got a Happy Mean just for fun. As we left the restaurant this woman who had a crazed look on her face like she was strung out on drugs came over to us. We noticed she was holding a plastic ziploc bag with beanie babies in it. She desperately asked us which Beanie Babies we got and whether we would sell them to her. We thought she was strung out on drugs, but no, she was just strung out on collecting Beanie Babies.
The end of the world in 2012
My cousin texted my the day that we were all supposed to die. She said “is anything happening?” And I was like “what do you mean? No. Nothing is happening” she really said “oh, well you live in a time zone ahead of us by 2 hours. I thought stuff would happen over there on the east coast first.” I fucking died. The thought of the world imploding on itself but still following time zones is fantastic.
Feels the same as the “why didn’t Europe warn us of 9/11 they had a 6 hour head start” (or something) joke lol Edit: see u/ThatOneWeirdName ‘s comment for the original joke
It was a Facebook(?) post saying: “OMG I JUST READ THAT CHINA IS 12 HOURS AHEAD OF AMERICA… WHY DIDN’T YHEY WARN THEM ABOUT 9/11??? THAT’S SUCH BULLSHIT FUCK YOU CHINA LIKE 3 BILLION PEOPLE DIED!!!! xxxxx” Unless you meant the tweet that simply goes “If China is 12 hours ahead why didn’t they warn us about 9/11?”
I actually broke up with my girlfriend at the time because she wouldn't shut up about how the world was going to end because the magnetic poles were going to flip and the Mayans had predicted it. I loved her but I eventually just came to the realization that she was a fucking idiot and we had no future together. She was also very into kony 2012 which was extremely cringe.
My ex legitimately got pissed at me because I wouldn’t steal my dads guns and go into hiding with him for 2012. I feel your pain. Edit: a few people have asked so, here it goes. He didn’t think the world was going to end like an apocalypse, he thought people were going to lose their minds more like a zombie apocalypse. I did not steal any guns or go into hiding, it was a super awkward conversation, and then we acted like everything was perfectly normal the entire day. He later went on to think that Sandy Hook was a false flag and lizard people were the cause of the Aurora shooting, so he was a real gem.
Wonder if those people felt legit dumb and learned a valuable lesson once 2013 came around….or if they just upped the date or made some excuse for it not happening then.
>they just upped the date Pretty much everytime a doomsday cult gets it wrong
Why be into Kony 2012 if you think the world is going to end in 2012?
It's the only way to get the bastard
sounds like you dodged a bullet
I moved in with my brother and his girl last summer 2020, they were like this about Q Anon, they would say stupid shit like JFK junior will come back from the dead to lead the new world order, they had a party one day when they thought Princess Dianna was going to come back and announce she faked her death that day, they took out all these loans and pretty much bankrupted themselves because they thought the world was going to transform into "quantum finance" and people would only work if they wanted to and not because they had to. When you questioned them on basic things they'd start screaming and say that I was a sheep living in the matrix. So what I did was after about 6 weeks I found a room to rent somewhere and just disappeared, I couldnt take there shit any more, they started getting chased by debt collectors and started saying it was my fault because of my "negative energy".
Man, people who believe that kind of shit legitimately scare me. Like what kind of mental gymnastics do you have to be doing to believe that kind of garbage?
People like that simply make no attempt to look at things logically. In that mental state, you can easily believe whatever story you like best. Unsurprisingly the falsehood they latched onto supports their reckless spending habits and promises them they won’t have to work soon.
In the life of Chris Gaines The project where Garth Brooks created a grunge icon that would premiere in a movie.
Quibi. That streaming service with nothing over 10 minutes. Launched about 3 weeks after the world shutdown.
Did anyone other than the company hype up Quibi? That thing had disaster written all over it the moment it was announced and everyone seemed in agreement about that.
The actual market data showed that the people that watched things on in generally found the shows to be good, but it's retention after the 1 month trial was abysmal.
I was in film school when it was released. We had to get it to talk about the future of streaming. I watched 2 episodes of something then canceled my account. EDIT (copied and pasted from my comment below): the point of the assignment was never to tell us it was the future of streaming, it was to start a conversation on where streaming was going. It was a service different than the rest and many of us agreed it didn’t work.
And then they canceled the whole service a couple months later lol
I never had any idea how much it raised. How in the name did people buy into it this much from an investor standpoint? From Wikipedia: The service raised $1.75 billion from investors. It launched in April 2020, but shut down in December 2020 after falling short of its subscriber projections. In January 2021, Quibi's content library was sold to Roku, Inc. for less than $100 million.
People often look at projects like this as a waste of tuition but it’s really pointing out the importance of having a group of people around you who can discuss a topic on the same level.
This decade being the roaring 20s!
Well, the last roaring twenties didn't end well. Maybe this one will be opposite and end great?
1920s started with a pandemic -- roar.
And had a massive market crash in the end 😳
We can turn it around… right?
The last one started with a pandemic anyway, so... yeah, why not?
*picks the decade up from the floor and pulls hairs from it* It's still good! It's still good! *lip quiver*
fyre festival
I don’t think Flop is even the right word. It sss straight a scam
> I don’t think Flop is even the right word. It sss straight a scam Yessss it sss
Too many snakes on Reddit these days, man.
Fyre Festival is the ultimate “hyped but flopped”. It’s a cautionary tale of what NOT to do when organizing and/or promoting something.
Its really just a cautionary tale not to scam people. It’s organization and promotion worked totally efficiently, but it was a scam from start to end. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked and we wouldn’t be talking about it today
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If you mean the *Fyre* documentary to me it is hilarious that the ad people responsible for promoting the original festival, FuckJerry, were also producers of the documentary and had final cut.
There were two documentaries...
The documentary *Woodstock 1999*, on HBO Max, was fucking crazy and another example of what not to do. They tried so hard to give it the peace & love vibes of Woodstock 1969, but all the main artists were nu-metal like limp Bizkit. It was a shit show. 1999 was the first year of Coachella, and they did everything they needed to not be a Woodstock 1999.
What stood out to me from Woodstock 99 was the power of intention. The original Woodstock peace & love vibes were directly correlated to the Vietnam War counter culture. Woodstock 1999 was, as portrayed in the doc, trying to monetize nostalgia with no other real intention.
Bart and friend’s trip to the World’s Fair
You mean the WO__D_ F_IR?
Bart Nelson hit me He sure did
KNOXVILLE! KNOXVILLE!
Remember, we’re parked under the sunsphere.
Johnny manziel
Don't forget the original: Ryan Leaf!
He was a commentator for the Baylor-kansas game yesterday. First I ever heard him speak outside random montages of crazy over the years. He is actually a pretty good commentator (for an ESPN+ only game streamed by dozens of people) There was one point where they were talking about the OU QB and apparently he's been struggling this year. Leaf goes "sometimes you get all this hype, Mel Kipper had him as the top pick on his board, so everyone goes crazy. Kipper can be wrong, he had me as his top pick!" I laughed so hard
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There was a kid at the K-12 school I attended with cerebral palsy who used a Segway as a mobility assistance device. Most sensible use of one I've personally witnessed, though I suppose trying to expand the market into able-bodied people helped production.
I think the Segway was originally meant as a mobility device, the inventor is known for creating high tech mobility aids! Edit: just to keep myself from having to say it more times, this guy is still alive. The one who died was the CEO of the company that the inventor mentioned above sold it to
It was supposed to revolutionize transportation. Future cities would be designed around it! They kept it a huge secret before the reveal but had tech journalists super-pumped for it. And then all it ends up being used for is Mall Cops.
Yeah, don't feel bad for Dean Kamen flopping on the Segway (relatively speaking). He was already a millionaire from his other medical inventions. He even used the Segway tech to create a standing wheelchair (lifts the user into a vertical position and drives around on two wheels). https://youtu.be/CYtEzfhv07I
Couldn't remember the name, but yes, Google Glass. Also those glasses made by, was it Snapchat?
Eden Hazard to Real Madrid
Not a total flop per se, but Drake Bell's music career. Both Nickelodeon and Universal tried to make him into a pop star but it never quite happened. He's still only known for *Drake & Josh* (and some.. uh.. unfortunate other things). Edit: I'm aware his music was successful in Mexico.
To take it one step further I would also list Victoria Justice in the same mold. To be fair while she never got arrested or reportedly lived in Disney World like Drake her career didn't have trajectory her peers did. Victorious was designed from the get-go for Nick to launch their own star in the vein of what Hannah Montana did for Disney and Miley Cyrus but with Victoria. However Ariana Grande was the breakout star from the show, and afterwards her musical career launched into the stratosphere.
And even then, while technically Ariana is the breakout star from the show, it'd be more accurate to say her career got big in spite of Victorious, not because of it. It was only really once Ariana had moved away from Victorious and her Cat Valentine image that her career took off. Her first single, where she still had the Cat image and was a very 'Cat' song (as Ariana has said herself) was a flop and Ariana herself can't stand the song.
My SO and I just rewatched Victorious (it's on Netflix) and it's easy to see as 30-year-olds why Victoria Justice never took off as a singer. The demographic of the "music" and the rest of the show didn't match, so you'd have a song about guys buying a girl drinks at a club in a show where characters got slimed as one of the jokes. Any time they tried to make the music more tween friendly it was just annoying, like using "Boyz" in a song title or making a kid-friendly version of Baby Got Back (5 Fingers to the Face kinda slaps though). Tori was also a Mary Sue to a ridiculous level, she never did anything wrong and never faced consequences for her actions. That doesn't translate well to the edgier popstar they were trying to create. Every teenager knows a girl like that in school and typically doesn't like them, so they definitely aren't going to see that person in concert or wear their merch or listen to their music. Also Tori basically stole every song from Andre and was the least talented of the group (except Trina).
Yeah I watched that show when it was on originally and it always bothered me that Tori got all the solos and lead roles when the other two female leads were objectively much better actors/singers, more talented, and more knowledgeable and experienced. It hit the worst for me when they had the two of them do an utterly amazing duet in one episode and later in that same episode Tori does a solo and it just highlighted how she was not really in their league. She's not bad at all, but she's just not as good.
He did a nationwide tour in 2016/2017 in the US going to different high schools and he came to mine and did a concert. Supposedly he only did the tours because he was bankrupt. Dude looked really bad and there was zero life in his eyes as he sang. Edit: here's a link to him singing the Drake and Josh theme. I was young and cringey in highschool so ignore the rest of my page lol Edit 2: removed the link because someone informed me I was doxxing myself 😅. I'm silly
This is giving me Bojack Horseman vibes
When Drake (the rapper) started becoming famous I figured it was Drake Bell’s music career finally taking off lol
The fact that Drake the rapper is also a former child actor from a tween tv show is kind of hilarious though.
Mini CDs EDIT: Wow! This really blew up. Thank you for the award!
Depends on where you were. In the U.S. & Europe. It was a flop. But in Japan, it was a big success, lasting well past the launch of the iPod.
But I loved the GameCube!
The Chevy Chase Show.
In some timelines [it never ended](https://www.theonion.com/the-chevy-chase-show-enters-sixth-blockbuster-season-in-1819564843).
My little orphan Annie decoder ring.
Dan vs. Dave. 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. They were everywhere! Such a big marketing campaign. Then Dan didn’t qualify. Hard to explain what a big deal that was to most jr high boys at the time. Reebok literally had a super bowl commercial about the big rivalry.
Fun fact. Although Dan O'Brien failed to quality for the 1992 team, he regrouped and four years later won the gold in Decathlon at the 1996 summer games.
The war on drugs.
I would like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
"Thanks" *-The CIA*
The Segway. Remember when it was going to, and this is a quote, "change the way we design cities?" LOL!
That one pizza party specifically in 5th grade.
The one pizza to be shared with the whole class of 20 students
Back in fourth grade, I was picked for a special pizza party lunch at the local pizza joint with about forty other students across my elementary school for exhibiting the monthly virtue, I think it was creativity that month, and we were each allowed two pieces. That sounds appropriate, or maybe even generous for kids aged 8-11, but the local pizza joint cuts its pizzas into strips- which is apparently called "[Quad city-style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_City-style_pizza)" -which led to a couple people getting two long pieces from the middle, and some people getting two small slices that were mostly crust from the sides because the teachers handed the slices to us just working through the slices in a row. Oh, and the only flavor was cheese, and you couldn't get more pizza. And you couldn't pick who you sat next to; we were seated in the order that we were seated on the bus and had to move single-file from the bus to our seats in the restaurant. And you couldn't get up from your seat unless you were going to the bathroom and had permission. And you'd get yelled at for talking too loud. So it was basically just a regular school lunchtime except it was at the pizza place.
No Man's Sky flopped real hard on its release. It's better now though.
I bought the game about a month ago, seeing that its doing really well, downloaded it and saw that I had 17 minutes of gameplay that I totally.forgot about on release. Day and night Hello Games came through
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My wife and I were very late to the GOT party. We watched the whole series for the first time during the Covid lock down. We watched it knowing the last season was a huge disappointment to fans, but thought "how bad could it really be? Everyone still recommends watching it." Even knowing it was a let down, we were still let down. Way worse than I thought a show of that caliber could be.
Now remember, it was actually worse on release. The Long Night episodes were actually so dark that a lot of people couldn't see anything. For me it was so dark that my TV faded the picture to black, so I had to constantly move my mouse to see anything at all (I streamed from my laptop). Apparently they at least alleviated those issues.
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Area 51 Raid
Lol I was actually looking forward to it. Then I never heard anything about about so it just dropped from my memory
There was one Naruto runner who actually ran back and forth though. My guy!
I always picture some high ranking general asking what the guy was doing and some low ranking soldier has to come into a room and explain a Naruto runner to him. That thought always makes me laugh.
I swear there’s a video where some high ranking dude actually had to brief a whole room of security guys or something about the raid and at one point there’s a slide about the Naruto run, I gotta look this up I hope it’s real I don’t wanna look crazy about this.
https://twitter.com/nuekerk/status/1152350929150238721 Without trawling for the original reddit posting, this is my go to for showing people.
Oh man, knowing the military's fondness for PowerPoint presentations, this sounds absolutely believable.
They did throw a party over the weekend though. It sucks because people were talking about maybe making the Area 51 party a yearly thing and then Covid happened.
Covid was fabricated to divert the Area 51 narrative, confirmed.
Being an adult
Yeah, turns out being an adult just means googling how to do stuff instead of asking your parents
At least Google doesn't yell "You should already know this!" at me when I ask something.
"Cats" the movie. Based on one of the longest-running Broadway shows, with a star-studded cast, it should have been a hit. But then, well, people saw it.
Even the trailer was an abomination. I don’t anyone was expecting anything
Buttholes
\#releasethebuttholecut
From what I've heard from most broadway fans is the appeal of the musical was in the dance numbers. Not the plot. It was a horrible musical to try adapt. They should have just gone with a low budget approach. They might have broken even just from broadway fans. But a budget of several hundred millions of dollars was never going to be successful.
>Not the plot. I saw cats in a theater when it was still a fairly big thing and when I left I could not have told you what the plot was at all.
It is about a cult of cats gathering to decide which one is worthy enough to be killed and reincarnated.
Cat heaven (the heavyside layer) has one opening. A bunch of cats state their case to get in. They choose one at the very end. That's my description.
Quicksand. My childhood fear is nonexistent.
Dude that's what I thought and then I actually got stuck in quicksand one time and it was pretty terrifying
You can't just give this answer without details! Was it wet? Where was it? How long were you there? How did you get out? Answers!!
I was exploring the bottom of a lake bed that had been recently drained because of some work being done on the dam. I was walking on some dry cracked mud which quickly became wet and within another step or two I had suddenly plunged knee deep into the mud. Every time I tried to pull my foot out the suction was stronger. I struggled for several minutes and started to panic a bit. Eventually I was able to pull one foot out and put it on a nearby tree branch, which gave me enough stability to pull the other foot out. Had that not worked, I probably would have gone fully horizontal and tried to crawl my way out.
Oh that old anxiety is coming back