If you are friends with me on Facebook, you might have read my saga to buy the game. I visited no less than 10 stores multiple times asking if they had the game on PC (because my thoughts on anyone who buys an MMO for the console, let's just say their elevator doesn't go all the way to the top), and it was basically a string of "we don't have it" and "it's sold out."
Keep in mind, folks, this is the only game I need to complete my collection. I have every game for the series. I've copied the older games to emulators because I did give my money to SquareSoft and Square Enix. I've done this longer than some of you have been alive, and yes, as a kid, I actually liked these games better than Mario. I was given a Sega Genesis so I wouldn't climb cupboards in my house, and frequently claim I could have been a mountain climber by now if it were not for video games.
That aside, here's my character as a fresh level one. I inadvertently made my toon look like Tidus from FFX, according to a friend. He also forgot I also inadvertently made my toon also look like Vaan from FFXII:
Fun fact: I made this toon a Thaumaturge (a magic user), while Tidus and Vaan are more Thief-type characters, which makes my choice a bit more confusing than it should be.
Anyways, first hour in, I get hit by maintenance. No problem, I just go out and get some stuff from Safeway. I come back and play for a bit, and get hit by maintenance again for a total of three maintenance hours during a time when people are playing the most. Am I mad? Not really. I probably would have been more pissed off if I had bought the game on its original release date (August 27) and tried to play then.
The gameplay is somewhat good. Not bad, but good enough to keep me interested. The only games that I play on a regular basis have been reduced to multiplayer first person shooters and WoW, so this is a pretty big achievement on the game's part. My expectations weren't sky high to begin with, since the JRPGs are far better, but it exceeded them on some level.
Getting gear is pretty straightforward. You do quests, you get gear. A fun part of the game are the FATEs, which basically involve you killing enemies with a ton of other people, and you get rewards commensurate on how you did in the battle. Think of them as world bosses. They're not extremely hard, but if you're level 10 like me, you'll probably think they are.
I get a lot of bag space to begin with, which rules. I haven't actually done any instances yet, and I'm not even max level yet. I'll write a full review once I get to know the game a bit better.
People make death threats over seemingly inane things nowadays. I've actually gotten a death threat because of what I write, which is another testament to people overreacting to things I say or do. I actually took it seriously too, because the guy looks like he could have gone on a shooting rampage at any second, and poking crazy people with a virtual stick is generally not a good idea. Should people be making death threats? The answer is an obvious no, but people do it anyway without realizing their status in life and how seriously they will be taken. The consequences are a completely different thing altogether.
Pop music fans
In the past few weeks, I've seen death threats from fans of Taylor Swift, One Direction, and Blood on the Dance Floor. I did a few sweepings of the Internet and found out that the pop music fans' semi-empty threats of violence are not only harmless, but amusing. YouTube personality NateTalksToYou chronicled the insanity of One Direction fans in his video:
The majority of One Direction fans are preteen or teenage girls, making them only threatening in movies such as Mean Girls, or, in real life, not at all.
Risk of getting killed by a fan of pop music: Extremely Low Chances of being taken seriously if you're a fan of pop music and did make a death threat: Extremely Low
In fact, you could say they're more of a threat to themselves than to anyone else.
Gamers
Another group of people I notice making death threats are gamers. As a gamer myself, I've learned to laugh it off, namely because it's just a game, but there are people who take games quite seriously. Video games don't cause violence, because you'd have to be an idiot to want to kill someone over a few virtual pixels, right? Well, the news LOVES to fish for stories involving video games and real violence, even though psychologists and psychiatrists already have been saying for at least 20 years that there is no correlation between the two.
Here is a recent news article detailing some eight year old kid killing a 90 year old woman after playing Grand Theft Auto. Out of the millions and millions of people playing Grand Theft Auto doing things such as blowing up cars, shooting random people in the streets, shooting hookers and getting your money back, and vehicular homicide, you'd think there would be a drastic increase of actual crime, right?
Wrong.
Let's look at some contributing factors that will ultimately make people who go "VIDEO GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE LOL" shut the fuck up, because they make my blood boil:
1. The gun was left loaded in an unsafe place, which is probably one of the most idiotic things you could do with a gun. If you're reading this and own a gun, store it away safely.
2. They lived in a trailer park, which is probably not the best place to be having a gun in the first place.
3. The kid was eight years old and thus, he shouldn't have been playing Grand Theft Auto in the first place. The real people who should be charged with a crime? His parents, for generally being shitty parents, child neglect, etc.
I don't know why they have to repeat this ad nauseam, namely because 20 years of studies done by people obviously qualified to make these statements are apparently not enough to convince idiots.
Risk of getting killed by a gamer: Medium Chances of being taken seriously if you're a gamer and did make a death threat: Low
It's happened, but not as frequently as the media wants you to think. In fact, lag upsets me more than violence in video games.
Religious zealots
Good old religious zealots never can catch a break. People kill an abortion doctor to save the lives of the unborn, which in and of itself is hypocritical because "Thou shalt not kill" is the fifth commandment of the Ten Commandments; Islamic fundamentalists decide to carry out 9/11 just because the people in America prefer to worship Jesus over Allah. It's really a mess, and a mess that probably won't end unless somehow people manage to practice their faith without proselytizing it. There are quotes in the Bible and the Koran stating that all followers of Christianity and Islam must spread the good news of their faith or else (which completely defeats the whole purpose of the free will we were given). An old teacher of mine runs a blog and it's probably the best sleep aid since televised golf. Not only has he managed to improperly practice Christianity (at least from my own experiences with him), but has also managed to make the Christian religion boring. How do you expect to follow the word of God if you make your religion appear boring? It's not intellectual charity if you're putting people to sleep (well, if your intended audience are insomniacs, it probably is).
Personal vendettas aside, religious zealots are pretty dangerous people. It's not because their religion is bad; it's that to them, violence is the answer, and you're going to die because you didn't accept their God for whatever reason.
Risk of getting killed by a religious zealot: Zero (Buddhist, Atheist/Agnostic), Medium to High (Christian, Hindu), Extreme (Muslim, Cult) Chances of being taken seriously if you're a religious zealot and did make a death threat: Zero (Buddhist, Atheist/Agnostic), Medium to High (Christian, Hindu), Extreme (Muslim, Cult)
I have never been heard of anyone dying from Buddhist or atheist/agnostic extremists; in fact, Buddhists set themselves on fire as a form of protest. Atheists/agnostics tend to keep their extremism to Reddit and are mildly annoying at best and have probably ruined atheism/agnosticism for everyone else.
Christian extremists would historically top the list (Crusades, Spanish Inquisition), but nowadays it's just some random guys who are out to kill abortion doctors and serial killers who just happened to be Christian. If you're from India or know Indian history, you might remember Hindu extremists killing Mahatma Gandhi, who was allegedly the least violent person on the planet, and therefore didn't have an actual reason as to why they would carry out such an act.
There are multiple verses in the Koran that espouse peace and understanding, and just as many that say to kill infidels and all that other stuff you hear on the news. Why do we take them seriously, then? Well, Islamic extremists gloat about death and destruction and actually have the resources to do such things.
Cult leaders are self-explanatory. They would kill you in a heartbeat for the weirdest and most bizarre reason possible.
So here's a short guide as to whether you should be making a death threat and how seriously you'll be taken. Think twice before you make that death threat.
Finding a girlfriend or boyfriend on the Internet is pretty commonplace nowadays. There are several websites built around it, and some "studies" have shown that couples who meet online are happier and are married longer than those who don't. Guess what? They're wrong. Every single online dating profile ever is pretty much this:
Upon seeing this photo, 100% of people who do online dating now have 100% of their time spent online dating free to allocate elsewhere.
Making fun of online dating is more fun than online dating. If you're female and on an online dating website (OkCupid, for example), I guarantee that 99.99% of the people who contact you have one (or all) of the following: a fedora, talk about how nice of a guy they are, or are downright creepy and go straight to the point (i.e. "let's fuck lol ur boobies are nice" or "i'd drag my balls through broken glass just to hear you fart" kind of bullshit). For the 0.01% who actually manage to find the love of their life on an online dating site, you're luckier than most, but chances are you're going to be going through the garbage pile for days, weeks, months, even years.
It gets even worse for men. You can't be anything less than perfect or no one will ever contact you, and even a simple hello can be considered creepy as fuck (see included picture for reference). Sure, the Internet is a place where we can all be inconsiderate assholes towards one another without any fear of retaliation, but being creepy online is just as bad as being creepy in real life. In fact, if you're creepy in real life, you're arrested, sent to jail and probably have to be on some sex offender list; if you're creepy online, everyone screen caps it and sends it around everywhere to everyone they know, meaning you'll be known as creepy forever to billions of people around the world. Heck, it's worse than being creepy in real life, if you think about it.
I once wrote a guide to online dating, and I even distributed it for free on the Internet, because I'm such a nice guy. Here's the guide in its entirety:
"Jose's Guide to Online Dating:
Step 1: Don't
Step 2: See Step 1"
Do yourselves (and everybody else) a favor and keep the "online" out of "online dating."
I see protests against wars, gay marriage, putting artificial stuff in our food, abortion, and other issues in society today. While that's all fine and I believe people should have the right to protest (one of the perks of living in America), there are a lot of bigger things lurking in the shadows that do quite a bit more damage than people think. Here are a few issues that actually deserve your attention, and the reasons why.
Shitty parenting
We never protest people being awful parents.People didn't protest against Casey Anthony despite all the overwhelming evidence that she was guilty of something. She was even acquitted. While you morons were off saying gay marriage would wreck society, people were getting away with being shitty parents, and nobody gave a flying fuck about it. Next time you see kids being a nuisance at Wal-Mart and their parents being oblivious to it, you should protest that, not Adam and Steve filing a joint tax return.
The worst thing is that shitty parenting is preventable. Don't know what the fuck you're doing? Don't become a parent. Some of the most incapable people out there all of a sudden believe that they can take responsibility for another human being's life while they don't have their shit together. It's not just a 'MERICA thing, it's pretty much a worldwide phenomenon, but that's for another blog post.
Divorce
Gay marriage opponents/cosmetic Christians (I'm going to call fake Christians "cosmetic Christians" from now on), take note: divorce is actually wrong as said in the Bible:
"I hate divorce" (Malachi 2:16)
"Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate" (Mark 10:9)
There's a lot more, but that would actually require reading the Bible, something that is inconvenient to these cosmetic Christians.
Stupidity
We protest for our schools to stop sucking, but we don't protest stupidity. In fact, we practically embrace stupidity like it was our best friend. We're here asking for our schools to improve, while at the same time watching reality television.
Spoilers on shitty cars
Self-explanatory.
Those are just a few things I can think of that need to be protested against just as much as gay marriage, abortion, war, etc. Add your own.
I have heard from a good amount of people that they hate rap/hip-hop without giving a really good reason other than "I don't like it." I've been listening to rap/hip-hop since I was a kid, namely because I grew up in an area that wasn't predominantly white. So that's my excuse.
As for the people who say they hate rap/hip-hop, this is what they really hate:
These people forgot to add an extremely vital word to their sentence: "I hate mainstream rap/hip-hop." That's really it. The rap/hip-hop they listen to are people rapping about being a stupid hoe or saying nigga eleven billion times. They don't really hate rap/hip-hop, they just hate what's being played on the radio, so they automatically paint the entire genre as just being Lil Wayne or Nicki Minaj without doing research into what rap/hip-hop actually is.
I link good rap/hip-hop on my Facebook a lot, and it gets ignored because it's automatically been placed into the same camp as YMCMB. Why? They happen to be in the same genre as each other. There's a huge difference between someone rapping about issues in society (the original purpose of rap/hip-hop) and rapping about getting bitches and being a stupid hoe (what people have been deluded into thinking rap/hip-hop is nowadays).
I don't know that many people that want to look for good music, or many radio stations that want to look for good rap/hip-hop to play on the radio, so garbage like Nicki Minaj is rolled out for everyone to listen to and thus perpetuate the cycle of people hating rap/hip-hop. It's not that they actually hate rap/hip-hop, it's that they hate shitty rap/hip-hop. The sign that humanity as a whole is deteriorating is that Nicki Minaj was made a judge on American Idol, and it's a bit depressing that someone who has abused the fuck out of auto-tune gets to decide whether or not you have talent as a singer.
So if you say you hate rap/hip-hop, at least add "mainstream" before rap/hip-hop because I know that's what you're really saying. It also helps if you don't paint the entire genre as being similar to Lil Wayne or Nicki Minaj, because that is so far from the truth.
I haven't done too much personal blogging lately because I have to blog about other things to receive a paycheck—so here's a few things that have happened lately:
I got a new YouTube channel (I'm uploading mostly game videos but I'll have other stuff soon): http://www.youtube.com/TheAWPFactor
Anyways, onto the whole restaurants with the best free bread.
1. Red Lobster
Red Lobster has the best free bread, in this case, biscuits. Cheddar bay biscuits are the shit. I could eat them every single day if I wanted to. I used to take home a lot of the bread and eat it at home. They're one of the best reasons to ever go to Red Lobster, and I don't even like the majority of seafood. Red Lobster's biscuits are one of the greatest gifts to humanity.
2. Olive Garden
I haven't been to Olive Garden in a while, but it's still a great place to eat. The difference between Red Lobster and Olive Garden is that I actually like most of the items on Olive Garden's menu (I don't think I've eaten more than four things off of the menu at Red Lobster). Their breadsticks take the cake, the plate it came on, the utensils, and the next cake when it comes to taste. The garlic butter taste is second to none. If you haven't had Olive Garden's breadsticks, you better go and get them because you're missing out big time.
3. Outback Steakhouse
I despise wheat bread, but for some reason, Outback Steakhouse's bread makes me like it. It hits my taste buds in a different way, much like new flavors of Arizona Iced Tea or whatever. The thing is you'll need melted butter to make it taste a lot better. I went through at least two baskets before we got to the Bloomin' Onion.
4. Cheesecake Factory
It makes my list because the white bread is awesome. The other types of bread are kinda meh, namely because I have a personal aversion to wheat bread as I mentioned before. My big problem with this is that the butter isn't slightly melted, so you'll have to spread it on and not be lazy. The bread is really average and nothing super special, but it's the Cheesecake Factory, so it serves as a good appetizer to a good meal.
Lent is supposed to be a season of sacrifice and reconciliation in the Catholic Church. For forty days and nights, we reflect on the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, by dying so that we can be free from sin and death. You go to church every Sunday, confess your sins, and, by tradition, you give something up that you really like, such as candy, soda, Facebook, etc. Doesn't sound so bad, does it?
As human beings usually do, they find something wrong with everything. I immediately saw what was wrong with Lent the second I started attempting to give something up: to these people, it really wasn't about Jesus or the sacrifices he made so that we could be free from sin. It was basically a circus event of people trying to outdo each other through their Lenten sacrifices, all in the name of self-control, something that should be done all of the time rather than some of the time. I'm sure to this very day, some of those people still do it; they brag about what they're going to give up and how awesome of a person they are because of it. If you don't, then good for you; you've learned how to stop throwing dirt on a good message.
For years, I stayed extremely bitter at this time of the year because of that. However, I'm changing my stance on it in 2013, thanks to a good friend of mine who reminded me on how it should be done. Instead of giving things up, we should start reaching out to one another in the spirit of reconciliation, and that's what I intend to do throughout Lent. Sounds shocking, doesn't it? Returning to what the original message of Lent is, what Jesus intended it all to be, right? It might be a bit alarming to those who believe that giving things up temporarily (and thus temporarily practicing self-control) is a good idea. It's good practice, but self-control is a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year virtue, you know, like all the other virtues?
Here's the kicker (something that may shock plenty of you): I'm going to start sending messages to those who I despise and those who despise me and reach out to them in the spirit of Lenten forgiveness. This is not a one-time, Lent-only deal—it's something that will be done all the time from now on, the way Jesus intended it to be, the correct way. No conditions, no ulterior motives, no bullshit, this is a genuine reaching out. I'm ready to take action immediately.
I previously did something called "Internet Forum Reviews" which were my attempt to try to review Internet forums. It's difficult to review a forum if you're not part of the community (although that will also lend to some bias if you try to), so I decided to stop doing them. Instead, I'm doing a one-off of the most poorly moderated forums on the Internet.
I've been on Internet forums longer than some of you have been alive (true story), and back in the day, you had to have some functional level of intelligence to even post onthem, let alone access them. Although the sites I frequented were mostly things related to video games, they had some pretty bright folks on it, and as a nine year old kid, it was interesting to meet all sorts of individuals who had similar interests. Now that the Internet is for everybody, we've let all sorts of people in who should be learning proper spelling and grammar rather than posting cat videos and how much they love or hate (insert popular thing here).
With any Internet forum comes moderators, aka the online equivalent to the yard duty people when you go out to have recess and play with your friends. Since they also happen to be human beings, they also happen to make mistakes. Guess who the rules are made by? Human beings, so they also have mistakes in them as well. Since human beings having flaws have always been true, there's nothing we can change about that. But since the Internet can be accessed by just about everyone (including people without intelligence), Internet forums has deteriorated from fairness into police states that would put a smile on Hitler's face.
Without further ado, here are some examples of the most poorly moderated forums on the Internet.
GameFAQs.com
This is probably the king of poorly moderated Internet forums. I've frequented their forums for eight years, contributed to some FAQs, and noticed some of the most blatant and downright bizarre abuses of power. Saying "this game sucks" will get you "modded" (I said that a game that was universally panned as a bad game sucked and got modded for "trolling"). What is being modded? If a moderator doesn't like what you're doing, you get modded. It doesn't even have to break the rules. You can even be modded for a post you deleted, which is also a testament to their bizarre abuses of power.
This guy has come clean about what goes on in the mod circle, and can probably explain things better than I can from the moderator perspective. But from my eight years on the website, I've been modded probably four times, namely because I visited the site at a time when I wasn't a somewhat complete asshole on the Internet (yes, there was a time when I was like that). I still visit GameFAQs but only to read FAQs and not so much post on the forums. I do this because expressing my opinion on something will most likely get me "modded" by people who, for the most part, twist the rules to suit their own viewpoints rather than enforce the rules that are usually available for all to read. The difference between good moderation and shitty moderation? Good moderation entails enforcement of the rules by the letter rather than by the spirit, and some flexibility based on the context (i.e. saying "I think X feature of this game is retarded" shouldn't be actionable, while "You're retarded for thinking what you think" warrants action).
The silver lining: The silver lining in the cloud is that GameFAQs is still largely a forum only kids will visit. The same kids that tell you online that they'll bang your mom and spew 99 million expletives per second as if they just found out how to curse.
Expectations for improvement: Very low. They just rope in more suckers with the promise of being an Internet forum moderator and thus having a position of power, while in reality it ranks somewhere between cleaning toilets and getting a C in remedial math.
World of Warcraft forums
Although the game isn't bad (I still fork over $15 a month to play daily), the forums are poorly moderated. I don't post much in the other forums. However, I like posting on my realm (Kil'jaeden) forum. Despite the large stream of morons on the forum, there are actually really cool people there that I've gotten to know over my three years on the server. I'm currently banned from the forum until February 2 for posting a thread with a joke title about a guild being bad, and talking about Borderlands 2. The reason? Harassment. Even if it was a joke, apparently having a sense of humor is harassment.
Now it's time for my Alex Jones-level conspiracy theory regarding my ban. The guild (which will go unnamed) in question is the largest guild on the server, but it also happens to be the worst. Multiple threads about them go up in the Kil'jaeden realm forums and most of them get deleted within a few hours because they mass report such threads. Bans are thus handed out and everyone goes home happy, right?
Wrong.
Threads about them continue to go up because they really are the worst guild on the server. To be fair, there are some cool people in that guild, but the douchebags hold the power. You might think one would want to repair their reputation as a result, but it's already sunk so far that it can be no longer libeled or slandered. For those who know your media law, you should know that someone or something cannot be libeled/slandered if their reputation in the community is so awful that it can be lowered no further. However, since the "rules" are so badly enforced, these threads go the way of the garbage bin and people get banned.
But do they really deserve the ban? Some would say this guild is abusing the "Report Post" feature, while others think the rules should never, ever be questioned. My personal opinion sways toward the former, because whoever thinks the latter is more of a sheep than they want to let everyone know. Everything that is reported isn't necessarily a violation of the rules, and what you find offensive isn't necessarily what everyone else finds offensive.
On to my theory: This guild and Blizzard have an under-the-table deal where any thread about them is instantly deleted and the people in question warned or banned. It may sound crazy, but there is an element to truth about it: a thread bashing another guild stayed up far longer. Maybe it's because the post wasn't reported as quickly, but also because other guilds don't give a fuck or have the manpower to go to the forums and mass report such posts. Plus, they're the largest guild, so that means more money than Blizzard, which also confirms something that is extremely true in real life: when money is involved, people don't give a fuck about anything else.
The silver lining: There are cool people on the forums. People I'd have a drink with IRL. It's not a bad place to be, but rather a place that suffers from poor and uneven enforcement of the rules.
Expectations for improvement: I'll be generous and say that there's a moderate expectation for improvement, especially if the moderators can see past the smoke and mirrors that people put up in an attempt to squeal on others who are allegedly "breaking the rules" rather than just seeing the obvious "I don't agree with this guy, so I'll just mass report him with my entire guild."
There are a lot of poorly moderated forums out there on the Internet, but these are probably the ones with the most traffic, so if you know any other forums that have poor moderation, let me know.
I know I've railed on and on about maturity and what not in previous blog posts, but there is still massive confusion over the meaning of the term "adult." Since human beings have been given (well, at least most of us have been given) the ability to reason and to have a conscience and all those extra perks that our fellow mammals simply do not have, we often throw in our own meanings into the word (or any word, for that matter), which has led to this mass confusion of what exactly makes someone an adult.
First, we have to differentiate between biology's concept of an adult and society's concept of an adult, or at least what we (okay, most of us) agree on:
Biology's concept of an adult: Generally marked by the onset of puberty (the appearance of secondary sex characteristics in both men and women)
Society's concept of an adult: Generally marked by the person's ability to live a normal life with minimal to no assistance, aka self-reliance
There are tons of people that don't fit the self-reliance condition of being an adult. I was once asked if I would laugh at the things my peers and I did as a kid since I'm now an adult; I told him that not all of us are adults yet. I had a very good reason to say that: they're not self reliant and they have deluded themselves into thinking going into bars and that buying alcohol/cigarettes is what constitutes adulthood. They're still living off of their parents' dime and claiming to be adults, which really leads to a lot of confusion over the term. I know a guy whose dad foots the bill for practically everything (we're talking rent, utilities, even meals) and he claims to be more mature than everyone else. On that note, if you feel the need to say you're more "X" than everyone else, that is one of the biggest signs that you are not an adult.
The legal age to become an adult in most jurisdictions is 18 years of age. How many of us were self-reliant at 18? Living in mostly upper-middle class neighborhoods really led me to believe that being an adult was no different than being 16, except you could now smoke cigarettes, sign up for credit cards and all those perks that just require you to be 18 and not actually an "adult." There was no emphasis on self-reliance, because, after all, Mom and Dad picked up the bill most (if not all) of the time, and all you had to care about was whether or not you can party on Saturday with your friends or when your iPhone 5 was going to be shipped to your house.
It's time to redefine what an adult really is. I think self-reliance is the biggest (if not the most important) thing that defines an adult. That doesn't mean Mom and Dad can't help every now and then, but when it leads to complete dependence on Mom and Dad, that's still not adulthood. So here's a simple questionnaire that I've whipped up to see if you're an adult or not:
1. Can you do most (if not all) things expected of an adult with little to no assistance? (Having your own place, balancing a checkbook, filing your taxes and making sure you're under your credit limit on your credit cards are just a few of the most important things here)
2. Do you have a job or at least are looking for one?
3. Do you pay your own bills? (I know you can still be on your parents' health insurance until you're 26, if I recall correctly)
If you answered yes to all three, congratulations, you're an adult. If you answered no to all three and are over 18, you're still a child. If you said yes to at least one of those questions, you're on your way. Just because you're 18 doesn't make you an adult; there's a lot more to it than that.
My good friend Justin shared this picture with me on Facebook. If there's anything we want to kill each other over, it's politics. We think Democrats are elitist hippie snobs that want to ban everything they deem objectionable (assault rifles, violent video games, SUVs) and Republicans are ass-backwards, knuckle-dragging cavemen who think Jesus is the solution to all things. But in essence, they're both the same party—they both take money from corporations and both suck at what they do.
One of the most popular things to do is blame the President for all the problems that are going on in America, but most people don't realize that Congress is to blame for the mess we're all in. We voted them in, so essentially, we get what we deserve. Yes, the same "we" that thought cutting ourselves because Justin Bieber decided to smoke marijuana was a good idea (not making this up, people have actually gone through with it).
Congress is less popular than things such as Nickelback, Donald Trump, root canals, France, and the brussel sprouts your mom might have made you eat as a kid. But the things that are more popular than Congress don't even need to explain why they're more popular, but the things that are less popular—yes, the things that actually scored below the nine percent approval rating that Congress has at the moment—need to explain themselves as to how they managed to scrape the very bottom of the barrel. Here are some reasons why the following people have the dubious distinction of being less popular than Congress.
Lindsay Lohan
Disney stars tend to fade faster than the jeans you're wearing, and Lindsay Lohan is no exception. After Mean Girls began the slow descent into cocaine and alcohol-fueled madness and multiple stints in rehab, which was pretty much all the tabloid fodder you needed in the late 2000s.
Playground bullies
They took your lunch, gave you wedgies, and beat the shit out of you if you tried to fight back. Yet, they're still better than...
Telemarketers
This is one of the reasons I no longer keep a housephone—despite being on the Do Not Call list, you still get calls from these assholes. I've never gotten any telemarketing BS on my cell phone (aside from some dubious collection agency bullshit).
The Kardashians
Reality TV is too easy to pick on—the Kardashians make it a lot easier because it squarely falls into that category. What exactly have they done? Their father was a high-profile lawyer that represented O.J. Simpson in his murder trial, and that was about it. So they're basically living off of their dead father's money and dating rich black guys such as Kanye West and Lamar Odom.
John Edwards
Ironically, he was also part of Congress as a senator from North Carolina, and was once the running mate of 2004 U.S. Presidential candidate John Kerry.
Long story short, he cheated on his wife who was battling cancer and did a bang up job of trying to cover it up with illegally obtained campaign money. He had to eventually admit to the whole thing after people put two and two together and realized that he wasn't such a nice guy. He also fathered a child with his mistress. His wife died in 2010 of breast cancer. One of the biggest dick moves of all time. But wait, there's more!
Lobbyists
These guys are basically the people with money that want politicians to do what they want (as opposed to what the people want) by paying them money. Essentially, it's a subtle way to carry out bribes.
Fidel Castro
Basically ran a communist dictatorship right next door. There was also this whole "Bay of Pigs" thing where we went to DEFCON 3 and almost had nukes launched at us. Anyone who has taken a history class should know this guy.
Gonorrhea
It's an STD. It's also known as the clap, and one of its effects is that there is a burning sensation when you take a leak. Wear protection, kids.
Communism
With all this talk about Obama being a socialist, people in the Socialist Party USA themselves have even said that Obama is just as much of a capitalist as his own predecessor. Communism is basically socialism with authoritarian elements, i.e. if you show dissent towards the regime, you get shot, jailed, or have to do forced labor. This form of government is only present in North Korea and Cuba.
North Korea
They beef up their military while starving their own people using an authoritarian style of government. It's like they hit the jackpot on how not to run a country.
Meth labs
Meth: not even once.
Things that were left out (but should have been included anyway for obvious reasons)
Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber, Comic Sans font, Honey Boo Boo, Teen Mom, Chris Brown, Internet Explorer, crack cocaine, Insane Clown Posse fans/juggalos, Natural Light beer, M. Night Shyamalan and his movies, cancer, piranhas, pickles, Osama bin Laden, pedophiles, rapists, Dragonball: Evolution, One Direction, GameFAQs moderators, YouTube commenters, etc.
