Pulse Check Round-up #14
Hi all,
Thanks for your patience on this latest round-up. I know you’ve all been refreshing your inboxes with bated breath.
The next survey is available at this link, also linked below.
Survey Results
Q1: Do you care about the British royal family?
Results:
Highlighted Free Responses:
“At this point in our time, I don't see how the royal family functions any differently than any other influential celebrities. They don't hold a lot of real legal power outside of their influence that is based on people's love or disdain for them.”
“I’m Irish so what the hell do I care about them?”
“I don’t keep up very closely but I did wake up early to see Kate and William and Meghan and Harry get married. If I’m being honest, it’s probably just having a peek into the life of the rich and famous that intrigues me.”
“I'm not British and their drama isn't that interesting.”
“. . . I truly don’t actually care about them, if you can rob your taxpayers of $500 mil a year while having someone wipe your ass that’s rad. I am baffled that anyone follows them at all, it seems astoundingly boring.”
“I have no interest in oligarchs whose sole claim to power is inherited privilege”
“I think the royals in theory are interesting. But not interesting enough to keep up with them on a day-to-day.”
Commentary:
I agree with most of you. I do not give a rat’s ass about the royal family and I never have. Everything I have learned about them has been entirely against my will. The only king I respect is King (LeBron) James.
I tried watching The Crown, a show that is supposed to be good. I couldn’t make it past more than one season because I could not just give a shit about any of their so-called drama or problems. The only redeeming thing about that show was Vanessa Kirby and I’d rather just watch Mission Impossible: Fallout to get my fix of that.
My issue with the royal family is that they literally don’t matter. They have no effect on real problems! They don’t make laws, they don’t affect diplomacy, they don’t do anything for the economy besides generate tourism dollars.
I seriously don’t understand why any Americans find them fascinating. Say what you will about American celebrity culture, but at least our famous people actually do stuff. Kim Kardashian is on TV and sells clothes and makeup. Jake Paul pretends to box and gets beat up by Anthony Joshua. Mr. Beast goes on Survivor. What the hell does Prince William do for society? At least make him go on Taskmaster or something. Their greatest contribution to society might be that Meghan Markle was on Suits. And she’s American!
Speaking of Meghan, I found the whole Harry and Meghan Markle in America stuff particularly annoying. I mean I guess I can respect being in an inter-racial relationship and wanting to get away from your family (who can relate) but why do you have to bring your bullshit over here? And then they had to milk it even further by going on Oprah and getting some big payday from Spotify for a flop podcast that only made 12 episodes in 2.5 years. Actually I can kind of respect getting that bag. But still, seems like a tremendous waste of resources.
I don’t know how I even know about all this stuff for someone who actively avoids learning about stuffy Old World aristocrats. It’s probably because American media covers it like it’s as important as real stuff like Gaza or tariffs or LeBron.
There are plenty of aspects of British culture I respect: the Beatles, Christopher Nolan, Slow Horses. They should be more proud of that stuff instead of some dead old hag or some wrinkly Jeffery Epstein co-conspirator. Keep your British bullshit off our shores. We fought a war for this!
Q2: How much NFL football do you expect to watch this season?
Results:
Highlighted Free Responses:
“i wish that football was more of a thing but i'm also part of the problem so whatever”
“Meh”
“Much like Trump and Diet Coke, I’ll keep drinking that garbage because it’s too culturally important to tune it out completely and I enjoy the product overall.”
“I find the actual sport to be a bit boring to watch, but I do like the coziness of watching a football game in the fall. I also like that the season (both NFL and college) is pretty short so it does feel a bit more fun to gather to watch a game!”
“I will spend so much time scrolling the realreal while you yell at the television once or twice a week through the regular season. Does this count as watching?”
“I’ll likely only do the Super Bowl, and maybe some games w friends. It’s fun to watch, but doesn’t get my juices activated the way it does with the fans. I’m happy it makes my buddies happy.”
“I know it's a morally questionable league, but I'm not the one who sets the laws of supply and demand for sports, so as long as the Pats are playing, I'll be watching”
“I want to watch more NFL games, but tbh I'm just not invested enough to give it time. I'll likely end up watching the Super Bowl and bandwagon the vibes for the season.”
Commentary:
I admit I was more excited to write about the NFL when I originally thought of this question, right before the season started and the future was ripe and full of possibilities. Now, it’s week 4 and the Steelers just lost to the Browns on Thursday Night Football and my dynasty fantasy league is not going well and I am feeling more mixed about the NFL.
The NFL has gone through a lot of challenges in my lifetime. There have been a litany of domestic and sexual abuse charges from NFL players and owners, coordinated team cheating scandals, BountyGate, DeflateGate, SpyGate, all of Tom Brady’s Super Bowls, Aaron Hernandez, Colin Kaepernick, and an unsettling rise in CTE cases.
And yet the NFL is more popular than ever:
I have a lot of conflicted feelings about the NFL, and I like to think I can keep it at a rational distance. But once the season kicks off I come crawling back like the pathetic dog I am.
Even if I wanted to try and stay away from football, it feels increasingly unavoidable. As American culture continues to fragment into mutually exclusive little bubbles, the NFL is one of the last parts of monoculture remaining. That and Taylor Swift, and now you can get both together at every Chiefs home game!
It makes sense that the NFL is so central to American culture. It is a violent, primal sport — a manifestation of our obsession with war and military culture. It’s a conduit and enabler for our greatest addictions: drinking, eating, gambling, violence, tribalism, advertising, toxic masculinity, and getting sucked in by the television. And it’s not even that great to watch a lot of the time!
But sometimes it is great television: suspense and drama and storylines that you can’t quite get anywhere else. For those of you that know ball, there are so many indelible moments in football that are seared into our memories. The double doink, the helmet catch, the Butt Fumble. I think all sports are interesting in their own ways, but it is hard for other leagues to really match the highs of the NFL. Even if LeBron is playing.
Q3: How good are you at swimming?
Results:
Highlighted Free Responses:
“Dad threw me in the water as a baby”
“apparently the freestyle / front stroke was invented by native americans and was imported to Europeans only after they visited the US. kinda no one came up with this when it feels like the obvious stroke”
“Swimming is one of the most important life skills to learn!! Learned to swim very young and swam competitively for years. It's also one of the only kids sports that often has a wide range of ages (ex. I was on a team with kids from 4/5 to 18) which builds other types of social skills and community.”
“I somehow made it until I was like, 27 or so, before I took actual, honest to god swim lessons. . .I like swimming a fair bit and it’s better than running imo but the only drawback for me is that I have to commit a lot of time to going out, swimming, and really scrubbing the chlorine smell out.”
“I learned to swim at like age 3 I think? My parents put me in like a one day swimming camp and then it was a lot of my dad throwing me in the water lol. I grew up by the water so it was a basic necessity of life.”
“My parents put me into baby swim classes so I don't remember learning to swim at first, but I also had a lot of swim instruction (mostly at summer camps) when I was in elementary school that was pretty rigorous. I'm a woman of the sea. I love to swim.”
“I AM A MAN OF THE SEA.”
“Love swimming! Was a competitive swimmer for about 10 years, and have been loving getting back into it. As a form of exercise it’s great, I love that all the other swimmers I meet are weird and fun to hang with.”
“I love swimming but pools bore me - give me an open lake or ocean any time!”
Commentary:
I would say I’m more at basic proficiency in swimming. I didn’t have proper swimming lessons growing up, so I didn’t grow up comfortable in the water. I eventually figured out how to swim over time through enough exposure and trial and error, which I feel like most people should be able to figure out with enough time.
This question was partially inspired when a friend of mine (let’s just call him Francis) recently asked me how long I thought it would take me to swim from Manhattan to New Jersey. I said that I think I would probably not make it half way; he thought it would take him about half an hour.
Now, that may be more of a disparity in delusion rather than proficiency. But it does seem like proficiency in swimming is one of those things that tends to vary more than people think. I’ve known multiple grown adults that still don’t know how to swim, or have had to take swimming lessons in adulthood.
Your capacity for swimming is correlated to access to swimmable water and having someone to teach you. Not to imply that “swimming is only for rich white people,” but anecdotally I have observed that the only people I know who didn't know how to swim were Not White. Make of that what you will.
Swimming is in some ways more like tennis and golf than it is like running or biking — you can’t get very far based on sheer athleticism without proper training on technique and form. Like you couldn’t just put 2013 LeBron in a pool and expect him to out-swim a competitive high school swimmer, even if his BPM was 11.7 (!) that year. Who am I kidding, he’s probably really good at swimming.
Q4: How much Harry Potter content have you consumed?
Results:
Highlighted Free Responses:
“I feel like I can still read/watch the original books and movies and enjoy them for how they were created at the time. But, I am uncomfortable consuming new HP media that puts more money in Jo Rowling's unabashedly transphobic pocket. ALSO, unrelated to any controversy...why the fuck are we recreating the same story so soon??? The original actors are still in their 30s for fucking sake!!”
“Currently? I could take it or leave it. It’s for children and I liked it a lot when I was a kid. It’s kind of a nostalgia thing I suppose but I don’t really foresee myself watching a beat for best remake, even regardless of JK Rowling’s politics.”
“It feels too soon for a reboot, but I love Harry Potter! I was a bit too young to read the books and kind of settled with just the movies, but my older brother was the perfect age for that series and I remember him getting the books every Christmas which makes the series feel special. There’s so much magic and whimsy in the original movies that I don’t think can ever be recreated. Will definitely be showing my kids the originals one day.”
“...Couldn't care less about the reboot. Feel like it's way too soon for a reboot, and it looks like a shot for shot remake/soulless cash grab for the millennials who were way too into HP when they were young and now have their own young kids. Then there's the whole black Snape thing so I'm sure that discourse will be unavoidable.”
“I problematically really enjoy it. It’s tough because the world has so much nostalgia and I enjoy watching the films, but I’m adamantly opposed to JK Rowling. If I’m being honest with myself and Nathman and the other survey participants I’m gonna watch the show, but I probably won’t be vocal about it.”
“I haven't watched the movies in a long time. And I never read the books. They're fun.”
Commentary:
Like many of you, I was totally in the bag for Harry Potter. I was dismayed when I turned 11 and didn’t get a letter from Hogwarts. I literally went as Harry Potter for Halloween at least 3 different times (this may be because my parents are cheap and there are not that many other convincing Halloween costumes for Chinese boys with glasses). I can still recite several lines from Goblet of Fire. (“Barty Crouch... JUNIOR!”)
If the survey results are any indication, I think it really seems to be one of the largest cultural touchstones for younger millennials / zillennials. A lot of my coworkers, who are well into their 30s, didn't seem to have the same kind of attachment to it when we recently discussed the franchise over lunch. They were even impressed that I could remember the names of all 7 books, which I thought was just a thing that everyone knew. Like how many MVPs LeBron has won (four) or when LeBron’s birthday is (December 30th) or where LeBron went on his first date with his wife (Outback Steakhouse). This is all basic information.
On the reboot, I agree with many of you. It looks really dumb and feels really soulless. The movies wrapped up less than 20 years ago, and they weren’t even bad! Besides maybe Half-Blood Prince. And maybe Chamber of Secrets. But it just feels too soon and feels way too opportunistic.
I always felt like the extended Harry Potter universe was a wasted opportunity for more stories within that world. I know they tried with those Fantastic Beast movies but those were super mid and I don’t believe that Eddie Redmayne was ever meant to carry a movie. There are still a lot of other parts of the world they could explore, like the Order of the Phoenix, or the history of Hogwarts was established, or the Ministry of Magic.
Sorry, my millennial is showing. I’ll stop.
Despite my grumbling, I’ll probably keep drinking that crap. I have no expectations for the Harry Potter show to be good, but I’ll probably check it out of curiosity and I might still enjoy spending time in that world again. At the very least I’ll have John Lithgow to look forward to.
Q5: What is your experience like with dating apps?
Results:
Highlighted Free Responses:
“creates too much incentive to find the next best thing. all of them kind of suck now because they're owned by Match group and they're not motivated to help you find a relationship because you'll get off the apps. what's the alternative though?”
“They suck and they've gotten so so much worse in the past year that it doesn't even feel worth it anymore”
“I remember being curious what it was like for women on those apps so I looked at a coworker’s app and I was stunned to see just how many ehhh, offers, she had for casual hook ups she had. From that perspective, I suppose it’s rather annoying and maybe predatory. Idk how that has changed in the six years since I’ve been on them, though. All I can say is that I’m very grateful not to be dating anymore.”
“I do acknowledge though that it took me and my boyfriend a year to properly get together after meeting, but a lot of that is because when you meet in a casual setting, there’s that natural back and forth of “will they won’t they” that’s excruciating in the moment but so sweet to look back on cause that’s what figuring out your feelings looks like. Dating apps sort of cut that experience because the premise of it is that you are somewhat interested romantically (even if just superficially) so I think you lose a bit of that experience of becoming friends first.”
“Meeting someone on an app in 2022 has been compared to getting the last helicopter out of Vietnam. However annoying it was then, I definitely went on more dates than I would have if I didn't use it and that was a good thing for me. But I agree that it was not great then and I'm sure it's much worse now with AI and paywalling and all the other nonsense.”
“...They’re super weird, but also have a place in a world where the rules of dating have changed, people don’t talk to each other as much outside anymore, etc. I think they’re a net good, allow people to be picky and meet people they want to be with. It cuts both ways, obviously, but having an algorithmically chosen partner is maybe a better thing for everyone”
“Used to use them in my olden days. Then I went to a picnic . . . . Heard they're rough nowadays, but have also heard of many success stories leading to very happy relationships.”
“I met my wife on a dating app so it worked well for me! But talking to my friend's experiences now, seems that a lot has changed for the worse in the last few years in regards to the apps - the never-ending push for monetization combined with general negative vibes on social media seem to have made it much more difficult for people to successfully navigate app-based dating, and has shrunk the pool of good people on them.”
Commentary:
Dating apps absolutely do suck. They are a demoralizing, dejecting, soul-crushing experience. It is so constantly embarrassing to try and “put yourself out there,” to reduce yourself to a curated set of 6-7 pictures and a couple little quips and try to sell yourself to other people who will make a judgment about your potential as a mate in about 5 seconds or less.
That being said, I am in a very happy relationship thanks to a dating app. I guess I chose good enough pictures to finally trick a girl into dating me for 4+ years running (Love you darling).
Despite how much the apps suck, I don’t know what I would have done otherwise. I’ve met girls in person before, but very few and far between. I’m not the most confident or rizz-y guy in the world, so maybe that’s a me problem, but I think a lot of other guys feel similarly.
Plus it’s legitimately difficult to know when it’s appropriate to hit on someone in person, for both men and women. Is it okay at the grocery store? At a work thing? When LeBron is playing on national TV? Your mileage may vary. And I don’t even think it’s just a like “beta male” thing — in-person connection just seems harder and harder to come by. So if you’re young and single, what else are you supposed to do? Lie to a girl about being her internet pen-pal and use it to manipulate her? Green-card marry your boss and hope it turns into something real? Get limb lengthening surgery and hire a matchmaker who’s still holding a candle for her financially struggling ex-boyfriend?
Online dating is so normalized now anyways; most relationships start online. I know some people still feel some shame or embarrassment about their relationships starting via a dating app instead of a romantic meet-cute or an enemies-to-lovers arc. But who cares? Finding someone you connect with romantically is extremely difficult. You should take it however you can find it. Even if it takes you one bajillion swipes.
I do consider myself pretty lucky to have gotten out of the App Game when I did. I can’t personally attest to it, but from what I hear the experience of using the apps has just gotten worse, if that was even possible. I don’t think that the apps themselves has gotten worse, but the modern experience of dating now just seems over-monetized, over-gamified, over-scrutinized. As the kids are saying, Hinge is chopped.
But best of luck to all you singles. Keep putting yourself out there!
Next Survey
See here for the link to the next survey. Going to set the deadline for two weeks again, so the survey will close on Friday, October 16th.
Thanks for reading,
Nathan