An Open Letter to Justin Bieber Fans

Dear Bielebers or whatever you kids call yourselves,

You know, one day I was just like you guys.  Except back in my day, we had *NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, BBMak and O-Town. 

Yes, back 13 years ago, when many of you were still but a wee infant, or even a fetus or a zygote, I was a squealing fan girl.  I had t-shirts, posters, CDs, the fucking *NSYNC marionettes and fruit snacks (oh yeah, they existed, my friends), everything.  I fought tooth and nail with bitches who dared to make fun of them.  Shit got real more than once, let me tell you.  Sure, I enjoyed some Radiohead or Incubus, but at that age I was far too young to fully appreciate their musicianship and it was usually placed in the “things I’ll put in my 3-CD stereo whilst I sleep” category.  Besides, did Thom Yorke or Brandon Boyd ever bust out some slick dance moves?  Well, Thom does some crazy ass dancing but that is beside my point.

I even had an *NSYNC fan site!  Friends, I’m telling you, it was fucking LEGIT.  Number 8 on a fan site listing on Geocities.  I was on like 5 webrings (do those even exist anymore?).  I learned guitar so I could learn to play these boy band songs and tabbed them out to put onto my website.  INTENSITY.  I breathed, ate, pissed, spat, cried boy bands, *NSYNC in particular.

Now you may ask, “But what did you do about the jerks on the Internet who were mean to them?”  Oh, I flamed.  I ranted.  I unleashed the fury of caps lock.  I compared them to the great men of decades and centuries past.  If I had known about my senior thesis topic back then, I would have compared them to Leonidas and his 300 Spartans without hesitation.

Then, something strange happened.  Radiohead and Incubus and others started to sound more appealing to me.  Perhaps I was turning into an emo kid (read: I was) or my music lessons were allowing me to hear the more intricate aspects of musicians who played actual instruments (not to diss people who don’t, because I listen to plenty who use primarily computer generated music).  I started listening to less and less boy band music until one day it appealed to me no more.  The marionettes were packed away into a box, the shirts were jammed into a far corner of my closet, posters were taken down, Geocities account was deleted (BTW, RIP Geocities, you were a great friend).

Looking back, it was strange to recall myself arguing that I would love *NSYNC “4EVA” and that I’d never stop liking their music.  I remembered talking about how they were the greatest people ever and how talented they were, and was a bit surprised that I had changed.  Now I was one of those people making fun of them, rolling my eyes at my past exploits or pretending that it had never happened at all.

So what does this have to do with Justin Bieber and you?  Well, I’m telling you all this because it will  happen to you.  Believe it or not, 97% of you will cease to care about Justin in 5 years.  I say this as someone who has been there.  All of these attempts to keep Justin on Twitter’s trending topics, to flame anyone who insults him, to declare yourself as his #1 fan will all be completely forgotten.

Am I saying you should stop being Justin Bieber fans?  Hell no, go and have your fun, be young and enjoy whatever you enjoy, and don’t let people take that away from you.  However, if you can, learn to not take everything so seriously.  Honestly, life is much more fun when you can poke fun at yourself and the things you enjoy.  I mean, I told my friend Em we should have a Radiohead party since we’re both big fans.  She replied, “Yeah!  We’ll sit in opposite corners of the room, and avoid making eye contact while Thom Yorke moans about how unloved he is.”  That’s fucking brilliant, my friends, brilliant.  I laughed so hard my ribs ached.  Poking fun at everyone and everything, particularly yourself and things that pertain to yourself, is so much less stressful than fighting everyone.  If you like it, fuck what everyone else thinks.

Hell, I still have my boy band albums on my iPod.  I still listen to it occasionally, mostly to reminisce and to laugh.  BBMak’s CD is still really good, in my opinion.  I mean, you can’t devote a good chunk of your adolescence to something and not still have a soft spot for it later on in life.  But understand that these pop star phenomena happen seemingly every 10 years.  Before *NSYNC and BSB, it was New Kids on the Block.  Before them, it was New Edition.  Before them, Jackson 5.  Before them, The Beatles.  Anyone who was an intense fan girl over these pop stars can probably attest to most of what I write in this post. 

However, don’t become like the Claymates or Glamberts (Clay Aiken and Adam Lambert fans, respectively).  These groups harm the object of their affection far more than they help.  The difference between them and you guys is that you guys are mostly young girls, and therefore it’s much more acceptable for you to lose your shit over a pop star.  No offense, but at the age most of you are it’s not like you have a hell of a lot of other stuff you have to think about and take care of.  You can afford to spend your time on it.  However, if you’re over 30 and dressing up like your favorite star, making t-shirts, arguing over the Internet about them, etc., that’s when it becomes very troublesome.  Please don’t become Frau fans.

Seriously, friends, enjoy it while it lasts.  Just don’t go overboard with it.

 

Yours,

Tinnerz

Mass Effect 2 Review: I Wish to Marry this Game

Anyone who knows me well knows I’m a total Mass Effect fangirl.  Like, seriously hardcore.  I own the soundtrack(s).  And actually listen to them.  I have serious issues.

My game arrived last Friday, just in time for a gaming weekend since both of my roomies were gone.  I finished it Tuesday.  About 36 hours of playtime, over 5 days.  When I realized this I cried a little bit, but wiped away my tears and vowed not to turn on my XBox until this weekend’s Snowpocalypse (seriously, we’re getting 2-4 inches of ice in addition to 20 inches of snow.  Virginia suddenly became Minnesota or something).

I don’t want to say Mass Effect 2 is better than the first, but I’m thinking it might be.  It’s definitely (and understandably) darker than the first, but I also found it much more humorous. The story feels a bit weaker than the first, but it’s sort of understandable because the player already knows about the goings on in the Milky Way, granted they played the first one.  There’s less to flesh out, so the story is more driven by the characters themselves. The characters are once again well developed and I found myself getting rather attached to my team.  It gives you more impetus to complete everything before your “suicide mission” in order to ensure everyone’s survival.

Upgrading is definitely different this time around.  You don’t have to worry about an inventory limit because you don’t have an inventory.  Instead, upgrades are received by doing missions, scanning planets for minerals and using said minerals to research new technologies.  I liked this system much better, if only because I spent an awful amount of time in ME1 sorting through my inventory.

Weapons are pretty badass.  My infiltrator owned with heavy weapons, but even the pistols aren’t too shabby.  Because I’m me, however, I mostly stuck to the Sniper and assault rifles.  I fucking love sniping, and the sniper upgrade is absolute love.  I do have one warning: for heavy weapons, be careful with the M-920 Cain.  Make sure you aim at enemies who are far, far away from you.  First time I tried it out I killed everyone, myself and my team included.

I really didn’t mind scanning planets for resources or side missions, but I know many people who absolutely despise it. The annoyance factor of planet exploration really depends on the player; instead of the Mako you scan planets, which I personally like because the Mako makes me so angry it’s not even funny.  The cursor is rather slow at first, but there is an upgrade that makes it faster.

The romance scene remains awkward and creepy.  My (male) Shepard hooked up with Tali.  It was bizarre.  It wasn’t explicit at all, even less so than the creeptastic romance scene in the first one, but there’s something really, really strange about it.  That’s all I’m going to say about it.

There were some graphical issues, but no game busting ones that I found.  Sometimes teammates would climb over an obstruction and suddenly be 20 feet above me.  Also, for some reason husks kept falling through the floor when they died and ended up just sticking out of the ground like daisies.  It was confusing, but my room mates and I lol’d pretty hard.  Otherwise the graphics definitely looked better than ME1, and it’s still an absolutely gorgeous game to look at.

Basically, I love this game.  I enjoyed every minute I played it, and my room mates enjoyed watching me play it (seriously, they gathered around like it was Project Runway). BioWare has never failed me yet, and I hope they never will.  I do recommend playing ME1 first, though, if only for the starting bonuses and to get a feel for the Mass Effect universe.  I definitely, definitely give this game an A.