Merry Festivus: Airing My Grievances 2023
Gather 'round the Festivus pole to find out what disappointed me this year.
A Festivus rant for anyone who has a beef with YouTube, Facebook, Fake Pickleball and Taylor Swift.
Festivus is an alternative to the commercialization of Christmas, made popular by the TV show Seinfeld. Festivities include gathering around a plain aluminum pole for the airing of grievances. So here are a few things I’d like to get off my chest.
Grievance #1: YouTube Shorts
2023 will go down in history as the year that I — a grown-ass woman and professional journalist — spent way too much time making vertical videos of my dog and some cute Slovenian river rats called nutria.
Why? So-called experts had assured me that making ‘shorts’ was the best way to grow my YouTube channel to 500 subscribers and “monetize” it. Shorts are YouTube’s answer to TikTok, the video sharing site that has captured every cellphone junkie under 30. I won’t get into the propaganda and privacy issues, except to say that I’ll never be on TikTok. So I gave YouTube shorts a try.
Thanks to a big-ass Florida alligator, the cute river rats and a weirdly popular video of my son eating Mongolian hot pot, I finally made it to 500! But the money pot at the end of the YouTube rainbow turned out to be… a button asking people to donate money to my channel. All that work for a glorified GoFundMe-type page! No revenue share of the video ads YouTube forces you to watch on the content I created. No thanks. Bah humbug.
Grievance #2: Facebook Boost
Judging from my personal and business Facebook pages, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t rich enough. Everything I post is slapped with a notification that I could reach more than a couple of people if I pay to “boost” the content or buy ads. Why not just show the content to the thousands of Facebook friends and followers I already have? Or to new people who might enjoy it?
I'm not the only Facebook user feeling lonely. Folks are falling for popular hoaxes that suggest ways to beat the algorithm. Like holding down the shift button while you bite your own ass a few times. Didn’t work for me, either.
Whatever the reason, engagement on my Facebook is way down. I repeatedly see posts that are four or five days old, perhaps because fewer people are creating new ones. Young people tend to view Facebook as the thing their grandma uses. But I suspect that older folks have just given up on it.
Grievance #3: Fake Pickleball
I’ll also remember 2023 as the year I tried pickleball and had fun. No grievance here, except maybe the wacky scoring system. But some of my friends are so obsessed that they wanted me to know about the floating pickleball court in Slovenia’s Lake Bled.
Well, here’s the deal. Yes, NBA star Luka Dončič of the Dallas Mavericks was seen playing pickleball during the pandemic when he was among the pro athletes confined to a bubble. However, the floating court in his native Slovenia was not for pickleball. It was for a basketball shoe event, as explained here by WFAA.
Grievance #4: Taylor Swift
It’s been hard to avoid Taylor Swift in 2023. But if you were hoping to escape the madness by planning a trip outside of the US, I have bad news.
The pop star is going international next year and hotels are already selling out at inflated prices.
So, plan to avoid: Australia in February, Singapore in March, Paris, Stockholm and Lisbon in May, the UK and Ireland in June. July will bring out the Swifties in Amsterdam, Zurich as well as Germany and Italy. Poland, Vienna and London are set for August.
Notice how I didn’t mention it’s going to be a “Cruel Summer.” It might be impossible to write a story about the singer without oh-so-clever references to her song titles. Or covering a Kansas City Chiefs football game without “Enchanted” cutaways of Travis Kelce’s girlfriend in the stands. Newspapers are saying “Look What You Made Me Do” as the “Love Story” takes up entire front pages in pursuit of a few clicks on dying, distrusted legacy media. I guess we’ll just have to “Shake It Off.”
At least there’s no longer a “Blank Space” where this newsletter should be. Always free to your inbox once a month with no advertising. Happy Festivus to all, and safe travels in 2024 — whatever it may bring.
Next month: back to random travel tips and FREE stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/live/apdDoX878o4?feature=shared
My husband was there and watched a few of the matches. Slovenia is obsessed with volleyball and has a very good national team. On the other hand, they haven’t heard of pickleball.