Tag: social media

Thoughts on the RAW is Netflix debut

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was looking forward to the debut of RAW on Netflix, because I hadn’t seen an episode of RAW in close to almost a decade, since my house had long since cut the cables, and I could usually keep up with the product solely on YouTube highlights or just catching the PPVs PLEs.  Furthermore, being a monumental debut class of episode, I had expectations that the WWE was going to put their best foot forward and have a loaded show.  If the Saturday Night’s Main Event revival they had a month ago was any indication to how they were going to treat special events, I thought the E was ready to pop off, and I was excited to see what was going to happen.

And of course, there was the whole curiosity of what the E was going to do on Netflix, as far as the freedom to push boundaries were going to be, since this isn’t cable television and they aren’t beholden to the television rating standards, I was curious to see what, if any, behavioral changes that were going to take place.  However, they are still a publicly traded company, with collaborative programming still on cable television, so it wasn’t any surprise that they still kept it fairly PG, aside from The Rock saying ‘bullshit’ at one point.

Overall, the show was decent, but I’d be lying if I didn’t have all sorts of opinions and criticisms for it, mostly the fact that the episode was a little bit drowned in the pomp and celebration of the move to Netflix, with all sorts of appearances, cameos and segments that chewed up time, drug on a little bit, and most importantly, got in the way of actual wrestling product.  The three-hour show had a total of four matches, and on paper they sounded good, but I don’t know what it was, but they were all pretty underwhelming in the grand spectrum of things.

The matches were sloppy and got sloppier as the night progressed, and honestly a Seth Rollins vs. CM Punk match could have been on a Wrestlemania card without anyone  questioning it, but as far as I’m concerned it was the worst match of the night for the RAW is Netflix debut.  I don’t know whether their personal beefs interfered with their ability to do business, or if there were any subtle instances of trying to sabotage one another, but the whole match was kind of clunky, and I felt like it was a good example of two talented guys that just didn’t click in the ring.

It’s like the talent caved into the magnitude of the scenario, which is funny considering all of these specific performers have worked multiple Wrestlemanias among other big shows at this point, and those shows are usually two to three times the size of this episode of RAW.

But the biggest thing in my opinion was the fact that the crowd was absolutely dead as fuck.  This was something my bros and I discussed in our group chat during the show, but my consensus was that the crowd was a dead crowd, and I always believe that performers really can feed off of the fans, and hot crowds can really inspire stalwart performances, and since the RAW is Netflix show was held in Los Angeles, primarily full of people who just wanted to there for the hot ticket, but not really because they’re actual wrestling fans, it led to an arena that was full, but full of mostly casuals who don’t know the nuances of a show, intricacies of existing storylines, or have any genuine fandom for any of the workers.  This was an event, and casuals want to be seen at events, and actual wrestling fans that feed a show their energy, weren’t there, be it being priced out or simply incapable of getting in because of the fairweather scenesters were boxing them all out.

Sure, guys like The Rock and John Cena got some big reactions.  Roman Reigns got a decent pop, as did Rhea Ripley, Seth Rollins and CM Punk.  Jey Uso didn’t get the raucous reaction that he normally has been getting, as the most over guy in the company currently.  Dominic Mysterio and the New Day, who have been getting absolutely drowned out by boos and heat in the last few months, I’m convinced had to have boos piped into the arena because of how lukewarm the dead crowd was.

It’s like the people in attendance had it in them to have initial reactions to everything they saw, but by and large were sitting on their hands for the remainder of every segment, reacting to big spots and probably whatever the actual fans dispersed throughout the arena were reacting to and going along with it.  It was almost like watching a New Japan show, by how non-plussed the fans were, except whereas the Japanese chalk it up to cultural meekness and lack of expression, the LA scenesters were dead because they’re not really wrestling fans as much as they wanted to be at a big event so they could boast about it on social media.

I get it, it was important for the E to put their best foot forward, have it in LA and pack it with as many execs, celebrities and people who might actually gain more exposure, but in the process, they priced and pushed out actual fans from attending and it led to a dead crowd that didn’t help the general uninspired performing from the workers on the card.  Wrestlemanias and big shows get away with celeb-stacking and posturing, because they’re held at giant venues where the majority of the audience can still be actual fans, but the dinky Intuit Dome with their capacity of like 16,000, had the majority of the attendance being casuals and/or scenesters, and it was painfully obvious.

However, if there was one segment where the crowd woke up and came to life that truly stood out, was when Hulk Hogan made his appearance and was absolutely booed the fuck out of the building.  It was like the fans were told that they had a finite amount of booing that they were allowed to do, and they passed on using any of it on Dom Mysterio or The New Day and absolutely unloaded on Hulk Hogan.  Unsurprisingly, this was my most notable and entertaining moment of the evening where the most emotion was elicited from me, in the form of laughter.

The funniest part about it all was that how out of touch Hulk Hogan is with the world and the current state of the industry, is that he stood there, somehow surprised that a California crowd was booing him into oblivion when just less than three months ago, he was ripping his shirt and cutting a cringeworthy promo in support of the orange turd prior to the election.  Poor Jimmy Hart standing there with his longtime friend, waving Old Glory, complicit by association, taking tons of shrapnel.  And then Hogan just goes straight into his babyface promo, putting over Netflix, putting over his beer company, and putting over the company, while everyone is still just booing the fuck out of him.

The power of a crowd when they get hot!

Take all the pomp and circumstance, and the whole Netflix narrative out of the night, and this was an extremely mediocre show.  The matches were average at best, the crowd was dead as fuck, and not even all the special appearances did much for me.  A tremendous amount of time was spent on showing off celebrities and speaking segments, and in true first-world wrestling smark problems, the lack of formal commercial breaks really cramped my style of multitasking while watching wrestling like I used to.

The good news is that whether it was intentional or not, the RAW on Netflix bar has been set at not a tremendously high level, and the brand can only go upward from here, and the sky’s the limit.  I’m sure once the novelty of being on Netflix wears out, and regular fans are allowed to start going back to the shows, business will get back to normal, and as far as the E is concerned, that’s probably exactly where they want to be.

Let’s talk about how much mobile-first development sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is a topic that has been sitting in my living document of potential writing topics for a while, but never seemed to make it out of the queue, because of well, life.  But the other day, I saw a meme that I’d seen a few times before, but for whatever reason, it bubbled up this topic, and then I found myself in a position and headspace to where I might be able to write about this, finally.

But basically the meme was about how, [paraphrased] my most millennial trait is that large purchases must be done on an actual computer, or whatever equivalent to that general message that exists.  And being a millennial, I wholeheartedly agree, for a myriad of reasons, that large purchases really should be done on an actual computer and not on my phone or any other mobile device that I have.

Flights, vacations, experiences, large expenses, yeah, I don’t want do any of that shit over my phone, because I’ll never fully trust mobile data security as much as I would my own home’s personal wi-fi, not that that’s any better, but it just gives me peace of mind that it is.  Additionally, checking out on my phone leads to all sorts of room for error when pecking in on a mobile keyboard any sort of PII, billing and shipping information, and the last thing I’d want is a critical purchase to fail or bounce, because I entered in something incorrectly on account of being on a little-ass phone.

And then there’s stuff like Rakuten and other shopping plugins that I have installed in my personal computer’s browsers that I don’t have on my mobile devices, that might get me a little bit of cashback here and there; sure, earning 1% back on a $100 purchase might not seem like a lot, but all those nickels and dimes can eventually amount to something in the future, especially if you’re not paying them any attention and they just continue to accumulate quietly.

And finally, I’m old and paranoid, and I like to have records of the things I spend my money on, so I have a penchant to take screen grabs and print to PDF confirmation screens and purchase confirmations, because at some point everyone goes through that paranoia of when a confirmation email doesn’t come immediately, and you’re left wondering if your purchase actually went through, and if you’re actually going to get what you ordered, and that your money wasn’t going to be tossed into the aether, to have to be fought and disputed for in order to retrieve.

So yes, I do believe that big purchases are best done on personal computers, even at the risk of sounding old and dated to a bunch of young shitheads whom I don’t give a fuck what their opinions of me are in the first place.

However the problem is that in this ever-changing and ever-evolving world, is something that I’ve had varying amounts of objection throughout the years, which is mobile-first development – the practice of developing websites and e-commerce platforms that are designed to be optimally used by those on phones and tablets, with the conversely resulting secondary and B-tier performance for those on personal computers.

I’d wager that most people I know have been in situations where they’re trying to do something on the internet, like visit a site, make a purchase or do something at their laptop or their computer, to little success, and then whether it’s themselves or someone within proximity goes “hey, let me try it on my phone,” to where they have instant and easy success – this is a prime example of mobile-first development.

Well anyway, it’s bullshit, and I hate it, that the internet is becoming more and more in favor of mobile-first development, and little by little alienating those people who still use laptops and computers, and gradually phasing out those of us olds who actually like to make purchases of any size on devices that aren’t the same things that we play games on and doom scroll while we’re sitting on the crapper.

Phones are great for making purchases like food orders, or quick rage purchases on Amazon Prime when the store you’re in is out of what you’re looking for.  Tickets, or social media sales platform transactions that aren’t really that big of a deal.  That’s the extent of mobile shopping that I’m interested in.  To each their own, and I’m sure the generations after me are fine with shelling out thousands of dollars worth of travel, electronics and experiences on their phones while sitting in traffic or dicking around on their phone while at work, but my old ass likes the ceremony and ritual of making large impactful purchases from the comfort of my own computer, preferably at home.

Welp, this wasn’t as great of a post as I thought it could’ve been, but whatever.  Mobile-first is bullshit, and it annoys me whenever I identify when companies are obviously putting mobile device commerce at the top of their food chains over all other means of completing transactions.  *coughDELTA

The whitest thing since January 6th

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I will never understand how social media algorithms work, but for whatever reason, I was fed some videos about a dude who proclaims to be a “lawn dad” and has a bunch of videos of him working on his flawless, impeccably curated lawn.  At first, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes a little at the obvious white privilege I was watching of a white man painstakingly pampering his grass, but I was learning some interesting techniques of lawn care, like leveling out divots.

Eventually, I saw a video of the same dude, and it looked like he was doing some more mowing of his grass, but the caption said something along the lines of removing the morning dew from the grass to reduce moisture and create conditions that could lead to mold, mildew or whatever nasty growth occurs from moisture.  But the fact of the matter was that lawn dad was basically squeegeeing his grass, and at this point I was just like what the fuck.

The concern over something so inconsequential to the survival of the human race.  The excessive pampering over a concern that is naturally regulated by Mother Nature, the sun and the great outdoors.  Calling himself a “lawn dad.”

Yeah, all this bullshit is a whole lot of peak white guy, and probably the whitest content I’ve seen since footage of the January 6th storming of the Capitol.

Now I know a lot of people always recommend, avoid the comments, but when I see something so full of shit, I can’t help but be curious on what is being said in the comments.  Fuck it, I often times enjoy reading the comments, because sometimes I discover some really good memes in them, and as long as I don’t participate, there’s few things I enjoy more than seeing some good internet squabbling.

Anyway, I was relieved to see that there were plenty of commenters like me who were weirded out by just how much time and effort lawn dad puts into his lawn, calling him out for having extraordinary amounts of extraneous time, resource, privilege and all sorts of white guy attributes without specifically referring to his whiteness.

Naturally, these responses triggered a tremendous amount of mostly white, white knights, who were more than willing to trade barbs with other commenters calling lawn dad out on his privilege, and it goes without saying that those flinging stones were likely people who were lawn dads in their own right, or were so inspired that they were considering their path to becoming one too.

The point is, lawn dad life is clearly a life without kids or any of the daily struggles that those not from a background of privilege can enjoy themselves.  I’m like, motherfucker, have some kids and see if you still have any time left in your life to wick dew or pattern lines into your grass, but that being said, a guy like this probably has a trad wife who does all of the parenting without him so that he can go play around in his yard all hours of the day.

Question is, when election time was in full swing, does a lawn dad dare risk poking holes into his lawn to plant his orange guy political signs, or does the health of his lawn supersede his support for racist bigots?

I always wanted the front of my house to look like an office vestibule

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I saw this meme from Black Twitter about how now that glass-enclosed front porches are becoming a thing, it’s only a matter of time before black people start tinting their front porches.  It was one of those things that I thought was kind of funny because of the stereotypes that were being implied by such an observations, but really my mind went to being fascinated that glass-enclosed front porches were actually a thing.

The examples I’d been seeing since being curious don’t really sell me on their benefit, other than the fact that they’re a hard-shell that stands as one more layer to protect the front door of a home from the devastating effects of prolonged rain exposure.

But otherwise, they make the homes that choose to go in that route look like, a vestibule to an office building.  And frankly, I don’t even understand what the point of vestibules are in the first place; Google is telling me that they’re:

for the purpose of waiting, withholding the larger space from view, reducing heat loss, providing storage space for outdoor clothing, etc

The thing is, most everywhere I’ve been, offices, hotels, airports, or any place that might have vestibules, the only rationale that really makes any sense is the prevention of loss of a desired air temperature; cold in the summer, heat in the winter, and anything in between.  I guess they could be used as something of mudrooms for a patch of space where people can reduce the amount of dirt and mud they track into the larger part of the structure.

But to basically turn homes into having a glorified vestibule once a front segment of a home is enclosed in glass?  Yeah, seems counterproductive in my opinion.

Not only does it look aesthetically ridiculous, it’s an invitation to greenhouse effect your front stoop/porch, and microwave the inside of it during a sunny and/or hot day.  Short of having some logical ventilation in there, I have to imagine that moisture gets trapped in these things and now you’ve also now got a sauna, pressing and permeating moisture onto one of the exterior walls and doors to your home, and if there’s one thing that I’ve ever learned about homeownership is that moisture is definitely not a good thing in most cases.

Provided on whether they’re locked or unlocked, these doors just create an extra layer for packages to be dropped off at; like Amazon will just plop the boxes outside the vestibule instead of next to your actual front door, and the risk of package theft goes up.  Or in a true nightmare scenario, a place for bums and squatters wandering by to meander to the door and give a tug, to see if they can get a free place to sleep overnight, or drop a deuce in the corner.

And of course, even if they’re not making up of straight up actual glass, plexi, acrylic and other forms of transparent surfaces still shatter and shard into sharp, dangerous pieces, and all it takes is one local vandal, an errant baseball, golf ball or football being struck or thrown, or a drive-by destruction of property in order to trash one of these glass boxes, and now you’ve got one more fragile thing that can break and cause a lot of harm and trauma.

I’m going to make an assumption here and assume that it was white people who came up with this silly idea, of glass-enclosed front porches because this definitely sounds like something white people would really come up with.  Have the pleasure of feeling like you’re outside enjoying a picturesque day, except not have to be influenced (as much) by summer heat or winter cold; and that’s provided that these are built to be remotely temperature controlled.  But completely not take into considerations of building little glass boxes that live outside, and all the consequences of creating such silly things.

But for real though, it will be entertaining if when the first time I actually see one of these out in the wild, it’s tinted.

Are Ravens fans really this dumb, pt 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even before I had daughters, I’ve always been in support of women’s rights.  What’s wrong with believing in that whole notion that everyone should be equal?

So a few days ago, I saw while scrolling, a quote from a Ravens player I’d never heard of before, about how he thought it was literally disgusting to see Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles playfully giving the bow down motion to Gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.

My first thought was, who the fuck is Marlon Humphrey, but then feeling my own disgust that someone was so offended by some women demonstrating a beautiful scene of sportsmanship and camaraderie with a fellow Olympian, to where they needed to use their influence as a for-lack-of-a-better-term, celebrity on Twitter to take a shit on it.

I felt the compulsion to comment on it:

Man plays on a team whose fans gave ovations to a guy whom had video evidence of him beating the Jesus out of his babymama in an elevator, and he thinks some sportsmanship is literally disgusting. Yeah ok

I didn’t give it much thought afterward, but clearly I had ignited Ravens fans for taking a pot-shot at their fanbase for how they so glowingly supported Ray Rice after his domestic assault charges against his fiancée, implying that they are as brainless and dumb as I genuinely think of most of them anyway, and the responses were about as predictable as one might imagine.

Firstly, most everyone who replied to my comment completely missed the point of being in support of female gymnasts, because I had committed the most heinous of sins, which was to take a swipe at the Ravens, and all these schmucks were blinded with rage when composing their own silly rebuttals, with denial, personal attacks, including a racist one where a black guy told me to stick to ping pong that either was deleted, or they had the wherewithal to delete themselves, and a not-surprising amount of people who were inadvertently taking Humphrey’s side just because he’s on the Ravens.

The thing is, what a lot of these butthurt commenters don’t seem to realize that by attacking me, they’re basically showing their support of Marlon Humphrey’s disdain for women athletes demonstrating sportsmanship as well as being okay with domestic violence towards women.  Yes, it’s a little bit of a reach to come to those conclusions, but looking at the gamut of people who took their time to air out their grievances with my words with their own, it doesn’t seem that far-fetched after all.

My favorites are the people who tried to defend Ray Rice by stating how he helped the Ravens win a Super Bowl some time ago, as if it makes it completely okay that he beat the living shit out of his fiancée in a hotel service elevator.  Or how she was spitting on him and cursing and smacking him first, so she seemed to deserve it.

I like when abusers, or those who are okay with it identify themselves, because it makes it easy for me to steer clear of the pieces of shit they are.

The thing is, my remarks also got a surprisingly high (300+) number of likes, showing that a lot of more intelligent people agreed with my opinion of Humphrey’s dumbass remark.  Unfortunately, those people were all smarter than me and didn’t comment in the first place, and frankly I don’t know why I do it sometimes, other than inadvertently embarking on some weird social experiments.

But hey, unsurprising as it is, it’s something to see, that even ten years after the last time I posted about Ravens fans being idiots, absolutely nothing at all seems to have changed.

Hello, L . . . GBTQ+

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was 16 years old and the WWF was in the midst of their Attitude Era, business was booming, wrestling couldn’t possibly be anymore mainstream than it was, and week after week was compelling television to the demographic that clearly targeted people like me, and of similar age mindsets.

When vignettes of Val Venis began, of him announcing is impending arrival in the WWE while simultaneously pantomiming all sorts of sexual activity, it really was a holy shit moment, as in the reality that professional wrestling was going to have a porn star character, was actually going to happen.

I remember debut on RAW is WAR, against Too-Cold Scorpio, and thinking this match was going surprisingly long for a guy’s debut, and after a vicious spinning heel kick from Scorpio, I actually remember wondering if Val Venis would be among the few superstars to actually take an L in their debut, the last one I could remember being Bastion Booger way back in like 1992.

Perhaps The Big Valbowski was being too generous as the noob in the locker room.  Or maybe Too-Cold was going into business for himself a little bit seeing as how he was eventually supposed to take the L; maybe the man that Mick Foley put in writing as having the largest penis he’d ever seen in his life was a little salty that some Canadian guy was getting to portray the porn star gimmick that he felt could’ve been his.

But Val Venis did win the match, and I remember thinking how unimpressive he actually was in the ring, based on that singular match.

Eventually, he would get opportunities to redeem himself, and seeing as how the WWF roster was stacked to the gills with guys like The Rock, Mick Foley, Kurt Angle and Edge, even the mid-card was loaded with guys like the New Age Outlaws, Hardcore Holly, D’lo, X-Pac, Ken Shamrock among many others.

Not only was The Big Valbowski a fun character, gushing with charisma and cleverly-written promos, the guy actually could work too.  Needless to say, I was a fan of Val Venis.

However, it should come as no great surprise that a guy whose character was a literal porn star, there would be a ceiling for him, dictated by the rules and regulations of public decency and mostly the FCC.  In order for Val to elevate to the main event and the top of the card, the character would have to grow and evolve, and there’s really not much growth or evolution a porn star would be able to do on national television.

Eventually, due to mounting pressure from outside forces, most notably the formed Parent-Television Council, the Val Venis persona eventually made its way to the block and was soon choppy-choppy’d from the program.

As talented of a worker as he was, workrate is only half of professional wrestling, and character is the other half.  Losing a persona like Val Venis was the kiss of death, and after flops like RTC member Val Venis and then Chief Morley, he would flounder some more in TNA before his professional career came to mostly an end.

Much like lots of former wrestlers of yesteryear, Sean Morley [his real name] could’ve faded into the sunset, or among the many things a guy could do in order to stay relevant to the modern wrestling community, utilize social media to announce their existence, but also to spout horrifically right-wing propaganda and become one of the countless right-wing nuts that pollute the population.  And if you went with the latter, at what you think Val Venis has been doing in retirement, you’re absolutely right.

Which finally brings us to the point of this post’s existence; apparently The Big Valbowski’s right-wing rhetoric and how much he blathers it has ruffled a few feathers, most notably the guy who has been running his website, ValVenis.com.  I didn’t dive too far to find out the context of just how bad the rift went, or specifically what caused it, but the result of such a fallout was that the guy who had the keys to the car, has decided to turn ValVenis.com into a site that now exists in support and allyship of the LGBTQ+ community; and if there’s one major demographic that exists in the crosshairs of the hard right, it’s the LGBTQ+ community.

Unsurprisingly, The Big Valbowski is none too pleased with this development, and has supposedly pursued legal action and is suing the webmaster to try to get the reigns to his website back.  I don’t care enough to have an opinion on whom is going to possibly come out of the legal battle with any advantage, but my knee-jerk thought is that webmaster probably has the upper hand, seeing as how they’re probably the one who registered, paid and are actually the ones still maintaining the virtual property.

Seeing as how the WWE hasn’t cared enough about the Val Venis character to bother renewing and retaining the IP, I imagine if Sean Morley secures the copyright for himself, he might have a leg to stand on, but in the meantime, I love that the Webmaster has turned “VAL VENIS” into a really reaching anagram of LGBTQ+ support in a long-shot way to justify using the domain for its current purpose:

VAL : Valued Allies of LGBTQ+
VENIS: Vital Educational & NonJudgemental Informational Services

Sean Morley didn’t really have that long of a career, but he kind of existed in the era when professional wrestlers were free-spending jocks who blew thousands of dollars on drinking, drugs and ring rats, and aren’t the athletic nerds of today who have gamified investing and earning, so I have no idea what his current financial status is.  But if I had to guess, it’s more towards the former, and I don’t imagine he has the means to get into a legal battle against a website, fighting over the web domain of a former wrestling porn star in an actual court of law.

The bottom line is as it stands now, Val Venis is in 100% owned status, and is a precautionary tale of the importance of being good to your webmasters, especially if you yourself don’t have any keys to the house.

I hope Southwest is ready to be mediocre

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WaPo: Southwest Airlines eliminating open seating starting in 2025

In the grand spectrum of things, Southwest Airlines getting rid of open seating doesn’t really impact my life that much.  I don’t fly enough anymore to really be affected by this, because my life is too hectic at this juncture in my life and when it’s time for a family trip, driving is more economical and logical albeit more time consuming, but it’s better than dropping $2,100 on a trip to like Orlando.

But Southwest was always a company that I had some admiration for, because their general people-first modus operandi was always refreshing in the vast ocean of big businesses that existed solely to part dollars from the hands of the people and put them into the pockets of soulless shitheads known as investors and other finance-ey words used to describe old white people. 

And it’s not like they were starving by any stretch of the imagination, even during some of the most brutal recessions and stretches of financial wastelands, SWA was one of the few airlines that continually turned profits, mostly on account of their generally friendly business practices.

Reasonable fares, convenient routes, free checked bags, and free change policies; there was a lot to like about SWA, but if there was ever one thing that conversely blew the minds off of the dull-watted, and to some probably perceived as a deterrent and turn-off, was the open-seating policy that probably defeated more people than the internet itself.

Personally, it was, and has never been an issue for me, because I have a brain.  It’s not that hard to queue up in lines in little chunks of five behind clearly marked totems, and it takes either a little bit of upfront discipline or the willingness to pay a little extra to get Group A boarding, and seeing as how the vast majority of my travels on SWA have usually been by myself, I’ve almost always been able to grab an errant single aisle or window seat closer to the front of the aircraft, meaning I can get the fuck off sooner rather than later being wedged into the back of the aircraft and needing an extra 20 minutes just to deplane.

But if I had to guess, in spite of being their policy for over the last 50 years, SWA has simply had enough of the bullshit of dealing with passengers who just haven’t gotten it after a half century, passengers who conduct themselves like entitled spoiled assholes on the aircraft, and having to deal with passengers who they have to reimburse or give free second seats to because they’re the sizes of Pontiac Azteks.

Like the vast majority of things in the world that end up being declared ruined, there’s nobody really to blame, except people.

Sure, at the root of it, I want to accuse some managerial change at the higher rungs of the ladders at SWA, where some bean counters have identified a vast field of earning opportunities to be had by ditching open seating, and that’s probably not inaccurate, but the company had resisted many opportunities to switch in previous decades, but in this day and age, the bullshit of passengers has probably grown too much, their workforce has grown flakier and full of impatient younger heads, and enough is enough and this is where we’re headed.

The reality is that SWA has probably lost out on millions over the last few decades, by trying to be The People’s™ airline, with their friendly policies and acceptance and inclusion, and thanks to mounting passenger bullshit, they’ve probably just hit a philosophical wall of why they should be handicapping their earning capabilities being nice to a ton of assholes, when absolutely nobody else is doing it?

When the day is over, as I said, it doesn’t impact me a whole hell of a lot, but I would be curious to see what lies in the future for Southwest.  I don’t imagine the loss of open-seating is really going to impact the airline as much as many outlets on the internet make it sound like it’s going to, but for those people who were married to the concept, and are going to revolt, or at least no longer prioritize them because they’re basically transforming into an “ordinary” airline on the level of United or American or JetBlue, SWA is just going to likely blend into the pack, except, barring a change, more handicapped by virtue of not partnering up with travel aggregators like Google, Kayak, Travelocity and Expedia.

Their free baggage and lack of change fees might be enough to retain some customers, and I’m really curious to know what’s going to become of the large passenger policy once seats become assigned, and big people won’t be able to just lumber to the gate and assume an empty seat will be available next to theirs, but in the game of airline thrones, the most important thing is solely going to hinge on if as long as SWA can remain competitive with fares.

Regardless, I still lament over the days before SWA engulfed AirTran.  Not a travel day goes by where I don’t miss AirTran and the time where I could get sub-$200 RT fares to visit my family and eastern-based friends, and then cash in my credits to trips to Las Vegas or Seattle.  After the merger, all those routes have nearly doubled in cost, and despite my general positive opinion of their brand, I was not happy about it.

Things change, this is where we’re headed, and I hope SWA is ready to slide into the middle of the pack.  But as long as they don’t have to see any further videos and articles about their passengers being douchebag pricks on the internet, they probably are happy to take that deal in the long game.