Well, you get boring human writing instead:

“Inaction Man! There’s a seven story building burning with kids and kittens on the top floor!”

Inaction Man scratches his belly and pops another potato chip into his mouth.

“Have you considered calling the fire department instead of me? They are doing reruns of the Sopranos so I’m busy.”

How is he these days? I heard Oreo passed away at some point but I haven’t kept up with any of the TGWTG people in a few years.

Yes. I have known a few people who made a bit of fun of me for having kept the same phone for seven years and told me that they had had three or four phones within that time span and that I was silly for keeping the same phone for so long. What about the newest updates and cameras and gadgets or whatever they call it? Why would I put up with outdated tech? The phone I have right now is from 22 and it still works fine. I hope it will last me until 2032, longer if possible.

Oh for real. We sometimes buy a very cheap and shitty red wine and soak chicken thighs in it and cook them with spices and veggies. Also chopping up cauliflower and fry it with garlic and pepper and using the red wine sauce from the chicken to pour over it before serving. Fucking magic. It’s almost enough to make you forget that you’re a rat.

I’ll be 36 this year and I still live like I did when I was a student. I’m too worried about getting used to nice things and have been for the past 20 years that I simply just don’t spend money on anything other than food and bills and people around me tell me I should spoil myself more and go on more vacations and blah blah blah and I just want to scream at them xD

My life goal is to stay out of debt. You don’t stay out of debt if you constantly fly around the world and buy expensive shit you don’t need and replace your phone every three years or whatever I see some people do.

The good thing about my lifestyle is that when the next economic crisis hits, I am used to live like a rat so I don’t have to dial back too much compared to some people who treat their bankaccount like a Yolo slot machine.

I sure do miss rotisserie chicken, though. That’s one luxury I sadly got used to but whatever. Not the hardest thing to give up tbh and once in awhile you do get lucky that they are on sale to a reasonable price.

And yet we are the coddled, snowflake generation xD make it make sense. I feel worse for the younger generations, tbh. At least we got to spend our childhoods and teens relatively carefree, if a bit aimless and with the feeling of not being needed in society.

Young people and kids today are dealing with constant existential crisis. I guess the upside to that is that they won’t have to deal with this aimlessness that we dealt with, but maybe it’s better to feel aimless than to carry the future of our planet on your shoulders before the age of 10.

In the end, we are all dealing with the same problems right now and we can only do our best.

This meme was made by a “know it all”.

I dunno man. Depending on the age and person, it can be pretty difficult to get into how computers work. It really isn’t as much of a given as we think it is. I’m sure there are some older people who are just lazy, but I don’t think it is the case for everybody. Some older people don’t use computers unless they have to. They don’t spend time on them in their spare time to get more acquainted with how they work. For many it wasn’t a part of their lives for the first fifty years they spent on this planet. I’m in my mid 30s and I have areas of modern technology where I have just accepted that I can’t and won’t keep up because I simply don’t have the time, motivation or patience for it. I will learn if it is a necessity, but I also have limits to how many new things I can take in at this point while also having to earn money and pay my bills and maybe live a little on the side. So it is with that in mind that I think it is very much appropriate to cut many older people some slack and maybe have a little bit of empathy for where they are coming from.

Yeah. I think this is a pretty good point you are making there! Zoomers may not understand the tech language we grew up with, but in turn, we don’t understand the tech language they have grown up with either. It’s kinda like slang. It evolves over time and makes communication between generations awkward haha.

I think, for me, I feel uncomfortable relying so much on the tech doing a lot of the work for me. There is a loss of control in a sense even though it may make life more convenient in some areas (and not in others). It’s kinda like having to use a dishwasher for the first time and not really understanding how to operate it and then washing dishes by hand still, because that’s what you’re comfortable with.

Can’t blame a generation that wasn’t raised on computers as well as you can’t blame a generation that was raised by algothrims. I’m a millennial too, one of the older ones, and I have felt my tech literacy decay over the past ten years as the cancer that is silicon valley has spread and dominated the internet. It is to the point that I feel so trapped when I try to do anything online that becoming passive feels like the only choice if you play their game.

I have the benefit of remembering what the internet used to be like and what it still has the potential to be in the future, but the youths of today never experienced that. To them the internet is a feeding machine that encourages nay grooms them into becoming passive consumers. I can’t blame someone who literally never got the chance to learn because some tech bro scumbags in America decided that they should abuse their power to turn people into addicts.

Had to look it up as I don’t really play video games. Based purely on the designs I saw of Odin and Thor, I’m not particularly thrilled about that one either. Maybe the games themselves are super faithful to Norse mythology and the designs are just an oopsie. I dunno.

Generally it seems like Americans interpret Norse Mythology in a very materialistic way. It is always to polished and over the top when they depict Norse gods. To most Scandinavians, Norse mythology and folklore too, is completely and utterly intertwined with nature. It is gnarled, ugly and brutal as well as delicate, beautiful and poetic.

Odin can be a bombastic god adorned in armor and riding Sleipner into battle, sure. But most depictions of him in Scandinavia is the unassuming cloaked stranger with the staff and the hat or hood.

And that is kind of how most gods and jotuns are for us. Everyday people with everyday problems that are just a bit more extraordinary than ours. It is easier to relate to and it is more authentic. I haven’t yet seen an American depiction of Norse mythology or culture that isn’t just complete and utter nonsense that only cares about looking cool. I think one of the best depictions of Norse mythology, culture and folklore are the ones done by Erik Hjorth Nielsen. That man gets it. Probably because it is his culture too.

It has its moments for sure. I still don’t know what mythology is more crazy, Norse or Greek. Probably Greek.

I get a similar tick when some people claim that The Little Mermaid takes place in Denmark because it was written by HC Andersen. No, it literally doesn’t. We don’t have palm trees and mountains like the ones in the movie. And even in the original fairytale from the 1800s, it is very heavily implied that the prince lives in a fairytale country that borrows from the Mediterranean, Middle East and India. Even in the original illustrations for the story, there are palm trees and a arab looking palace in the background of one of the illustrations.

HC wanted to put the reader in the mermaids place. Give them the same longing for another world that she had. If he had set thr story in Copenhagen it wouldn’t have captured the imagination of 1800s Dane the same way. He managed to make these gorgeous descriptions of the strange and beautiful country the prince is from. There is a reason why Edmund Dulac designed the prince the way he did in his illustration work for the story in the early 1900s.

As a Dane, I have had many a non Scandinavian try and educate me on Norse mythology too and their knowledge is based on those godawful Marvel movies and comics.

They usually get very confused when they learn that Thor and Loki aren’t brothers. That Loki and Odin are the ones who are blood brothers. It’s like it doesn’t compute in their heads. And for those who don’t know, blood brothers in old scandinavian culture was two men slicing their hands and clasping their wounded hands together to mix blood. That was a way to forge an alliance and an oath of loyalty as strong as if you came out of the same womb. I’m pretty sure it was still practiced in more recent times as well. Probably died out when AIDS became the big scary thing, but I dunno. I just have vague memories of older people telling me about doing the blood oath when they were young.

In any case, it is just super fun to have your culture reduced to a cringe American comic book where Thor looks nothing like Thor and Valhalla looks like ass and literally none of the gods look right according to their descriptions in mythology. Couldn’t even give Sif her golden hair, could they?