The Internet Is A Place Where People Cry About Bullshit


On Tuesday night, the Houston Rockets played their intrastate rivals the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Late in the game, the official Houston Rockets Twitter account sent out the following:

Screenshot via Deadspin

The internet being the stupid place that it is, a thousand crybabies immediately began to cry. Oh pray for the emoji horse! How dare the stupid Twitter account joke about horse slaughter! Wah wah wah!

The internet is a place where people cry about bullshit. If outrage is a currency—and it is—then the online market is drowning in counterfeits. People like to feign outrage because it allows them to demonstrate their humanity and show the world that they feel things strongly and people like to sleep with people who feel things strongly. Outrage allows people to define themselves in opposition to something, which is much easier than defining yourself on your own.

The Rockets went on to win the game (and thus the series) but not before the tweet was deleted. Today we learned that simply taking the tweet down and apologizing wasn’t enough. The Rockets fired the dude who tweeted it, their social media manager Chad Shanks!

This is such bullshit. Emoji violence lost this dude his job. EMOJI VIOLENCE. Like, who was really outraged by this? Were you? Of course you weren’t. You are smart and normal and very attractive and people like you. But let’s pretend you were outraged by it. Here is my question: What outraged you about it? Did you not know that horses get shot when they are lame? Of course you knew it. Everyone knows that! Here’s what I know about horses:

  • They are beautiful.
  • We don’t eat them.
  • For thousands of years they were second only to our legs when it came to helping humans get around.
  • Now they’re sort of ridden recreationally.
  • Also we race them.
  • They have shoes.
  • They get shot when they are lame.

Is merely mentioning the reality that horses are shot when they are lame outrageous? If you are outraged by the fact that horses are shot when they are lame, be outraged about the fact that horses are shot when they are lame, not someone remarking on the fact that horses are shot when they are lame.

In conclusion:

The Houston Rockets are cowards.

The Los Angeles Lakers are the best team in sports.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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