Notifications: The Best And Worst Things In Our Lives

All of our hearts skip a beat when we see those little alerts that tell us that someone in the world wide web cares enough to interact with us on a social network. However, while supplying our lives with a joy and excitement that is otherwise hard to come by, they’re also a source of much disappointment. Here’s a deeper look into those little bittersweet squares:

Facebook

Most of us get Facebook notifications often enough, and we’re usually left disappointed by how mundane they are. Given how interweaved the social network is with our real lives, there’s much more at stake here.

What You Hope It Will Be: A friend request from that person you work with and secretly love, your ex telling you how much they regret leaving you and how much they miss the sex, or a tagged image of you where you resemble Brad Pitt.

What It Is: A friend request from someone you’re indifferent about, your grandmother asking for assistance in Farmville, or a tagged image of you where you resemble Philip Seymour Hoffman (and you’re a girl).

Unless you’re internet famous or somehow have a life outside of the internet, messages on Tumblr are relatively rare compared to Facebook. Therefore, when you see that “1” above your inbox, it’s a cause for celebration, yet it’s rarely what we pray it is.

What You Hope It Will Be: A message from an attractive member of your preferred sex stating: “So I found your blog, and based on your description, tiny-yet-attractive display picture, and our shared love of kitten .gifs, I’ve decided to have sex with you. It turns out I live close by, and I strongly believe we’re star-crossed lovers drawn together by our preferred micro-blogging platform.”

What It Is: A “Thanks for the follow!” or an anonymous “No wonder you’re so lonely.”

Twitter

The blue light that appears beneath your @connect tab when someone tweets @ you is a relatively new feature on Twitter, and it doesn’t take 140 characters to describe how disappointing the results almost always are.

What You Hope It Will Be: Anything that’s not spam.

What It Is: Spam.

How To Survive The Internet Blackout

If you’re unaware of January 18th’s SOPA protest, the largest internet strike in history, you deserve to not be able to use Wikipedia for your homework for those 12 hours. While we’re all against SOPA, the shutting down of thousands of websites will leave many of us searching around the internet for something to do. Remember that blackouts are dangerous though, so here are a few tips on how to survive The Great Internet Blackout Of 2012:

- Don’t wander through the darkened internet blindly. You’re bound to stub your toe on a blog about tentacle rape or fall over one of your old blogs, leaving you crying on the floor about how much you miss your ex. Stick to the websites you know and save what’s left of your innocence and self-esteem.

- Don’t bother checking the fusebox. Science shows that constantly refreshing a page slows down time by 276%. Unless you want those twelve hours without Reddit, Twitpic, Wordpress, and more to last a lifetime, don’t bother.

- Don’t leave your computer. The sun burns, there’s nothing on TV, and social situations are awkward. There’s always something better to do on the internet than there is in real life. Always.

Make sure you’ve got new batteries in your e-torch, some candles in your downloads folder, and we’ll see each other on the other side.

Kill And Consume Your Better Half // The Bubblegum Gang

Pokémon Doppelgänger Week

Have you ever been mistaken for a Charizard?

Did you once get hit on because of your likeness to Eevee?

Ever had someone come up to you and say “Excuse me, Onyx…”?

Well, now’s the time to celebrate your likeness to the Pokémon you’re always being mistaken for!

The 12th - 19th of January is Pokémon Doppelgänger Week! In order to join in on the fun, simply change your Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr profile image to a photo of your chosen creature. Reblog this, tweet it or post it in your status update after you’ve done so to spread the word on this international week of celebration!

- Images Of All Pokémon.
- Information On All Pokémon.
- Pokémon Doppelgänger Week Headquarters.

Facebook Justice // The Bubblegum Gang

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Getting Revenge On Small Children

Kids can be real dicks sometimes. Sure, they’re too young to realise the consequences of their actions, but is that really an excuse? Whether they’re playing up in a store, throwing things or heckling you, they know that there’s nothing you can do to get back at them… until now. Unless you’re their family, you can’t discipline them without being arrested, and thus you’ve got to be smart about getting revenge on the five-year-old who just called you a “bitch”.

Here are a few methods you can use for revenge:

- The Dead Animal Trick: So, you know where the punk kid lives, and you’ve got to make the most of that. When the family aren’t around, sneak onto the premises and leave a deceased animal somewhere for the kid to find. A dead bird in the mailbox, a cat at the food of the bed, or a cow’s head in the sandpit, it would surely do some psychological damage. The child may even contract a disease from it! Win-Win!

- The Dream Ruiner: If you’re away from their parents and want to do some quick damage, do your best to ruin everything they have. Start firing out sentences that destroy not only their childhood, but also their hope. For example: “Santa isn’t real, you can’t be whatever you want to be, and your parents would be happier if you weren’t around.” Get a combo going and that kid will be crying before you can say “Dora The Explorer has AIDS.”

- The Tattle Tail: If you feel like you’re too good to try the above techniques, you can always just tell the child’s parents what they did. The punishment they deal out, along with the disappointment they feel, should be enough revenge. You can even add to the list of wrongs the child committed. Throw in “They said the ‘c-word’ too!” for extra damage, and saying they asked you for a cigarette can’t hurt. However, if the parents are as horrible as their children: it’s war. I’ll save that for another post though…

After weeks of technical difficulties and self-assigned holidays, The Bubblegum Gang is back! The internet’s fourth most dangerous gang is not giving up on the war against unoriginality and mediocrity on the world wide web anytime soon. Now with a new look, you’ll see daily updates about all of the usual subjects, including new serials and interactive posts.

New posts begin tomorrow, but in the meantime, here’s how you can get involved:

Like on Facebook.

Follow on Twitter.

Take a tour.

Ask a question.

The streets of the internet are safe no more.

Merry Christmas From The Bubblegum Gang

Santa Kaws

As children, we were always threatened by our parents with being on Santa’s “naughty list” and not getting all of the presents we wanted. How often did that really occur though? You could act like a real little douchebag and still get everything you wrote down on your wish list. Well, if you have children, or plan on having them, I have a new character you can add to the Christmas myth that will make your spawn behave all year around.

Santa Kaws is a human-sized, anthropomorphic crow that assists Santa Claus in his yearly practices. Throughout the year, Santa Kaws flies high above the world, well beyond the field of view of humans. From the stratosphere, he uses his extraordinary eyesight to watch all of the children. If he spies a kid being naughty, he will venture into it’s house on the 25th of December, entering through the chimney dressed as Santa Claus, and proceed to peck out the child’s eyes.

Of course, considering Kaws is just a myth, it will be up to the parents themselves to remove the eyes of their children. Fortunately, the consistent, all-encompassing fear of Santa Kaws should be enough to keep any child on their best behaviour all throughout the year. The most parents will have to do is draw fake scratch marks on the eyes of their sleeping children on Christmas night, or the naughtiest kids (or perhaps just those with overwhelming guilt) might even get their Oedipus on.

Now we can put Santa’s “naughty list” behind us. After all, what are you more afraid of: a jolly fat man refusing to give you presents, or an always vigilant, man-sized crow that sneaks into your house and pecks out your eyes?

Why We Need More Specific Facebook Relationship Statuses

We all know that real life relationships are much more complicated than we can currently express in our Basic Info on our Facebook profiles. While statuses like “Single”, “In A Relationship”, “In An Open Relationship”, etc, can give people an idea of our love lives, there’s no way to be more specific, and “It’s Complicated” is far too broad a term to label everything in between. Therefore, I propose Facebook allows us to give more specific descriptions of our relationship statuses, such as those pictured above.

Spread the word online, write to your congressman, even send Mark Zuckerberg threatening letters, because we all deserve to be able to let everyone know absolutely every detail of our love lives.

Video Games: More Productive Than Real Life

Most of us have been the victim in this scenario: You’re playing a video game, and someone you know (usually a parent or partner) leaves and returns later in the day to find you in the exact same place, still playing that video game. Then, instead of commending you for your commitment, they proclaim “Have you really been playing that thing all day?!” They try to shame you, emphasising that they spent their time doing grown-up things and just being generally superior. But they are wrong.

What can you do in a day of real life activities? Pay some bills, do a bit of shopping, get coffee with a friend, etc. That’s about it. What can you do in a day of video game playing? Rescue a princess, prevent an apocalypse, solve crimes, annihilate a terrorist organisation, and much more. Take Skyrim for example. In a single day of Skyrim playing, you can save a town from a dragon, battle wolves on mountain peaks, and solve a ghost problem. That’s a hell of a lot more than just buying some new socks and cleaning your kitchen.

So, next time someone walks in on you playing a game and says “Have you really been playing that thing all day?!”, you look them in the eye and tell them every single thing you’ve achieved in that game. Then, when you’ve told them everything, calmly ask them:

“What the fuck have you done today?”

Mythical Beings For Teenagers

By the time you reach your teenage years, chances are you’ve put Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy behind you. Yet these sources of childhood happiness dissolve in a sea of lies right when you face one of the most painful times of your life. I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Therefore, I believe we should create more mythical, gift-giving beings that can assist teens in times of turmoil. Here are a few of my suggestions:

The Menstruation Mountain Lion
- Those first few months of menstruation are difficult for every female, and the Mountain Lion is designed to make this period easier. The terrestrial mammal wanders the lands, visiting girls at the beginning of their cycle, leaving them menstrual products, painkillers, and other such comfort items. The spirit of the beast remains with the girl during each cycle, and is used to explain any irritability or anger that follows.

The Wet Dream Whale
- An enormous, magical whale that comes to the bedrooms of teenage boys whenever they experience a wet dream. The whale (a sperm whale, of course) delivers items to make the embarrassment of nocturnal emissions less severe, such as clean sheets and new underwear. In the mind of the teenager, it wasn’t their mother that had to clean their bedding, it was a 65 ft. long, toothed whale.

The Heartbreak Hobgoblins
- You never forget your first heartbreak and the apocalyptic pain that comes with it. However, wouldn’t that nasty break up be much easier if you believed your ex-partner was haunted for weeks afterwards by a band of hobgoblins? These mischievous little creatures play practical jokes on the person that ruined you forever, and do their best to make their life worse than yours.

The Consequences Of Making Fun Of Adele

You don’t often see people making fun of Adele, and there’s good reason for that. Extreme punishment is handed out to those who mock the current queen of music, adored by men, women, and animals worldwide, so I’ve decided to refresh you on the guidelines. Here they are:

Class I - Physical Mockery
Example: “Why should we pray for Adele’s vocal chords when the only thing she ever prays for is that they remember to put Sweet & Sour sauce in with her McNuggets?”
Punishment: Stoning/Flogging/Torturing
Description: It’s easy to tease people for their appearance, and considering Adele isn’t the perfectly thin, buxom singer we’re used to, this is the most common form of mockery. Any negative comment about her weight will land you one of practically any form of public humiliation and violence. You will also receive this punishment if you do not yet own copies of her albums.

Class II - Talent Mockery
Example: “Her voice is kind of generic.” / “19 was pretty mediocre…”
Punishment: Death.
Description: If you’re in the presence of someone who mentions Adele’s talents in such a way, you’re legally obligated to put them to death immediately. Refusing to do so results in earning yourself Class I punishment. So, don’t forget to bludgeon your grandmother to death when she says “Turn that ‘Someone Like You’ song off. I’m sick to death of it.”

Class III - Blasphemy
Example: “I don’t understand her appeal at all.” / “Just because she’s sold a bunch of records doesn’t mean she’s anything special.”
Punishment: An eternity of suffering in the fires of hell.
Description: You’ve questioned the power of Adele, and now you’re going to pay. Heaven has no room for people who doubt her, so instead of just death, you’re sentenced to hell. There you will spend the rest of forever shovelling coal with 21 on repeat, because even Lucifer himself loves “Rolling In The Deep”.