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PLEASE GET OFF MY PORCH

A VC With A Very Bad Networking Idea, And More Of This Week's 'One Main Character'

Molly Bradley
Molly Bradley
A VC With A Very Bad Networking Idea, And More Of This Week's 'One Main Character'
This week, we've also got a guy who thinks people in their thirties shouldn't enjoy live music, a woman irate that "Fire Island" doesn't pass the Bechdel Test, a guy with an unexciting fantasy about blockchain gaming and rich people doing caviar "bumps."
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Every day somebody says or does something that earns them the scorn of the internet. Here at Digg, as part of our mission to curate what the internet is talking about right now, we rounded up the main characters on Twitter from this past week and held them accountable for their actions.



This week's characters include a VC with a very bad networking idea, a guy who thinks people in their thirties should not enjoy live music, a woman irate that “Fire Island” doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, a guy whose fantasy about the future of blockchain gaming made everyone cringe and rich people getting their kicks from “bumps” of fish eggs.



Friday

Sahil Bloom

The character: Sahil Bloom, VC-type guy, bad coffee shop patron, a human LinkedIn post

The plot: Bloom started off the weekend with a bang. A former college athlete and now investor/entrepreneur-type dude, who has a terribly annoying website, published a decent sized Twitter thread about hustle, and how if you’re between the age of 16 and 24, he had an idea.

“Next Saturday morning, put on a button down shirt and grab a notebook and pen. Go to a local coffee shop and buy a big jug of coffee. Take 10 disposable cups and some creamer. Pick a nearby nice-ish neighborhood and head there,” Bloom began.



TL;DR Bloom went on to describe how one should go to people’s houses, hit their door and ask for advice after offering them some second-hand coffee.

He said this was a hybrid type of mentorship and networking experience, and it took the Internet one hour of bullying to get him to add an asterisk to the thread.


The repercussion: People were quick to point out how Bloom’s absurd strategy would result in a lot of friction if executed by various added layers, like different neighborhoods, cities and more when looking at the bigger picture.



Bloom’s response to the backlash:



Adwait Patil



Daniel Schofield

The character: Daniel Schofield, literally some guy on Twitter

The plot: The world was minding its own business when Schonfield let out a quiet sizzler.

“People over the age of 35 (and that’s pushing it) attending music festivals don’t realise they’re ruining the vibe and weirding everyone out. you might think you’re living your best life but you’re actually living your most embarrassing life. try a real ale festival instead,” he wrote.



It’s unclear what prompted this fire take. His Twitter location is a town in England, and England has a load of decent festivals. Was he at one? Who knows. It’s a pretty big hit or miss when you come at music festivals, but when you come for that 35+ millennial cohort? You’re on your own, mate.

The repercussions: The best part about fighting nobodies on Twitter is that sometimes they respond, Schofield did, and they keep the party going as long as they can.



This is how things were looking on day four:



Adwait Patil



Monday

Hanna Rosin

The character: Hanna Rosin, author, NY Mag podcast manager, Bechdel Test administrator

The plot: Last week saw the release of the Hulu film “Fire Island,” the story of a group of queer friends vacationing at Fire Island Pines. The movie centers on queer male characters and their trials and tribulations in friendship and love.

So on Monday, presumably after having watched the movie over the weekend, author Hanna Rosin took to Twitter to announce that the film did not pass the Bechdel Test.



The Bechdel Test is a wry metric for movies wherein a movie must feature two female characters talking about something other than men in order to pass. It’s named for Alison Bechdel, an author and cartoonist, and the idea behind the test arose in Bechdel’s comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For.” It’s since become a cultural mainstay and a means of highlighting how little representation women get in film and other art forms.


The repercussion: In addition to a lot of eye-rolling at the predictability of the Bechdel Test being referenced when you least expect it, people brought valid criticism to the idea of applying the “test” to a film featuring gay men and queer male culture, which itself hasn’t historically gotten a lot of representation in film.



But the best part — and the perfect finale — of the conversation came when Alison Bechdel herself weighed in, granting “Fire Island” a pass on the Bechdel test:



Rosin ended up deleting the tweet (though preserving a screenshot for integrity) and acknowledging the responses to it, and apologizing.



Molly Bradley



Nicolas Vereecke

The character: Nicolas Vereecke, tech guy, big-time blockchain gaming investor, small-time blockchain gaming visionary

The plot: Last week, Vereecke posted a little future-daydreaming to LinkedIn, imagining what it might be like to game in 2030. The majority of the post just describes, well, gaming — and then reveals that all of what has just been described was somehow only possible through the boons that the blockchain has brought to gaming.



The repercussion: If you’re wondering, “How is any of this fundamentally different from gaming — or, if it’s a matter of mining real, valuable currency within a game and spending hours doing so, how is this any different from work?” — well, you read my thoughts exactly, and the thoughts of a whole lot of people on both Twitter and LinkedIn.



Molly Bradley



Tuesday

The New York Times / Rich People


The character: Rich people who love to turn something inherently inaccessible and classist into something cool by invoking more relatable terminology, and The New York Times, which loves to feature this kind of thing in a tone of fascination and implicit approval

The plot: Tuesday saw the publication of a NYT piece called “Caviar ‘Bumps’ Are All the Rage,” which detailed the novel new way people who can afford it are consuming fish roe, i.e. fish eggs.



The repercussion: In a society that has criminalized and demonized the use of drugs (while making allowances for some drugs, depending on the type of drug, the cost, the people using it and how they’re using it), there’s no good time for the upper class to roleplay “getting high” off an inaccessibly expensive (not to mention nutritionally meaningless) food item. But right now, in a time that feels particularly fraught for a number of reasons, one being vast wealth inequality, was definitely not the time.

People (rightly) told the NYT to read the room, and also that making a big deal out of eating caviar off your hand is quite stupid, and also that this is literally not what a “bump” means.



Molly Bradley


———

Read the previous edition of our One Main Character column, which included a political party crushing on Captain Jack Sparrow and more.

Did we miss a main character from this week? Please send tips to [email protected].

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