The Reverse Untrendy

Choose to drive on public roads and you have to trust in her ability to multitask.

I love finding new internet things. I never cease to be amazed.

The Nigerian scams that try to trick you into sending money to collect a big prize? Internet to the rescue. A new form of entertainment is born called “scambaiting” where would-be victims turn the tables on the evil motherfuckers.

Scam baiting is a form of Internet vigilantism, where the vigilante poses as a potential victim to the scammer in order to waste their time and resources, gather information that will be of use to authorities, and publicly expose the scammer. It is, in essence, a form of social engineering that may have an altruistic motive or may be motivated by malice. It is primarily used to thwart the Advance-fee fraud scam and can be done out of a sense of civic duty, as a form of amusement, or both.

Source: Wikipedia

OMG! LOLZ! Sometimes I fucking love you, internets. Brilliant!

At the office, we get asshole marketing calls all the freakin’ time. Most turn out to be search engines and credit card processing companies. One of the latter is really bad. They get their jollies off by calling us every day. They act nice up front but as soon as you ask them for the umpteenth time to be taken off their call list, they get really nasty. They’ll snarl and hang up on you.

I get it. I hate my job, too.

The idiocy of this is mind-bogging, though. You think they’d like to make their operation more efficient by trimming their lists of people who hate their guts. Instead they call us every single day. Maybe this is a method of attempted provoking of suicide. Good thing I don’t keep a gun in my desk.

Internets to the rescue.

I googled their phone number and found one of those “who called us” pages. Suddenly the irritating becomes hilarious. One commenter said, “They threatened to kill my employee.”

I guess that would be a sale that got away, eh? Hahaha!

And then came the comments about people who, driven to the brink of madness, decided to fight back. They feigned interest in the product, scheduled appointments, and then, when someone had the audacity to actually show up, they pointed and laughed at them. It almost gives me hope for the human race. So good!

This post is, of course, about none of that stuff. This post is about The Reverse Untrendy. Nice segue, eh?

Before writing a single word, I worked on the important part first. I went to Flickr and did a search for the word “trendy.” Sometimes the results from that sort of thing will provide a little boost of inspiration and add a bit of unexpected spice to my writing. It can take me places I didn’t originally intend to go.

Not so much this time, but it did eventually lead me to the image above, which I liked so much it gets included whether it really fits or not. It’s my blog. I make the rules. (Where else can I say that in this life?) So eat it.

Naturally this all led to the discovery of another one of those internet things. This time, it’s people taking pictures of people talking on phones while driving and posting them to the net. Wow, how much fun is that? For me it was love at first byte.

Sometimes it even goes beyond that. It can get a little proactive, I guess. Like writing on someone’s back window, “U cell phone drivers – Get a Life!” and posting a picture of that to the internet, too.

I deem that to be healthy vigilantism. And to think I used to settle for hockin’ a loogie and walking away. So much wasted opportunity.

Now I can’t help but wonder what else I’m missing. What other bits of internet goodness are out there just waiting for me to discover them? The journey awaits!

My topic seems lame and boring after all that setup (which it is) but here goes.

This week I caught myself doing the exact opposite of what I wanted. I realized what was going on and immediately dubbed it The Reverse Untrendy. Here’s how it works.

I could give a flying damn about what anyone thinks. I proactively put effort into being the opposite of trendy. That’s how I roll. I even have memories as far back as high school of accusing my friend on the football team of doing things for the sole purpose of being trendy. Things like his cowboy hat with the feather band (that often needed blocking), his sunglasses, the certain kind of jeans he had to wear, etc. We chose to disagree about such things. The point is, I’ve obviously been feeling this way for a long time. Trendiness offends me.

How far can you take this?

Sometimes I end up parked next to the boss in the parking lot. He always backs in. And not very well, either. Sometimes he ends up on the curb. He just shrugs and leaves it sloppy, like he does with everything in his life.

I prefer to back in, too. One of my shit duties is taking packages to the post office after the post office is closed because rules and deadlines don’t apply to the boss. And I prefer to load the packages from the driver’s side of the car so I can unload them the same way. So it makes sense for me to back in, too, so I can easily get to the driver’s side.

If I do this, though, both of our cars end up side by side and both backed in.

I was about to do this the other day, when a thought crossed my brain. I pulled away, turned my car around, and pulled in front first, even though this is the exact opposite of what I wanted.

Even though I normally don’t give a holy damn what people think, this time I suddenly cared. I didn’t want anyone to think I was emulating that asshole. Someone might think I was aping him out of some feeling of respect. And I can’t have that.

Doing the opposite of what you want just so people won’t think something untrue about you? I call that The Reverse Untrendy. At my current level of development, that’s what makes the most sense for me. I’d rather die than having anyone thinking I look up to that asshole.

Can you figure out a way to apply The Reverse Untrendy to your own life? Give it a try and let me know how it goes! I’m here to help.