Confessions of a Logophile

To those who aren’t familiar with the term, Mukbang quite literally means ‘eating show’ in Korean. This genre of entertainment first originated in South Korea in the early 2010s, but since has grown into a global phenomenon with mukbang creators gaining millions upon millions of views for eating food and live streaming or videotaping themselves. But there is a separation between normal mukbangs and those that cause public concern. A specific subgenre of mukbangs entail creators eating overly excessive amounts of food. Instead of a normal amount of chicken tenders, a normal mukbang video in this subgenre might entail a creator eating hundreds, like the videos of popular youtube star Nikocado Avocado. Studies have shown that viewing creators gorging themselves on insane amounts of food can have destructive effects on one’s nutritional diet. Another pressing concern is the food waste that this subgenre promotes in additions to severely unhealthy eating habits. Sustainable eating is someth...

“I don’t think I can pronounce that— wait, can you spell it for me? I’ll put in the presentation.”   The 6th grade. English class. A guy named Jacob. We were starting our powerpoint presentation on Tuck Everlasting, and were put in pairs. Of course, when  his  name was typed out, there was no angry red line squiggling under all the letters like a snake. But on mine— well, that was a different story. “V, I, N, A, Y, A.” Almost instantly, that snake appeared. It was almost like a signal, a blaring “HEY. LOOK AT THIS WORD RIGHT NOW. THIS WORD IS  WRONG .”  Jacob saw that, and to his 6th grader brain the angry red snake meant you had to click and hold to use autocorrect. And when ‘Vineyard’ and ‘Winnie’ showed up to save the day from the angry red snake and effectively erase me, Jacob thought this was the funniest thing in the world since bad minecraft memes. “Hey guys oh my god come over here look what came up in autocorrect for her name dude that’s soooo funny hah...

Christian Man Persecuted Simply For Driving 90 Miles Per Hour In School Zone A Christian man?? Arrested?! Surely, our justice system has failed us. This satirical piece pokes fun at how news headlines can mislead an audience to believe something untrue. For example, that this man was targeted by the police because of his religious identity and not for the fact he was driving fast enough to effectively smush a child in his path. Although this article was written for satirical purposes, this effect, called ‘headline bias”, can have dangerous consequences when used to garner support for the wrong people. For example, in the world of news articles that proliferate rape culture, subtle changes in a perpetrator’s identity can question the credibility of victims or imply that they gave consent when they, in fact, did not— which all shapes whether a survivor is believed by the public or not. Instead of stating the name of a rapist, news articles could name the perpetrator a ‘hardworking stude...

I recently started working at the Panera Bread on Coolidge. In fact, I’m sitting here right now after a particularly strenuous shift. And now, being a worker that has freshly entered the food service industry, I can confidently say that the everyday dynamics of this Panera Bread are sometimes so bizarre, it’s laughable. And these past few weeks, we’ve definitely discusssed entertainment in sarcasm extensively. Also, I’m unsure what to blog about.  Every once in a while, I come across a particularly interesting order.  For example:  “Hi ma’am, welcome to Panera Bread! What can I get for you today?” “Bagel. Pickles. Extra pickles.”  “...Alright ma’am, is that all for today?” “ Pickles .” “Yep, don’t worry I got you!” “Did you get the pickles?”  “Yes, ma’am.”  “I really want pickles, can you put extra?”  “Yep.” Her first red flag that I should’ve detected is that she ordered pickles in a bagel. That is some interesting behavior in and of itself. I try n...

  Prompt #2: The Roles We Play   Coming from an Indian household with my parents being immigrants, there has always been this subtle pressure of needing to succeed in every avenue of life. It definitely isn’t like this for all first generation Indian high schoolers, but the pressure to maintain a high GPA, do tons of extracurriculars, get into a hyper-selective college, find a day job with a prestigious sounding title that would impress the people back home and make 6 figures until you aren’t able to function is never ending. This is the role many of us are expected to play at Troy High and it undoubtedly leads to constant comparisons and no room for uniqueness or personality. Even people that I know who have graduated years ago have told me that high school is definitely not the best place for your mental health.  My parents, like many others, worked insanely hard to get to America— having to enter a country where they aren’t looked at the same, where they don’t know the...

  We’ve all seen the symbol of the Swastika in the pages of ‘Maus’ in the past week. Whenever it showed up on a page, it denoted fear, power, and the telltale impact of genocide that followed the Nazis. But the real origins of the Swastika dates back about 6,000 years ago, the oldest sightings discovered in cave and rock paintings. In Sanskrit (a classical Indian language), ‘Swastika’ means well-being. Scholars have hypothesized that the symbol first originated in the Indian subcontinent and moved westward to Scandinavia, the Scottish Highlands, Finland, and other parts of Europe. Today, it is still used in a number of religions, such as Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrian faith, and many more. Greek currency, Native American healing rituals, Baroque architecture, and Iron Age artifacts all hold some trace of the Swastika. Generally, the swastika was regarded as a symbol of auspiciousness and good luck. So how did the meaning of this once innocent symbol change from prosperous to infamo...

Through the use of perspective in page 83 of Maus, Spiegelman develops the argument that the Nazis stripped Jewish people of their individualism and viewed them as insignificant beings that were below them. The large panel at the top of the page depicts a scene where many Jews have all been rounded up so officers could verify papers and sort them,    and the panel seems to be zoomed out, at first glance to illustrate the sheer number of people present. But it also mirrors how people would view ants— tiny, uniform, and powerless. Being depicted as small itself is a sign of weakness, as in the movie ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’. When the characters were small, they didn’t have any power of what was going on around them at all. They could be squashed, vacuumed, or eaten whole by a pet and they didn’t have anything to defend themselves. This mirrors how the Jews were depicted in the panel— defenseless. It also served as a reminder of how Nazis could so easily alter the course of a J...