Wafflepwn

The other day, I discovered a youtube channel called wafflepwn.  The channel belongs to a teenaged boy, Jack, who makes videos of himself antagonizing his older brother, Steven, who clearly has some serious anger issues.  The videos are entitled, "The Greatest Freakout Ever" and he has made almost 20 videos of his brother's anger outbreaks.  To give you an idea of what these videos are about, here is an example of one of the  videos on the channel. 

Some believe that these videos are fake and that they are all acted.  It is definitely possible, but for the purpose of this blog post, let's suppose they are real.  Now when you watch the video, you will probably at first get a good laugh out of it, I certainly did.  Maybe you will go watch some more, they are definitely hilarious and addictive, but after I had gotten over my hysterical laughing phit, I started to think about the morals of the videos. I started to think, how is this any better than making fun of someone with downs syndrome.  The owner of this channel takes advantage of his brothers issues and exploits them so that he can humiliate his own brother in front of literally millions of people.  To me that is just completely immoral.  One might argue that Jack doesn't realize or believe that his brother actually has issues, but I saw him say in an interview that "There's definitely something wrong with him."  So Jack understands Steven's disability and exploits him secretly without his knowledge.

Thanksgiving: A Day of Mourning

      Since we were kids, we have been taught about the origins of the national holiday, Thanksgiving.  Friends and family get together to eat good food, drink, play football and enjoy themselves.  We are supposedly celebrating the union of the Native Americans and the settlers.  It celebrates a day where the European colonists and the Native Americans got together, shared knowledge and harvested a field.  While this event is widely accepted as historically accurate, many historians have an issue with the overall picture it paints of the events to come.  Most people simply accept that Thanksgiving celebrates peace and happiness, yet for others, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of a genocide.  

     I read a very interesting article that speaks of a group of people that has an unorthodox approach to "celebrating" this national holiday.  While most Americans watch football and stuff themselves with pie and turkey, a group of mostly people with Native American Heritage gather near Plymouth rock to mourn the genocide of their ancestors.  Most Americans don't even consider what they are actually celebrating when they gather on Thanksgiving day, but rather just accept that they are allowed to stop working and enjoy themselves for one day.  

      To me it seems incredibly insensitive celebrate a Thanksgiving without even considering the overall historical background that so drastically contradicts what we are celebrating.  I am not arguing for the abolition of Thanksgiving because we are celebrating a historically accurate day, however I do think that there should be some recognition of the devastating events to come.

Please comment with your opinions.