- TheRecogScene
- Aug 22, 2010
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I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
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The other day I saw the film Hits on Netflix, and it's a film about a bunch of well-off hipsters who get involved in a man's crusade to get his town council to take him seriously. He has spoken up at several council meetings and is generally ignored until he goes viral online and the hipsters come out to rally behind him, culminating in him finally getting a chance to deliver a full speech to the council about how the ACLU is full of Jews just like the media, and how Obama is a "socialist friend of the family" who loves Muslims, and the hipsters all just sort of stare in silence and horror.
Needless to say, it reminded me thoroughly of our own Doobie.
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Jan 7, 2016 06:12
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- TheRecogScene
- Aug 22, 2010
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I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
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Didn't it happen organically in some thread where people were making fun of stupid kickstarters and then people started to say hey, why not actually support this silly dude, and then soundmonkey started the main thread from there?
IIRC one of the major motivators behind it was Noni, who had two major posts about it - one that was quoted on the first page of the original thread, and one made in that thread, that really push the idea of hot-dog-shaped-time-machines to bring childhood wonder to Reform, Alabama. They read like a motivational speech from a particularly silly B-movie.
Noni posted:
I think we've all been there, jobless with nothing but a bucket of hotdogs, a block of processed cheese, a van, an American flag, and a goddamn dream.
Or at least that was my initial impression. Since the campaign started, the guy has actually built his kitchen (look at the updates!), done some hotdog catering, set up his entire supply chain, and he appears to have his budget planned very well, albeit with the help of "How to Start a Hotdog Cart" eBooks. He's got a dream, man, and none of us and not even the devil himself is going to be able to stop him. Unlike a lot of crappy Kickstarters, I believe this is going to happen with or without our funding. This guy is Forrest Gump and his shrimping boat/hotdog stand might as well be built right next to the Field of Dreams. I don't mean to imply that he's an idiot, but that I admire his blind confidence and hotdog faith.
I come from Hipsterville where we only eat hotdogs ironically, as a joke, so that other people can look at us and say "Haha. That's hilarious. Let me take an Instagram of that. Imagine if you ate hotdogs and actually liked them." So this campaign touches me in ways both mystical and nostalgic. It makes me yearn for the days when I could eat bad food unironically and wear plaid because it's warm and because lumberjacks are cool, not because I'm trying to convey some dumb hidden message. Every time you eat a hotdog, you get to become a kid again for two minutes.
The hotdogs are hilarious, but I genuinely hate it when people get flak for "trying too hard." We badly need more people who try too hard. It's the most foolish insult to say, "I dislike you because I dislike effort." We are a generation of people who were told their entire lives by nurturing, caring, hippie parents they we are all geniuses. Every boy a wonderboy. Every child above average. But rare is a parent who doesn't care about test scores and IQs, but instead praises their kid only for trying and failing. Effort, man. Effort. That matters so much more than innate intelligence, than knowledge, than wit. You should try to do new things even when (hell, especially when) you think you will fail. This man is trying hard, with all his might, for an aspiration that isn't even lofty. It's humble man wanting for a reachable goal involving the most meager of foods in the tiniest of towns in the poorest of states.
Yeah, I'll be damned if I'm going to dislike a guy for trying too hard. It's apparent that he has turned to crowdfunding only because he has already put every spare dollar he owns into this business. I might not believe in the superior deliciousness of Doobie's hotdogs, but I want to believe in them. And I would eat one.
Another thing is that this appears to be a very small town where the median household income is 20 grand and the most prominent restaurant is a Subway. A hotdog stand, of all things, could affect real change there. It's a good story: The unfeeling internet hordes pulling together to fund a rural hotdog stand in Reform, Alabama. That is something I want to be part of. "Doobie's Dog House" is a name worthy of headlines. I want confused journalists to try to figure out what the gently caress happened, why it happened, and how they can possibly convey the idea of crowdfunding to their readers. It'll be like when CNN tries to explain memes. At the very least, this has the potential to make an entire town wonder about Something Awful. Someday, I would like to drive to Doobie's Dog House, eat a hotdog, and think of goons.
To finally answer your question about our motivations, it's definitely the third option. We are good and bad meats processed together and extruded as 6 foot tall tubes, both cynical and kind, complicated and salty. Goons are actual hotdogs. I pledged $25 for both entertainment and charity. If this works and there's a hungry Alabama goon who wants my hotdogs, they can have them. Just please take pictures so it's like a child sponsorship charity, only for meat tubes instead of impoverished children. If the Kickstarter fails, then I will have paid nothing and told a guy that I admire his efforts and his gumption.
Noni posted: This is magical. I personally did a complete 180 on this Kickstarter. A few weeks ago, I absolutely tore into his hotdog pictures and then I gradually became entranced, curious, filled with nostalgia and warm fuzzy feelings for this Alabama Hotdog Man's humble project.
I think what we've all discovered is that it's representative of something much greater.
He's not a goon. Nobody here knows the hotdog guy. Heck, I don't even know if he has yet heard the name "Somethingawful." I suppose that is part of the beauty of this.
We haven't talked too much about the town where this Kickstarter is from, but I think that's part of the story: Reform, Alabama. Named apparently by an irate preacher. Population: 1675. Median household income: $15k. 45% African Americans. It has a a Dollar General, a Subway, a small grocery store, and some gas stations. Google maps comically labels nothing but three cemeteries and an airport.
It's like a place we all picture in our minds when we think of proverbial small town America. Heck, if you walk the town there are American flags down the entire stretch of the road. But this place has lost a fifth of its population in 10 years. Incomes, already poverty-line, have dropped 25% in a decade. Exactly a year ago, a storm wrecked the place. It decimated a thrift store (now rebuilt) that is right next to where Doobie's Dog House will be located. I tell you all of this just to make a round-about point: A humble hotdog stand, of all the things in the world, could help this town. It could affect real change.
Hotdogs are hilarious. They're also universal, a sort of basic meat currency. And they're edible time machines. They bring us back to child-like states of glee and energy. If you eat a hotdog, you get to travel back to an age when you thought that anything was possible, you could do anything, you could become anyone.
Reform, Alabama could probably use a few hotdog-shaped time machines.
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Jan 10, 2016 09:06
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Jan 7, 2016 06:12
