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SHOW NOTES

• Definition of the topic

• • Inconvenience, as defined by Merriam-Webster is: 
    • Something that is inconvenient….or not convenient especially in giving trouble or annoyance
  • The top definition on Urban Dictionary, with 16 thumbs up, is that Inconvenience is "a version of baseball you play when you do not have enough people to field two full teams.
    • The rules are that "you can only hit to right field or left field, which you have to call before you are up. If you hit to the opposite field, you are out. The outfield can throw the ball to the pitcher to get the lead runner out."
    • Conveniently, or inconveniently depending on how you look at it, this is also the most downvoted definition of "inconvenience" on Urban Dictionary, with 47 thumbs down. It was posted on July 12, 2004 by "Steve".
    • The only other definition of "inconvenience" on UD was posted on November 2, 2019, and states that inconvenience is the "trouble or difficulty caused to one's personal requirements or comfort." 
      • It has no votes either way, and was added by the user "TheUnseenWriter" (lol)
• History of the holiday
  • According to Worldwide Weird Holidays, Inconvenience Yourself Day has been celebrated on the 4th Wednesday in February since 2006. The holiday was created by Julie Thompson, the then (and now?) president of Environmental Resources Network in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, to encourage everyone to recognize how our actions impact the lives of those around us
    • I checked, and this sadly means that it will never fall on Leap Day, which is too bad because it would make it an incredibly inconvenient holiday
    • "It's easy to become so focused on our own crazy to-do lists that we forget to hold open a door, let a customer with only a few items get ahead of us in line, thank someone who has helped us or just be kind to others when there is no tangible benefit to us."
    • Its goal is not only to recognize a person's self awareness in life, but also to acknowledge other peoples' lives and actions as well. There are times where you need to put yourself first, but this day is meant to encourage you to try to put someone else before you
    • And according to WWH, "the secret payoff of inconveniencing ourselves: it makes us feel good. Who knows? It could become a habit. Slow down, say thanks, and have a happy Inconvenience Yourself Day!"
• Fun facts and opinions
  • A 2018 NYTimes opinion piece by Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia, entitled "The Tyranny of Convenience", says that "convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today." Defining convenience as the more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks, Wu describes its effects on our individual lives and our economies. 
    • "Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences. Easy is better, easiest is best." 
    • "Convenience has the ability to make other options unthinkable." Why wash your dishes or clothes by hand when you can let machines do it? When you can watch streaming television or listen to a podcast anytime you want, why would you bother with waiting for a prescribed radio or television hour? Why would you use BIng when you have Google?
    • Resisting convenience, such as refusing to get a smartphone or printing out Mapquest instructions instead of using a GPS, must "come to require a special kind of dedication that is often taken for eccentricity, if not fanaticism." 
    • The "article describes two separate cultural waves of convenience," with the first taking place in the early 20th century with labor-saving inventions for the home and industry, such as convenience foods, washing machines, electric vacuum cleaners, and factory farming. The inventions were quickly embraced, since people thought it would free them from extraneous labor and offer the possibility of leisure for the first time, meaning that time could be used instead for hobbies, education, or binge watching I Love Lucy or The Jetsons
    • This first wave began to wane and people seemed to intentionally embrace some inconvenience in the 60s and 70s in order to resist conformity and retain a sense of individuality. So it was fitting that the second wave of convenience, which occurred in the 1980s, would co-opt this ideal by presenting the idea of personal technology with the invention of the Sony Walkman. 
    • According to Wu, "if the first convenience revolution promised to make life and work easier for you, the second promised to make it easier to be you. The new technologies were catalysts of selfhood. They conferred efficiency on self-expression." 
    • This version of convenience is no longer occupied with saving physical labor or creating free time--"it is about minimizing the mental resources, the mental exertion, required to choose among the options that express ourselves. Convenience is one-click, one-stop shopping, the seamless experience of "plug and play." The ideal is personal preference with no effort."
    • But convenience has a dark side. "With its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency, it threatens to erase the sort of struggles and challenges that help give meaning to life. Created to free us, it can become a constraint on what we are willing to do, and thus in a subtle way it can enslave us." 
    • We pay a premium for convenience. As Wu states, "We are spoiled by immediacy and become annoyed by tasks that remain at the old level of effort and time. When you can skip the line and buy concert tickets on your phone, waiting in line to vote in an election is irritating." (On the other hand, I miss the days of buying concert tickets in person. Not only were they cheaper, but I'm a sentimental fuck who loves keeping the physical tickets as a memento)
    • Wu presents the concept of a paradoxical truth that today's technologies of individualization are technologies of mass individualization, and that customization can be surprisingly homogenizing. Social media like Facebook and Instagram are vehicles intended to help you present your unique self, yet their formats and conventions force us to present ourselves as overwhelmingly the same
    • He argues that "being a person is only partly about having and exercising choices. It is also about how we face up to situations that are thrust upon us, about overcoming worthy challenges and finishing difficult tasks--the struggles that help make us who we are."
      • "Today's cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey...We are becoming people who care mainly or only about outcomes."
    • Wu recommends that "we need to consciously embrace the inconvenient...if you want to be someone, you cannot allow convenience to be the value that transcends all others. Struggle is not always a problem. Sometimes struggle is a solution. It can be the solution to the question of who you are."
    • We already do this to a great degree, though we call these inconveniences other names, such as hobbies or passions. If you're into wood carving, glass-blowing, exercise, or talking about inconvenience on your hobby podcast, you already making inconvenient choices in order to create your own character and give your life meaning. 
    • Wu concludes by insisting that "we must never forget the joy of doing something slow and something difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest. The constellation of inconvenient choices may be all that stands between us and a life of total, efficient conformity."
  • If you do find yourself annoyed by inconveniences that were not intentional, such as locking yourself out, dealing with intense traffic, or breaking your phone, sersanoconsulting.com has some advice for how to change your perspective and therefore your experience of the inconvenient. 
    • Remind yourself that these problems are almost certainly temporary
    • Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions during these moments of inconvenience. See if you can take a different course of action that will counteract the typical build-up of frustration and irritation.
    • For example, if you lock yourself out of your home and catch yourself in a spiral of blame or anger, see what else you can do with the time you're about to spend locked out, such as taking a walk and exploring a different neighborhood, or in my case, developing a real appreciation for how fucking difficult it is to actually break into someone's home thanks to modern door locks
    • You don't have to get mentally stuck when your plans go off the rails, since the misfortune is not likely to be eternal and you can make the choice to not let that time and emotion go to waste
  • A thinkpiece from HackSpirit.com entitled "These 20 inconvenient truths about life are hard to admit but they'll change your life when you do" highlight some "hard truths about life that will benefit you in the long run" to accept, including:
    • We haven't got that much control in life
    • Our expectations are what cause are [sic] suffering
    • Everything, even you, is imperfect
    • Worrying is a complete waste of time
    • The best lessons often come from hardships
    • We often confuse being busy with being productive
    • Most of us don't need more to be happy, we need less
    • As a society, we're way too focused on outer beauty
    • Most arguments we have are pointless
    • It's easier to hold onto the way things are than to learn and grow
    • Everyone will die
    • You give your own life meaning
    • There is no such thing as a perfect partner
    • Life isn't that serious
    • Everything will come to an end
    • Be realistic
    • Make a change or don't complain
    • The best lessons often come from hardships (see brutal truth #3)
    • Most of us don't need more to be happy, we need less (smh)
  • Here's mine: Proofreading is a necessary inconvenience
  • Science shows that inconvenience can actually be really  good for you, especially when helping others! 
    • Mentalfloss sites that "studies indicate that the very act of giving back to the community boosts your happiness, health, and sense of well-being", and offers "7 Scientific Benefits of Helping Others"
      • "Helping others can help you live longer" because activities such as volunteering or helping those in need can improve your "ability to manage stress and stave off disease" as well as reduce rates of depression and increase a sense of life satisfaction. This could be related to the fact that volunteering can alleviate loneliness and support our social lives, which are factors that strongly affect our long-term health
      • One study shows that "altruism is contagious," and found that "people are more likely to perform feats of generosity after observing another do the same", which in turn can have a ripple effect within a community 
      • "Helping others makes us happy"! A team of sociologists "tracked 2000 people over a five-year period and found that Americans who described themselves as 'very happy' volunteered at least 5.8 hours per month." This boost could come from being the byproduct of being more physically active, being more socially active, or even from providing volunteers with a neurochemical sense of reward
      • "Helping others may help with chronic pain." One study showed that participants who suffered from chronic pain experienced a reduction in their own symptoms after working as peer volunteers
      • "Helping others lowers blood pressure." Some research has shown that "older individuals who volunteered for at least 200 hours a year decreased their risk of hypertension by 40%. This could possibly be because they were provided with more social opportunities, which help relieve loneliness and the stress that often accompanies it." 
      • "Helping others promotes positive behaviors in teens," as teenage volunteers generally have better grades and self-image
      • And finally, "helping others gives us a sense of purpose and satisfaction," particularly when a person no longer holds a life-defining role such as "worker" or "parent." 
    • Psychology Today echoes these sentiments with their article, "In Helping Others, You Help Yourself"
      • The "warm glow" of pro-sociality that one can experience after helping someone else "is thought to be one of the drivers of generous behavior in humans [because] the positive feelings associated with helping others is that being prosocial reinforces our sense of relatedness to others, thus helping us meet our most basic psychological needs." 
      • Activities such as volunteering, altruistic behavior, and spending money on others rather than ourselves have repeatedly shown boosts in well-being, a sense of meaning and purpose, general happiness, and lower rates of depression. 
      • There is even neural evidence suggesting a link between acts of generosity and happiness in the brain. Simply the intent and commitment to generosity can stimulate the neural change and make people happier
        • fMRI studies show that donating money to charities activates the same (mesolimbic) regions of the brain that respond to monetary rewards or sex
      • Other research from Columbia University shows that helping others regulate their emotions helps us regulate our own, decreases symptoms of depression, and improve our well-being since we are enhancing our own emotion regulation skills
        • "Social regulation of emotion is a key component of our relationships. Whenever we navigate children through tantrums, help a friend through a breakup, or rely on our partners for comfort after a challenging day, we often engage in social regulation of emotion...
        • "The two most common ways to help others regulate their emotions are through acceptance ([by] showing empathy by validating their feelings) and reappraisal ([or] helping others think about their situation in a different way)."
        • The study was done over a 3 week period, during which "participants were provided with an anonymous online environment where they could share their personal stories of stressful life events." They were also able to provide emotional support to each other by replying to entries with short, empathetic messages. 
        • "Participants helped each other by identifying potential distortions of thinking, suggesting reappraisal strategies or providing words of acceptance. Responses were rated for their degree of helpfulness and participants were given the opportunity to express their gratitude for the acceptance or reappraisal messages that they received from others.
        • "The results showed that helping others to regulate their emotions predicted better emotional and cognitive outcomes for those participants who were giving the help. Moreover, because heightened levels of self-focused attention are common in depression, the more people helped others, the more their helping behavior predicted a reduction in their own depression, thanks to the use of reappraisal in their own daily lives.
      • The article recommends that the "next time you find yourself helping someone with regulating their emotions, consider how your efforts may be providing you with an opportunity to practice for future situations at a distance, and consequently, improving your emotional well-being. Thus when it comes to the benefits of social regulation, St. Francis of Assisi's words ring especially poignant: 'For it is in the giving that we receive.'"
  • There may be times when doing something kindly inconvenient will go south, though, such as the following examples from the Reader's Digest article "14 Random Acts of Kindness That Went Totally Wrong"
    • Reddit user dendaddy's wife donated her kidney to a stranger, and the bills were supposed to be taken care of by the recipient. However, dendaddy and his wife learned that the recipient's insurance hadn't paid the bill in full and the recipient wasn't paying it either. Since then, a collection agency has been after dendaddy's family for the inconvenient sum of $10,000
    • Judith Re told Reader's Digest,"I was purchasing fruit at a truck where several homeless men were congregating. As I purchased my fruits, I bought apples to give to each of the men. [but as I handed out the last apple, one of the men told me], 'I'm sorry but we can't eat these because our teeth aren't strong enough.'"
    • "Working out on the steps of an amphitheater, Scott Deuty, author of the book 'Secrets of an Over 50 Fat Man', noticed a woman and her daughter who were also working out on the steps. Inspired by the scene, Deuty responded by giving a copy of his book to the mother. Apparently, this gesture was not appreciated because the daughter responded by angrily throwing the book down the stairs!"
      • I mean. a) what narcissistic maniac is just carrying around copies of his own goddamn book while working out and b) who the fuck wants to have to now carry a goddamn book around while they're trying to work out that some idiot just handed them and c) the implication that the woman was fat is super obvious to everyone except apparently Scott Deuty
    • When Veonne Anderson saw a pregnant woman smoking, she wanted to give her an encouraging word about quitting smoking for her baby's sake. She started by telling her how pretty she looked, then asked her how many months she was.
      • "How many…? What?", the woman replied.
      • "You're pregnant, no? I mean, I thought…"
      • "Not pregnant. Just fat."
      • Instant karma. Fuck you, Veonne.
    • "When you see someone driving with a flat tire, it seems reasonable to flag them down. But Reddit user, whistledick, went beyond that simple kindness, pulling over and offering to take the driver to a convenience store to purchase a can of fix-a-flat. Unfortunately, according to whistledick, "Not only did they ride in my car silently, offering no thanks, but they also stole my wallet out of my console when I wasn't looking."
    • When a homeless man asked Reddit user, hourmc, for food, hourmc gave the man the chicken salad sandwich he had with him.
      • "Ain't nobody gonna eat that," the man said, refusing the sandwich.
      • Hourmc recalled feeling "strangely rejected"
    • Yet another Reddit user, capatiller, let a longtime friend stay in her spare bedroom when the friend was leaving an abusive husband. Capatiller's friend then showed her gratitude by starting an affair with capatiller's fiance, and the two of them then kicked capatiller out of the house and took up residency there together. 
    • Our final Reddit user named Thundernut was trail running when he encountered a fallen tree on the path. He decided to move the tree as a good deed, but then felt a pain on his knee. Then another. He soon realized he was being attacked by a swarm of bees that were nesting in the tree. Thundernut then spent three days in the hospital with anaphylaxis
  • That all said, if your attempts to help someone backfire, take advantage of those emotional regulation skills of yours and remember that your discomfort is simply temporary and that anaphylaxis will only help your journey to being a better version of you :)
• What it means to me

• • This was an incredibly inconvenient holiday to research
  • "Inconvenient" is really inconvenient to type
  • It's more obvious that modern day conveniences are actually having some long-term consequences. Convenience food is terrible for you, single-use plastics and other similar inventions are terrible for the environment, and social media is terrible for your social life

• Activities to celebrate

• • Whatever you do today, be sure to do it with the #InconvenienceYourselfDay hashtag on all your social media
  • Worldwide Weird Holidays has a few suggestions to "slow the pace of [your] hectic lives, if only for today."
    • Call a friend instead of texting
    • Write a letter instead of a Facebook message
    • Cook a favorite meal instead of throwing something together (or getting delivery)
      • Maybe even get the "good" china out of storage, because what the hell are you even saving it for?
    • Take a walk without any mobile devices and look around at your neighborhood, not just the view of the sidewalk you see past your cell phone
  • WikiHow, as always, comes to the rescue with the following breakdown of precisely how to Inconvenience Yourself today
    • Be there for someone else emotionally--if someone you know needs to talk, give them your full attention. Give them advice and try to get them to see a positive aspect in whatever they're going through. Everyone loves smiles and hugs, especially in a stressful situation
    • Make children feel appreciated--"When parents are buried in work, household chores to maintain a clean & safe house, and bill payment deadlines to meet, it's hard to set some time off to spend quality time with kids. Help them out with homework, have fun preparing for a test by creating index card games, take them to the park, or even play their favorite video game with them."
    • Perform a random act of kindness to a stranger--"don't hesitate to let someone in the supermarket line before you if they have a few things while you have a full cart. Open the door for a senior citizen and allow them to walk in/out before you."
    • Be patient on the road--"Allow people to go in front of you to make a merge and never play the 'bumper-to-bumper game' so that people can't merge. Avoid taking a parking space because it's closer and more convenient for you; go further back to allow someone else the chance - it's also good exercise to walk."
    • Achieve success at work--"Use this day to re-evaluate how you present yourself towards others. Offer help to someone first; don't wait for them to come to you. Explain things with specific instructions instead of a basic overview. Take the time out and ensure that they are presented with the best assistance."
    • Avoid doing "me" things--"'Me' things are activities or wants that people desire to do in their spare or leisure time by themselves. Examples could be sleeping in to a later time, taking a stress-free walk by themselves, or reading a book in a peaceful and quiet place. Agree to an outing with friends or attend your daughter's stuffed animal tea party."
    • Reflect on "Inconvenience Yourself Day"-- "If you have put someone else before you, how did it make you feel? Were you satisfied or unhappy with the result(s)? Try to adapt and practice this everyday and see if it comes back to you."
  • Weekendnotes.com offers this comprehensive schedule for a proper celebration of the holiday
    • "You start the day by waking up at 5AM, you need to celebrate the day to its fullest
    • The first thing you do is start a load of all your bath towels
    • Then, you take a freezing cold shower for 15 minutes
    • When you're done you realize you have no towel
    • You figure out that problem and then you get dressed
    • The thing is that you don't get dressed the convenient way
    • Put your clothes on backwards and inside out
    • Once you're completely dressed you go get the ingredients for cereal
    • As you are pouring the milk you look at the time and then freak out, you're late for work
    • You spill the milk and then decide that you need something to eat
    • You get your purse/wallet and then remember you need your coat
    • You put your purse/wallet down and your coat on and get your car keys off the key hook
    • You get in the car and hurry to the store
    • Once you're at the checkout you remember you have no money, because you forgot your purse/wallet
    • You hurry to your car, just to remember that you locked your keys in the car
    • You call the police to see if they can open the door, but the closest police man is over a half an hour away
    • You call a friend who thankfully takes you to work
    • But you're late! And your boss is mad at you, for being late for the past week
    • He gives you an insane amount of overtime, which you know you deserve
    • You finish a hard day of work at 7PM, dealing with various inconveniences you made for yourself
    • You didn't wear your suit, so you had to borrow another employees extra one
    • Well, you spilled coffee on it, so you had to find another just like it
    • You yell at your friend, because she was yelling at you for ruining her suit and you just made the meaning of the special holiday come true 
    • You return to the store and a police officer arrives. He goes through many ID questions, but realizes you are legit
    • You go home just to find spoiled, bumpy, smelly milk all over your kitchen floor
    • After you clean it up you realize it is 8PM
    • You put your cell phone in the charger and the power to the house turns off
    • You change into your most uncomfortable outfit and go to sleep
  • INCONVENIENCE YOURSELF DAY Mixtape
    • Help! By The Beatles
    • The Inconvenient Truth by Nervus
    • Unsolicited by Disadvantages
    • The Annoying Song by Butthole Surfers
    • Watch Out For This (Bumaye) by Major Lazer, Busy Signal, The Flexican, FS Green
    • Do Somethin' by Britney Spears
    • Help I'm Alive by Metric
    • Pain In The Ass by Nina Kraviz
    • Kitties and Inconveniences by Iamjakehill
    • World of Inconvenience by Dub Trio featuring King Buzzo
    • Lose Yourself by Eminem
    • Find You by Zedd, Matthew Koma, Miriam Bryant

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3f9XQw3stUg8sZDSV24b3M?si=ensyNxXUQiKk0KiHw5wfIQ

• • And never forget what our wise "prince of paradox" Gilbert K. Chesterton once said, "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."
    • GKC was an English write, philosopher, and lay theologian, often referred to as the "prince of paradox"

[embed]https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3f9XQw3stUg8sZDSV24b3M?si=ensyNxXUQiKk0KiHw5wfIQ[/embed]

SOURCES

• https://www.wikihow.com/Celebrate-Inconvenience-Yourself-Day
• https://www.worldwideweirdholidays.com/inconvenience-yourself-day/
• https://www.weekendnotes.com/celebrate-national-inconvenience-yourself-day/
• https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inconvenience
• https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Inconvenience
• https://hackspirit.com/20-brutal-truths-life-will-make-better-person-1/
• https://www.sersanoconsulting.com/2017/09/inconvenience-perspective/
• https://www.treehugger.com/culture/why-convenience-overrated.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-convenience.html
• https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/71964/7-scientific-benefits-helping-others
• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-cultures/201805/in-helping-others-you-help-yourself
• https://www.rd.com/true-stories/acts-of-kindness-gone-wrong/

Find Holiday Party online – Patreon: patreon,com/HOLIDAYPARTY Twitter: @HOLIDAYPARTYPOD / Instagram: HOLIDAYPARTYPODCAST / Facebook: @HOLIDAYPARTYPODCAST / HOLIDAYPARTYPODCAST.COM

Find Alyssa – Twitter: @alyssapants / alyssapants.com

Find Disa – Spotify: open.spotify.com/user/1243777842

SHOW NOTES

• History/Fun facts about the topic

• • How do we define "nothing"? (What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of "nothing"?)
  • An article from Vice summarizes this conundrum pretty well. "Nothing is a concept so deceptively simple that it inhabits the strange intersection of science, philosophy, and language itself. Like a child asking "Why?" to the point of absurdity, trying to get to the bottom of this problem can be pretty frustrating"
  • "'Nothing', used as a pronoun subject, is the absence of a something or particular thing that one might expect or desire to be present ("We found nothing", "Nothing was there") or the inactivity of a thing or things that are usually or could be active ("Nothing moved", "Nothing happened"). As a predicate or complement "nothing" is the absence of meaning, value, worth, relevance, standing, or significance ("It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing"; "The affair meant nothing"; "I'm nothing in their eyes"). 
    • Grammatically, the word "nothing" is an indefinite pronoun, which means that it refers to something. According to cute-calendar.com, "one might argue that 'nothing' is a concept, and since concepts are things, the concept of "nothing" itself is a thing. Many philosophers hold that the word "nothing" does not function as a noun, as there is no object to which it refers."
  • "Nothingness" is a philosophical term for the general state of nonexistence, sometimes reified as a domain or dimension into which things pass when they cease to exist or out of which they may come to exist, e.g. God is understood to have created the universe ex nihilo, "out of nothing". Creatio ex nihilo is one of the most common themes in ancient myths and religions
  • Western philosophy has been obsessing over "nothingness" for a  very long time. To avoid linguistic traps over the meaning of "nothing", philosophers will often use a phrase such as not-being to make clear what is being discussed
    • One of the earliest Western philosophers to consider nothing as a concept was Parmenides, a Greek philosopher of the monist school who lived in the 5th century BC. He reasoned that "nothing" cannot exist because to speak of a thing, one has to speak of a thing that exists. Since we can speak of a thing in the past, this thing must still exist (in some sense) now. From this, he concludes that there is no such thing as change, there can be no such things as coming-into-being, passing-out-of-being, or not-being
      • Parmenides was an influence for other philosophers such as Socrates and Plato, though Aristotle shrugged him off, concluding, "Although these opinions seem to follow logically in a dialectical discussion, yet to believe them seems next door to madness when one considers the facts." 
    • Aristotle provided an escape from the logical problem posed by Parmenides by distinguishing things that are matter and things that are space. In this scenario, space is not "nothing" but, rather, a receptacle in which objects of matter can be placed. The true void (as "nothing") is different from "space" and is removed from consideration. 
      • This characterization of space reached its pinnacle with Isaac Newton who asserted the existence of absolute space.
      • Rene Descartes, however, espoused an argument similar to Parmenides, which denied the existence of space. For Descartes, there was matter, and there was extension of matter leaving no room for the existence of "nothing."
    • In modern times, Albert Einstein's concept of spacetime has led many scientists, including Einstein himself, to adopt a position remarkably similar to Parmenides. On the death of his friend Michelle Besso, Einstein consoled his widow with the words, "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of time. That signifies nothing. For those of us that believe in physics, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." 
    • Existentialists really like to spend a lot of time considering 'nothing.' "The most prominent figure among the existentialists is Jean-Paul Sartre, whose ideas in his book Being and Nothingness are heavily influenced by Being and Time of Martin Heidegger, although Heidegger later stated that he was misunderstood by Satre. 
      • Sartre defines two kinds of "being" or etre. One kind is etre-en-soi, the brute existence of things such as a tree. The other kind is etre-pour-soi which is consciousness. Sartre claims that this second kind of being is "nothing" since consciousness cannot be an object of consciousness and can possess no essence. Sartre uses this conception of nothing as the foundation of his atheist philosophy, since equating nothingness with being leads to creation from nothing. Hence, God is no longer needed for there to be existence
    • Modern day philosopher Jim Holt describes nothingness as "a state in which everything is not self-identical. If for all x, x is unequal to x; that sentence in logic describes a state of nothingness. It doesn't help the imagination, but it doesn't give rise to any contradictions. It can only be true if nothing exists, because if anything exists, it equals itself."
      • He also contends that, "Nothing is the simplest way that reality could turn out; it's the least arbitrary, because it excludes everything. Once you take that seriously, you begin to think, 'That's how it should have been; why should there be something rather than nothing?'"
  • Of course, the understanding of 'nothing' varies between cultures. In some Eastern philosophies, the concept of "nothingness" is characterized by an egoless state of being in which one fully realizes one's own small part in the cosmos. 
    • Sunyata, or emptiness, is considered a state of mind in some forms of Buddhism--achieving 'nothing' in this tradition allows one to be totally focused on a thought or activity at a level of intensity that they would not be able to achieve if they were consciously thinking. 
    • A classic example of this is an archer attempting to erase the mind and clear the thoughts to better focus on the shot
    • Some have pointed to similarities between the Buddhist conception of nothingness and the ideas of Martin Heidegger and existentialists like Sartre
  • Before moving on from the philosophical interpretations of "nothing," I would be remiss to not mention Seinfeld, which is popularly known as "the show about nothing" as many of its episodes are about the minutiae of daily life. 
    • According to a BBC article, "Was Seinfeld Really 'About Nothing'?", the show "revealed the same problems of being that nauseated the existentialists: the tiniest acts of its characters come together to wreak havoc, sometimes on other characters, more commonly on unsuspecting strangers."
    • "...one could argue [the show] has a strong nihilistic streak throughout its run - if it's about 'nothing', it's about the nothingness of existence, the futility of it all."
    • Just as with 'nothing' throughout history, books have been written about Seinfeld since it's conclusion, colleges offer classes on it that tend to fill to capacity, and think pieces still regularly pop up about the show, despite its finale airing over twenty years ago, on May 14, 1998.
    • From the article, Seinfeld is one of many major works of pop culture that "show us why we say the things we do, do the things we do, thinking the things we think, like the things we like. Seinfeld teaches us what at least one sliver of life was like in 1990s America: silly, banal, self-indulgent, self-obsessed and maybe even nihilistic underneath it all" and shows us "the more universal tendencies we share: we're probably still a little self-indulgent, even more self-obsessed and still questioning what it all means. And any show that makes us think about all of that - while making nihilism and existentialism fun - can't really be about nothing after all, can it?"
  • Both philosophically and mathematically, the concept of "zero" has a bumpy history. The ancient Greeks hated the concept of zero so much that they refused to incorporate it into their number system, even when their astronomical calculations called for it. They were uneasy, thinking, "How can nothing be something?" 
    • Aristotle once wrote, "Nature abhors a vacuum," and so did he (I'm naming my next dog Aristotle). His complete rejection of vacuums and voids and his subsequent influence on centuries of learning prevented the adoption and the concept of zero in the Western world until around the 13th century, when Italian bankers found it to be extraordinarily useful in financial transactions
    • Other terms for 'zero' include 'nought', which is where"naughty" is derived from because it was bad to be nothing. Zero was thought of as Devil's work and the antithesis of God
    • "Zero" was first seen in cuneiform tablets written around 300 BC by Babylonians who used it as a placeholder (to distinguish 36 from 306 or 360, for example). The concept of zero in its mathematical sense was developed in India in the 5th century, and popularized in Europe by Fibonacci in the eleventh century
    • Any number divided by zero is...nothing, not even zero. The equation is mathematically impossible
    • A mathematical concept of nothing proposed by science journalist Charles Seife, who authored "Zero: The Biography of of a Dangerous idea," proposed starting with a set of numbers that included only the number zero, then removing zero, leaving with is called a null set
    • In computing, "nothing" can be a keyword used in place of something unassigned, a data abstraction. Although a computer's storage hardware always contains numbers, "nothing" symbolizes a number skipped by the system when the programmer desires. May systems have similar capabilities but different keywords, such as "null", "NUL", "nil", and "None"
  • In physics, the concept of "nothing" can be a touchy and complex subject to consider. Generally, a region of space is called a vacuum if it does not contain any matter, though it can contain physical fields. In fact, it is practically impossible to construct a region of space that contains no matter or fields, since gravity cannot be blocked and all objects at a non-zero temperature radiate electromagnetically
  • According to theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, "Even if [space] is as empty as it can be, there are still quantum mechanical [properties] - they're just in a zero-energy state not doing anything. But you could probe the vacuum, as particle physics does, and discover its properties."
    • Empty space is instead filled with pairs of particles and antiparticles, called virtual particles, that quickly form and then, in accordance with the law of energy conservation, annihilate each other in about 10-25 seconds
    • These virtual particles popping in and out of existence create energy. In fact, according to quantum mechanics, the energy contained in all the power plants and nuclear weapons in the world doesn't equal the theoretical energy contained in the empty spaces between these words
    • Carroll suggests that, "It's probably better to think of nothing as the absence of even space and time, rather than space and time without anything in them."
  • Forbes.com further reiterates that "not everyone agrees about what we mean, scientifically, when we talk about what 'nothing' actually is" and helpfully outlines the four scientific meanings of nothing:
    • A time when your "thing" of interest didn't exist--if something fundamentally arose where there was no such thing before
    • Empty space--if you take all the matter, antimatter, radiation, and spatial curvature away
    • Empty spacetime in the lowest-energy state possible--if you then take away any energy inherent to space itself, leaving only spacetime and the laws of nature
    • Whatever you're left with when you take away the entire Universe and the laws governing it
  • A few more fun facts from the Discovermagazine.com article "20 Things You Didn't Know About...Nothing"
    • There is vastly more nothing than something. Roughly 74% of the universe is "nothing," or dark energy. 22% is dark matter. Only 4% is baryonic matter, the stuff we call 'something.'
    • And even something is mostly nothing. Atoms overwhelmingly consist of empty space. Matter's solidity is an illusion caused by the electric fields created by subatomic particles
    • There is more and more nothing every second. In 1998 astronomers measuring the expansion of the universe determined that dark energy is pushing apart the universe at an ever-accelerating speed. The discovery of nothing - and its ability to influence the fate of the cosmos - is considered the most important astronomical finding of the past decade
    • But even nothing has a weight. The energy in dark matter is equivalent to a tiny mass; there is about one pound of dark energy in a cube of empty space 250K miles on each side
    • In space, no one can hear you scream: Sound, a mechanical wave, cannot travel through a vacuum. Without matter to vibrate through, there is only silence
    • Light can travel through a vacuum, but there is nothing to refract it. Alas for extraterrestrial romantics, stars do not twinkle in outer space
    • Black holes are not holes or voids; they are the exact opposite of nothing, being the densest concentration of mass known in the universe
    • It is said that Abdulhamid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s, had censors expunge references to H2O from chemistry books because he was sure it stood for "Hamid the Second is nothing"
    • Medieval art was mostly flat and 2D until the 15th century, when the Florentine architect Filippo Brunalleschi conceived of the vanishing point, the place where parallel lines converge into nothingness. This allowed for the development of perspective in art
    • Vacuums do not suck things. They create spaces into which the surrounding atmosphere pushes matter
    • Current theories suggest that the universe was created out of a state of vacuum energy, that is, nothing
    • In other words, nothing could be the key to the theory of everything
  • Urban Dictionary's top definition of "nothing" is: "Actually means 'something,' but is used when you don't feel like explaining," posted by user Melanie on October 21, 2003
    • The second most upvoted Urban Dictionary definition of "nothing" was posted by user Doomeyes, also on October 21, 2003, and is thus: "Nothing, put simply, is the deepest, shallowest, brightest, darkest, widest, thinnest, and incomprehensibly empty emptiness, so empty that it is only prevented from collapsing upon itself because there is no substance to collapse in upon, or no substance to do the collapsing, or even any substance to think or daydream about collapsing upon absence of presence or presence of absence, which is still utterly and completely absent of form and shape and mass and presence that is absent from the existence of anything. In short, nothing is the total, absolute, final, and complete spot that is both positive and negative, young and old, and to sum it all up the opposite of everything in existence, for there is no existence in nothingness. It has even been thought that nothingness itself doesn't even exist, and that the existence of nothingness is so impossibly ludicrous and insane that if anyone were to actually realize or see nothingness, the entirety of the expanse of the Everything would simply vaporize, leaning even more nothingness in its place. 
      • Nothingness is nothing, to put it simply. (really, this time)"
• History of National Nothing Day
  • According to WIkipedia and various other sources, National Nothing Day is an "un-event" proposed in 1972 by San Francisco Examiner columnist Harold Pullman Coffin, and has been observed annually since 1973, when it was added to Chase's Calendar of Events. The purpose of the holiday is "to provide Americans with one National Day when they can just sit without celebrating, observing or honoring anything." 
    • Now remember, the third Monday of every January has, since 1986, been celebrated as MLK Jr Day, which falls between the 15th and 21st. This means that one-in-seven January 16ths now fall on a public holiday, which effectively usurps the very nature of National Nothing Day
      • Unfun fact: Some states were resistant enough to observing MLK Jr Day that it wasn't until 2000 that it was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time
    • In contrast, the Realist Society of Canada has a religious holiday called THABS or "There Has Always Been Something" Day), which is dedicated to the celebration of the "realization" that "if there was ever nothing, there would be nothing now". It is celebrated on July 8 each year. 
  • Fun fact! Harold Pullman Coffin was born in Reno, NV on January 26th, 1905 and is buried at Masonic Memorial Gardens on Stoker Ave, near Idlewild Park and Reno High School.
• Activities to celebrate
• • Do nothing! But use the hashtag #NationalNothingDay on social media when you brag about all the nothing that you're doing
  • Watch Seinfeld. You can start with the show's self-mocking clips where Jerry and George pitch a show to NBC about "nothing"
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQnaRtNMGMI
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUWiv5r_CZw
  • Watch the 2003 movie "Nothing", a canadian philosophical comedy-drama about two friends and housemates who open their front door one day and discover that the entire world beyond their house is gone, replaced with a featureless white void
  • Watch "A Short History of Nothing" on bbc.co.uk. 
    • https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/a-short-history-of-nothing/p076bm46
  • You can post some of the following "nothing" quotes to your social media, and anyone under 14 on your friends list will think you're really deep
    • "We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom." - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
    • "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing." - Plato, The Republic
    • "To do nothing is the way to be nothing." - Nathanial Hawthorne
    • "Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world's weight he had never chosen to bear." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
    • "I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about." - Oscar Wilde
    • "I must be made of nothing to feel so much nothing." - Michelle Hodkin, The Evolution of Mara Dyer
    • "In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." - Theodore Roosevelt
    • "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
    • "Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee." - Ernest Hemingway, A Clean Well Lighted Place
    • "Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!" - Audrey Hepburn
  • From bustle.com, you could
    • Watch or read "Much Ado About Nothing"
    • Have a milkshake at Tom's Restaurant in NYC, which is a nod to Seinfeld
    • Watch GoT and remember that Jon Snow knows nothing
    • Challenge yourself to do nothing for two minutes. This tip includes a link to the website donothingfor2minutes.com, which is essentially an ad for the Calm app and features an ocean at sunset in the background, the sounds of waves, and a timer that resets every time you interact with your computer in any way. Basically a beginner's meditation session
    • Chow down on a Nothing Bundt Cake, from the bakery Nothing Bundt Cakes
    • Brush up on why we should all get comfortable doing nothing, five reasons for which we learn from The Guardian. 
      • First, "doing nothing" isn't really doing nothing. "Savouring the pleasure of idleness" isn't passive--according to psychologists, "It's a learnable set of skills for relishing the moment, for example, by focusing on each of your senses in turn." It could be considered synonymous with "feeling alive." 
      • Second, aimlessness, rest, and even boredom can boost creativity. One reason why is the "incubation effect": ceasing to focus on a project seems to give your unconscious permission to get to work. Other studies looking at boredom suggest it motivates people to find interesting ways to alleviate it, thereby triggering creative ideas. Aimless thinking can also combat the tunnel vision that can result from fixating on goals. When you have no specific end in mind, you're less likely to exclude new ideas as irrelevant
      • Third, too much busyness is counterproductive.  The article explains that "we chronically confuse effort with effectiveness: a day spent on trifling tasks feels exhausting and virtuous, so we assume - often wrongly - it must have been useful." However, Dutch work expert Manfred Kets de Vries informs us that busyness "can be a very effective defence mechanism for warding off disturbing thoughts and feelings." Essentially, it's when doing nothing that we can finally confront what matters.
      • Fourth, the brain depends on downtime. Not only is downtime essential for "recharging", but to process the data we're deluged with daily, to consolidate memory, and reinforce learning. Downtime and rest strengthen the neural pathways that make these things possible. In a 2009 study, "brain imaging suggested that people faced with a strange task - controlling a computer joystick that didn't obey the usual rules - were actively coming to grips (nice turn of phrase) with learning this new skill during seemingly passive rest periods."
      • And fifth, you'll regain control of your attention. Doing nothing isn't easy at first. It takes a good amount of willpower to resist the urge to do things. According to the meditation instructor Susan Piver, "busyness is seen as a form of laziness" in Buddhism. It's a failure to withhold your attention from whatever random email, task, or webpage lays claim to it. One trick could be to schedule time to "do nothing." "Just don't expect others to understand when you decline some social event on the grounds that you're busy not being busy."
    • Listen to Nothing. The band. 
    • Whisper sweet nothings to someone
    • Read The Book of Nothing
    • Take a trip to Nothing, Arizona. It's now a ghost town, but once held an impressive population of 4 people and contained a gas station and small convenience store
      • The town sign read, "Town of Nothing Arizona. Founded 1977. Elevation 3269ft. The staunch citizens of Nothing are full of Hope, Faith, and Believe in the work ethic. Thru-the-years-these dedicated people had faith in Nothing, hoped for Nothing, worked at Nothing, for Nothing."
  • Deseret.com has a couple of book recommendations, including "The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe," by John D. Barrow; "Nothing Matters: a book about nothing," by Ronald Green; "The Book about Nothing," by Mike Bender
  • Deseret.com also encourages you to use "nothing" in as many phrases as possible, such as
    • "All or nothing"
    • "Nothing but…"
    • "Thanks for nothing"
    • "Nothing to lose"
    • "Next to nothing"
    • "I got nothing"
  • NATIONAL NOTHING DAY Mixtape
    • Nothing by Bruno Major
    • Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby by Cigarettes After Sex
    • Zero Day by Nothing
    • I'm Nothing by Violent Femmes
    • Nothing From Something by The Offspring
    • Nothing by The Script
    • Particles by Nothing But Thieves
    • Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O'Connor
    • Nothing Breaks Like a Heart by Mark Ronson featuring Miley Cyrus
    • Nothing Without You by The Weeknd
    • Church by Fall Out Boy featuring nothing, nowhere
    • Sweet Nothing by Calvin Harris featuring Florence Welch
    • All or Nothing by O-Town
    • Making Love Out of Nothing at All by Air Supply
    • There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back by Shawn Mendes
    • Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now by Starship

SOURCES

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Nothing_Day
• https://nationaldaycalendar.com/national-nothing-day-january-16/
• https://www.bustle.com/articles/59083-10-ways-to-celebrate-national-nothing-day-besides-doing-absolutely-nothing
• https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/09/five-reasons-we-should-all-learn-to-do-nothing
• https://www.cute-calendar.com/event/national-nothing-day/36126.html
• https://www.deseret.com/2019/1/16/20663602/today-is-national-nothing-day-here-s-what-that-means
• https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/nothing-quotes
• https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/nothing
• https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Nothing
• https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-nothing
• https://www.livescience.com/28132-what-is-nothing-physicists-debate.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/01/31/the-four-scientific-meanings-of-nothing/#3f2d15631a5f
• https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbk5va/what-is-nothing

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SHOW NOTES

• History/Fun facts about the topic
• • Definition and history--What exactly is emo, you ask?
    • To start, Dictionary.com gives a two-part definition of emo as a noun
      • 1. A type of guitar-based music developed from emocore but having a softer, pop, or mainstream sound
      • 2. A fan of emo, especially a person who is overly sensitive and full of angst or adopts a certain style characterized by dyed black hair, tight t-shirts and jeans
    • Wikipedia further defines Emo as "a rock music genre characterized by an emphasis on emotional expression, sometimes through confessional lyrics." 
    • Urban Dictionary has over 1400 entries for the definition of emo, with the top entry outlining three applications of the word as: an emotional person, a style, and a genre of music, from user "One of the few people who will say what the labels are instead of my opinion on them" in February 2008. This was their only submission to the site
    • According to NME, emo might be "music's dirtiest word," one that "attracts scorn like few others." 
    • As a genre, It emerged as a style of post-hardcore from the mid-1980s hardcore punk movement in Washington DC, where it was known as 'emotional or emotive hardcore' or 'emocore'."
    • The origin of the term itself is hard to pin down, though evidence shows that it was coined in 1985. Some attribute its birth to a 1985 Thrasher article in which Embrace and other Washington DC bands were referred to as "emo-core," while others claim that Minor Threat frontman Ian MacKaye used it self-mockingly in a magazine, and yet other people give credit to an audience member at an Embrace show, who shouted as an insult that the band was "emocore."
    • Either way, the general consensus is that the term was intended as an insult from the very beginning, and none of the flagship bands wanted anything to do it
    • Though The Beach Boys' 1966 album "Pet Sounds" was labelled "the first emo album" by Treble Zine's Ernest Simpson, the first Emo band is often cited to be Rites of Spring, ostensibly because of their lyrics, such as, "I woke up this morning with a piece of past caught in my throat/And then I choked," from their song "For Want Of." Apparently the members of Rites of Spring hate being called emo, though, with Guy Picciotto once saying, "I've never recognized 'emo' as a genre of music… the reason I think it's so stupid is that--what, like the Bad Brains weren't emotional? What--they were robots or something? It just doesn't make any sense to me."
    • In 1980, Minor Threat frontman Ian Mackaye founded the Dischord record label where it signed many DC hardcore punk bands. Later on, it went on to sign MacKaye and Picciotto's iconic band Fugazi. Fugazi were not emo, drawing in elements of hardcore, funk, and jazz instead, but they did inspire bands in the mid 90s to abandon conventional hardcore roots
    • The first wave of emo took off with Revolution Summer 1985, which was an attempt deliberately sought by emo-core bands like Gray Matter, Beefeater, Dag Nasty, Soulside, and Embrace to break the limitations of hardcore punk in favor for a fresh idea of creativity. It was a social movement that challenged the initial wave of hardcore music, the attitudes of fans and bands before them, and also the image mainstream media protrayed of punks. The bands that spawned from Revolution Summer often took a stand against violence, especially at shows in the form of slamdancing, as well as standing up against the sexism of the scene.
    • During the 90s, a second wave of emo began to spread out and started splintering into different subgenres, and became to be defined by an emotional intimacy between bands and their fans. According to the altpress.com article "What is Emo, Anyway? We Look at History to Define a Genre," this is where we saw the birth of screamo, with bands like Antioch Arrow and Swing Kids. 
      • In Seattle, Sunny Day Real Estate drew elements of grunge and alt-rock, and were in fact often pegged as the "next Nirvana" by industry insiders before they broke up for the first time in 1995.
      • Farther down the West Coast in California, Green Day, Rancid, Jawbreaker, and Weezer were exploding onto the national scene
    • The emo scene was particularly prolific in the Midwest at this time, giving us bands such as The Promise Ring, Cap'n Jazz, American Football, and The Get Up Kids, as well as many of the stereotypes that continue to this day--that emo is "boy-driven, glasses-wearing, overly sensitive, overly brainy, chiming-guitar-driven college music," according to author Andy Greenwald, who wrote "Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and EMO," a 2003 book that explores the evolution of the emo scene and how this culture has affected its largest group, teenagers.
      • According to The Chicago Reader critic Leor Galil, Midwest, or second-wave, emo was critical in transforming DC emo into "something malleable, melodic, and cathartic--its common features included cycling guitar parts, chugging bass lines, and unconventional singing that sounded like a sweet neighbor kid with no vocal training but plenty of heart."
    • The 2000s saw a third wave of emo music, and saw pop-punk and emo become inexorably intertwined. It was during this period when bands like Jimmy Eat World, Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, At The Drive-In, Saves The Day, and Brand New were at their respective peaks. We also saw the likes of Atreyu, the Faint, Bright Eyes, and Coheed and Cambria. As altpress notes, "one thing about all of these bands [is that] they all sound wildly different from one another. The sonic palette of emo is widening as quickly as outside influences can be embraced."
    • With the advent of MySpace in the mid 2000s, emo blew up into a full-blown counter-culture, with groups such as Fall Out Boy, AFI, My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Relient K, Plain White T's, and Panic! At the DIsco at the forefront, giving us all the inspo to go full "mall emo." 
      • Through that entire decade, emo purists were incensed, claiming that "emo" is already dead, horrified that bands like the Used and Senses Fail were being called "screamo," and referring to their precious OG screamo bands as "skramz" instead. 
      • According to NME, "this is an era that countless emo purists like to reject, but it saw the genre take flight like never before."
    • The last decade has seen emo take two clear paths. There has been something of an underground revival, with many newer bands finding inspiration from emo's second wave the 90s, while the emo acts from the mid-2000s explosion have gone on to huge pop success and transitions to other genres.  
    • With artists such as Lil Peep, Princess Nokia, nothing, nowhere, and Ghostmane, the next generation of emo may see the continuation of blending emo elements with hip-hop. Wherever it goes, we can surely expect the OG emo gatekeepers to keep their pearls clutched close and their tissues even closer
    • The most significant update to the world of emo, as least to me, is taking place practically as we speak. The return of My Chemical Romance commences tomorrow, December 20th, at the Shrine Expo Hall In LA. The saga to this reunion has been a long and painful one. First, they stomped on the souls of emos around the world when they announced their breakup on March 22nd, 2013. 
      • Then in July 2016, they posted to their social media for the first time in years a video with the piano intro from "Welcome to the Black Parade," ending with a cryptic date, "9/23/16", which stoked hopes for a reunion announcement. It ended up being the reissue date of The Black Parade with unreleased demos. 
      • Next, in June of this year, Joe Jonas claimed that he saw the band was rehearsing in a New York studio space. Frank Iero sort of quashed these rumors, and a lot of people speculated that Joe Jonas may have confused Iero's band, Frank Iero and the Future Violents, with My Chemical Romance. 
      • Turns out that MCR just sucked at being sneaky. They announced on Halloween 2019 that they would be performing in LA, then followed up that announcement a week later with more dates in Australia, Japan, and New Zealand for 2020
    • Since the reunion announcement, Pitchfork issued a retrospective review of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, giving it an 8.2 score, describing it as "an operatic pop-rock behemoth that became an icon for outcasts."
  • Criticisms and controversies (from Wikipedia)
    • Emo music was blamed for the suicide of teenager Hannah Bond by the coroner at her inquest and her mother, with emo music reportedly glamorizing suicide. She had an online presence in emo forums where she discussed the "glamour" of hanging, as well as telling her parents that her self-harm was an "emo initiation ceremony." A qualitative study showed emo respondents reporting "attitudes including high acceptance for suicidal behavior and self-injury," and concluded, "the identification with the emo youth subculture is considered to be a factor strengthening vulnerability towards risky behaviors."
    • Emo has been criticized for being androcentrist, with Andy Greenwald citing that there are few women in emo bands and those who are have little influence on lyrical content. "Emo's popularity and its "lonely boy's aesthetic" have lead to a litany of one-sided songs in which men vent their fury at the women who have wronged them. Some emo bands' lyrics disguise violent anti-women sentiments with a pop-music veneer."
    • The emo genre experienced backlash in response to its rapid growth. Some bands rejected the label for its social stigma and controversy. The backlash intensified in 2008, when anti-emo groups attacked teenagers in Mexico City, Queretaro, and Tijuana. Legislation was proposed in Russia's Duma regulating emo websites and banning emo attire in schools and government buildings, with the subculture perceived as a "dangerous teen trend" promoting anti-social behavior, depression, social withdrawal, and suicide. In 2012, the BBC reported that Shia militias in Iraq shot or beat to death as many as 58 young Iraqi emos. 
  • As we know, "emo" isn't a term only to denote a genre of music, but also a fashion statement, a lifestyle, and a collection of personality traits
    • Wikipedia succinctly informs us that "emo fashion was originally clean-cut and tended towards geek chic", with comparisons made to Fred Rogers and Buddy Holly. As emo entered the mainstream, fashion began to include skinny jeans, tight t-shirts, studded belts, converse sneakers, Vans, and black wristbands. Thick black eyeliner and black fingernails also became common, though the most ubiquitous facet of emo fashion is the hairstyle: flat, straight, usually jet-black hair with long bangs covering much of the face. 
    • As emo became a subculture, people who dressed in emo fashion and associated themselves with its music were known as "emo kids" or "emos". 
    • An "emo kid," according to Urban Dictionary is: A social classification that has been bastardized by scenesters, rich preps, and wannabe goths united. A true emo kid does not label him/herself as being "emo"...often this label is foisted on him or her against the alleged emo kid's will. True emo kids listen to whatever the hell music they feel like, and it is often poetic or expressive. Emo is not a clothing style, cutting our wrists, or being a frequent buyer at Hot Topic. Those who call themselves "emo" are most likely just trying to be "scene" and have really screwed up the genre through wearing generic, borderline gothic clothing that all their sad little friends wear."
      • In other words, a "true" emo kid is someone who gatekeeps being an emo kid
    • The most common Emo stereotypes, as taken from thetoptens.com, wikipedia, 
      • Emos hate themselves
      • They self harm or are suicidal
      • They're Emo for attention
      • Emos have fake cut marks
      • They whine a lot
      • They're depressed
      • Their poetry is bad
      • Emo songs are bad
      • Emos wear their mom's makeup (pro-tip: don't share mascara or eyeliner with anyone unless you want some attention-grabbing eye infections)
      • They wear black clothing in hot weather (this is a good idea though!)
      • Have spiky hair
      • Only wear converse
      • Their hair covers one of their eyes (sounds painful if hair is indeed spiky)
      • Worship the devil
    • According to National Today, emo is responsible for starting some well known trends, including
      • Ear gauges, which NT describes as "the default millennial piercing option
      • Social media--"Back when you couldn't see the point in getting a Facebook page, emos were tricking out their Myspaces with glitter, animations, and their favorite songs on autoplay"
      • Selfies: "Emos pioneered the art of self-photography, before phones even had a selfie camera!"
      • And skinny jeans, "the official '00s pants style for both men and women started in the emo community first"
        
        
• History of National Emo Day
• • From definithing.com, "national emo day takes place on december the 19th, and is celebrated all around the world, by emo's and non-emos alike.
    It is a day for emos to celbrate their sub-culture, and for non-emos to pretend to be emo, for a day, sometimes people use the day, as an excuse tyo
    National emo day
    A day for the all emos to congregate together for a m-ss non-celbration, and general whine about life.
    Celebrated on the 19th of december
    "Oh my god… my life is like, so totally hard."
    "Yeah me too… i hate my life, like so much"
    "What"
    "Go to national emo day"
    "Omg yeaaaah!!
    I mean, like. Okay, whatever, man."
    Also known as-ned
    Its where you act emo, dress emo, be emo! Its always on may 4th. Its to make fun of the fake emo kids who are scene!
    "Hey are you celebrating national emo day?"
    "H-ll yeah i am! I cant wait to act depressed all day!"
  • Now according to Uncyclopedia, National Emo Day "was created in 1927, created by a group of Christians who wanted to reach out to more people. In a desperate attempt they had 10K people sign a document stating they would created a holiday to celebrate the life of Emos. As they continued to publicize the petition to create the holiday they got little to know [sic] results so they decided to change their approach on the topic, They decided to instead of publicising it as an emo holiday to publicise it as a petition to make "Girls Gone Wild" videos for free. Within only 6 days they had achieved 10k signatures."
  • But for real, the earliest reference I could find to National Emo Day was an Urban Dictionary entry by BlackSouledBeast from December 5th, 2009, which states, and this may sound familiar, "National Emo Day takes place on December the 19th, and is celebrated all around the world, by emo's and non-emos alike. It is a day for emos to celbrate their sub-culture, and for non-emos to pretend to be emo, for a day. Sometimes people use the day, as an excuse tyo"
  • There was another UD entry from December 5th, 2009, by user Johnatronn, which stated, "a day for the all emos to congregate together for a mass non-celbration, and general whine about life. Celebrated on the 19th of December."
    There are a grand total of 4 entries on Urban Dictionary entries for National Emo Day. The other two were added May 1st, 2018, by CRIMSON_WOLF, and June 9, 2018, by Moncricket Killer. So take that information for what it's worth
    
    

Activities to celebrate

Take part in our National Emo Day social media challenge, which is to post as many sad sack updates as you can throughout the day, ending each of them with the hashtag #NationalEmoDay and the :( emoji

Become emo! WikHow gives a helpful breakdown of precisely how to be an emokid.

• First, look the part and get an emo appearance. 
  • Start with getting "emo hair," which usually refers to a layered haircut in which long bangs are swept and styled to one side usually held in place with mousse, hair gel, or pomade. The color is mainly natural, but sometimes "emo hair" is dyed black and sometimes features a bright highlight of blonde or other "punky" colors
  • Then break out the black eyeliner and don't be shy with it. Get your full waterlines, and don't skimp on the corners of your eyes
  • You're also going to need nail polish, specifically black. Don't be afraid to wear different colors or mix them
  • Consider getting piercings! Snake bites in particular are a very common piercing among the emos 
  • Dress in emo fashion. Stock your closet with skinny jeans, hoodies, vintage t-shirts, and checked shirts that will pair great with your concert tees. Wear emo bands t-shirts, even if you've never seen them live
  • Wear thick horn rimmed glasses, even and especially if you have perfect eyesight
  • Shoes should be converse or vans. WikiHow says that you do not have to buy them new, and that's a lie. If you don't have an outlandish collection of limited edition high-tops and canvas slip-ons, you're a poser and not doing emo correctly
  • Accessorize with scarves, stripy socks, wristbands, studded belts, safety pins that are doing nothing, badges, and fingerless gloves. 
  • Embrace androgyny. 
  • Don't forget to cuff your jeans, cut thumb holes into your hoodies, and be sure to own at least two items with characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas
• Next, you have to understand Emo, so learn all about it. You're off to a good start with this episode. Learn about the history as well as the subgenres, including emocore (Rites of Spring); post-emo indie rock/Midwest emo (Sunny Day Real Estate); Emo pop (Jimmy Eat World); screamo (Heroin); and emo rap (MC Lars). 
  • Understanding emo includes appreciating emo music. You can listen to the classics of the subgenres, as well as explore using music streaming services like SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Pandora, Spotify, and Youtube to find less well-known emo bands.
  • Develop a passion for different kinds of music. Generally speaking, all emo music has two things in common: big, sweeping, extremely melodramatic guitar-based music, either aggressive and harsh or acoustic and gentle, that contain confessional or explicitly personal lyrics, often about heartbreak and loneliness. You can listen to Death Cab for Cutie or My Chemical Romance or both (you lunatic) and still be emo.
  • Learn to tell the difference between emo and other subcultures. 
    • Emo is a subculture that is based around music, and deals with emotions, self-expression, and self-exploration. Being emo means you understand your roots, listen to emo music, and participate in the community
    • Scene is a subculture which emerged from members of the chav subculture in England experimenting with alternative fashions. It's a mixture of several styles including emo, indie pop, rave, and punk. Scenes tend to wear brighter colors, and have teased or backcombed hair which may feature "cool tails." Scene kids tend to listen to genres like metalcore, deathcore, and crunk core
    • Goth is a subculture which emerged from the British post-punk scene in the late 70s/early 80s. Goths primarily listen to goth rock, cold wave, deathrock, and darkwave.
• And finally, participate in emo culture by going to shows, cultivating a creative persona, picking up an instrument, or making or customizing your own clothes (pins, patches, color on your shoes)
• If you don't know where to start with your emo music adventure, you have some options. If you're feeling brave, you could throw a dart at Wikipedia's list of emo artists, You can get some recommendations from Rollingstone's article "40 Greatest Emo Albums of All Time", which lists the top ten as 
  • 10. MCR "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004)
  • 9. FOB "From Under the Cork Tree" (2005)
  • 8. JEW "Bleed American" (2001)
  • 7. Cap'n Jazz "Burritos, Inspiration Point, For Balloon Sports…" (1995)
  • 6. American Football "American Football" (1999)
  • 5. Braid "Frame and Canvas" (1998)
  • 4. Jawbreaker "Dear You" (1995)
  • 3. The Promise Ring "Nothing Feels Good" (1997)
  • 2. Rites of Spring "Rites of Spring" (1985)
  • 1. Sunny Day Real Estate "Diary" (1994)
• Make sure to check out our NATIONAL EMO DAY Mixtape. This is the first one I've made that intentionally doesn't have a specific listening order, though I did put them in order of their album release dates. Since I don't know what kind of ~emotions~ you'll be needing to connect with when you listen, I encourage you to hit shuffle and keep clicking "next" until you find your emo unicorn song. 
  • Wouldn't it Be Nice by The Beach Boys (1966)
  • For Want of by Rites of Spring (1985)
  • In Circles by Sunny Day Real Estate (May 10, 1994)
  • Buddy Holly by Weezer (May 10, 1994)
  • Here Come the Rome Plows by Drive Like Jehu (1994)
  • Red & Blue Jeans by The Promise Ring (1997)
  • Napoleon Solo by At The Drive-In (1998)
  • Never Meant by American Football (1999)
  • At Your Funeral by Saves the Day (2001)
  • The Middle by Jimmy Eat World (2001)
  • A Favor House Atlantic by Coheed and Cambria (2003)
  • A Decade Under the Influence by Taking Back Sunday (2004)
  • Vindicated by Dashboard Confessional (2004)
  • I'm Not Okay (I Promise) by My Chemical Romance (2004)
  • All That I've Got by The Used (2004)
  • Sugar, We're Going Down by Fall Out Boy (2005)
  • Streetcar by Funeral For A Friend (2005)
  • I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic! At The Disco (2005
  • Everything is Alright by Motion City Soundtrack (2005)
  • Misery Business by Paramore (2007)
  • 20 Dollar Nose Bleed by Fall Out Boy (featuring Brendon Urie) (2008)
  • In Exile by Thrice (2009)
  • Your Eyes Are Bleeding by Princess Nokia (2018)
  • Uncomfortably Numb by American Football (featuring Hayley Williams) (2019)

SOURCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=emo
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=emo%20kid
https://www.thetoptens.com/false-emo-stereotypes/
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/emo
https://www.wikihow.com/Be-Emo
https://www.altpress.com/features/what_is_emo_history_definition/
https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/emo-wave-guide-evolution-2302802
https://www.facebook.com/events/national-emo-day/1304009436379814/
https://nationaltoday.com/national-emo-day/
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=National%20Emo%20Day
http://mirror.uncyc.org/wiki/The_Only_Emo_Holiday:_National_Emo_Day
https://definithing.com/national-emo-day/
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/40-greatest-emo-albums-of-all-time-23526/my-chemical-romance-three-cheers-for-sweet-revenge-2004-158842/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emo_artistshttps://www.ranker.com/list/emo-bands-and-musicians/reference

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SHOW NOTES

• History/Fun facts about the topic
  • Urban Dictionary defines unfriending as "removing a person from your list on a social network site, i.e. Facebook (292-87 thumbs up:down ratio)
    • "Compulsive people prune their friend list periodically, removing people that they no longer have contact with. More often though, unfriending is only done when a particular friend's updates and self-promotions become so annoying that you can no longer stand hearing about them. Or you might unfriend someone when they piss you off, however, this is not very effective since the person who is unfriended is not notified that you unfriended them and you'd be better off to keep them as a friend and plot your revenge."
  • Mirriam-Webster claims that the first use of 'unfriend' took place in 2003, which would put it in the same vocabulary time capsule as baby bump, binge-watch, clapback, flash mob, manscaping, muffin top, net neutrality, and SARS
    • However, according to a 2016 article from curiosity.com and a 2016 article from interestingliterature.com, the first known usage of a form of "unfriend" took place in the Middle English poem "Brut" by Layamon. "We sollen...slean houre onfreondes and wenden after Brenne." Here, the noun form of unfriend delineates someone who is not a friend, but not necessarily an enemy either
      • This is apparently the same poem that provided us with the first presentation of the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, as well as the first instance of the word 'muggle'
    • It was in the 17th century that 'unfriend' was first used as a verb, by good ole Shakespeare in "Twelfth Night" (1601-02)
      • His use referred more to a passive losing of friends, rather than an active one, stating, "Being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger,/Unguided and unfriended, often prove/Rough and unhospitable."
      • In King Lear (1606), he says, "Sir, will you, with those infirmities she owes--./Unfriended, new adopted to our hate."
    • Regardless, the use of the term among social media references still predates Facebook. The first known recorded use was on Usenet in 2003 by a user named Woo-hoo who commented, "I have been "unfriended" by somebody in the LJ world today."LJ is LiveJournal?
    • In 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary named "unfriend" the word of the year! According to an abcnews.go.com article from the same year, this was received in mixed fashion by Facebook users, who reportedly "erupted with commentary." 
      • "It should be de-friend, not unfriend. I've been using facebook since it began and do not agree with unfriend. (and I guarantee my facebook friends agree with me),"
      • "I also use 'defriend' and have never heard of 'unfriend.' For the record, I'm 24 and use Facebook most regularly. I first signed on Facebook when I was 19, right when it opened up to my college." 
      • "No, unfriend is definitely more lexy. Defriend misses the whole point and is both boring and uncreative. Unfriend should be compared to undo--which is in social networking exactly what one does. It's not befriending someone and making acquaintances in reverse, it's just undoing a function--unhitting the friend button."
      • Ultimately, according to the folks at Oxford, "unfriend" was chosen because it's much more common than defriend.
    • According to a 2010 nytimes article and a 2014 article from theatlantic, research done by a graduate student at the Business School at the University of Colorado, Denver, gives the top four reasons that people unfriend each other on Facebook, in the following order of frequency:
      • Frequent/unimportant posts;
      • Polarizing posts, such as politics and religion;
      • Inappropriate posts, such as sexist or racist remarks;
      • Everyday life posts such as those about children, a spouse, or eating habits
      • The student, Christopher Sibona, stated, "One of the interesting things about unfriending is that most real-world friendships either blow up or fade away. But on Facebook, users actively make the decision to unfriend, and people often don't know why or what's happened in the relationship."
      • According to the study, those who initiate a friendship are more likely to be unfriended than those on the receiving end, which seems to mirror how we treat friendships in the real world. Research has shown that those who make friendship overtures tend to be of lower social status than those they court. The recipient of the overtures seems to value those relationships less than the initiator does
      • The study was done by Sibona reaching out to those who had tweeted about unfriending. He sent out over 7300 recruitment tweets, and received 1552 completed surveys. The survey asked the participant to identify the last person they unfriended on Facebook, and to classify the nature of the friendship
      • Un-friends were most likely to be a high-school buddy, a work colleague, a friend of a friend, or "other" which included "didn't know them," "former student," or "enemy."
      • Interestingly, work friends were more likely to be unfriended for their real-life behavior rather than their posting patterns
      • Lee Siegel, the author of "Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob," is quoted as saying, "Unfriending reflects the instrumentalization and commodifying of friendship on Facebook. Why unfriend someone at all? After all, in the real world,  you don't just ignore an obnoxious relative. The very act of unfriending acknowledges that the Facebook definition of friend is different from the traditional." 

• • Some stats and facts from wincalendar.com, cnn.com
    • As of January 2019, Facebook is the leading social network with approximately 1.6 billion active monthly users. This is in comparison to WhatsApp (1 billion), Instagram (400 million), and Twitter (320 million)
    • The average Facebook user has 338 friends. 27% of users have >500 friends, compared to an average of 100 friends for 72% of users who are older than 65
    • 36% of Facebook users strongly dislike it when someone shares too much information or photos about themselves, as well as when they post photos of others without asking for permission
    • After the 2016 US presidential election, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 13% of people reported unfriending, blocking, or no longer following someone because of political posts
      • Democrats were the most likely to do so, with almost 24% reporting unfriending, blocking, or unfollowing someone due to political differences, compared to 9% of Republicans, and 9% of independents
      • This is unfortunate, since it creates what author Eli Pariser calls "filter bubbles," which is when we only consume content and talk to others who already agree with our ideologies 
  • There have been two movies made about unfriending: 2014's "Unfriended" and its 2018 sequel "Unfriended: Dark Web"
    • "Unfriended" is a found footage supernatural horror film, shot as a computer screen film. The film follows a group of high school students in a Skype conversation that is haunted by a student who was bullied and committed suicide after an anonymous person uploaded  a video of her passing out and defecating at a party. The video goes viral, as does the video of her subsequent suicide. Two of the participants die, each seemingly of suicide (which we later find out was really the influence of the ghost), and then the rest of the group are forced by the anonymous user to play a game of Never Have I Ever, stating that the loser will die
      • They are forced to reveal hurtful secrets which reveal their backstabbing against each other. Ultimately, three more of the group die by ghost-assisted suicide, and the movie closes with a shot of the ghost violently lunging at the final girl as the screen cuts to black
    • The sequel, "Unfriended: Dark Web" is shot in the same computer screen film style, and follows a group of friends who find a laptop that has access to the dark web, only to realize they are being watched by the original owners
      • While on a video call with friends, using a new laptop, the protagonist keeps getting messages for someone named Erica for the original owner of the laptop
      • He then finds hidden videos, most of which are girls being tortured. The film continues on, revealing a group of hackers that threaten the main character in order for them to get the laptop back. They then engineer the deaths of the rest of the characters, including the protagonist. The entire scheme turns out to be basically a big game for the hackers
  • A cnn.com article from the 2017 Unfriend Day highlights some safety reasons for culling your friends list, stating that "Facebook friends can do us a great deal of harm in the real world. They can use the information we share about ourselves to cause us devastating physical, emotional, and financial pain." People can post directly to your page, which may include photos of you doing something inflammatory or offensive, which can lead to greater consequences. The example they gave was dubious though. They wrote about a woman whose "friend" posted a photo of her "making an obscene gesture at Arlington National Cemetery," and then lost her job and fell into a depression after the photo went viral. This case was presented by the article as an example of a bad "friend," but clicking through to the source article reveals that the photo was taken as a joke among these friends, posted WITH the woman's permission, and she even said that the photo should stay up once criticism started trickling in
    • They gave additional examples of how "friends" can betray you, including screenshotting and sharing your posts, sharing your post info with exes such as in custody battles, or stealing your identity or your shit (since vacation or other posts could reveal that you're not home, and signal a good time to rob you)

• Cases of unfriending gone awry--From 2013 oddee.com article by Grace Murano, entitled "9 Crazy Stories about People Being Unfriended on Facebook"
• • In November 2011, a Des Moines woman was arrested in an arson attack on the home of a former friend who had quarreled with her and unfriended her on Facebook. Jennifer Christine Harris, 30, was charged with first-degree arson after setting fire to the home of JIm and NIkki Rasmussen. Harris was a maid of honor at the Rasmussen wedding
    • The unfriending came after the two women got into an argument while trying to plan a birthday party for Harris. Harris then began to disparage Rasmussen on Facebook, so Rasmussen decided to unfriend and block Harris. 
    • The Rasmussens woke up and escaped unharmed from the fire as it began to melt the siding on their house
  • In February 2012, a woman attacked her boyfriend with a knife, a pair of scissors, and a fork after he "unfriended" her on Facebook and changed his status to "single." William Hanz De Veyra Arriesgado, a 25 year old Filipina who is transgender but unable to change her name under Phillipine law, was then sentenced to two years in jail for causing her Australian lover grievous harm, as Arreisgado had inflicted 16 separate and serious injuries on 47 year old bank worker Colin James Peady.
    • The couple first argued about Peady's Facebook status while in a pub at Duston Road. Peady returned to his rented Sunhaven condominium in Changi (Singapore) alone. When Arriesgado, who was on a social visit pass (basically prohibits someone from engaging in employment of any kind), reached the home, they began arguing anew. Arriesgado grabbed a knife with a 20cm long blade, then proceeded to stab and slash Peady repeatedly.  He was left with stab wounds to his abdomen and cuts to other parts of his body, including his face and eyes
  • In 2012, 36 year old Billy Payne Jr. and his girlfriend, 23 year old Billie Jean Hayworth, unfriended 30 year old Jenelle Potter on Facebook. Jenelle was upset, but not as much as her 60 year old father, Marvin "Buddy" Potter. He was so angry when he learned about the unfriending that he and 38 year old Jamie Lynn Curd, who reportedly had romantic feelings for Jenelle, went out and murdered Payne and Hayworth. The couple is survived by an 8 month old baby boy, who was found unharmed in Hayworth's arms
    • In the weeks leading up to the murder, Potter, who is also Payne's cousin, had two separate verbal confrontations with Payne. The year before, Payne and Hayworth complained to police that Jenelle was harassing them over the phone and internet after they unfriended her on Facebook
    • There is a lot more to this case that we won't get into for the sake of time and relevance, but Jenelle was essentially caught catfishing basically everyone, including her father, and engineered this entire situation because she was a jealous, feral, immature hermit of a human being who just super sucked
  • A government minister in Venezuela, a country that offered asylum to Edward Snowden back in the day, urged her countrymen to cancel their Facebook accounts lest they be targeted by US snooping
    • "Fellow Venezuelans: Cancel your facebook accounts, since you unwittingly have worked as CIA informants! Look at the Snowden case!," prisons minister Maria Iris Varela said in a tweet
    • She also said that victims of "gringo espionage" should file lawsuits to demand "fair compensation" and bankrupt the US government
    • This lady sucks. According to Wikipedia, she condoned and pushed for police violence against protesters during peaceful protests that took place in April and May 2017. She's been the target of sanctions by several countries, including the US, Canada, Panama, and Columbia for various offences including money laundering, financing of terrorism, financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the rupture of Venezuela's constitutional order
      • In August 2018 and in response to Venezuelans growing increasingly concerned with the nation's economy, Varela tweeted telling people that all they need to do is share with friends and that they shouldn't speculate or doubt, otherwise "they will end up worse off that Requesens, [where] they won't be able to speculate."
      • This refers to Juan Requesens who was arrested as a suspect of the Caracas drone attack, an alleged assassination plot on the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. His arrest and detention are controversial, and have been condemned by the National Assembly, as well as international diplomats, politicians, and organizations. His family and fellow politicians have stated that he was in fact arrested for criticizing Maduro
      • Suffice to say that Requesens has been treated terribly while in custody, to say the least, and Iris Varela is in charge of the conditions of his incarceration and care. Requesens's case is considered an example of a forced disappearance
  • Paul Baier, a research consultant in Boston, paid his then 14 year old daughter $200 to keep her off Facebook until the end of June 2013
    • The two even wrote up a contract, stating, "I ______ agree to deactivate my Facebook account from 2/4/13 to 6/16/13. In return, my dad, Paul Baier, agrees to pay me $50 on 4/15/13 and $150 on 6/26/13. He/she will have access to my Facebook to change the password and to deactivate the account. This will prevent me from reactivating the account in the future. I plan to use the money for the following purposes: stuff."
  • In August 2013, Charlie Cooper claims that his Ecstasy addiction (you're getting some wack X, dude. It's probably cut with meth if you're addicted to it) led him to rob the houses he cleaned and eventually get caught by the Canterbury, England police. After a local newspaper published the story of his arrest with a photo of him, Charlie started complaining about it to the paper on Facebook. He whined that the paper didn't ask him if they could take a picture of him
    • Charlie's mom saw the post and decided to give him a good dressing down, commenting, "They don't need your permission to take your picture if the courts have given them permission to be there to do so!" To which Charlie angrily responded, "They do, I don't want my picture taken. End of." Mom then retorted, in all caps, "IT DONE NOW. THAT LADY DIDNT WANT HER JEWLERY TAKING BUT YOU DID IT ANYWAY, END OF."
    • Charlie then threatened to block his mom, replying, " This is why I didnt have you on facebook mum, you say things like that, im blocking you ok"
    • Other folks followed up to confirm the mom's assertion that the newspaper indeed did not need Charlie's permission to publish his photo since he was arrested for the crime
• History/fun facts about the holiday itself
• • According to abc.com, the inaugural holiday took place on November 17, 2010 when Jimmy Kimmel was inspired to create a holiday "to celebrate the act of getting rid of those Facebook friends you no longer need." When he launched the initiative, he said, "Let's say, on Friday, post a status update that says, 'I'm moving this weekend and I need help.' The people that respond? Those are your friends. Everyone else isn't."
    • He's also quoted as saying, "I encourage you to cut out some of the friend fat in your life. A friend is someone you have a special relationship with. It's not someone who asks which Harry Potter character you are."
  • Jimmy Kimmel initially  offered three criteria by which to judge whether to unfriend someone:
    • Friends who post too often
    • Friends who don't use correct grammar often enough
    • Friends who post too frequently about the weather, their kids, politics, or working out
  • In 2011, Kimmel updated and expanded the criteria and created a point system:
    • Change their profile picture more than once a month: 5 points
    • Took their profile picture in the bathroom mirror using their cellphone: 5 points
    • Posted more than three photos of food: 5 points each
    • Posted the phrase OMG, my friends are the best: 5 points
    • For every picture of a pet: 8 points
    • Said the word yum in a status update: 10 points
    • Posted a picture of a sunset: 15 points
    • Uploaded an embarrassing picture of you from Jr. High and tagged you in it: 15 points
    • Posted their opinion on gay marriage, no matter what it is: 30 points
    • Invited you to see their band play more times than you've talked in person: 30 points
    • Used the phrase amazeballs: 40 points
    • If the person is your Mom: 50 points
  • In a 2014 video, Kimmel released a video with a FURTHER updated list of criteria, which contained the following additions:
    • Not spell-checking
    • Writing about how you slept the night before
    • Complaints about traffic
    • Identifying with certain "Frozen" characters
    • Tagging loved ones in photos where everyone appears "unflattering" except for the poster
    • Too many images from vacation
    • One too many body pictures
    • Photos of feet, or your feet on vacation
    • Throwback Thursday posts
    • People who ruin television shows before others have had a chance to watch
    • Questions that can easily be Googled
  • A 2014 cnn.com article outlines 5 more types of friends that you should eliminate from your account:
    • Third-grade classmates
    • Oversharers
    • That friend of Ricardo's you met two years ago at that party
    • Exes
    • Those irritatingly fabulous couples
  • The Facebook page for National Unfriend Day gives three additional "simple" guidelines
    • If you wouldn't loan someone $50, unfriend them
    • If you wouldn't invite them to your birthday party, unfriend them
    • If you wouldn't cry if they got hit by a bus, unfriend them
  • Huffpost.com goes on to further outline 7 types of people you should unfriend on Facebook ASAP
    • The Political Ranter
    • The Negative Nancy--since research shows that stress is a contagious emotion
    • The Attention-Seekers--the 'vague-bookers' et al
    • The Braggart
    • Anyone who makes you feel really crappy about yourself
  • According to infomedia.com, the point is not to create a homogenous list of friends who are carbon copies of you, but to create a space that doesn't annoy or potentially anger you every time you log on. 
• Activities to celebrate

• • Use #NationalUnfriendDay on social media
  • Binge the Unfriended movies
  • Wincalendar.com suggests going through your privacy settings on Facebook to control who can see your content; deciding who you're going to unfriend; and reviewing your posting habits
    • They also suggested watching movies about friendship, such as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Good Will Hunting, The Social Network, and As Good as it Gets, which would provide a healthy balance to the Unfriended movies, I guess
  • If you decide to observe the holiday with a friend purge, cnet.com gives a list of things to consider beforehand, and the one I can most get behind is to avoid posting a status update to the effect of, "If you're seeing this status update that means you made the cut!!!!!!" or anything similar. It's arrogant and annoying, and might just get you unfriended yourself
  •  National Unfriend Day mixtape
    • Blocked by Onyx Family
    • Frenemy by Shaggy
    • Unfriended by Francisco Bolsa
    • Unfriend You by Greyson Chance
    • Rich Friends by Portugal. The Man
    • My Friend by Suburban Legends
    • Dead End Friends by Them Crooked Vultures
    • Internet Friends by Knife Party

SOURCES

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfriended
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfriended:_Dark_Web
• https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unfriend
• https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Unfriend
• https://interestingliterature.com/2016/04/22/the-curious-origin-of-the-word-unfriend/
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfriendhttps://www.oddee.com/item_98811.aspx
• https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/how-to-get-unfriended/361394/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/fashion/24Studied.html
• https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/unfriend-defriend-facebook-fans-debate/story?id=9106240
• https://www-m.cnn.com/2014/11/17/living/national-unfriend-day/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&rm=1
• https://www.huffpost.com/entry/people-you-should-unfriend_n_568ab884e4b06fa68882fc94
• https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/u/unfriend.asp
• https://nationaltoday.com/national-unfriend-day/
• https://m.facebook.com/NATIONALUnFriendDAY/
• https://www.wincalendar.com/UnFriend-Day
• https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/17/opinions/national-unfriend-day-facebook-alaimo-opinion/index.html
• https://abc.go.com/shows/jimmy-kimmel-live/news/editors-picks/jimmy-kimmel-national-unfriend-day-11182015
• https://www.ibtimes.com/what-national-unfriend-day-jimmy-kimmels-facebook-rules-social-media-unfriending-2447229
• https://infomedia.com/blog/frazzled-social-media-happy-national-unfriend-day/
• https://wordhistories.net/2017/07/23/unfriend-17th-century/
• https://newrepublic.com/article/117857/unfriending-facebook-didnt-invent-verb
• https://curiosity.com/topics/the-verb-unfriended-is-way-older-than-facebook-curiosity/