#just use ipa its so much easier even if everyone else has to come to me to read it for them hdndbjdnfbnf

[popperfur]

My husband often compares me to a mediaeval monk but the thing that makes me feel most like one is I've been able to read IPA since I was 12 I can relate to being the only literate person in my community

[arigatogatos]

Making the Draenei Language - Part 2

Part 1 | Part 3

First off, thanks to all the people who’ve expressed interest in this project! It makes me super happy that people think what I’m doing is interesting :D

Anyway, last time I went through and got a basic idea of the structure of the language, this time we’re diving into WHAT 👏 THAT👏 MOUTH👏 DO (and also spelling)

... and by that I of course mean phonetics (the study of the sounds produced in speech), phonology (the study of which sounds differentiate meaning) and phonotactics (how sounds are put together).

Phonetics and Phonology

Before we can even consider choosing some sounds for the language lets take a moment to consider those TEEF! 

Taking my main boy Aegagrus (drawn by the wonderful @rurukatt, definitely didn’t put this in here cuz I still love this pic) as a model for my headcanon of Draenei teeth, we can see how those might get in the way of some sounds... but just like, specifically [f] and [v] (sounds in square brackets represent sounds not the letters, to hear what they sound like go here!) Both of those sounds involve making the same shape with your mouth - touching your bottom lip to your top teeth, but when you got some real long or pointy teeth, that might be a little bit hard to do! (or an accident waiting to happen if they’re sharp enough)

There’s only a small problem with this though, we have some canon words that use these sounds e.g “Pheta vi acahaci” - Light give me strength. I’m gonna explain this away by saying that we’re dealing with an approximate transcription using the Latin alphabet and English spelling conventions, which definitely wasn't designed to write down languages outside of well.. ideally Latin. I mean there’s a reason why English spelling is the way it is and one of those reasons comes down to using an alphabet too small for the number of sounds in the language. 

Tangent aside, this means those two sounds are probably something like [ɸ] (again click here to hear these) for f and [β~ʋ] for v. These are sounds similar to [f] and [v] but they don’t involve teeth touching lips, check, and they’re probably what human transcribers misheard as [f] and [v]. 

Going through the other transcriptions in the data and making some guesses as to what they could be, we end up with something like this:

and huh that seems familiar... wait a second!

Yeah that’s just Hebrew without voiced fricatives, affricates or the sound [j] (the ‘y’ sound in English), and a bonus rhotic. I mean that’s probably to be expected as Draenei are heavily coded to be Jewish (a good post on that), so it makes sense that the sounds are also similar. It’s a shame to have such quote-unquote normal sounds (the th sound [θ] in ”thin” and “ether” is only in 4% of the worlds languages!) but that’s what you get when English devs make a game for a western audience, you get... ~~the fantasy accent~~ a.k.a discount slavic/germanic accents. 

By the way [r] is the ‘trilled’ or ‘rolled’ r and [ɾ] is a ‘tapped’ r like in Spanish "por favor”.

Also, as another side note, this sound [ʔ] - the glottal stop is present in English too but you probably don’t recognise that it’s there. It’s the ‘-’ break in between “uh-oh”, and its also present in some dialects of American and British English where the [t] in words like “bottle” (bo’el) and “water” (wa’er) are replaced with the glottal stop.

Anyway, onto vowels! And yet again we come back to the problems of English spellings. English has approximately... too many vowels. In my dialect of Australian Standard English there’s up to 20 different vowel sounds depending on how you count. I mean all things considered we've done pretty well with the 5 vowel symbols we've got but good luck trying to accurately represent all this:

(not to mention the diphthongs) with just a e i o u. Most languages only have ~5 vowels so that’s about what I’m looking for. Taking into consideration all the English wackiness in spelling, we end up with what I think are 7 vowels (the pronunciation examples are definitely not gonna be spot on due to regional differences, learn the IPA its good):

[i] - meat, me, three, e-mail

[ʊ] - (short though) good, should, wood

[ʊ:] - (same as above but long)

[e] - bed, head, red

[ɔ~o] - (somewhere between the vowels in) bought, bot (those of you with the cot-caught merger are having real fun now)

[ɐ] - (this one is really only in Australian English) but, strut, bud

[ɐ:] - (same as above but long) bard, palm, start, hard

The two vowels with long forms are the interesting ones. All throughout the canon text we see ‘aa’ and ‘uu’ popping up again and again in things like “Maraad”, “Sayaad”, “Enkaat”, “Vaard”, “Tuurem” and “Krokuun”. Now this could just be stylistic choices made by the dev team to make the language seem more ~exotic~ but I think that it is definitely a case of phonemic vowel length. That’s where distinctions in words are made by elongating a vowel - something Latin had. But it’s not to be confused with what English calls ‘long vowels’, which are really the leftovers from actual vowel length after everyone in 1500 decided to pronounce every vowel just... completely different for some reason. The Great Vowel Shift is an interesting read). Anyway, it makes these double letters make sense, and is way more interesting than random double vowels. It’s also interesting that it’s not perfectly symmetric either, not all the vowels have this distinction, which is cool and perfectly natural for languages to do! 

What is weird is that  [ɔ~o] doesn’t have this feature, because in our vowel system, it’s almost directly in the middle of our two long/short vowels so it would probably assimilate and end up doing the same thing! So, going off that I’m going to simulate the beginning of language evolution, where the [ɔ~o] sounds is in the process of diverging into [o:] (oar, caught, thought) when it’s followed by ‘r, t, d, k or g’ and [ɔ] (lot, pot) everywhere else.

So, now we have the sounds for our language, how are they used? (dw hardcore conlanging people, I’ve worked out the rest of the allomorphy rules for the consonants but this post is already loooong)

Phonotactics

Phonotactics is largely about how syllables are formed and what sounds are allowed where. In an effort to try and not make the language *too* similar to English I want these rules to differ from English. Luckily, that’d really easy to do because yet again, English is a statistically weird language! 

Syllables are divided into 3 parts - The onset, The nucleus and the Coda. For simplicities sake this corresponds to the consonants before the vowel, the vowel, and the consonants after the vowel. English lets wayyyyy too many consonants on either side ending up with abominations like “strengths” having 3 sounds before the nucleus and 3 after, or crimes against god like “twelfths” with 4 sounds after the coda.

Draenei on the other hand seems to be at most (C)(L)V(C). The brackets mean a sound is optional, C’s being consonants, L being ‘liquids’ like [l] and [r] (and [ʋ]) and V of course being vowels. Now going through the data (plus some creative input) we end up with some rules as to what can go where...

but we’ll leave the details of that for the final documentation and head onto...

Spelling! Everyone’s favourite...

There have been countless forum posts about how to pronounce ‘Draenei’ and even between developers at different panels there doesn't seem to be a consensus. This is probably due to the inconsistent spellings used throughout the lexicon so far - draenei and auchenai rhyme (I think) but they’re spelt with different endings! 

With the language I have a few main goals

- Make it match as closely as reasonable with canon and common interpretations - Have the spelling be consistent (same letters should always produce the same sound) - In line with the first one, keep as much of the spelling the same as possible - Make it as alien as possible within reason (sadly phonetics and phonology will not be the place to do that)

So coming to a word like “Draenei”, I have to break at least one thingon that list. Personally I want it to be pronounced [drɐ.naɪ] (druh-nai). So, to be consistent with the sounds from before it should be spelt ‘Dranai’ but that definitely won’t do, or I could keep the spelling and pronounce it literally [drɐ.e.ne.i] (druh-eh-ne-ey to give a rough guide for that), which is... equally bad. 

The compromise I'm going with is keeping the spelling of Draenei but making the [aɪ] (ai) sound spelt ‘ei’ across the language. Meaning is gonna be Auchenei. Well, not really because there’s still a bunch of other spellings that need standardising.

the ‘ch’ in “Auchenei” is pronounced with a [k], so is the ‘c’ in “Dioniss aca”. Going through and standardising things like ‘ph’ -> ‘f’, ‘ch’ -> ‘k’ or ‘sh’ depending and rewriting vowels to match the phonology we end up with something that preserves most of the identity and look of the language but just makes more sense! Aukenei would then be the spelling I’m using in the lexicon, probably with a little note for the canon spelling.

So, from now on I'm going to be using the reformed spelling TM, which hopefully will mean anyone attempting to speak this language will have an easier time getting what I'm envisioning, cuz everything is now consistant.

That about does it for this post. Yet again if you made it all the way to the bottom, congratulations! Hopefully the next posts will be a bit more interesting (I’m so fucking pumped for how the culture will impact the grammar and vocabulary holy shit) but I gotta get this one out of the way.

Next time, we’ll be doing word-building - the morphology of the language, Thanks for reading!

[sturlsons]

french in 1.5 years anon

Kinda random but I just found out that I’ll be required to be intermediate/advanced in French by the next 1.5 years; ALL I KNOW IS THAT MEIRDE IS A BAD BAD WORD! Idk if you’re a native speaker but I was wondering if you could provide me of any good French language resources (or language in general since I’ll be needing to learn Arabic soon as well), and like tips for language learning and how to go about it? Sorry to bother you haha this is MY stress but I appreciate any help! Have a great day!

HEY. so i really fucking dropped the ball on this one, i’m sorry. 2019 has been one health fiasco after another (or more like the same fiasco again and again) and i kept telling myself i want to sit down and make a proper post for this, until i realised that that’s just never going to happen given the way things are rn. and i’d rather give you a quickly-written post which is actually helpful than never write that perfect bullet-pointed one. 

first of all, i’ve been in your EXACT position (so no, i’m not a native speaker) except i had about...six months to go from je m’appelle teesta to voyez-vous, le problème qui se cache derrière tout ça n’est pas le manque de respect mais la personne dont il s’agit or whatever. i was like, i can so do this. (spoiler: i didn’t, because i was 18 and overconfident and stupid and didn’t actually know how to learn a language.) GOOD NEWS: having learned 3 more foreign languages since then, i am now REALLY GOOD at learning languages REALLY FAST. 1.5 years is a good amount of time, so don’t stress.

i’m going to go generic on this, with some extra tips about french since i speak it, unlike arabic. 

first thing, that typical thing everyone hates to hear but knows is coming from the mouth of an accomplished person (pat on my back) in any field whatsoever: you’re going to have to work really hard and practice like fuck. 

there’s just nothing else that can replace it. i’ve filled up notebooks and notebooks with japanese verb conjugations, once i did like 1800 of them in one sitting. but you better believe that a bitch will never forget those now. resign yourself to putting in at least three hours of your day to this until you get to the level you need. (and three hours is...kind. at my peak i was literally reading through french dictionaries at the library, 10 AM - 8 PM. i treated it like a workday.)

now, what you need to establish is: are you a hands-on learner or a digital one. 

i don’t really care for all the auditory learner and visual learner stuff, i don’t know about anyone else but i personally used those as excuses to avoid certain exercises. unless you have actual disabilities preventing you from accessing certain methods of learning, you can train yourself into anything. it’s a matter of practice. i could barely understand a new song without reading its lyrics first, now i eat up podcasts. 

SO. the question here is different. a hands-on learner, like i used to be more or less throughout my bachelor’s, is someone who absolutely cannot retain information unless they’ve written it down BY HAND at least once. pen and paper. (i’m still like this but i’ve learned to combine it with digital methods to go faster.) if this isn’t a hurdle for you, congratulations. your process is going to go that much faster, at least for french. (you’ll have to spend hours practicing your written arabic however, if you’re not familiar with the script.) 

now, if you’re a hands-on learner, you need to add an extra hour to your daily time. no matter how fast you write, you will take that time. and you cannot shorthand your way into languages. you need to understand how french is spelt, what accents it uses, that they put a space before exclamation points, question marks, and semicolons. (side tip: learn the IPA. it will be useful to you forever in language learning, at least for the romance languages.) i’m not gonna teach you how to make notes since i’ve never benefitted from copying someone else’s style, so if you don’t have a set method start establishing that. you need regularity and rhythm when you learn a language. my grammar notes look the same regardless of the language. i don’t have my french ones since it’s been years and i didn’t take good ones then anyway, but here’s my japanese and russian stuff. 

JAPANESE NOTES // RUSSIAN NOTES

now, it bears mentioning that these notes are NOT the notes i take when i don’t know shit. these are final level notes. they’re brief, idiosyncratic, and only reminders. something to refer to when i’m revising and suddenly forget a rule. the first notes i make are much more elaborate, whether they’re pretty or not. i’ve gradually lost the fucks i had about really going ham on academics so my russian notes are very messy, but my japanese ones from back in the day are magnificent. here’s a look. during lesson one i realised that japanese and my mother tongue, gujarati, are syntaxically similar as shit, and i started taking notes with references in gujarati. it sped up my learning process 2x while my french classmates were still going “BUT WHY IS IT LIKE THAT”. 

PRACTICAL GRAMMAR // THEORETICAL GRAMMAR

if you plan to learn more languages in the future, this will be so valuable. sometimes a phrase i learn in russian doesn’t make sense in its french explanation, but a phrase in english might use the same logic. bam, put down the translation in english then. you get what i’m saying? the more languages you learn, the easier it gets to learn languages. 

now if you’re a digital learner, i’ve got great news for you. duolingo and anki are your best friends. duolingo’s memed to hell and has a system that might not work for everyone, but they’ll do the brunt work of compiling grammar notes for you in the beginnings/ends of their lessons. note those down and transform them into anki flashcards, and you can learn grammar concepts without doing 20 exercises. (do those exercises if you can, though, nothing beats mindless practice.) now anki is an intimidating-looking but actually super intuitive app that basically builds digital flashcards for you and shows them to you in a rhythm based on your own learning speed. it’ll show you the front of a card, let’s say merde. you say the english translation out loud, shit, and hit enter. correct! was that easy? anki’ll show it to you in 10 minutes. hard? it’ll show you in 1 minute. super easy? merde won’t come up again until tomorrow. eventually you get so good at it that you can bury a card for 2 months. anki will also show you the same cards reversed, which is harder but trains you better. you’ll see shit and have to remember what it’s called in french, which is more difficult than you’d think it is. 

you can use anki for more than just vocab, like i mentioned. it’s a little tricky learning to convert grammar concepts into front/back flashcards, but you can do it. for example, here’s a sample of one of my russian grammar cards: 

front ^^

back once i hit enter^^

see? not that difficult. now don’t be an idiot like me who manually entered every single flashcard into anki. you can find pre-made packages online (but you can’t guarantee they’ll be correct) or you can make your own without killing your fingers. what you wanna do is open up a spreadsheet and make two columns, A for front of the card and B for back. it’ll look like this:

then you’re gonna save that spreadsheet as a .CVS (comma separated values) and import that into anki. bam, your flashcards are made for you with half the effort. there’s also a script floating around somewhere to make excel translate words automatically for you, but i don’t recommend that unless they’re really easy words. google translate can fuck up. reverso is your friend. 

you need to review your anki cards every day. it’ll take less and less time as you go along. i can review 300 russian cards in 15 minutes now. but you need to keep the rhythm going. download ankiapp and sync your cards, review them on commutes or in the hallway or whatever. trust me, it’s magic. 

apart from this, if a traditional textbook helps, go for that. i’ve always used textbooks and workbooks, more as supports than as principal methods, but it does help. it’s structured and organised and these people know how to train you. bescherelle is a good go-to for french. 

media is always a great way of immersion too, until you get to the country itself. it’ll show you how french people speak french. when i first came to france i didn’t have that experience and even though i spoke an arguably decent amount of french when i got here, it was like, if this is french then what the fuck was i learning in high school. if you like watching movies this is your chance. watch the classics first so that you can get an idea of french pop culture. amélie (though the pop culture aspect here is about shitting on it) and les intouchables, for starters. watch your favourite films, first subbed, then subbed and dubbed, then just dubbed. i watched all ten seasons of friends with french subs, it was wild. with music you want to start off with some indie-ish singers since they will universally sing softer and slower, making things easier to understand than idk, la tribu de dana. (if you’re into bts there’s a hilarious video of their baepsae choreo set to la tribu de dana.) anyway - angèle, cœur de pirate, céline dion, fréro delavega, uhhh that fucking french sufjan stevens. what’s his name. VIANNEY. don’t fucking listen to biglo and oli or like, fatal bazooka right away. you will not understand shit. i barely understand it. white people are wild. ooh listen to stromae. orelsan too, he’s a rapper but he has a relatively clean diction imo. he also sang the french opening for OPM. they call him orelsan-san in japan.

last but not the least: if you have the opportunity to interact in french with people, DO IT. native speakers will do their best to help you and be kind about it. people who learned french might sometimes be assholes from experience. it’s a whole superiority complex thing, and very hypocritical. anyway - online or IRL, wherever you can practice your french, do it. it’ll be immensely helpful. there’s nothing like the frustration of not being able to express simple things to get you motivated to get better. do your best to immerse yourself - changing the language on your devices can make a difference too. 

i think that’s all i have and again, i’m sorry for taking this long to finally deliver, thanks for your patience! if you have any specific questions don’t hesitate to hit me up, on anon or not. 

good luck - it’s not going to be the easiest but nothing is as gratifying as beginning to understand the workings of a language. you’re gonna love it!

[allofbeercom]

5 Insane Subcultures That Might Become The Next Hipster

Guys, we’ve gone and done it: We broke hipsters. We’ve made fun of their $200 “vintage” shirts and fixies and craft-beer-spewing proboscises for so long that the very term has malfunctioned. “Hipster” is now a meaningless go-to insult for anyone who looks different from you, which is everyone. The hipster is gone. Beards can finally be un-ironic again.

However, as much as it pains me to say this, the death of the hipster is a problem. There must always be a dominant subculture — the one people love to hate until it occupies so much mind space that it actually hits the mainstream. A few of them actually die; strong ones such as punk come cackling back in the shadows before long, while others such as hippies gain public semi-acceptance and go on doing their thing. Even fucking emos have Hot Topic to remember them by. But, not hipsters — hipsters are going out like an IPA-tainted diarrhea fart. The mark they leave is distinct, but easily washable. They’ve been an unsustainable fad — the Kris Kross jeans of subcultures. So, now that they’re on the out, there’s a power vacuum, and attempts to fill it with more of the same (see “lumbersexuals” and “yuccies“) don’t seem to be gaining too much traction.

The balance of the universe is at stake. What we need is the next hipster: a fresh new stereotype to joke about/lust after (depending on your alignment) for the next few years. Seeing as I’m currently locked in the writing barrel, and the other columnists refuse to let me out until I find one, here goes:

#5. Raggare

I’ve never been a greaser myself because, frankly, I can only handle so much Buddy Holly, but I have a long-standing affinity toward 1950s aesthetics. That’s why it’s always pissed me off a little that, apart from a few fashion revivals and Stray Cats in the 1980s, the culture has been firmly sidelined from the mainstream for decades. Still, just because it’s not front and center doesn’t mean that it’s not evolving. In Sweden, strange things are happening:

It’s like Mad Max had a drinking competition with Grease, and everyone lost.

Raggare have been around since the 1950s, but they truly kicked into gear during the 1970s oil crisis: When America found it didn’t have money to drive its giant-ass cars, many Swedes said, “Fuck yes, American stuff for cheap,” and bought themselves a bunch of Buicks, Dodges, and suchlike in prime condition. The rock ‘n’ roll attitude arrived with the cars, and they’ve never stopped since. These days, raggare are a culture old enough to have subcultures of its own: the relatively mellow old-timers who tinker with their machines and arrange garage parties and drives, and the younger generation, who are feistier and, if the pictures are any indication, possess a very different attitude about their cars’ appearance.

Feber “I’m telling you, man, thatched car roofs are the next big thing.”

Hipster Pros:

Raggare have a look. They have a very specific thing that they do. Most importantly, they’re not just a phase you grow out of. Guys from the 1970s are still in the scene and have no intention of stopping. These guys could have actual lasting power.

Hipster Cons:

They’re seasonal. The raggare lifestyle is all about old cars, suede shoes, and painstakingly pomade-sculptured hair, all of which go right out of the window when mother nature decides to make your region eat a faceful of winter. For the colder portion of the year, many raggare tend to go around in modern cars and season-appropriate clothes and generally give more of an upstanding citizen vibe. Today’s Twitter-filled world is a hectic ol’ thing, and a subculture that goes into hibernation for a few months every year might not be able to survive even a single media cycle.

I am, of course, proposing that they should mod their cars into all-weather, all-terrain attack vehicles, M.A.S.K. style.

#4. Seapunk

Seapunk is a logical successor to the dominant subculture throne, in that it ticks all the right boxes: They have their own weird, house/hip-hop music, a distinct identity, and a look that sets them apart from everyone else. Also important: Said look is annoying as hell.

Aquaman’s emo years were no one’s proudest moment.

Even seapunk’s origin story is organic, reflects our times, and (most importantly) is easily stupid enough to warrant a torrent of jokes. Someone saw a dream about a leather jacket with barnacles instead of studs and tweeted it, shit went viral — and boom! Online joke becomes a meme, and meme becomes a subculture, complete with aesthetics that look like a tornado picked up the entire Burning Man festival and dropped it in the cartoon ocean part of Oz.

Hipster Pros:

They’re a fucking meme come to life! Plus, no one seems to be certain about whether this is an elaborate joke or an actual thing that exists. Suck on those irony levels, veterans of the hipster scene.

My money would be on the joke, but I think I actually have a shirt like that somewhere.

Hipster Cons:

It might be too late. We live in a time where most cool new things are almost immediately appropriated by the mainstream. So, barely a year into its short life, pop stars from Rihanna to Azealia Banks were already flirting with the seapunk aesthetic, stripping it of what little underground value it had. By most accounts, the movement largely fizzled out of existence by the end of 2012, meaning that the Mayan people were right about at least one small, sad apocalypse.

Even if there is a strong seapunk scene bubbling under the streets and just waiting to explode upon us in all its aquamarine glory, there’s the fact that apart from the 0.01 percent of seapunks with the looks, time, money, and eye for visuals to regularly look like a naval-themed wedding cake, pretty much every aficionado of the movement would end up looking as out of place as the left shark in Katy Perry’s Superbowl performance.

FUCK YEAH LEFT SHARK, YOU SHOW THEM!

This would, of course, be totally awesome and thus severely undermine the subculture’s ability to function as a hate sink.

#3. Gopniki

Weird Russia

There are plenty of working class cultures around the world that wear track suits and designer gear — British chavs, Polish dresy, Australian bogans, and gangsta rappers, for instance. However, those are not what we’re going to talk about today. Today, we’re all about the gopniki. They’re the Russian variation of the ghetto gangster theme and therefore, by default, 125 percent rougher around the edges and in possession of precisely none of all the fucks. If you see a weird YouTube clip about a 20-something in a cheap track suit doing an activity that makes you instantly nod and think: “Yep, Russia,” chances are it’s one of these guys.

Case in point.

Hipster Pros:

Every once in a while, society needs its dominant subculture to be more than just a remora sticking to pop culture’s underbelly. Sometimes, we need it to give us a good, hard slap on the balls and make us look in the mirror. It’s been a while since we had one of those, and none of the current ones fit the old “my son/daughter is not going to go out with one of those people” bill better than the gopniki.

Also, I’m completely on board with a rerun of the Slav squat meme.

Hipster Cons:

Gopniki are not known for their open-mindedness, but extremely so for their tendency to drunkenly fight anything that moves. Unless you’re a terrible person, they’re not going to agree with your political views too much and, on occasion, might be inclined to do their disagreeing with the soles of their Adidas instead of angry blogging.

So, while a gopnik might be a very good target for a casual “ugh, can you believe what I saw one of those fucking gopniki do today at Starbucks?” said offensive activity might involve a lot less pretentious screenplay writing with an actual typewriter and a lot more high-impact slurs and poor impulse control.

Also, I really, really don’t want that goddamned slicked-forward inverted mullet hairstyle half of them seem to sport to catch on. I still haven’t recovered from topknots.

Actually, yeah, let’s pass these fucking guys. Besides, I have a much better candidate just around the corner …

#2. Haul People

Back in the murky depths of 2011, Cracked’s resident trend expert Daniel O’Brien became baffled by a phenomenon known as haul videos. They’re seemingly random YouTube clips where girls fawned over their shopping “hauls” on-camera and, for some inexplicable reason, raked in five- to six-figure views.

I remember this well. Back then, it seemed like just another weird kink of the Internet, a video version of a meme. Surely, people have long since grown bored of watching a bunch of creepy kids wave their purchases at the camera and wandered away to watch more cat videos or someth-

… ing.

6.7 million views? Actual production values? What the shit?

Sure, they’re still not particularly widely known, but they’ve been moving and shaking in the marginal like no one’s business. The people who make haul videos used to be called haul girls, but now that guys are in on the action, too, I don’t think the community really has a name yet — haulers? Haulsters? I’m just going to go ahead and call them “haul people” and hope it’ll stick until the Mole Man mishears the name and attempts to enslave them all. Many of the more successful ones have PR agents and deals with fashion and cosmetic companies. They have been featured on Good Morning America. They have a distinct identity, albeit that of vapid fucks yammering about consumer products to unseen audiences. There are even people who make haul parodies. If that level of sadness doesn’t ruin your day, I don’t know what will.

Hipster Pros:

Easier to hate than a shit-smeared street performer singing Nickelback, yet inexplicably popular enough to have some semblance of legitimacy. Those are the main definitions of, well, every fucking successful subculture in history, and haul people pass them with flying flags.

Flags that they shape out of giant shopping bags.

Hipster Cons:

They’re not ready just yet.

Although they have vast potential as a highly visible subculture that everyone will do their level best to forget in five years’ time, haul people currently lack direction. They’re basically low-key corporate shills, buying/getting junk and peddling it for us. However, the extreme popularity of fringe haul genres such as unboxing videos shows promise for something much, much grander and more stupid. Give it a year or two; I have hope that the community will find certain defining themes and Flanderize itself into something we can truly be baffled by on an ironic-mustache level.

#1. These Fucking Guys

For the love of G’huul the Great Eater, keep the sound on.

Hipster Pros:

All of them.

Hipster Cons:

None. We’re done here. I don’t care who these people really are. I don’t care what they’re supposed to be doing. All I know is that they look like an explosion at the My Little Pony factory’s neon paint subsidiary, and someone edited the Thomas The Tank Engine theme to sync with their goofy-looking space outfit flailing. That is the level of bafflement we need right now, friends, and I now want these guys to explode all over our pop culture fucking yesterday — preferably, while contractually obligated to carry a boom box that blasts out the Thomas theme 24/7.

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked weekly columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-insane-subcultures-that-might-become-the-next-hipster/

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The Funny Thing About Comedy Nights at Breweries

Comedian and author Dwight Simmons performs at On Tour Brewing in Chicago. (Amanda Campagnoni)

February 27, 2018

Last February, over 75 people filled a small taproom in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania. Dancing Gnome Beer, a small independently owned brewery just outside of Pittsburgh, was having its first comedy night featuring mostly local comedians. Even as someone who has been performing for nearly a decade, I have trouble describing the energy in the room that night. A city had come out in mass to support its local creatives in both local beer and in comedy. Comics riffed on beer names like “Spy Dolphin” and “Lustra” as audience members sampled beer and ordered pint after pint. It was a night of pure joy, all made easier with great comedy and amazing beer.

A few months later, I found myself in Chicago at On Tour Brewing for another first-time comedy show. Once again, a palpable energy filled the taproom as nearly 100 people came out to support a show comprised of local talent. At the time, On Tour was less than a year old so it was no surprise that when a comic asked, “Who’s been here before?” nearly three-fourths of the audience raised their hands. Once again, these people were seeing a great comedy show paired with fantastic beer — and it was simply wonderful.

(READ: A Common Thread Binds Brewing and Comedy)

For decades, seeing a quality stand-up comedy show meant getting fancied up, going to a local comedy club, seeing a nationally touring headliner and buying at least two menu items. Over the past few years, more and more opportunities to see quality local comedy talent have popped up, and craft breweries have played a huge role.

Comedian Monty Mitchell outside of Zanies in Nashville with his case of Yazoo brews.

All over the country, breweries are getting involved in their local comedy scenes by putting on, promoting or sponsoring D.I.Y comedy shows. Lucy Sinsheimer produces shows at major comedy clubs in Nashville and Huntsville that are sponsored by local breweries. Her show in Nashville, “Comedy out the Yazoo,” is sponsored by Yazoo Brewing and the comic who puts on the best set of the night walks away with an entire case of Yazoo’s finest brews. Beer is also provided for the comics by Yazoo — something you see at independent shows but is a bit of a rarity at major comedy clubs. She also produces “Funny as Ale” in Huntsville, sponsored by Straight to Ale Brewing where the comics are also treated like rock stars.

I interviewed comics and show producers behind some of the best brewery comedy shows around the country to get an inside look as to why this pairing works so well.

(READ: 2018 SAVOR Breweries Announced)

Atlanta

Joe Pettis and Jeremy Mesi host Beer and Comedy Night at SweetWater Brewing in Atlanta.

When it comes to comedy in a brewery, the first person I had to talk to is Joe Pettis out of Atlanta. Joe has been running his show “Beer and Comedy” at SweetWater Brewing Co. for seven years and is among the first people to run a comedy show in a brewery. Full Disclosure: Joe downplays the significance of his show, but I’ve done it three times and it is simply and objectively one of the best shows in the country.

Me: What are three words that describe the vibe of SweetWater?

Joe: Don’t Float the Mainstream (sorry that is four words)

Me: Why does comedy work at Sweetwater?

Joe: Every other Monday, we bring in some of the best comics from all over the country. The brewery is normally closed on Mondays, so they basically let us come and turn it into a comedy club for the night.

Me: What’s the best show memory you have?

Joe: Each and every one gets better and better! But from an audience perspective, probably the last time Ron White dropped it. We keep all the comics on the show a secret, so when someone of his caliber drops in the audience freaks out.

Me: Seven years is a long time. I’m sure there are crazy stories.

Joe: One time a crazy storm came through and the electricity went out for an hour leading right up to show time. We were about to cancel when it finally came back on. There are probably crazier stories, but I don’t want to incriminate myself.

Beer and Comedy Night runs every other Monday at SweetWater Brewery.

(TRAVEL: Themed Beer Festivals)

Milwaukee

Comedian Meredith Katchel performs in front of a packed house at Keg Stand Up! at Lakefront Brewing.

Lakefront Brewery, an iconic mainstay in Wisconsin’s craft beer scene, sits on the Milwaukee River. Lakefront has been in business for the last 25 years, and for the last two have produced the best comedy show in Milwaukee. “Keg Stand Up,” run by Creative Producer Matt Kemple, has seen crowds of over 250 people and is quickly becoming a must-stop for touring comedians. Matt describes the atmosphere at Lakefront as energetic, welcoming and just plain fun.

Me: Why does comedy work at Lakefront?

Matt: The atmosphere of Lakefront is a real draw. It’s a large German-style beer hall and attracts a lot of people year round. But on top of that the staff is friendly and attentive, and everyone from the folks that make the beer to the people that mop the floors enjoy working there. It really shows during our comedy events how much customer service can affect the experience for everyone involved. The comics get treated really well, the audience is having a great time and the staff all want to be there — and that makes the show so successful. We are very fortunate to have a great relationship with Lakefront Brewery.

Me: I’m an IPA guy. What’s your favorite beer at Lakefront and what would you recommend?

Matt: The Lakefront IPA is definitely my favorite, but Lakefront has been experimenting with some small batches that I always enjoy trying. Let’s be honest, I usually have one of each!

Me: What’s the best show memory you have?

Matt: Wisconsin is a huge sports state. With the show being on Sunday nights, it’s tough to schedule around Green Bay Packer games, but the first time we sold a show out on a Packer Sunday was a very big moment for the comedy scene as a whole. That just doesn’t happen!

Me: What are some of your challenges of having comedy in a brewery?

Matt: The brew-hall is a large space and audio has been an issue from the beginning. Lakefront and my company Milwaukee Comedy have invested in new speakers, sound dampening, etc. It’s become a much better space for events but is still an ongoing project to reduce the echo of a large room without taking away the atmosphere.

Keg Stand Up at Lakefront Brewery runs monthly.

(VISIT: Find a U.S. Brewery)

Denver

To experts in their respective fields, there are two things that Denver does really well: make beer and develop comedians. It is no surprise that the shows at Ratio Beerworks are simply fantastic. Ratio is “all about beer” but prides itself on supporting all of the artistic scenes that are so vibrant in Denver. Comedian Ian Douglas Terry is directly involved with the comedy shows that happen at Ratio.

Me: Gotta talk about beer first. What’s your go-to at Ratio?

Ian: Domestica. It’s the standard ale, nothing fancy or too hoppy.

Me: Ratio is a little different in that it produces multiple shows throughout the week. What is Ratio Comedy?

Ian: Ratio Comedy is the umbrella that all of the weekly shows fall under. We try and mix it up with different formats, from Doom Room (comedians doing sets based off of whatever pops up on a screen) to Dirty Laundry Dating Show (think a version of The Dating Show) to Fresh AF (an all comedians of color show).

Me: Why does comedy work at Ratio?

Ian: There is a separate back room at Ratio, which is a huge bonus. They’ve also invested a lot into lighting, seating, and promotion. Denver keeps growing every week leading to lots of people looking for something to do, so you have to be pretty bad at putting shows on if you aren’t getting crowds.

Me: Any challenges of having comedy in a brewery?

Ian: Dealing with noise from the front of the house was an issue, so we invested in more speakers. Also, people bring their dogs all the time and try to cram them into the back room which is loud and full of people which just seems cruel.

Me: What’s the best show memory you have?

Ian: Al Madrigal dropped in one night, which was wild. It’s good to build something up and have the reputation attract bigger and bigger comedians.

Ratio Comedy has comedy shows every Wednesday starting at 8 p.m.

(READ: Offbeat Places to Drink Craft Beer)

Indianapolis

Comedian Cam O’Connor produces comedy nights at Flat12 Bierwerks in Indianapolis. (Pauline Shypula Photography)

For the past four years, Indianapolis comedy collective Rocketship Comedy and Flat12 Bierwerks have produced some of the most notable shows in the city. As Ian and Joe both mentioned, it’s a game changer when a nationally touring headliner comes in and does a set at an independent brewery show. Being from Indianapolis myself, it’s been great to see so many amazing shows in such a short time frame. Rocketship Comedy Quarterback Cam O’ Connor and Flat12 Marketing and Events Director Valerie Green discuss why they’ve been able to keep things going for so long.

Me: Why does comedy work at Flat12?

Cam: Comedy works great at Flat12. The sound in the room is surprisingly good. The quiets are quiet and the louds are loud — if that makes sense. But mostly it works because of the wonderful staff. Valerie has always been an incredible champion for us, and everyone else follows along and agrees with her passion for our shows. Kyle Kruse the manager has always been a steady force as well. We are treated like royalty on show nights. It’s truly a great thing when a venue and staff appreciate comedy and the show.

Valerie: It’s been described in the past as the “party barn,” and I think that sums it up. It’s warm, cozy and inviting with awesome craft beer. It’s a nontraditional venue, but so much entertainment in Indy is happening in breweries right now. People love the environment. We’ve become a destination for comedy, not the stuffy antiquated style of comedy venue with a two-drink minimum, where bachelor/ette parties come in or perhaps people off the street who don’t know how to behave. Comics choose to come here over other bigger venues because they love the audience. Comedy fans seek us out and are fully engaged in the show.

Me: Last time I was in, I tried the Downtown Tinker Brown Coffee Ale. It was great! What’s your go-to?

Valerie: We have a variety of styles I love, but I’d say my year-round go-to beer is the Dan Patch Wit. It’s a Belgian style witbier with orange zest, coriander and chamomile. Other than that, I love all of our fruited barrel-aged sour beers.

Cam: My go-to beer is the Walkabout. That’s what I always drink there. All night. I don’t really even know what kind of beer it is. But it is always perfect for me.

Me: What are some of the challenges of running a show in a brewery?

Valerie: It’s actually been fairly natural to set up these shows at the brewery. We did have some challenges early on because we don’t have a professional stage or lighting for performance, and the taproom wasn’t necessarily designed to host comedy shows, but we’ve figured it out and it works. The capacity is about 85, so the shows are intimate. We don’t have a “backstage” but have set up a makeshift green room where the comics get to lounge among barrels and grain bags, and they seem to enjoy the laid-back ambience. Plus they get free beer, so they stay happy.

Me: What’s your favorite show memory?

Cam: Honestly, there have been so many great nights and shows. My favorite memory is the overall incredible way we have been welcomed in there. Anytime Stewart Huff comes through is special. We’ve had some anniversary shows that were amazing.

Valerie: Wow, so many. I really do feel that every show we’ve hosted here kills. Cam consistently books some of the best up-and-coming local, regional, and nationally touring comics around. He’s so connected and such a pro with the flow and mix of comics on the lineup. Some standouts have been Sean Patton of course, one of the best working comics out there now, Matt Braunger was a big one for us — that guy is the real deal and brought the house down. Other than that, I love seeing local comics develop and sadly for us, move on to bigger scenes, but it’s great that we’re nurturing talent and giving these great local kids a place to get improve their stand-up. We miss them when they leave!

Check out more details on shows from Rocketship Comedy and Flat12.

(LEARN: Beer 101 Online Course)

In 2018, no matter where you live, there is more than likely a comedy night in a brewery near you. From coast to coast, we are able to enjoy a well-crafted local pint and take in a professional level show. It’s now easier than ever to support local comedy as well as support a local brewery. So let’s grab a beer and share a laugh. Who doesn’t love beer and comedy?

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