Colynemery, Author at HARDTIMES

Christian YouTuber Reminds Peers That Algorithm Works in Mysterious Ways

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Tyler Simpson

RICHMOND, Va. — Christian YouTuber LEViticus has posted a controversial video reminding peers that the YouTube algorithm works in mysterious ways and that it must not be questioned.

“The algorithm is an unknowable entity beyond our understanding,” said Lev Burningham in the recently uploaded video. “Much like the Lord Himself, the algorithm acts in ways that we could never understand. It is not our role to question the inner workings of it, only to accept it and love it. If I knew the machinations of YouTube’s algorithm, why would I be sitting at only 43 subscribers? I’m clearly being tested by YouTube and I will not fail them. So sayeth the algorithm.”

LEViticus went on to discuss the struggles of those he considered peers, such as BiblicalGamer and WaterIntoWineMom.

“People tell me ‘Tiffany, you should post on a consistent basis during peak hours, share a link on Reddit or at least let your friends and family on Facebook know. Give a call to action, have a topic to discuss, get your dog to stop barking,’” said Tiffany Gates, better known as WaterIntoWineMom, rolling her eyes. “My relationship with the algorithm is between it and me. I know it will bless me as long as I change absolutely nothing about myself.”

“Our story is much like that of Job,” she explained. “Satan thought that if he relentlessly persecuted and tormented Job, he would forsake God. Job lost everything and yet he still believed, despite not understanding why he was being persecuted. Our channels rarely get any engagement or followers, yet we continue to persevere by posting videos in portrait mode at 6am every 2-to-3 months.”

As of press time, both LEViticus and WaterIntoWineMom have asked for thoughts, prayers, likes, and subscriptions.

Listen to the newest episode of our podcast, The Ace Watkins Presidential Hour:

We Look Back on the Entire History of Punk, 1977-1977

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Jimmy Adamson

Some genres of music span a lifetime and will live on forever. Jazz, Rock ‘N Roll, Grindcore, and Symphonic Death Metal are all still very much alive and vibrant today. But only one genre of music had a very special year, and then promptly died, never to return.

That genre was punk. The year was 1977.

There were three bands in total: The Clash, The Ramones, and of course the greatest of all, The Sex Pistols. It is important to note that literally no other Punk bands existed before or after this. Just these legendary three, in the whole world.

But I digress. Let’s start from the very beginning, when punk was invented by Sid “Jello Biafra” Vicious. He had just shot some heroin and accidentally listened to “Sgt. Peppers” on 78 speed. The date was January 1st, 1977. The time? 12:01 am.

“Here I was, stoned off some heroin I nicked from Lou Bloody Reed. I put on the ole warbly disc ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’, by The Beatles, in’it? I was so stoned out of me gourd that I accidentally played it at 78 speed! Next thing I know, poof! I’m a punk! My hair is all spiky and such and I got this snarl with slashes on me arms,” Sid relayed in his legendary interview with Walter Cronkite.

Later that day Sid went searching for more heroin in a London gutter when he randomly bumped into a young Johnny Rotten, who was known as Johnny Fresh at the time. They rounded up two other guys who we don’t know the names of, and The Sex Pistols were born.

Shortly after that, The Clash came along. Quickly they recorded the first punk single, “Rock the Casbah.” They then hit the road with The Sex Pistols, which eventually brought them to New York City, where they would find some kindred spirits…

The Ramones were born when Dee Dee Ramone saw the Sex Pistols and The Clash play his legendary club, CBGB’s. As soon as they were done playing, Dee Dee ran to the streets to find three other guys who happened to have the same last name: Johnny, Joey, and Marky Mark Ramone. The Ramones soon climbed to superstardom with their one and only song, “Hey Ho, Lets Go.” The title seems a bit problematic honestly, but 1977 was a different time.

Tragically, on December 31st, 1977 at 11:59 pm, punk had its final minute. All of punk vanished at the stroke of midnight. Bondage pants turned back into bell bottoms and spiky hair magically grew out long. The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Ramones all called it quits. Punk was dead. But it’s spirit will forever live on in our hearts.

RIP Punk. 1977-1977.

Incel Guesses He’ll Just Do That for Lent as Well

Posted on March 8, 2020 by James Knapp

CLEVELAND — Involuntarily celibate churchgoer Donald Bates resolved today that, in observance of Lent, he will abstain from all sexual interaction, changing absolutely nothing about his current situation, noticeably aggravated sources confirmed.

“This was a tough choice, but I really feel like a vow of celibacy will bring me closer to God. After long discussions with my buddies on Reddit, we figured we could save face for a month and just pretend like we were swearing off sex on purpose,” said Bates. “It makes perfect sense: I mean, I’m a nice guy, Jesus was a nice guy — obviously, this is what I should do. Plus, maybe if I take myself off the market for a while, it’ll show all these Stacys that I don’t even need them.”

“But also, like… if any women are interested, I’m not really super religious or anything,” Bates added.

Fellow Cleveland resident Bethany Stevens met Bates recently during a happy hour at nearby Flanagan’s Pub.

“That guy was a dick. All he talked about was how high his IQ is, and asking if I wanted to see his van,” recalled Stevens. “After like, the fifth time I asked him to leave me alone, he just yelled that I was a ‘Stacy’ and something about how he ‘doesn’t fuck for Jesus.’ What the hell does that even mean? I just wanted to come out for a few drinks, and suddenly I’m being hit on, threatened, and evangelized all at once. Fuck this.”

For his part, Bates’ pastor, the Reverend Walter Jacobs, supports Bates’ ongoing celibacy.

“Rejoice. For tis’ holier to keepest thy snake inside thy tunic than to dippest of it in the sinful honey like an Ephesian, especially as they act like their honey is made of precious gold or something,” Jacobs recited to himself while staring into a mirror. “Weary is the disciple that indulges in debaucherous copulation, who should rather ‘tuck up’ to block the devil from thy genitals. Praise the O’ Lord, for these are your words. Because nothing else makes sense. I’m a good guy.”

Bates was last seen rewatching the 2002 romcom “40 Days and 40 Nights” and bemoaning that he’s “way nicer than Josh Hartnett.”

Super Smash Bros. Datamine Reveals That Coding Seems Really Complicated

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Giovanni Colantonio

TUCSON, Ariz. — A hacker has broken Super Smash Bros. Ultimate open and apparently revealed a host of new details about the game. The most notable takeaway from the datamine is that video game coding seems, like, pretty complicated.

The fighting game’s data was extracted by fans following a recent patch. After several hours of looking through the information provided by the digital sleuth, we’re able to confirm that a lot of work must go into coding a game like this. I mean, how do all these random numbers and letters even come together to make a game? Do you ever think about that?

“Okay, focus. See this string of characters here? That’s just a simple CRC32B hash,” the anonymous hacker tried to explain to us for the fifth time. “So all we have to do is translate that to— Look, I don’t know how to explain this to you. This garbled collection of letters means that a Resident Evil Mii costume is coming. Just trust me, okay?

Despite the hacker’s proven track record, there are still several questions surrounding the validity of the leak. The biggest among them: how do you even get into the game’s code? Like, is there just a way to do that in the game that I don’t know about?

Skepticism aside, we were able to use the hacker’s advice to decode the weird letters. Through our deduction, we uncovered the line “fighter_kind_gun” hidden in the code, I think. It’s either that or “fighter_kind_green.” Either way, we’re pretty sure that means Master Chief is coming to the game.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai, when asked about the leak’s findings. “I don’t understand any of that shit. I just whisper my ideas into an envelope and mail them to the programming department and then boom! There’s another Fire Emblem character! It’s a magical process that I don’t think anyone will ever fully understand.”

While all these rumors should be taken with a grain of salt, the datamine does conclusively confirm one thing: we have no idea what we’re looking at and probably shouldn’t be reporting on it, huh?

Listen to the newest episode of our podcast, The Ace Watkins Presidential Hour:

Boring! This Coughing Person Only Has Antibiotic-Resistant Tuberculosis

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Jon Swihart

Some people know how to get with the times. Others? Not so much. Andy Serrano is a troglodyte of the latter variety. When we asked him why he was hacking up blood, he said it was antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis. Umm what? It’s 2020 and if the reason you’re hacking up phlegm and shivering isn’t coronavirus, you might as well die because your ancient ass is already a fossil.

It’s like, read the room, man. Coronavirus is all the rage now and if you don’t have it, you don’t have shit. Besides, didn’t we cure tuberculosis, like, a hundred years ago? Talk about old-fashioned. And, not to be that guy, but something from that long ago probably has some serious racial undertones present. You should be mindful of that.

“My TB was treatable at first,” Serrano said, “but then I lost my job and my health insurance so I couldn’t finish my course of antibiotics. The most resistant strains managed to survive and reproduce, and now there’s nothing the doctors can do.”

Ugh. What a snooze.

If you want people to care about you, then you need to keep up with the trends. All Serrano had to do was get coronavirus. He could’ve been an infection influencer. Everyone would’ve paid attention to his plight and demanded that he be given treatment. Instead, he’s just another nobody with some has-been disease.

To be fair, Serrano and his vintage ailment do have one or two fans out there, such as public health policy analyst Amanda Fletcher. She told us that if rich countries like the United States focused more resources on perennial killers like tuberculosis or malaria, we’d save exponentially more lives across both the modern and developing worlds.

Malaria? Like, from mosquitoes? Yeah, hard pass.

There are only so many hours in the day to be worried about all the bullshit going on in the world. Trump takes up the vast majority of it and I don’t think this mole used to cover my entire shoulder, so if you want people to care about your debilitating illness at least try to catch one that’s in the zeitgeist.

Gamer Who Used Wiki For Every Quest Praises RPG’s Spirit of Exploration

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Chandler Dean

FRANKLIN, Texas — After consulting a wiki for every single quest from start to finish, local gamer Francesca Bufalini declared Red Dead Redemption 2 the pinnacle of curiosity, unexpected discovery, and adventurous exploration.

Bufalini, who had already read the descriptions of all the alternate endings before starting the game so she could know which one she wanted to pursue, exalted the game’s unpredictable nature.

“I mean, look at the screen — I could spend hours in just this corner of the map, searching for secrets and Easter Eggs,” said Bufalini, opening her laptop to search for a comprehensive list of that corner’s secrets and Easter Eggs.

“It’s such an immersive world that you really feel like you’re living in it,” continued Bufalini, who has never spent more than 45 consecutive minutes playing the game without consulting a walkthrough to make sure she hadn’t missed anything cool.

Bufalini’s roommate, Charline Edwards, criticized Bufalini’s approach to the game.

“I normally don’t mind watching my friends play RPGs — there’s so much story involved that it’s entertaining even if you’re on the sidelines,” explained Edwards. “But when Francesca plays, she spends so much time Googling exactly how to get hidden weapons or shiny armor or whatever that you never get to the interesting parts. In all the hours she has played, I don’t think she has ever let a character finish a line of dialogue.”

When asked, Bufalini clarified that she “doesn’t skip all the dialogue,” but instead selects the responses that lead to the best outcomes while setting the text to its fastest scroll setting so that she can save a few seconds before getting to the next cutscene. She does, however, then skip the cutscenes, because she’s “already seen all of them in Let’s Plays, so what’s the point?”

At press time, Bufalini decided she wanted a break from gaming to do something spontaneous in the city, and was seen Googling the phrase “top spontaneous things to do in the city.”

Listen to the newest episode of our podcast, The Ace Watkins Presidential Hour:

Exhausted ‘Slay the Spire’ Fans Demand Developers Make Game Less Fun

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Kevin Flynn

NEW YORK — Emphasizing the fact that they really ought to start playing some other games that they’ve been meaning to get around to, a group of exhausted Slay the Spire fans banded together yesterday to demand that developer Mega Crit Games make the roguelike card game less fun immediately, sources confirmed.

“When I purchased Slay the Spire, I was expecting to be amused for a few minutes until I got bored of the game’s animations and presumably repetitive gameplay. But it’s actually a deep, captivating experience that I keep returning to no matter what other games I have waiting for me,” said one disgruntled fan, Chris Germain, adding regretfully that he still hasn’t been able to play many games released in the past few years since the game’s launch in 2017. “Of course, this is totally unacceptable. The least the developers could do is release a patch unbalancing things a little bit so I can shake my addiction. Oh, and also I want a refund, but that goes without saying.”

Others went as far as to boast that they could make a worse game themselves, saying that the changes that need to be made are “totally obvious.”

“I mean, come on, any amateur game developer could design a card battle system worse than that,” said disgruntled fan Brian McGovern in a Reddit post on r/gamedev. “All you have to do is take the three characters and mash them up into one character with an overly complicated skill tree. Extra points if the UI makes no sense, but of course, Slay the Spire’s got a terribly intuitive UI that makes it very easy to keep playing. They couldn’t even get that wrong.”

Despite a pessimistic outlook that developers would likely ignore their requests, sources say that the Slay the Spire modding community was confident that they would be able to ruin the game themselves.

Listen to the newest episode of our podcast, The Ace Watkins Presidential Hour:

Depressed Black Metal Frontman Sees Own Face in Rorschach Test

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Noah Leavy

OSLO, Norway — Local black metal frontman “Iscariot” allegedly saw nothing but his own shallow reflection in a Rorschach test administered yesterday by a psychiatrist, sources close to the gauntlet-clad man confirmed.

“Obviously I’m not a child and a weakling, like the members of every other band,” claimed the heavily face-painted lead singer of Angr Agi. “But I’m starting to wonder if I’m in a rut — do I burn churches to destroy the futility that is hope, or to destroy myself? When I saw that piece of paper rocking my corpse paint, I knew I wasn’t special. I’m not the walking embodiment of Satan; I’m just an average man doing whatever I can to be considered evil.”

Iscariot’s father, Per Christensen, reported his son later spent hours at home reworking his appearance.

“He yelled at me to ‘let alone [his] machinations,’ and locked himself in the bathroom with the good mirror,” explained Christensen. “When I saw him again the next day, he’d completely changed his makeup — though he still kinda looked like Uncle Fester. I’m glad he’s taking the time to look inward and become more aware of himself as a human, but if he keeps hogging the bathroom all hours of the day and night to paint his face, I’m going to ask him to move out.”

Psychiatrist Ingrid Mikalsen administered the test and tried to level with Iscariot.

“I told him he was seeing an entirely random splotch of ink, but he just said, ‘Nothing is random. I must create a new mask of death,’ which was a bit alarming,” claimed Dr. Mikalsen, who added, “I’m thinking about scrapping this test — it’s the seventh time in two months I’ve had to talk down a confused and obstinate metal singer after it.”

Dr. Mikalsen would not confirm or deny any diagnosis, but noted, “An adult man storming out of an evaluation to run home and change his face paint is never an encouraging sign.”

Iscariot has reportedly changed his appearance again already after seeing a BBC nature documentary featuring lemurs.

Guy With Idea for Video Game Goes on Shark Tank to Ask Mark Cuban If He Knows How to Code

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Jeremy Kaplowitz

LOS ANGELES — Video game idea-developer Steve Harmon appeared on the newest episode of Shark Tank, not to ask for funding for a business, but to specifically ask Mark Cuban if he knows how to code.

“The money part is easy, we just KickStarter this bad boy,” Harmon said in front of a poster for his proposal — Unterrored — an MMO first person shooter roguelike RPG where every choice you make greatly impacts the story. “So really I’m just here to see if any of you guys are good with coding. Because I’m an ideas guy; I got lots of ideas. Cuban, come on, man, you’re telling me you became one of the richest people on Earth and you don’t even know how to code?”

Mark Cuban, who is an entrepreneur and investor, responded by saying that he has no experience with coding or video game development.

“To be honest, I’m not really sure how he got onto the show in the first place,” Cuban said after the taping. “When I heard the name, I figured his company was… I dunno, potato chips made out of snail shells or whatever. Something we can all get behind.”

“You know, because I would be cool with investing money in a video game company if they were trying something fresh,” Cuban continued. “But he wasn’t even asking for me to invest! He wanted me to make the video game. I don’t have the time to learn how to make video games. I’m way too busy running my own businesses, appearing on Shark Tank, and — hint hint — hinting every four years that I’m considering running for president to drum up support.”

As of press time, fellow Shark Tank host Barbara Corcoran came to a deal with Harmon after remembering that her nephew was thinking about majoring in computer science.

Listen to the newest episode of our podcast, The Ace Watkins Presidential Hour:

5 Cute Ways to Signal to Customers That Your Door Is Locked Because You’re Not Fucking Open

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Taylor Roebuck

Customers can be a little adorably obtuse sometimes. They love to ask questions that are already answered by posted signs, saying “must be free” when an item doesn’t properly scan, and most of all, they love yanking on door handles of a business that is very clearly closed for the day.

Customers don’t always respond well to things like “words” or “rules”, so here are 5 cute ways to signal to customers that your door is locked because you’re not fucking open right now, man.

Mouth the word “sorry” and shrug: This is the most tried and true of all the methods. Having been established in the Midwest, the mouth “sorry” and shrug technique soothes the egos of the confused customers and puts the blame on the true culprit: the deadbolt.

Point to the closed sign and make fart noises: This one is a favorite among the experts. You are once again placing the blame elsewhere, as with the first method, and you’re adding some classic comedy for the customer. Customers love farts, we all know that.

Vacuum with the lights off while maintaining eye contact: You’ll spot this method among the more seasoned vets. It’s well documented that the thing that makes customers feel the most unwelcome is the sound of a running vacuum. It indicates that not only are you busy, but you’re drowning out the sounds of anything else. Customers are visual creatures, so that’s where turning the lights off comes into play.

Pretend to be a mannequin: When all else fails, just go motionless. Bonus points for wearing GAP clothing.

Stage your own murder and have your fake hitman point to the closed sign: This one may seem overly elaborate, but in my experience, sometimes it is absolutely necessary. If they haven’t already run for the hills when they think they see you croak, they’ll certainly get the point when a masked man points to the closed sign with his gun.

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