Entertainment
Skibidi, When The Walls Fell: The Ongoing Problem With Star Trek’s Contemporary Slang
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Starfleet Academy, the latest Star Trek spinoff, has proven to be controversial for many reasons. One of them is the use of profanity-laced modern language, all of which sounds wildly jarring coming out of 32nd-century mouths. This is clearly Paramount’s desperate attempt to appeal to modern audiences, but diehard fans and even Trek icon Robert Picardo keep going out of their way to make excuses for the inclusion of this slang-filled language.
However, the blunt truth is that the character’s use of contemporary language makes no sense, and I can definitively prove it. What are the excuses fanboys have been making, and why are they wrong? Why does the use of such language contradict long-established lore, and why is it bad for Star Trek as a whole? Keep reading to find out!
The Universal Translator Explanation
Before we really dive into the problem with the modern language on Starfleet Academy, I figured we’d discuss the most common excuses that fans have made for it. Perhaps the most prevalent excuse is that Star Trek’s famous Universal Translator is working for the benefit of the audience watching at home. That is, these characters are likely speaking some sort of otherwise indecipherable space slang to one another, and the UT is conveniently translating that to modern speech for the viewers.
As excuses go, this is a fun one, and it gets full points for integrating the franchise’s most famous technology. But at its heart, this claim is more of an explanation rather than a justification. In other words, it explains why we might hear characters like Caleb casually discuss “toilet wine,” but it doesn’t really justify why that language is in the show.
That’s basically the crux of the matter here: Star Trek fans can sit around all day awarding each other No-Prizes for efforts to explain why the 32nd-century Starfleet cadets talk like 21st-century zoomers. But the core issue is that this modern language in a futuristic show is distractingly jarring, robbing otherwise moving scenes of any real drama even as it instantly dates the show.
The “Kids Will Be Kids” Excuse
The other major justification for Starfleet Academy dialogue being overly modern is that the characters are young and don’t speak like the more seasoned veterans of the franchise. Even Robert Picardo (who reprises his role as the Doctor for this show) offered this up as an excuse in a recent interview with Collider. There, he noted that “the cadets talk like kids in the present-day world and in their own vernaculars” and that they would need to learn to code-switch into the kind of “mid-galactic speech” necessary for “marshaling an argument in a diplomatic situation.”
There are two basic problems with this argument: the most obvious is that Star Trek has had plenty of younger, non-Starfleet characters (including Wesley Crusher, Jake Sisko, early Nog, and even Naomi Wildman) who didn’t speak almost exclusively in then-modern slang. If they had, we might have had Jake describe his latest story as “all that and a bag of chips,” or Nog describing how Starfleet Academy is “the bomb.” Heck, how did Voyager even make it seven seasons without anyone telling Captain Janeway, “You go, girl!”
You know that instant cringe you felt upon reading that? That’s just a small taste of how contemporary slang can ruin Star Trek stories that are meant to be timeless. Now, just think how goofy you will feel hearing Starfleet Academy characters using phrases like “I’m Khionian, b*tch!” and “nah, she chose the War College, bruh” in about 10 years.
The other problem with Picardo’s defense of the contemporary language is that the older characters on the show also talk like this. Chancellor Ake, for example, tells Nus Braka to “blow it out your a**,” and Cadet Master Lura Thok describes a situation as a “dumpster fire.” Heck, in the same episode, Picardo was helping to hype up, his character says that “speech and debate is not for the chickensh*t.”
Long story, not very short? The “kids will be kids” excuse doesn’t really work for the modern language on Starfleet Academy when we see the older characters using the exact same language, essentially proving that age will not magically cause Starfleet characters to stop talking like zoomers.
Why Profanity Should Be Relatively Rare In Star Trek
Now, time to address the elephant in the room, which is that Star Trek characters have used vulgar language before. Starfleet Academy didn’t magically introduce cursing to the franchise: Dr. McCoy is famous for his various “damn it, Jim,” phrases, and Kirk memorably said “Let’s get the hell out of here” at the end of “City on the Edge of Forever.” This level of mild cursing persisted through the golden age of Star Trek, and even Captain Picard once said “sh*t” (albeit in French) onscreen in an episode of The Next Generation.
However, Trek’s traditional use of vulgar language often reminds me of something my favorite professor once said. Much like the Doctor on Starfleet Academy, he was known to curse in class, and much like those hapless cadets, we asked him about why he spoke like that in the classroom. That was when he said something simple that has always stuck with me: “A gentleman never curses unintentionally.”
His point was that people shouldn’t blurt out foul language out of impulse or anger but should instead only use it for maximum impact in a conversation. This is why Star Trek saved its first “oh, sh*t” for Data when the Enterprise was about to crash in Generations: the rarity of the vulgarity and the extremity of the situation arguably merited the four-letter word. While it was used to increasingly weaker effect in NuTrek, the vulgarity (including F-bombs) in Discovery and Picard was generally spread out to maximize their rhetorical impact.
InStarfleet Academy, characters constantly call each other b*tch, use terms like “fish d*ck,” use “sh*t” as an adjective, and so on. The problem isn’t that Star Trek characters shouldn’t curse; rather, the problem is that if they do so all the time, the four-letter words lose any real meaning or power. Just like that, the vulgar language used to make these youthful characters sound more adult has them sounding like petulant children trying to show off!
Most Modern Profanity Should Be Completely Incomprehensible In The Future
Perhaps the biggest reason there shouldn’t be so much vulgar, modern language inStarfleet Academy goes back to one of the most popular movies in the franchise:Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. One of the best running gags in that movie is that Kirk and Spock didn’t really understand the vulgar language of the 20th century. This is why Kirk responds to someone calling him a “dumba**” with the memorable rejoinder “double dumba** on you!”
Later, Spock (who amusingly tries his hand at such language with phrases like “these are not the hell your whales”) describes such language as “colorful metaphors,” and Kirk says that profanity is “simply the way they talk here” (meaning the 20th century). He sums up his thoughts on the matter by saying that, in this relatively primitive time period that McCoy compares to the Dark Ages, “Nobody pays any attention to you if you don’t swear every other word.”
It’s not that Kirk didn’t know what these words meant, exactly; anyone with a fascination for the 20th century (like Captain Pike enjoying old sci-fi movies) would have a passing familiarity with profanity. But even minor variations on old slang (like putting “dumb” in front of “a**”) completely confused him. Furthermore, it was quite clear that the practice of constantly cursing to get someone’s attention was completely alien to him, someone born a couple of centuries later.
That’s the ultimate problem with the vulgarity in Starfleet Academy: rather than talking like 32nd-century characters who are studying to be the best of the best, they are swearing every other word like characters in the 20th century. Kirk himself identified this as behavior so archaic that visitors from the 23rd century can barely understand the vulgar phrases people are saying. But in Starfleet Academy, characters alive nearly a millennium later are constantly cursing like sailors and generally reminding us how much this franchise has regressed.
Star Trek fans, it’s time to get real: the distractingly modern dialogue has already dated Starfleet Academy, and the constant cursing makes no sense within the canon of the franchise. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the show on its own merits, but it’s far past time the fandom stops making excuses for poor writing. The bottom line is that this show doesn’t sound like Star Trek on any level, making it increasingly difficult for anyone who has seen a single episode of The Original Series or The Next Generation to take any of this very seriously.
Or, to put this in a way that the writers of Trek’s newest series might understand: “Kurtzman and Paramount at the Rizzing. Skibidi, when the subscribers fell!”
Entertainment
This $430 MacBook Pro deal wont stick around for long — act fast to save
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Entertainment
6 AdultFriendFinder features other hookup sites lack
For 30 years now, AdultFriendFinder has quietly positioned itself as the internet’s premier adult dating site and a go-to destination for singles chasing casual flings and hookups. Their success hasn’t been an accident. They’ve stayed on top of the game, and even survived the emergence of dating apps, by forging a unique identity to help them stand out in an incredibly crowded and competitive field.
If you’re looking to let your freak flag fly, AFF offers you the greatest variety of ways to do it — here are six features AdultFriendFinder has that you won’t find on any other dating site.
Credit: AdultFriendFinder
Naked content
One of the first things you’ll discover after creating an AFF account is that the site doesn’t shy away from hosting nudity, nor is it hard to come by. In fact, it’s extremely common for people’s profile photos to contain genitalia or full-frontal nudity rather than the typical headshot you’re likely to find on most other dating sites.
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The nudity isn’t confined to photos, either. You can host videos on your profile, including explicit videos, and there are webcam feeds live at any given time that feature amateur and professional models in various states of undress.
If you find yourself distracted by all of the nudity or just want to browse the site in public without getting arrested, you can turn on the adult content filter by navigating to your profile settings in the top right of the screen, scrolling down to Content Filter and then selecting either No Nudity, Some Nudity or Everything (the default setting, naturally).
Live webcam feeds
There’s certainly no shortage of webcam sites on the internet, but it’s rare to find a dating site that hosts live webcam feeds, not only of professional models but also of regular men and women looking for connection.
Navigate to the Live Action menu at the top of your AFF window and choose between either Member Webcams or Pro Models. Once you’ve made this choice, you’ll be able to create even more specific search filters, including by gender (Men, Women or Trans), Nude or Non-Nude, and even by proximity to you.
The Looksmaxxing Glossary: Every term you need to understand the internet’s most unhinged subculture
One thing to note, however: while free members can view webcam feeds (including more than one at a time), only Gold members and above can actually chat with models.
Discussion forums, blogs, and group chats
Unlike traditional dating sites, which only seek to match people in one-on-one interactions, AdultFriendFinder encourages group dynamics, especially in their Community section. Here you’ll find not only personal blog posts by AFF users commenting on their experience, sharing stories or posting queries, but also group discussion boards organized around literally hundreds of interesting topics.
Many of these are sexual in nature (there’s a polyamory group, for example, and a “women who like older men” group), but many are organized around interests and hobbies, including politics, tech, travel, movies and music.
Mashable Trend Report
Best of all, you can participate in these communal discussions without having to subscribe to AFF’s Gold membership, which helps to keep these places more lively than they would otherwise be if only paying members could access these spaces.
Erotic stories
Fun fact: erotic fiction now accounts for approximately 25 percent of all fiction sold in the United States, so it’s hardly surprising that erotic writing (“literotica” for those in the know) would be a major draw. What is surprising, however, is how few online dating sites take advantage of it.
AdultFriendFinder members who wish to read or write sexy stories, real or imagined, can navigate to the Community menu and select Stories, where they’ll uncover a near-unlimited array of stories, novels, fan fiction and even erotic poetry.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you can explore the stories at random, but AFF also deploys a clever tagging system that allows you to search by topic, with popular options including First Time, Sci-Fi, TSTV (trans and transvestite), and Voyeur.
Popular stories achieve higher ratings and greater on-site visibility, and popular authors can actually build a large following on the site, so whether you’re eager to read more erotic fiction or aspire to write some, AFF has you covered.
Contests
One of the more fun aspects of AdultFriendFinder is that it genuinely seeks to cultivate a sense of community and actively encourages its users to spend more time on the site, especially in the public-facing sections. Their on-site contests are a fantastic example of this in action.
About once a month, the site hosts a themed photo contest, asking members to submit photos and then allowing the rest of the site to vote on which submissions best reflect or embody the contest caption.
The most recent photo contest theme was “Velvet Secrets: Valentine’s Masquerade,” while prior contests include “Naughty & Nice” for the holidays and “Midnight Mischief.” Winners get a special badge they can display on their profile, as well as tons more profile visibility, so there’s a strong incentive to participate.
To enter, scroll to the Community menu and then find Contests at the very bottom of the options list. If there’s an active contest and you are logged in to your account, you’ll be given the option of participating.
Kink-based profile search
Every online dating site or app has a profile section, where you can fill out pertinent personal information such as your sexual orientation, level of education, and whatever hobbies, interests or special skills you have that might make you stand out from the crowd, but AdultFriendFinder takes things a step further by offering members the opportunity to list their kinks.
If you navigate to your profile name in the top right of your AFF screen and then select Dating Profile and Edit Profile, you’ll have the opportunity to add to your My Kinks section. Popular options here include BDSM, voyeurism and cross dressing, but the full list is far more extensive.
Best of all, these kink lists aren’t merely decorative. If you have a premium account, you can actually search out other members by their chosen kinks, allowing you to find the people in your area who like exhibitionism or have a foot fetish, for example.
There’s no shortage of online dating sites, and even no shortage of hookup-first sites, but when it comes to adult dating, AFF clearly separates itself from the competition with its wide array of kink-friendly features and accommodations.
Entertainment
Netflix's Hit Fantasy Series Turned A Fan-Favorite Storyline Into Pure Nightmare Fuel
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Netflix’s smash hit One Piece live-action adaptation was always going to be compared to the record-setting anime series, but in some ways, it’s improved on the anime. The most obvious improvement is in the pacing, which has been all killer, and no filler. Less obvious is that going live-action provides a sense of weight and realism to even the most absurd action scenes. Then there was Season 2, Episode 5, “Wax On, Wax Off,” when the murderous Mr. 3 took the spotlight and went from an over-the-top supervillain in the original to a disturbing serial killer. Turns out, watching people be encased in wax is a lot more terrifying in live action.
One Piece’s Villains Steal The Show
Mr. 3 is brought to life by David Dastmalchian, who you might recognize from The Suicide Squad, Late Night with the Devil, Murderbot, or Ant-Man. His casting as the Baroque Works agent powered by the Wax-Wax Devil Fruit, which, as the name implies, gives him the ability to generate wax harder than steel, was an inspired pick by the manga’s creator, Oda. Dastmalchian was on fan’s wish lists for the role, and when given the chance, he owned every single second spent on screen.
One Piece’s colorful cast of characters revolves around taking a personality trait and amplifying it to a cartoonish level. Mr. 3’s murderous desire to turn people into artwork that immortalizes their suffering, anguish, and terror over slowly dying encased in wax is straight out of classic horror movies. In the anime, he’s off-putting, but in the series, Dastmalchian’s line delivery, coupled with his creepy smile, turns the absurdity of a giant wax candle covering Nami, Vivi, and Zoro with hardening wax flakes from cartoonish buffoonery into a nightmare.
His Baroque Works partner, Miss Golden Week (Sophia Anne Caruso, from The School for Good and Evil), also has a horrifying power, utilizing different colors of paint to force her victims to experience emotions. She uses yellow to force Zoro to be cheerful, and blue to make Luffy feel the saddest he has in his life (to that point). Mind control is a common superpower but, then you think about it in the context of the real world, it’s one of the most terrifying experiences you can think of. Trapped inside your body, acting against your will as you’re forced to move, think, and feel a certain way? That’s pure Hell.
One Piece Keeps Proving It’s The Best Anime Adaptation
Netflix’s One Piece didn’t bring over Mr. 3’s candle champion ability, but what it does keep intact is that the killer is a complete coward. Mr. 3’s running away at the first sign of an equal fight is a hilarious moment topped only by the very satisfying hammerpunch that Luffy lands on him to put an end to the nightmare. For now, as in the original story, he comes back later with his real name, Galdino, and while he’s not quite an ally to the Straw Hat Pirates, he does recognize when there’s a larger, much more dangerous enemy that needs to be taken down, and Luffy is the only one who can do it.
Thanks to the inclusion of the manga’s author Oda, Netflix’s One Piece adaptation is not only faithful to the source material, it’s the perfect entry point for those curious about the Straw Hat Pirates but scared to tackle the 1000+ episodes of the anime. And sometimes, it might even be a little bit better.
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