It used to be widely thought that you couldn’t generally trust an unsubscribe button, and that they would devilishly sign you up for even more.
Oh, this modern world and its Internet….
Um,… wouldn’t unsubscribe in this context mean suicide? That’s … dark.
Woozy, I really didn’t see that! But now it doesn’t look impossible.
In case the simple flatfooted explanation wasn’t clear, she is saying at least some things are no longer irrevocable mistakes that once would have been so — like subscribing to a newsletter or the like that it turns out you hate getting.
I was being a bit facetious.
I’m sure the joke is something like: well, this post modern age we needn’t commit or think any thing’s permanent. Or something like that. I don’t really get it. I also suspect there might not actually have been much thought put into it and it might not actually *mean* anything (I kind of don’t like Pardon My Planet). If you do think about it though….
Could it be something like she’s matured and now has the strength of character to unsubscribe from websites or social media outlets, avoiding that whole FOMO thing that teenagers (and others) go through. Like:
“I made a lot of mistakes when I was young…” = I signed up to a lot of things and tracked them relentlessly wasting a lot of my time.
“I can now hit the unsubscribe button.” = It doesn’t bother me so much anymore.
The joke being, I guess, that when people usually say they’ve made a lot of mistakes, you’re thinking bad tattoos or not finishing school or something like that. Here, it’s just an obsession with social media platforms. This is what wild youthful abandon has become. Millennials’ biggest regrets are social media related.
Possibly she has previously made a lot of relationship and other mistakes in her life, and has spent years in some cases turning them over in her mind and worrying away at them – but the Unsubscribe option provided on social media and emails gave her the idea that she can Unsubscribe from a lot of other stuff too, specifically useless mental baggage she is lugging around with her but can now let go of so it falls away into the abyss of the forgotten past.
She was young and made a lot of mistakes. At this point, you, the reader fill in some of the mistakes YOU made and quietly nod along. Then she subverts your expectations, because all of the mistakes she now regrets was signing up to receive emails from various websites, which she would no longer like to receive.
This reminds me of how pastors incorporate “hip” trends and lingo into their sermons in an effort to “relate to the youth”.
“You’ve made a lot of mistakes and they’ve been weighing you down. When people look at you, they don’t see your potential, they see your past. But I’m here to tell you today, brother and sister, you can hit UN-SUB-SCRIIIIBE from your past ways! (wild applause from the middle aged folks) And if people try to bring it up again–just BLOCK ‘EM!”
For us geezers, unsubscribe is to cancel e-mail lists. This is something that was, as previously mentioned, a bit iffy as the senders might unsubscribe you, but if they were the dodgy kind, they’d just think “Ha! He’s alive and seeing our spam!” and keep you subscribed or add you to more. I had one that I got subscribed to that would not stop, no matter how many times I unsubscribed. So I did my best to find as many corporate e-mails as I could. Every time they sent one of their (numerous) e-mails, I’d forward it to the sales address, the hr address, etc, and any named employees I had found, telling them I really, really wanted to be unsubscribed. Didn’t take long for things to stop.
Now, digression aside, for the youngsters, unsubscribe is more likely to mean unsubscribe from a YouTube channel or an Instagram, etc.
Regardless, I think she is really confusing “unsubscribe” with “undo”. I’ll deal with my junk mail. What I could really use is and undo option.
This needs a “The Cartoonist Thinks Referring to Modern Technology Makes Something Funny, And That No Further Joke Or Logic Is Needed” (TCTRTMTMSFATNFJOLIN) tag.
Exactly – Draw a cartoon of two people talking. Punchline: blah, blah, blah, internet, or hashtag, or Facebook, blah, blah, blah.
“This needs a “The Cartoonist Thinks Referring to Modern Technology Makes Something Funny, And That No Further Joke Or Logic Is Needed” (TCTRTMTMSFATNFJOLIN) tag.”
“Exactly – Draw a cartoon of two people talking. Punchline: blah, blah, blah, internet, or hashtag, or Facebook, blah, blah, blah.”
… which is why I find it so important *to* apply logic and see what the logic *actually* says. “I made mistakes in life but I can always hit the unsubscribe button”… Uh, so you can take an action to undo things that occur in life??? You mean… suicide? …. Or being born again in blood of Jesus Christ? … Or being a selfish jerk and just walk away from the dumpster fire you made of your life … or … something else…. None of these are actually the light-hearted “Oh, this modern world and the Internet!” that the cartoonist seems to think it means.
I’ve often wished I could apply “Open Apple-Z” (undo) to some things in life.
Gosh that was so long ago I musty not have known who Tony Hale was, as seeing him listed as the lead is a complete surprise.
I seem to remember something on maybe, ‘Outer Limits’ (‘Twilight Zone’ is too early) about using the DELETE button to make a person disappear . . . or was that something I made up due to wishful thinking? Or did I read it in a short story?
“which is why I find it so important *to* apply logic and see what the logic *actually* says.”
But you didn’t (respectfully) consider one of the possibilities. The logic actually works just fine if all the mistakes she refers to literally are the kind that can be unsubscribed from… no need to parse what she means by “unsubscribe” if she means actually and literally “unsubscribe” in the ordinary sense of the word. She doesn’t mean “suicide” or “be born again” or “walk away from dumpster-fire mistakes” when she says “unsubscribe”, she just means “unsubscribe”.
‘CTRL ‘-
“I seem to remember something on maybe, ‘Outer Limits’ (‘Twilight Zone’ is too early) about using the DELETE button to make a person disappear . . . or was that something I made up due to wishful thinking? Or did I read it in a short story?”
It was both a short story and an episode of the rebooted Twilight Zone:
“But you didn’t (respectfully) consider one of the possibilities. The logic actually works just fine if all the mistakes she refers to literally are the kind that can be unsubscribed from…”
I don’t consider those to be “mistakes when I was young”. If you can erase the mistakes you make in life they really are not mistakes worth talking about.
…. unless you are one of these insufferable upbeat new-agers “life doesn’t give problems; it gives opportunity” types. In which case… where’s the effing *joke* in the dang cartoon?
@Brian: And it made its way into at least one song:
Anyway, thank you Andréa for Ctrl! I’m about half-way through now (there’s a better youtube playlist that has all the episodes); I also liked the theme song so I looked up Cat Jahnke — a good new discovery day!
My mom who is only 89 has been having a problem with her email – it only comes in every few weeks – or so she says. Now, mom is also an accountant (I was her boss when she worked for my dad for a short while) and has been working with a “personal type” computer for over 30 years. She currently has an android tablet. It keeps telling her (she tells me) that she does not have enough mail waiting for it to be delivered.
While I have never used a tablet computer, I had planned to tell her to bring it when I took her to the doctor a month or so ago. (She has finally decided not to drive any longer and hasn’t gotten her senior ride paperwork done yet.) But I forgot and figured I would tell her to bring it when we go to the next doctor – which we would have done this past month if not for my needing to take Robert to the hospital, doctor, etc and sit home with him.
So my BIL, a long time IT person, was at her house and worked on her computer. She had over 1200 emails waiting to come into a tablet (this is how it was explained to me by sister, so if wrong – it is her, not me) which only holds 100 emails at a time. He cleared out her email account and – here it come – unsubscribed her from almost everything she had ever subscribed to, to prevent this happening in the future. He also set up her email to check every 5 minutes instead of every week!
Comics I Don't Understand 
It used to be widely thought that you couldn’t generally trust an unsubscribe button, and that they would devilishly sign you up for even more.
Oh, this modern world and its Internet….
Um,… wouldn’t unsubscribe in this context mean suicide? That’s … dark.
Woozy, I really didn’t see that! But now it doesn’t look impossible.
In case the simple flatfooted explanation wasn’t clear, she is saying at least some things are no longer irrevocable mistakes that once would have been so — like subscribing to a newsletter or the like that it turns out you hate getting.
I was being a bit facetious.
I’m sure the joke is something like: well, this post modern age we needn’t commit or think any thing’s permanent. Or something like that. I don’t really get it. I also suspect there might not actually have been much thought put into it and it might not actually *mean* anything (I kind of don’t like Pardon My Planet). If you do think about it though….
Could it be something like she’s matured and now has the strength of character to unsubscribe from websites or social media outlets, avoiding that whole FOMO thing that teenagers (and others) go through. Like:
“I made a lot of mistakes when I was young…” = I signed up to a lot of things and tracked them relentlessly wasting a lot of my time.
“I can now hit the unsubscribe button.” = It doesn’t bother me so much anymore.
The joke being, I guess, that when people usually say they’ve made a lot of mistakes, you’re thinking bad tattoos or not finishing school or something like that. Here, it’s just an obsession with social media platforms. This is what wild youthful abandon has become. Millennials’ biggest regrets are social media related.
Possibly she has previously made a lot of relationship and other mistakes in her life, and has spent years in some cases turning them over in her mind and worrying away at them – but the Unsubscribe option provided on social media and emails gave her the idea that she can Unsubscribe from a lot of other stuff too, specifically useless mental baggage she is lugging around with her but can now let go of so it falls away into the abyss of the forgotten past.
She was young and made a lot of mistakes. At this point, you, the reader fill in some of the mistakes YOU made and quietly nod along. Then she subverts your expectations, because all of the mistakes she now regrets was signing up to receive emails from various websites, which she would no longer like to receive.
This reminds me of how pastors incorporate “hip” trends and lingo into their sermons in an effort to “relate to the youth”.
“You’ve made a lot of mistakes and they’ve been weighing you down. When people look at you, they don’t see your potential, they see your past. But I’m here to tell you today, brother and sister, you can hit UN-SUB-SCRIIIIBE from your past ways! (wild applause from the middle aged folks) And if people try to bring it up again–just BLOCK ‘EM!”
For us geezers, unsubscribe is to cancel e-mail lists. This is something that was, as previously mentioned, a bit iffy as the senders might unsubscribe you, but if they were the dodgy kind, they’d just think “Ha! He’s alive and seeing our spam!” and keep you subscribed or add you to more. I had one that I got subscribed to that would not stop, no matter how many times I unsubscribed. So I did my best to find as many corporate e-mails as I could. Every time they sent one of their (numerous) e-mails, I’d forward it to the sales address, the hr address, etc, and any named employees I had found, telling them I really, really wanted to be unsubscribed. Didn’t take long for things to stop.
Now, digression aside, for the youngsters, unsubscribe is more likely to mean unsubscribe from a YouTube channel or an Instagram, etc.
Regardless, I think she is really confusing “unsubscribe” with “undo”. I’ll deal with my junk mail. What I could really use is and undo option.
This needs a “The Cartoonist Thinks Referring to Modern Technology Makes Something Funny, And That No Further Joke Or Logic Is Needed” (TCTRTMTMSFATNFJOLIN) tag.
Exactly – Draw a cartoon of two people talking. Punchline: blah, blah, blah, internet, or hashtag, or Facebook, blah, blah, blah.
“This needs a “The Cartoonist Thinks Referring to Modern Technology Makes Something Funny, And That No Further Joke Or Logic Is Needed” (TCTRTMTMSFATNFJOLIN) tag.”
“Exactly – Draw a cartoon of two people talking. Punchline: blah, blah, blah, internet, or hashtag, or Facebook, blah, blah, blah.”
… which is why I find it so important *to* apply logic and see what the logic *actually* says. “I made mistakes in life but I can always hit the unsubscribe button”… Uh, so you can take an action to undo things that occur in life??? You mean… suicide? …. Or being born again in blood of Jesus Christ? … Or being a selfish jerk and just walk away from the dumpster fire you made of your life … or … something else…. None of these are actually the light-hearted “Oh, this modern world and the Internet!” that the cartoonist seems to think it means.
I’ve often wished I could apply “Open Apple-Z” (undo) to some things in life.
Ah, that reminds me of the web series “Ctrl”!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctrl_(web_series)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1473954/reference
Gosh that was so long ago I musty not have known who Tony Hale was, as seeing him listed as the lead is a complete surprise.
I seem to remember something on maybe, ‘Outer Limits’ (‘Twilight Zone’ is too early) about using the DELETE button to make a person disappear . . . or was that something I made up due to wishful thinking? Or did I read it in a short story?
“which is why I find it so important *to* apply logic and see what the logic *actually* says.”
But you didn’t (respectfully) consider one of the possibilities. The logic actually works just fine if all the mistakes she refers to literally are the kind that can be unsubscribed from… no need to parse what she means by “unsubscribe” if she means actually and literally “unsubscribe” in the ordinary sense of the word. She doesn’t mean “suicide” or “be born again” or “walk away from dumpster-fire mistakes” when she says “unsubscribe”, she just means “unsubscribe”.
‘CTRL ‘-
“I seem to remember something on maybe, ‘Outer Limits’ (‘Twilight Zone’ is too early) about using the DELETE button to make a person disappear . . . or was that something I made up due to wishful thinking? Or did I read it in a short story?”
It was both a short story and an episode of the rebooted Twilight Zone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Zone)
“But you didn’t (respectfully) consider one of the possibilities. The logic actually works just fine if all the mistakes she refers to literally are the kind that can be unsubscribed from…”
I don’t consider those to be “mistakes when I was young”. If you can erase the mistakes you make in life they really are not mistakes worth talking about.
…. unless you are one of these insufferable upbeat new-agers “life doesn’t give problems; it gives opportunity” types. In which case… where’s the effing *joke* in the dang cartoon?
@Brian: And it made its way into at least one song:
Wasn’t it here that I saw this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBkBS4O3yvY
Very likely, larK.
That would be a “yup”.
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/a-brief-mystery-of-time/
Anyway, thank you Andréa for Ctrl! I’m about half-way through now (there’s a better youtube playlist that has all the episodes); I also liked the theme song so I looked up Cat Jahnke — a good new discovery day!
My mom who is only 89 has been having a problem with her email – it only comes in every few weeks – or so she says. Now, mom is also an accountant (I was her boss when she worked for my dad for a short while) and has been working with a “personal type” computer for over 30 years. She currently has an android tablet. It keeps telling her (she tells me) that she does not have enough mail waiting for it to be delivered.
While I have never used a tablet computer, I had planned to tell her to bring it when I took her to the doctor a month or so ago. (She has finally decided not to drive any longer and hasn’t gotten her senior ride paperwork done yet.) But I forgot and figured I would tell her to bring it when we go to the next doctor – which we would have done this past month if not for my needing to take Robert to the hospital, doctor, etc and sit home with him.
So my BIL, a long time IT person, was at her house and worked on her computer. She had over 1200 emails waiting to come into a tablet (this is how it was explained to me by sister, so if wrong – it is her, not me) which only holds 100 emails at a time. He cleared out her email account and – here it come – unsubscribed her from almost everything she had ever subscribed to, to prevent this happening in the future. He also set up her email to check every 5 minutes instead of every week!
I know that feeling!