Slacktivism is when people do something easy and useless to make themselves feel like they are supporting a cause – any cause – instead of doing something that will, you know, actually support it. Social media is a hotbed of slacktivism. It’s a plague on humanity, not just because it spams up everybody’s newsfeed, but because it may prevent people from doing anything real.

See, they’ve already got that good feeling that they did something. So they’re not going to actually donate money, or write an email to a politician, or vote, or volunteer at a food kitchen, or go over to a cancer patient’s house and mow their lawn, or anything else that would make any tiny impact at all on anybody’s reality. They shared a picture of a hurt puppy to stop animal abuse! They clicked “Like” to prevent rape! They posted a dumbass cryptic status to prove they think a particular disease really sucks and somebody should make it go away!

All of these actions say “I’m not going to do anything about it. But somebody else totally should.” This is the first important point I want to make: slacktivism is bad.

And you should feel bad.

But the second important point I want to make is that some easy things do have a real impact. Those things do not count as slacktivism. There is a real impact on society when you speak up about the fact that you are perfectly fine with concepts like gay marriage, black people voting, women having jobs, or other basic tenets of modern first-world life.

The only reason marriage equality is up for debate in the first place is that there are still people out there who are completely unaware how many of us regard it as completely normal and can’t even figure out why there’s any debate about it SERIOUSLY WTF WHY ARE WE EVEN STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS.

It’s been proven again and again that until people are shown otherwise, they tend to believe their own opinion is the majority viewpoint. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whether you’re a Walmart greeter in Arkansas or a 6’4″ heavily bearded professional drag queen called Princess Fabulous, I guarantee you know multiple people who have zero exposure to viewpoints other than their own.

So, there are a lot of people who think support for gay marriage is a minority opinion held by gay people and a few activists. They don’t realize how many straight people are perfectly fine with the concept. They don’t realize how many straight people have gay friends, gay relatives, gay coworkers, and consider gayness to be a completely normal thing that is met with about as much reaction as when somebody says “My cousin is a redhead” or “That new guy in accounting is from Minnesota.”

This is where the difference between slacktivism and activism comes in. What are you trying to change? If the goal is to cure a disease, voicing your opinion does jack squat, because as far as I know, microorganisms don’t give a shit about your opinion. But if the goal is to make people realize other people are cool with a certain concept, okay, I’m no expert, but it seems like OPENLY SAYING YOU’RE COOL WITH IT would be the absolute best way to achieve that.

When the goal is to change a country’s laws, there are multiple other ways you can help with that. Voting, writing to politicians, being elected to the Supreme Court, and so on. But don’t underestimate the impact of just casually saying you’re cool with it when the topic comes up in everyday life. It matters, and it makes a difference.

For those who still can’t shake off a sense of optimism (or if there’s a waiting list for all the good street corners in your city), this is what you can expect from a speed dating event.

1. Wildly inappropriate age groups
No matter how old you are, the event you attend will specify a broad age range where you fall at one end, and everybody else will be at the other end. You will spend all night trying to politely act like you’re on a date with people who either look like your grandparents or make you feel uncomfortably like a paedophile.

2. People who have no realistic chance of getting a date any other way
You are not going to find anyone at a speed dating event who is physically attractive and capable of having a normal conversation with another human being. No, you’re not. It won’t happen. You may find a person who is ONE of those things, but if so, they will fail so hard at the other thing that it won’t matter. And yes, I realize I am saying this as a person who has attended speed dating events and must therefore be failing at one or both categories myself.

3. PUAs
A major hazard of speed dating for women, the pick-up artist is a strange and obnoxious creature who follows a bizarre set of rules, gleaned from various books and websites, based on an unshakeable belief that women are not individual human beings but some kind of gameable system in which entering the correct combination of pre-memorized words and phrases will result in sex. There’s usually at least one of them at these events. He will be dressed inappropriately, because PUAs believe looking unusual makes them irresistible. When I say “dressed inappropriately” I mean you will literally assume he is mildly retarded or has some other kind of actual clinical mental problem. Since they do this on purpose, and believe it’s helping their chances rather than the other way around, your assumption may be 100% accurate.

When a PUA starts talking, it’s immediately obvious he is following a script. He will ignore all attempts at conversation from your side, and relentlessly plow forward with his patented Enter Phrase A, Await Response, Enter Phrase B, Touch Hand, Enter Phrase C method. He will supply your side of the conversation in his own head, no matter what you actually say.

At one of these events, I happened to be wearing a ring on the little finger of my right hand. “That’s an interesting ring,” slimed the PUA, taking my hand and holding it while stroking my finger, 30 seconds after meeting me, because inappropriate touching is another thing these weirdos think women like. “Why do you wear it on that finger?” I withdrew my hand and answered the question: “Well, I’m a silversmith as a hobby, and I made this ring as an exercise to learn a new technique. Then I decided to keep it, but it only fits on this finger.” To a normal person, this sort of thing is conversational gold. Suddenly you know about a hobby of mine, and hell, you even have an opening to say “Wow, you made that? How cool!” You can then lead into talking about your own hobbies, or ask how I got into this hobby, or any of a hundred other possibilities, and before you know it, we’re having a real conversation and finding out about each other, perhaps even bonding a little.

This did not occur to the PUA. He was going to follow his script no matter what, because that is the guaranteed way to a woman’s heart and related body parts. His script had started out with “Mention item of clothing, ask question” and damn it, he would follow that road to its end. He ignored my response and started talking about how [insert item of clothing: item=RING: beep boop] rings are very interesting because the ancient Romans believed blah blah blah about [insert item of clothing: item=RING: beep boop] rings and in fact the ancient god of love always used to blah blah blah. As I sat there, jaw dropping at the amount of utter made-up bullshit he was spewing, I thought about telling him I’m very familiar with Roman history, that they didn’t believe anything even remotely akin to what he just told me, and that four seconds on Wikipedia to check the name and gender of the Roman goddess of love would have been time well spent.

But I didn’t. Because fuck PUAs, and I don’t mean that the way they wish I did.

4. People with no life
It’s a safe bet that if you are at a speed dating event, it’s because you haven’t been able to meet people through your other interests. In 90% of cases, the reason will become obvious: the person HAS no other interests.

One guy said he liked music. I said, oh cool, I go to shows all the time myself, and I play the guitar; what sort of music do you like, what bands? Mumble, mumble, mumble. “Oh … all sorts of music … you know.” Fuck off. You’re saying you like music, yet you can’t name even one band in any genre that you like? You can’t even randomly pick the Beatles or some other band that even single-celled microorganisms have heard of, and just fucking fake it?

Another guy said he loved to travel. I said, awesome! I love it too! I’ve had some good times in the southwestern US states, been to Japan and Vanuatu and Samoa, would really like to see Iceland next, where do you mostly go? Well, actually, he said, he mainly just travels within the state. Oh yes, I said, seeing where this was headed but trying to throw the poor guy a bone, there’s some amazing stuff to see here in Colorado, what are your favorite spots? He looked at me like I was cheating. You see, you’re not supposed to ask for details. You’re not supposed to have real interests yourself, or expect that your date might have some.

Here’s a clue, speed daters: stop trying to guess the right lies to tell. Get some actual interests and fucking DO them. Nobody cares what it is. Having even one genuine interest that you can talk intelligently about is going to set you miles above the rest of this crowd of damp, morose human fungus. I don’t care if it’s making your own barbecue sauce or collecting misprinted Kleenex boxes or studying dental diseases of the 17th century. JUST. DO. SOMETHING.

5. People with no social skills
There was the guy who responded to my statement that I enjoyed listening to live music by saying “Oh, you’re a groupie?” I guess my expression clued him in that this was possibly not a great conversational move, and he hastily added, “Ha ha! Just kidding!” Yes, there’s nothing smoother than asking your date if she’s an actual whore within one minute of meeting her. There was the guy I overheard talking to the poor woman at the next table, opening the conversation with a loud and awkward, “Well! So you’re … black … obviously.”

I can only assume it’s a similar experience for the guys. At this very moment, there’s probably more than one disgruntled speed dater telling his friends about ME and they’re all agreeing he dodged a bullet there. Perhaps we can meet up later, down on the corner, if the space lizards don’t get us first.

Bill the Cat (frontman and lead tongue)

Metal fans are rejoicing today as one of the most iconic fictional bands of the 1980s, Deathtöngue, is finally inducted into the Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As pioneers of imaginary metal, Deathtöngue had a lasting influence on non-reality-based musical history.

Based in Bloom County, USA, the band’s lineup featured Bill The Cat on lead tongue, Opus The Penguin on electric tuba, and that guy whose name we can never remember but we think he might have been a woodchuck or a beaver or something. Band manager Steve Dallas wrote most of their music, which included the hit singles “Snail Snot From Satan,” “Demon Drooler of the Sewer,” “Leper Lover,” and “Let’s Run Over Lionel Ritchie With A Tank.” Never afraid of controversy, the band famously one-upped Ozzy Osbourne when, live on stage, Bill The Cat bit the head off a roadie.

Opus (electric tuba)

Deathtöngue’s innovative tongue-based sound was never successfully imitated by any other group. “They really paved the way for a lot of modern imaginary metal,” says imaginary fan Mike Wilson, of East Armpit, Alabama. “When you talk about imaginary metal in the ’80s, most people think of the well-known groups like Spinal Tap or Wyld Stallyns, but Deathtöngue was right up there too. Today, we just wouldn’t have ugly obnoxious jerks such as William Murderface [bassist for imaginary metal superstars Dethklok] if Bill The Cat hadn’t been there 25 years before, showering audiences with spittle, hate, and incoherent songs about pus-filled pimples.”

The band broke up in the late ’80s, reformed briefly as Billy And The Boingers, and broke up again after a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior from its tongue player that included reading the Bible and experimenting with politics and televangelism. Attempts to contact any surviving members of the band were unsuccessful.

The Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was built in 2009 to recognize the significant impact of imaginary music on modern society.

Steve Dallas (lawyer, manager, and songwriter)

“No other single genre has had such a major effect,” said Hall of Fame spokesman Rufus. “In fact, a recent survey of well-known musicians showed that in 100% of cases, their very first musical experiences were in that genre. Whether we’re talking about Eric Clapton’s early performances on a tennis racket while jumping on his bed at the age of seven, or Dave Lombardo shrieking randomly while beating the sides of his highchair with a half-eaten hot dog, all had one thing in common: solid early training in pretending to be the best freakin’ musician ever.”

Rufus said there were numerous challenges in creating the Hall of Fame. “In many cases, because of the imaginary nature of the music, we do not have actual recordings that can be shown to the public,” he said. “But we find that most visitors understand these constraints. One of our most popular recent exhibits was a retrospective of the supergroup Blast Radius, formed in Wales in 1997 by 13-year-old Joey Thomas. As we all know, Blast Radius featured Yngwie Malmsteen, Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads on guitars, Keith Moon on drums, Chewbacca from Star Wars on bass, Rob Halford as backup vocalist, and Joey Thomas himself as lead vocalist.”

It turns out his name was Hodge-Podge and he was obviously a rabbit

“While there is no surviving audio or video of Blast Radius’s performances, we were able to display the band’s logo, which was drawn by Thomas in the margins of his geography homework. It was a tremendously successful exhibit, with all visitors saying they learned a lot about Blast Radius and agreed it was one of the best imaginary bands of all time, especially after Thomas departed the band and was replaced by themselves.”

The induction of Deathtöngue will be marked by a special exhibit that will include a bottle of Bill The Cat’s verminous cocaine-laced urine, some of Steve Dallas’s hair grease, and a tuba similar to the one played by Opus. All admission fees will be donated to a charity that provides spaceship-themed wheelchairs to disabled veterans.

“The board of trustees of the Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame extend their warmest congratulations to Deathtöngue on this most excellent occasion,” said Rufus. “As a proud Imaginary-American myself, I am happy to see our nation hosting the world’s greatest repository of music that doesn’t even exist in any meaningful way but would be awesome if it did.”

This report was originally published on Tyranny of Tradition, a blog that you should be reading if you want to stay informed on important current events such as Lemmy’s multiple liver removal surgery or interviews with Satan.

Dinosaurs of Rock.

I love IMAX documentaries and I love music. So it blew my mind when I discovered a jaw-dropping universal truth: every single IMAX documentary would also be an amazingly good name for a band.

The creators of IMAX obviously had this in mind right from the beginning, with the March 1970 release of the very first giant-screen documentary: Tiger Child. If you cannot hear those words and picture exactly what a 1970s band called Tiger Child would look like and sound like, then you are simply not trying hard enough. Many people reading this won’t even reach the end of the paragraph before they have already imagined the specific type of drugs the drummer was on, and can vaguely remember reading about the legal allegations that led to the band’s inevitable personality conflicts and disappearance from the charts. The 1970s also saw the rise of such diverse acts as Summertide, Volcano, Snowjob, Silent Sky, Italian synth-rock pioneers Alfa 78, and of course Peruvian folk favorites Capture the Sun (whose best-known tribute band, Catch the Sun, enjoyed a certain level of popularity in its own right). There was also Genesis, but obviously nobody would name a band Genesis, so perhaps the theory isn’t 100% perfect.

The 1980s, of course, brought heavy metal. Documentary lovers rocked out to Atmos, Speed, Chronos, Omnisphere, as well as lesser-known foreign bands like Price of Freedom, Primiti Too Taa and Haupango. Shock-rock acts like Beaver achieved notoriety, if only for a short time, and of course there were still plenty of mellower sounds available: Born of Stars with its New Age ethos, and Heartland for the country fans. The Toronto duo My Strange Uncle defied genre and, while they never really made it big in their own time, they now command a small but devoted cult following.

Even as grunge made its appearance in the 1990s, big-name metal bands like Titanica, Ring of Fire, Crashendo, and Black Widow were still very much part of the scene. Teen pop idols came and went: Flowers in the Sky, Funhouse Express, Wildfire, and The Mountain Gorillas (later to break up and re-form with a new singer, as Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees).

From 2000 until today, the list seems endless, and history alone will reveal which of these groups have real staying power. A few to watch, in my opinion, are Rheged (formerly Lost Kingdom), UltimateX, Giants of Patagonia, Steep, To The Arctic, The Flying Monsters, Tornado Alley, and The Trip. I’ll throw in a special mention of a band most people seem to either love or hate, Herbert the Chameleon.

What’s up next in the ever-changing music world? Only the Coming Attractions sign at your local IMAX theatre will tell. Just forget about naming your band Ice Age Deathtrap. That one’s mine, damn it.

Opening for Mastodon.

So I figured, if you can’t offer quality, maybe people will go just as wild for terrible WTF crap, just as long as there’s a LOT of it! The American restaurant industry has always done well with this concept. Sure enough, eight people put in their requests for various works of art, which I dutifully drew to the best of my ability as soon as I got home from work that night.

And here are the results.

@Thomsirveaux requested a picture of a Skyrim character.

@SuperLobster requested a picture of a lobster superhero.

@kristinalustig requested a picture of Harry Potter frolicking in a field of daisies with an enormous bottle of Heinz ketchup.

@Lacello requested the two-headed monster from Sesame Street but with Mr Rogers for one head and Spock for the other head and it should be teaching him a new word.

@mygoditsraining requested a picture of a cow eating some snails.

@LaylaBohm requested a picture of me drawing the picture of the cow eating some snails.

@lostcosmonauts requested a picture of a frog in a top hat and tails, dancing jauntily.

@perfectlydarien requested a picture of himself and @stephenkeller having a lightsaber fight on surfboards.

And there you have it: my contribution to the arts. There is no need to thank me. The knowledge that there are at least eight other people in the world who are weirder than me is comfort enough.

You're just going to stand here in the snow until I get back, aren't you? I feel like such an asshole.

Hello again, My Horse. I am so happy to see you, out here on this howling tundra which I just teleported to for some reason. The last time I saw you, you were in a stable outside a city hundreds of miles away. But with your perfect horse instinct, you knew where I would be the next time I needed a ride somewhere, and here you are. You are the best horse, My Horse.

You always try to fight my enemies for me, even when they’re a dragon or something. And then you get scared and run away. Sometimes you get in my way first, and I accidentally hit you and then the dragon sets me on fire while I’m trying to get you to stop standing in front of me. Then, after I kill it, I have to spend ten minutes running all over the place trying to find you again, and I want to hug you and tell you I’m sorry and you were a good horse for trying to help.

You never have a problem galloping all day, even when I’m maxed out on inventory. I didn’t go overboard on the Body slider but I am still pretty damn built with my shirt off, I figure with plate armor and all my weapons we’re talking 250 lbs at least. And I’m not even mentioning these other ten complete suits of armor which I looted off those bandits, and which I assume I folded up small and stuffed down my pants, because I don’t appear to have a backpack or pockets or anything. You don’t care. You are the strongest horse in the world.

So I try to make things as nice as possible for you, My Horse. When I leave you outside a city, I make sure I get right inside the stable before I dismount, so at least you’ll be under cover while you stand around for days until I need you again. I know this doesn’t mean a lot because it seems to snow right through the roof anyway, but maybe it helps a little.

I’m sorry I treat you the way I do. I’m sorry I never take your saddle off and I’m really, really sorry I never feed you. I’m glad you sometimes look like you’re eating grass when I leave you to stand around alone for weeks out in the wilderness, and I assume you drink from streams or puddles in places that aren’t covered in six feet of permafrost. Sometimes I’ll take one of these apples I keep finding in caves and drop it on the ground in front of you, in case you eat apples when I’m not there. Maybe when I’m in a city, you eat hay in the stables and somebody takes your saddle off and brushes you and everything. I hope so. Maybe you enjoy the company of your friends there, or even spend some quality time with a nice lady horse. Or a man horse. I admit I do not know which you are.

I want to be nicer to you, but I don’t have any option. I mean there literally isn’t any option besides Ride My Horse. But you seem to be okay with that, because you keep coming back. Unlike everybody else I hang out with, you never, ever Gets Tired Of Waiting And Leaves. You just turn your head and look at me and make that pbpbpbthhhh rubbery-lip-blowing horse noise, and I want to give you a big hug and pat you on the nose, as long as nobody is watching, because I have tundra-cred to maintain here.

In many ways, My Horse, you remind me of my first two horses, My Horse and My Horse. I named you after them. Some people might say that’s not very original, but I am a Viking hero guy who goes around hitting people in the face with axes for a living, not Mr Fancy Name Writer Man. My Horse and My Horse were good horses too. I owned them many years ago when I was just starting out in the hero biz, way back when I was apparently the same age I am now. I still feel guilty about what happened to them. No, I mean, nothing happened to them. They are 100% still alive and very happy, and the thing that happened to them will never happen to you, because I think I’m better at aiming power attacks now, and I’m definitely better at maintaining a good camera angle so enormous sheer icy cliffs don’t look like a small, gentle slope right up until you gallop over the edge.

Horses go to Sovngarde, right? I’m pretty sure they do.

Apparently this is what he looks like, unless there's another Tim Tebow who is famous enough for a Wikipedia entry. I carefully did not read the actual Wikipedia entry.

Months later, I can’t help noticing that Ted Teabowl is being mentioned all over the place. You can’t open a news site without saying to yourself, “Oh hey! There’s a story about that guy again! I guess he did something again.” People keep talking about him on Facebook and Twitter. If I watched TV news, I could surely find 24/7 coverage of the thing he does, whatever that is, perhaps on a special all-Tebow-all-the-time channel which started up recently to meet growing international demand.

I have now gone through the first four stages of News Ignorance:

1. Not knowing because you haven’t even heard about it yet.
2. Not knowing because you haven’t bothered to find out more.
3. Not knowing, while being uncomfortably aware that everyone else knows and there is a chance it might be embarrassing if people find out you don’t know.
4. Desperately trying to hide the fact that you don’t know, because it is now starting to be on the same level as not being aware of the existence of gravity, numbers higher than 10, or the color blue.

…and have progressed to the fifth stage:

5. Deliberately setting out to avoid knowing, out of sheer bloodymindedness and misplaced rage against the fact that the whole world is trying to force you to know.

Pushing the limits of human achievement is a fine tradition. Some people set out to climb Mount Everest without oxygen. Some people try to haul a Boeing 747 with their teeth. As a person living in the USA in 2012, with near-constant access to the Internet and the news media, I feel that it’s no less of an achievement to somehow stay completely unaware of anything whatsoever about Tim Tebow.

He has been doing whatever it is he does for, oh, probably months now, possibly years. Back when he started doing it well enough, or badly enough, or in whatever particular way he does it that makes it newsworthy, I knew exactly two things about him: he plays some sort of sport, possibly football but I’m not 100% certain of that, and he does a thing called Tebowing before/after/during his sport-playing endeavors. I do not know what it is or how I am supposed to feel about it.

Now, after what feels like decades of media coverage, those are still the only two things I know about him. As an information junkie, I am proud of that.

Sooner or later, I know I will accidentally find out more about Tim Tebow. I may even accidentally form an opinion about him. And when that day comes, I will not give up. I will stand firm in my right to not give one single shit, standing alone if necessary against ten thousand websites and newspapers and people talking in the break room at work and unsolicited email forwards and bricks thrown through my window wrapped in photographs and endorsements for products and topical references in late-night comedy.

Because when you get right down to it, knowing nothing about Tim Tebow is just a warmup, tough as it may be. Eventually, I will be good enough at it to move on to the real achievement: knowing nothing about Justin Bieber.

Along with several other people, I recently became mildly annoyed by a line in this article. It’s a review of Skyrim, the new Elder Scrolls game. It’s quite a long article, and makes a number of interesting points. Now, I love playing Skyrim like a Khajiit loves moon sugar. Like a Nord loves making racist remarks about how much Khajiits love moon sugar. So I read reviews of Skyrim even when I’m pretty sure I’m not going to gain a skill point from it. You just have to open that thing and click through every page of it anyway, because you never know.

But right at the beginning, my interest in this particular review got thu’umed right off a cliff by the reviewer’s statement that if you, the reader, haven’t heard of Skyrim, you’re probably (gasp!) a woman.

It was a joke. Just a joke! So I’m not going to talk about why it was a dumb joke (it was) or why it was a little misguided to think women gamers wouldn’t get annoyed by it (they did). What I want to talk about is what happens on the Internet when people who are the target of a joke dare to have an opinion about it.

A number of women, including me, commented on that joke. The last I saw of the article’s comments thread, none of our comments went beyond polite annoyance. We all just wanted to point out that we didn’t find it funny, it was dismissive of every woman reading the review or playing the game, and that such jokes are out of place. And the reviewer got the point and apologized. That’s all this whole thing should have been: a writer uses a throwaway gag not expecting to upset anyone, readers politely say it kinda did, writer says oops okay sorry. Everyone is happy and we can all continue killing bandits in caves and taking their stuff. But the responses from male gamers in the comments thread … well, that was something else again.

• “There’s no intimation of discrimination or gender superiority.” — a guy.
• “That comment isn’t sexist at all.” — a guy.
• “Luckily, many adult women don’t show this total lack of irony. Now go report me.” — a guy.
• “Women, it was a goddamn joke. Settle down. No one’s trying to take away your right to vote.” — a guy.
• “Relax, people. If anyone should be offended by that line, it should be guys like me. But I’m not.” — a guy.

This sort of response creates a perfect 10 on the blinding insane berserker rageometer. Best of all, it shuts down all possible further rebuttal. The women who weren’t particularly upset or angry when they posted their original comments are now completely unable to express their further annoyance at being told to shut up and go away, because if they do, they’re just going to prove they Can’t Take A Joke.

So, here we are. By expressing an opinion that a joke about me was perhaps a little insulting to me, I have become that worst of all creatures, a woman with an opinion on the internet, otherwise known as a humorless bitch who needs to get a grip. I have a total lack of irony. I should settle down. I should relax. I should realize that people who were not the target of the joke have a much better right than me to decide whether I should be annoyed by it, and in fact, that they were the ones who should be offended, if anyone.

And they weren’t! So that’s all right, then.

Edit: Wowwwwwww. When I wrote the above post during a five-minute break earlier today, I had no idea it would get this many comments, let alone a mention on Kotaku. Reading through the responses at Kotaku and elsewhere, I’m even more struck by the amount of heat generated by something I thought of as very simple. Many people seemed to automatically assume that I, and the other women who commented, are all crusading idealists who devote huge amounts of time to being angry about gender roles, gamer culture in general, or Tom Bissell’s review specifically. It has all been very interesting and it really does confirm the original feelings that made me write this post. Thank you all for my few minutes of Internet fame, and while you’re here, you might as well read the only other blog post I’ve ever written that a lot of people thought was cool. It has Vikings in it!

The Thing would rate a perfect 10 on the hackneyed cliche-o-meter if they hadn’t missed two opportunities to use hackneyed cliches. In the scene where a terrified guy in a darkened room backs away from where he thinks the monster is coming from, he inexplicably fails to back right into the monster. Also, the woman who is the traditional last survivor continues to wear full Arctic clothing to the end, instead of somehow losing her outer clothing or having it ripped in a revealing way. This is the sort of lazy film-making that gives lazy film-makers an unjustifiably good name.

The costumes were also incredibly lazy. Now, you could probably watch the whole movie without realizing this, because everything looks like a perfectly normal polar base and everyone is dressed as you would expect of people at a modern polar base. The reason this is so lazy is that the movie is set in goddamn 1982. It says so at the beginning, but if you were shuffling your popcorn and missed it, there is no way you could tell from the rest of the movie. The cold-weather clothing looks like it’s made of modern materials. The male characters all have the sort of stubble, beards, and scruffy hair that you get on polar explorers in any era, and the female characters have 2011 hairstyles and 2011 makeup (shut up, of course polar explorers wear full makeup every day).

In the single non-polar scene, everyone is dressed like it’s 2011, but hey, there’s a Men At Work song playing in the background! Long after the movie was over, I realized this was supposed to be a scene-setting historical cue. When you hear a co-worker streaming Mozart on Spotify, do you assume you are in the 18th century? The people who made this film do.

Most of the characters are completely interchangeable. There is the woman you know will be the last survivor. There is the black guy you know will die horribly. How desperate would you have to be, to accept a top secret job where you know you will be the only black guy on the team? It’s pure suicide. You can see he knows this when he goes into the room where the mysterious scary thing is. It’s written all over his face.

All the other characters are Lars Beardimaan Gunnadiesoonson and you won’t even care which order they do it in.

An interesting thing I learned about fire from this movie is that it stays wherever you put it. Once it’s down to the heroine and Guy Who Will Die Second-To-Last, pretty much the whole station is on fire because they go around trying to kill the monster with the giant back-mounted flamethrower which is standard scientific equipment on every polar geological expedition. (Flamethrowers are so important in geology that the station has TWO of them.) After setting every damn thing on fire, they continue to stand in the burning room and have calm conversations, or walk slowly and casually through the burning corridors while the fire stays confined to the exact place where it is supposed to be. It will still be there the next morning. That is just how fire works.

Redeeming features of the movie? Hard to say. The only one I could come up with is that you could use it as an educational film if you’re learning Norwegian and want to know how to say things like “Oh shit!”* and “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEE”** and “Oh god nooooooo aaaaaaaaah helphelphelphelp IT’S EATING MY FACE kill it kill it kill it!”***

I know you’re thinking, “I probably do not need to know how to say that in Norwegian,” and that’s very likely to be true. But if you ever do, oh man, will you be sorry you didn’t learn. You don’t want to risk being in a situation some day where a space monster is eating your face and you don’t know how to instruct bystanders that you would like them to kill it.

*Å faen!
**ÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅIIIIIIIIIIEEEEE
***Herregud neeeeeiii aaaaah hjelphjelphjelphjelp DEN SPISER ANSIKTET MITT drep den drep den drep den!