When I was... I wouldn't say I was a child. I wasn't. I was a teenager. Perhaps a new teenager, around thirteen. Around that time, I made this habit out of looking out of the car window and counting how many dead cats I saw.
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3/31/2018
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When I was... I wouldn't say I was a child. I wasn't. I was a teenager. Perhaps a new teenager, around thirteen. Around that time, I made this habit out of looking out of the car window and counting how many dead cats I saw.
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3/27/2018
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I never really cheated in school, I think.
There was this one time when I almost did, though. I think I was in fourth grade. The fact that I'm not sure about that belies the fact that I remember a few random details about that day. It was Filipino class. It was the 1:10 class. It was a quiz done on one of those one-fourth sheets of paper.
I'm sure I was in fourth grade then because I was still classmates with Anna, perhaps my fiercest academic rival during my elementary years - and because we were in this classroom that was wide but felt musty. (I was in a different classroom during the fifth grade.) It was Anna who I tried to copy from. I was having a severe case of mental block and, in hindsight, I was not at all willing to be upstaged by this big-eyed, thin-as-sticks lady who just popped up from out of nowhere.
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There was this one time when I almost did, though. I think I was in fourth grade. The fact that I'm not sure about that belies the fact that I remember a few random details about that day. It was Filipino class. It was the 1:10 class. It was a quiz done on one of those one-fourth sheets of paper.
I'm sure I was in fourth grade then because I was still classmates with Anna, perhaps my fiercest academic rival during my elementary years - and because we were in this classroom that was wide but felt musty. (I was in a different classroom during the fifth grade.) It was Anna who I tried to copy from. I was having a severe case of mental block and, in hindsight, I was not at all willing to be upstaged by this big-eyed, thin-as-sticks lady who just popped up from out of nowhere.
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3/22/2018
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Tweet one: the mother tweet. It's the thing that triggers the virality in the first place. Wait. My laptop has "virality" in red underline. Is that an actual word to begin with? Or, is that even relevant? I mean, words evolve, languages evolve, and "literally" means both what it means and the opposite of what it means, and nobody is fighting over it anymore. Begrudgingly accepting it, perhaps.
So, what makes something go viral? I don't know. It's really a combination of luck and wit, isn't it? Just as long as you don't try so hard to go viral. There really are posts "built" to viral, and almost always they fail, because the Internet knows. Is it dogs? Cats? What's the cat doing? What props are involved? Are there any pastel colors? Are you being humiliated? Do you feel humiliated? Don't be too cocky about it - the Internet knows.
Tweet two: the follow-up tweet. Twitter rolling out its threads feature meant having your thoughts run across multiple 140-character... wait, no, they've since doubled that. Funny how there was an outroar about the site shifting to 280 characters, only for people to end up using it, no? Maximizing it, even. And if you put a lot of emojis in it, that's even more characters, since a picture paints a thousand words, or something.
Read more »
So, what makes something go viral? I don't know. It's really a combination of luck and wit, isn't it? Just as long as you don't try so hard to go viral. There really are posts "built" to viral, and almost always they fail, because the Internet knows. Is it dogs? Cats? What's the cat doing? What props are involved? Are there any pastel colors? Are you being humiliated? Do you feel humiliated? Don't be too cocky about it - the Internet knows.
Tweet two: the follow-up tweet. Twitter rolling out its threads feature meant having your thoughts run across multiple 140-character... wait, no, they've since doubled that. Funny how there was an outroar about the site shifting to 280 characters, only for people to end up using it, no? Maximizing it, even. And if you put a lot of emojis in it, that's even more characters, since a picture paints a thousand words, or something.
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3/06/2018
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Today this blog turns thirteen. Yes, my blog is a teenager.
This is when I should be writing about how my life was when I was just thirteen years old. The opportunity presents itself, after all. It's an easy comparison. Teenagers, they say, are difficult; they're finding out things about the world, forming their own opinions, learning how to push - and enjoying it. Somehow I should be able to connect that to how keeping this blog going has been, well, a bit of a chore, about how difficult it has been to write for this thing lately, partly because I demand more of myself, partly because I am spreading myself too thinly, partly because I really just want to sleep sometimes.
But then, I honestly remember little about when I was thirteen.
Read more »
This is when I should be writing about how my life was when I was just thirteen years old. The opportunity presents itself, after all. It's an easy comparison. Teenagers, they say, are difficult; they're finding out things about the world, forming their own opinions, learning how to push - and enjoying it. Somehow I should be able to connect that to how keeping this blog going has been, well, a bit of a chore, about how difficult it has been to write for this thing lately, partly because I demand more of myself, partly because I am spreading myself too thinly, partly because I really just want to sleep sometimes.
But then, I honestly remember little about when I was thirteen.
Read more »
Niko Batallones writes The Upper Blog.
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