Social Psychology

So I took my first Social Psychology class last Thursday. It was alright. Content seems a little more challenging than Russian Studies, simply because the instructor spoke to his passion for the field and didn't mention that the course was "hard to fail" like my Russian Studies instructor did. No final exam for this course, either, even though traditionally there is one. I actually think I might not have any final exams this semester.

On the other hand, in the first lesson we spoke to the Milgram experiment and that one study with the lady who was murdered in public and no one intervened or reported it. Feels like we'll be studying the Zimbardo effect, that experiment with the rhesus monkeys, Genie the Wild Child etc. All stuff that I've been taught about at least two times previously. So maybe more information-heavy but also closer to my comfort zone, so I'm not too intimidated.

Days where I only have Russian Studies or Social Psychology are going to be a bit annoying, as it takes me about an hour and a half to get to class from where I live, and these classes are an hour and a half long. Including the return trip, that's three hours travel for and hour and a half of education. I'm going to try and get in the habit of staying at the school and studying awhile, which might make me feel better about the time investment.

I am often the only person in class to bring a binder with paper and a pencil to take notes. Essentially everyone else will print off the class notes ahead of time or, more often, will open them up on their laptop during class, which are published by the professor on our online system, and simply read along during class. During exams which require a number 2 pencil, I am usually the only person to use  standard pencil, while everyone else uses a mechanical one.

Have you guys heard of dabbing? It's a recent dance move where someone tucks their nose into their elbow bend, like so:

It's really brilliant in how upset it makes everyone when you do it. People act like it's a tragedy. You can dab in public, and people will scream "Oh no, he's dabbing!" (I've done it). One time, I was riding the bus, and some kid in a car riding next to us just started unloading mad dabs on everyone in the bus, and they couldn't do anything about it. I could only bust out laughing at the helpless bus patrons who were helpless to do anything but reel in outrage as they were subjected to a merciless onslaught of dabbing performed in a neighbouring vehicle.

Have you all heard of the recent waves that Szechuan sauce has been making? In the premiere episode of season 3 of an adult cartoon series called Rick and Morty, one of the main characters, Rick, states that his lead motivation is recovering a Szechuan sauce that was made by McDonald's to promote the Mulan Disney move back in the 1980s. Fans got out of hand an started to demand that the sauce be redistributed by McDonalds.

McDonald's first responded by gifting some old sauce to one of the Rick and Morty series creators. At this point, packets of the sauce were being discovered by random people and were getting sold for massively inflated prices. McDonald's then opened up some new sauce-focused chicken-nugget deal where you could choose one of ten sauces that would apparently determine your personality.

Now, while nine of these sauces would be readily available in bulk at each McDonald's location, Szechuan sauce would only be available at select branches, publicly advertised as "Szechuan available". And at each of these branches, only ten or so packets were made available.

So obviously the natural reaction is for fans to travel absurd distances to get their McDonald's sauce and to hold riots when they aren't given it. Szechuan sauce isn't any harder to make than any of the other sauces, by the way. The only reason they held out on this sauce is because they saw the demand, and thought they could get some media publicity via weird rioting.

The Szechuan Sauce put out by McDonald's stopped being advertised as Mulan-inspired or even Asia-inspired, and became Sci-Fi based and riddled with Rick and Morty references without crossing legal boundaries, as Rick and Morty creators expressed distaste for how McDonald's handled things.

Apparently Scechuan sace will be made available to the public in mass this winter. I don't know if I will fall to the consumerism.

You don't joke about McDonald's, yo. Both my East Asian Studies and Intro to Sociology textbooks last semester mentioned how McDonald's revolutionized the world. They haven't been doing well lately (and they shouldn't, they're overpriced and low quality), but they are still gurus in advertisement.