No Freaking Thanks

Chapter 2

To the surprise of no one, the establishment was crawling with a variety of people: couples that have their children running amok, beer-bellied patrons at the bar, soccer moms arguing with the employees over mild inconveniences, zoomers surrounding others with their smartphones, and even young adults donning far-right codes on their attires. The four can overhear anything within their proximity.

"What do you mean my son has to wait his turn?! It's his birthday!"

"These wings are bussin'! Sheesh!"

"I swear we used to have the blue on our side. Now they are Nazis."

"That high score was fire, my boy!"

Despite the cookie-cutter lines being said ad nauseum, the four took their booth and placed their orders.

While they wait for their orders, Vince pulled a flyer out of his cargo shorts. "Some friend of mine sent me this flyer through Facebook, and I printed it out because we are going to a new age of using an eco-friendly source like paper instead of plastic for everyday uses. Plus, physical media still has a reason to be relevant." The flyer in question is an invitation to a hunting party made to celebrate Vince's friend's 24th birthday and is held in Pennsylvania's Washington County. "My friend won't mind if you choose not to go hunting."

"Why would you bother inviting us to a hunting party?" Joy asked, "You said an indoor amusement park is not the best place to promote gun rights."

"Okay, do you want to know what my shirt said? I'll show you," Vince reached for his phone and sent something to the chat group. The shirt Vince got had a variety of guns along with a caption reading "Celebrate diversity." The cherry on top is that his brain-rotted uncle paid thirty dollars for that eyesore. He concluded, "I may be a Republican, and I know there is a difference between exercising the 2nd Amendment and exploiting it to an extreme degree for one's own amusement."

After finishing up their lunches, they got their arcade cards locked and loaded with credits. Terry first decided on playing skeeball and approached the machine. His swaying hips and apple bottom in high-waisted jeans can the attention of some male patrons. He booted up the game, and the machine expended nine balls. With his hefty grip and good aim, Terry managed to score 63,000 points and earned a jackpot for making a thousand above the threshold. Then, on the screen that would show the number of tickets earned, he first came across an advertisement for a show that is not good according to critics and audiences alike. The problem escalates when this amusement establishment had the gull to start persuading customers to purchase a higher-tier arcade card just to skip the advertisements. Terry was not the only one who is seeing this happening on the machines.

Before Joy could play a hunting game, she first had to see an ad for men's body spray. Jared and Vince got one that is even worse on the air hockey game: a trailer for some cartoon that doubles as a non-fungible token (NFT). In theory, each NFT is unique, and it can not be merged or divided (Voshmgir, 2018, as cited in Regner et al., 2019, p. 2). It would also be transferable from one to another in exchange for cryptocurrency, which works like the traditional form of money, but it is digital-only. To no one's surprise, the four are not interested in investing in cryptocurrency, let alone NFTs. The current craze that has been circling around everyone's minds rent-free is the Tired Alien Monarch, a limited NFT collection that would also make a buyer part of the community. Some of them would go for around $20,000 to $50,000; a small fraction of the gallery ended up being sold for millions. It became successful to the point a rich man in the Netherlands thought that establishing a cartoon involving custom Tired Alien NFTs would be "the next big thing." In the eyes of the majority, they would right-click, save-as any of the NFTs free of charge because those are just JPEGs or PNGs, and that buyers are purchasing only the hyperlinks to the pictures. To add salt to the wound, NFTs have the potential to emit greenhouse gases courtesy of a blockchain run by multiple computers (Levy, 2021).

Jared is the first of the trio to educate on what NFTs are. It did not take long for the three men (and Joy) to know that NFTs are horrible. Vince printed out some of them for target practice with a .44 Magnum revolver and a Kar98k rifle. Jared once jokingly dubbed that NFTs are collectively the "mark of the beast" while streaming himself playing Solitaire with physical cards. Terry and Joy (out of her curiosity about NFTs) downloaded a satirical game modification for Doom II that replaces the demonic enemies with NFT figures and the only weapon the player can use is a camera, referring to how crypto art can be easily copied by a Print Screen button or the "right-click, save-as" method for free (Heaton, 2021). As if having to watch an ad promoting crypto art to play air hockey or a shooting gallery is bad enough, some publishers are beginning to shoehorn NFTs into their games, and the gaming community grew upset. The amusement establishment is kind enough to avoid displaying arcade games that utilize blockchain technology within their coding.

Once the four finished their suffering with countless ads, they invited Hayden after her daily school meeting to participate in a nightly painting session at a local art studio. Everyone cleaned every bit of their sweat from the vigorous suffering, but they each handle their hygiene differently. Vince, being a big boy, has to scrub himself with a bar of soap. Since his facial hair grows back after five days, Vince also shaved every bit of it along with the back hairs on his neck. Like anyone on a budget, he scrubbed his brown hair with some store-brand shampoo. Once Vince finishes his shower, he threw on a Stars-and-Stripes collar shirt free of extremist messages, denim jeans, a brown belt, and brown dress shoes.

Jared, a man conscious about his hygiene, disregards buying any generic personal care products in favor of the more natural kinds he could get from a manufacturer's own web store. The cold-brew-scented soap for his skin, the pine-tar shampoo and conditioner for his blond hair, the pine-tar deodorant for his armpits, and the spearmint toothpaste for his shiny teeth. These products along with his tidy attires would put a 2000s-style male pop star to shame. However, Jared was not much of a bodybuilder, but rather a bookworm. This alienated him from the other boys who then became muscular chick magnets. Not even his family's great financial status did any good. When comparing this social tree found in a clichéd teen movie to how it is now, it was nothing. With the advancements of social media, people get into verbal battles over some of the most ridiculous topics possible on any platform such as NFTs, politics, and public health. Jared is not affiliated with either the Democrats or Republicans, calls the so-called religious or medical exemptions on basic health regulations "the insanity agenda," and ignores connections between crimes and protected classes (age, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, et cetera), but rather between crimes and the way people think morally. For instance, Jared would point out signs of pedophilia because of the explicit way someone puts their hands on a child instead of the race or gender identity. He has been friends with someone who cross-dresses like Terry Darrell and the latter has not once wanted to groom a child because it is morally wrong.

Speaking of Terry, the androgynous man would use naturally-sourced strawberry soap to achieve silky skin and the same shampoo/conditioner combination for his jet-black hair. As for clothes, he puts on the following: high-waisted briefs, an azure t-shirt, black jeans that hug every curve of his long legs and toned tuchus, white socks, and blue shoes with one-inch elevations for his heels; and of course, he would need to adjust himself to stay comfortable. His sister, on the other hand, would lazily spray herself with body spray. While showering, she uses the generic shampoo and soap. Joy would make a big curl from her brown hair, like a certain Pokémon known for its singing. Since there was a chance she would find handsome men at the art event, Joy dressed up herself in a bright red dress, red heels, and applied lipstick along with little foundation and mascara. Hayden is not different from her daughter, albeit being dressed in green. Once Hayden took some of her kombucha, theDarrells got in the blue Forester and headed out to the art studio.