There’s something really cathartic about placing shit in a firepit and just watching it burn away.
" …some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the wood burn "
White guy detected
It’s also the smell of smoke. The crackling. The heat. How the poking stick feels in your hand. Poke poke
Of course I know him. He’s me!
I didn’t know it was a racial trait.
Yeah, like why does race need to be involved here? Fire should be for everyone to enjoy.
Outdoor recreation and camping was and still sort of is exclusionary to black folks especially, but there’s a lot of people trying to change that
I live in the UK so I don’t think this really applies here. If you are not going out and touching grass, its on you. Not the colour of your skin.
Yes I think there are some differences between racism in the UK and the US
I am curious now, how does race stop someone touching grass in the US?
Intersectionly.
The US has extremely shit PT, with black Americans often living in already under-serviced communities, and with less disposable income and social services to support them to travel off to touch some grass.
What does PT mean in this context?
Lookup “Sundown Towns”
It doesn’t, but it does result in comments like yours. I’m not interested in responding further to you.
There are quite a few black comedians in the USA who explain why. Basically life as a black man in the US is hard enough and there is no need to introduce recreational “challenges” like campingto feel fulfilled.
It’s a joke.
I see that. But where lies the joke exactly? My interpretation is that this white dude barely knows what he’s doing, like constantly moving the wood. To me is more like set it up, and watch it burn. Then, from time to time, you add another log.
I mean, there’s no way of knowing with any certainty from this image alone whether or not the guy is tending the fire competently…
But it is actually not as simple as ‘just throw on another log’.
How long do you want the fire to burn?
How hot do you want the fire to burn?
Do you have an accelerant, or no?
Is your timber and kindling very dry or very wet?
Is your timber and kindling going to need to burn through bark or not?
How sappy is your timber and kindling?
How hot or cold or windy is it, is it expected to become?
All these things and more can and do affect the initial layout of the campfire, how to adjust it and maintain it to keep it going at the rate and intensity you want it to, especially if the desired goal state of the fire changes, and/or environmental conditions change or are expected to change significantly.
…
Anyway, the ‘joke’ could be more or less racially based.
I’d say yeah, you probably are more likely to find a random white guy that uh… knows all the stuff I just previously said, but thats because a random white guy (in the US, at least) is more likely to have come from a family that could afford camping trips, could send their kids to the scouts or something.
(This is basically the same root behind the ‘black people don’t know how to swim’ uh, ‘joke’.)
(Yep, turns out you’re more likely to learn how to swim if your parents could afford to / were not segregated out of living in a community with access to pools or beaches)
Again though, there’s no real way from the given context to determine… whether or not the image was made by someone aware of this, and is referencing that…
… or if they’re just making a very basic, pithy, uninformed, surface level observation…
or somewhere in between this.
…
There could also be an element of sexism to the ‘joke’, if you interperet ‘and I respect that’ as completely sarcastic, sort of going along with your interpretation.
‘Oh, clearly this dude doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s just trying to look like he knows what he’s doing.’
…
So yeah, if your ‘joke’ is possibly racist, possibly sexist, unclear about whether or not it actually is, and generally illicits confusion when it is described or explained as a joke…
Then uh, I agree with you, its not a very good joke.
…
Also, to perhaps clarify younger / more modern slang:
‘really fucks with’, to maybe a millenial or older, would mean that you keep consistently interfering with or engaging with some person or process or activity.
But! To Gen Z / A, ‘really fucks with’ is closer to… ‘spends their time’ or ‘engages at all’ or even ‘is seriously dedicated to’.
Like if I asked a Gen A if they knew person A, they could respond, ‘No, I don’t really fuck with person A’.
And that would basically mean that they don’t know them that well, or at all.
Whereas if a millenial or older person said ‘I don’t really fuck with person A’… that would be more like a denial of bullying or harassing them.
The Gen Z/A usage of ‘fucks with’ is much more morally/intent neutral, wheras the Millenial/Older usage is more morally/intent negative.
Thanks a lot :) There’s always a lemmy user who really fucks with explaining a meme and I respect that <3
no cap man fr fr, gotta recognize the w’s when you get em, appreciate you gassin’ me up!
low key, you gotta lay off that brainrot addiction a bit, replace it with just a dash, a little sprinkle of linguistic hyperfixation, as well as healthy downtime, contemplation, and then a lot of those jokes and memes? they just hit different.
(uh, uh, ok, imagine this comment also overlay bordered with subway surfers or something)
(up to you to determine if the meta irony of that is intentional or not)
This is some damn fine analysis of a screencap of a TikTok.
Autism + Boredom + Lemmy =
Inordinant level of analysis on entirely random subjects
EDIT
Oh right, social norms!
Skipped my mind.
Thank you for the compliment =D
Mmm, but what if a log falls over? Or all of one side of a piece of wood burns? Or someone decides they wanna make s’mores and they need a good spot for it?
White people’s ancestors had to survive brutal winters. It’s the reason they’re white.
Ehhhh, even places like the Sahara can get below freezing temps at night. Of course we also shouldn’t forget that people native to the Asian steppe and American high plains would also need to deal with freezing temps. I just think that it’s a human trait in general to need to mess with fires. (That probably stems from a vast amount of people on earth being able to trace their heritage back to the Mongols)
Or gendered. I do this in my friend group. I also grill, smoke, and bbq.
Yeah my sister and I are both the fire keeper type.
I absolutely adore keeping the fire going. I was a white man for decades so i’m not dodging the allegations. I have never been camping where i was not the last person awake and always keeping the fire just right until all the wood was gone.
It’s all about the air flow. Too much and everything burns too quickly in a roaring furnace, too little and you have no light and not enough heat. By constantly adjusting the logs you can maintain the proper air flow to keep everything just right. Rotating a log to present fresh wood to an eager flame here. Squeezing two logs a little closer to reduce the oxygen and trim things up there. A proper fire adjusting stick (and a backup) is crucial.
Give me a stack of seasoned wood, a k-bar, a magnesium fire starter and a comfy camp chair and i’m in heaven from the time the sun sets until the wood runs out.
I was a white man for decades
I feel like someone’s gotta ask: Are you no longer a white man?
Too much soot from staying near the fire
My lungs have turned black.
Probably a trans woman? From the name and Fed instance.
from the name??
this is going to mess with me when i make my next account 😂
My take is that ‘violetsoftness’ just seems like a feminine username. So if you used to identify as male but now use that username, I also guessed trans woman. The name itself doesn’t necessarily make me think trans, just fem.
For whatever it’s worth, I think it’s a great name! It gives a nice, friendly vibe, like you would be fun to hang out with.
<3
Either that or an it*lian.
@Alxe has it, I am now a white woman :)
reverse Micheal Jackson?
Solidarity from another former white guy and campfire enthusiast.
Three of us!
💖
I read this in Ron Swanson’s voice.
As someone else who was a white man for decades, ever started a fire from sratch ?
I’ve done it once. Pain in the ass, but the sense of accomplishment you get from starting a fire with nothing but kindling, some sticks, and a boot lace is amazing.
have tried 3-4 times but never even got a whiff of smoke! The region i camp in is generally described as ‘rainforest’ and while i have to assume it’s possible I am missing some trick to it.
Pro tip: dip a paper towel in olive oil, stuff it under the main log, and light it up. Olive oil burns slow and hot.
they are talking about making fire without using lighter or matches or a fire starter, just wood on wood friction the way people had to make fire before any of those things existed. An oily rag won’t help you with the difficult part; making a small coal to light your tinder.
Right, I missed that.
I love when I get back home and even after a shower and laundry, my hair and clothes still smell smokey.
fuck yeah that’s good shit
It’s all good until you experience a fire where there’s two of them.
‘I was kind of saving that stick’
‘Dude, you’re choking it’
Lol, depends on the group. I was recently at an sca event and had a fire going with another tender, and we worked great keeping the fire stoked and we’re super chill about it. We even helped each other reset the stack as it collapsed and more fuel was added.
Oh man.
One = chill small little fire.
Two = big fire, no one’s getting cold.
Three = call the fire department cause we’re about to start throwing big shit on this flame.Wrong! Give me a fire buddy!
where there’s two of them.
This is getting out of hand!
If there isn’t another I will become that person just to fuck with them.
I feel like it’s a do-or-die caveman instinct or something.
I was hanging out with a group of people in my friend’s backyard. We were supposed to have a bonfire, but the wood was wet and wasn’t burning. We used all sorts of fuel, fire starters, etc. I saw what looked like corner of a log turn into ember, so wouldn’t give up. Never got a flame when we were there, of course.
I felt very proud though when my friend sent me door camera footage of the firepit turning into a massive blaze in the middle of night that woke her up.
Wet wood is the worst. If you have some dry and some wet you can sort of power through it. A cabin we were at with a wood burning fireplace had a lot of wet wood. It kept popping and scaring us so we kept making that joke from The Office “the fire is shooting at us!”
Brown guy here, I like fire too
You know it’s American when skin colour is mentioned for no reason
I went to an engineering school and I am here to tell you that pyromancy is practiced by every type of person.
The best pyromancy comes from the United States, we have such classics as The German Barbeque, Korean Barbeque, Vietnam Barbeque, and California.
Is that a jab about all the forest fires CA keeps experiencing? If so, well done. I chuckled.
I’m from the Inland Empire here in SoCal I have to make jokes or the sirens call of the inferno starts to eat away at ones mind.
You forgot the Midwest Bonfire with 1000 drunken teenagers and a fire big enough that the local fire chief comes to check on it.
Isn’t that just Sunday?
Yeah, whats the deal with “white guy”? Guys like fucking with fire. Black, white, brown, blue. If theres an alien species on the other side of the galaxy, you can bet they have something very much like guys, and the love fucking with fire.
Wait… I’m white!?
sorry you had to find out this way
Does dad know?!
who do you think gave you the skin
“See no Evil, Hear no Evil” - 1989 Funny comedy, has my previous comment as a line in it.
“Sad Story 😥” - 2020 Twitter meme, has my previous comment as a line in it.
DONT HATE it’s all he’s got
Well, technically without him there would be no fire.
be honest, the Nike gel soles are doin most of the heavy liftin’
Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
That’s what I’m sayin’! I’m mildly autistic and not very good socially. Even if I want to be there it can be difficult. Tending to the fire is a way I get to participate.
You all laugh until the fire is in the oven of a hut with freezing temperatures outside and the fire guy is the one getting up in the middle of the night to keep the fire going. You then wake up to a cozy hut instead of spending the first two hours awake freezing in your sleeping bags.
you mean recruit. we recruit.
I don’t know why, I just have to keep poking that fucker with the dedicated poking stick, then wave the burning poking stick around for a bit.
In my experience, they’ve been Mexican or Puerto Rican. Though those are my two main travel destinations, so there might be some selection bias. Both for me and the meme
I know a set of brothers who all have this ingrained. They have each said at one point or another “You gotta fuck the fire.”
Hope the intent has/will always be basic firepit maintenance.
I too feel very seen right now.
