I Went to A Kentucky Fried Chicken Buffet...

...and it was awesome.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

In the American South, there is a longstanding stereotype that African Americans absolutely love fried chicken. As long-time readers of The Internet Is In America can tell you, however, this is actually more of a regional, rural birth rite than any sort of ethnoracial qualifier. I come from a long line of Appalachian trailer trash with skin whiter than albino mayonnaise, and my goodness, we ate fried chicken every opportunity we could when I was growing up. Fourth of July, Easter, Thanksgiving ... I'm pretty sure we ordered a bucket of original recipe and mashed potatoes for Christmas once. The Colonel was such a staple of my diet during my formative years that, even at the ripe old age of 30, I'm pretty sure at least half of my DNA is comprised of whatever they put in that delicious, delicious brown gravy. 

The thing is, I really don't get an opportunity to slake upon KFC's assorted offerings that often anymore. As far as quick bites, the fast food stalwart doesn't really lend itself well to always-on-the-go junk food (and junk culture) consumers such as myself. The containers are bulky, the food is greasy, it leaves bones all over the place, you have to work with all those damn lids, so on and so forth. It's tasty, to be sure, but at Taco Bell or Burger King, all I have to do is peel back a paper wrapper, chew, and occasionally shat out some turquoise-colored after-meal. The Colonel, by contrast, makes you work a little for your calories, and by golly, I need those precious, squandered minutes to do more important things with my life, like write about Robocop cartoons from the 1980s.

But lo and behold, I recently stumbled across something that made me view KFC in an entirely different light. Before we begin, however, a quick primer on the geography of metro Atlanta is necessary. About 90 percent of the city proper rests in Fulton County, a 1 million person-plus, backwards California-shaped swath that stretches for about 530 square miles from Chattahoochee Hills a half hour south of Atlanta all the way to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains damn near an hour north of the ATL. The county is bifurcated by Atlanta, with the southern portion of the county by and large home to economically-disadvantaged African Americans and the northern portion of the county by and large home to rich white and Asian motherfuckers. 

With a population nearing 100,000 people, Roswell is one of the larger north Atlanta 'burbs, and with an average annual household income stretching well beyond $100K, it's also one of the wealthiest. By and large, it's an utterly unremarkable town, one of those shitty Southern locales that's 90 percent subdivisions and half-filled strip malls, but because they've got a lot of parks and really overpriced downtown restaurants, they tend to think they're a lot better than they really are. Oh, and their mayor is racist as fuck. That probably needs to be mentioned somewhere.

Alas, beyond the ungodly traffic near Georgia 400 and all of the monuments to slave owners, you will find at least one jewel in the proverbial dumpster. Folks, Roswell is home to an all-you-can-eat KFC buffet. 

Conducting subsequent research, I discovered specialty restaurants of the sort - in the same vein as this Chick-fil-A buffet - aren't all that aberrational. In fact, there are quite a few KFC buffets throughout the metro Atlanta area but by golly, this was the first such location my peepers had ever seen. So, what is it actually like to waltz into the place, plop down $8.29 USD and go to town on some biscuits and mashed taters? Well, let's take a photographic journey, why don't we?

First things first, the exterior and interior of the building is rather unremarkable. In fact, if it wasn't for the gigantic metal buffet line, it would be completely indistinguishable from all of the other KFC restaurants out there.  

The set-up was EXTREMELY low-tech. Expecting ceramic plates, a'la Golden Corral? That's elitist bullshit, here at the KFC buffet you have to eat off flimsy plastic trays and honest-to-goodness STYROFOAM plates. And as someone who is well versed in economical household goods, I can almost guarantee you these are the Dollar Tree plate-bowls, too. 

Which brings us to the drink fountain. All in all, it is pretty much what you would expect. In keeping with Yum! Brands tradition, all of the offerings are Pepsi-branded. And perhaps appealing to the region's growing Hispanic audience, the fountain also offered apple-flavored soda, which is definitely NOT something you'd see at most establishments with a high clientele quotient of uppity white folks. 

...unfortunately, I didn't get to try out the delicious-looking apple-cola because the goddamn thing was unplugged. Yes, that's right, they turned off the fountain just in time for the evening rush, so the only thing I could pour down my throat hole was good old fashioned agua.

The buffet itself was broken up into salad offerings, sides and desserts and, of course deep-fried poultry. All in all, it was a rather unremarkable set-up, although the stickers kinda' made up for its abject normalness. 

As far as the veggie offerings go, you had the standard shredded lettuce, onions, coleslaw, carrots and corn. Probably the weirdest thing here was the inclusion of sliced up cranberry jam, which to me, doesn't exactly feel like the kind of thing you want sandwiched in between your original recipe chicken and a gravy soaked biscuit. And speaking of gravy...

Folks, the sides-section is reason enough to visit the restaurant. You get a mountain of mashed potatoes, BOTH kinds of gravy (the smoky, smooth brown sauce and the chunky, milky white variety) and if that wasn't enough, a delicious macaroni jambalaya, too. I'm not sure if it's a KFC diktat or some improvisation from the employees (about half and half Hispanic and African-American), but the beans and rice definitely stood out. The frijoles were embedded with slivers of jalapeño, while the rice had chunks of maize in it, with just a hint of Southwestern seasoning. All in all, it was a downright awesome syncretism of Southeastern soul food and South of the Border home cooking, and it is worth going out of your way to experience. Well, if you live kinda' close by, anyway. 

Eh, and what about the desserts? You are in luck, amigo, because that evening, there was a giant aluminum foil tray filled with peach cobbler, topped by a super-sugary layer of frosting. In an unrelated note, I have no idea why obesity rates in the Southland are so much higher than other parts of the country, either. 

As for the chicken buffet itself? Well, seeing as how I stopped by right when it was closing, the pickings ... to say the least .... were slim. As in, the only thing that was left were the crispy remnants of thighs, legs and breasts patrons gobbled up two hours earlier.  

However, the folks behind the counter were gracious enough to hand me as much fried and grilled chicken from those giant industrial ovens as I wanted. To the franchisers in Roswell, I just want you to know that your crew - as of mid Jan. 2016 - were fucking awesome and everything a fast food crew ought to be. They were prompt, considerate and very friendly, and they didn't even ask any questions when I stuck my camera under the sneeze guard to take up-close photos of the drumsticks. Not all fast food employees deserve $15 an hour, but in my book, the guys and gals at THIS Kentucky Fried Chicken establishment absolutely deserve it. 

You know, there sure are a lot of food snobs out there, especially in the metro Atlanta environs. Just two miles away from this very KFC restaurant there is this thing called Canton Street, which is home to a bunch of ritzy "independent" restaurants that are actually heavily financed by the city's downtown development authority (so much for local governments not picking winners and losers in commerce, no?) All of those crypto-racist, gentrification-and-"walkability"-loving', poor-people-hatin' suburban supremacists can keep their $93 hamburgers and microscopic portions of filet mignon, 'cause I'd much rather kick back, toss down $9 and eat plate after plate of delicious, deep fried chicken with REAL working class Americans. Not only is it a less pretentious and more cost-efficient dining experience, I am damn CONVINCED that the quality of food here is superior to whatever you'd find at those neo-yuppie haunts, anyway. 

So what more can I say? For less than it takes to pick up a DVD, you can slake upon as much macaroni, rice, brown gravy, bean paste and poultry as you want, and it is fantastic. Really, one has to wonder why more restaurants do not offer similar services - I mean, who wouldn't want to visit a Taco Bell buffet? That's right, nobody alive. 

In all seriousness though, visit this place and its kindred. The heart and soul of any small or midsize city isn't in its synthetic,  government-subsidized downtown districts, but in the small franchisees in the pothole-strewn parts of town where the lights don't work half the time. Not only are you subjecting yourself to some extremely decadent comfort food goodness, you are also helping support the true working class and sending a big, fat, hearty "eff you" to the crony capitalist elites. 

I'm still not sure what the famed "seven herbs and spices" are supposed to be, but at this restaurant in the northern 'burbs, I'm pretty sure there's an eighth in every biscuit and drumstick: proletariat pride, and by God, that's something you owe yourself a taste of every now and then. 

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American Media versus Middle America

Just why does Hollywood hate rural consumers -- and their preferred entertainment brands -- so much?

Paula Deen, the Savannah, Georgia native whose love of deep fried, calorie-loaded cuisine made her a cable TV Leviathan, is the latest victim in a media purge of any and all Red state icons from popular culture. For those of you that have been living underneath a boulder all summer, Deen confessed to dropping the “N” bomb several decades ago, and since she may or may not have wanted to stage something of a minstrel show at her brother's wedding, she was immediately sacrificed on the altar of contemporary political correctness -- a considerable amount of fat to burn as an offering to the (non-gender or race-specified) P.C. Gods, no doubt.

Say what you will about Deen’s alleged statements (and, uh, the shit she actually fessed up to), but it’s hard to deny that her brutal public assassination by the media’s sharpest shooters isn’t indicative of a widespread cultural pogrom against mass media figures that are a.) lucrative, b.) beloved by rural (especially Southern rural) individuals and c.), of course, Anglo-Saxon European in culture, heritage and outward appearance.

The barons of popular media aren’t just celebrating Deen’s downfall like the denizens of a Super Bowl winning city, they’re revealing in her career suicide like Scrooge McDuck showering himself with golden coins. The elimination of Paula Deen from “the mainstream” is another moral win for the elitist, coastal media cartel -- a consortium of hyper-liberal, hyper-P.C. and hyper-snotty social guardians that have no problems making moolah off rural citizens but would rather commit hari-kari before giving them any bona-fide political and social representation in the public spotlight.

It’s a clear paradox; the New York-Hollywood media connection absolutely detests everything rural America -- especially rural southern America -- stands for. They hate their right-wing political views (automatically deemed oppressive, homophobic, misogynistic and racist, of course), they hate their religious beliefs, they hate their attachment to family (and those loathsome, prejudiced “family values” tied with it) and they hate, much more than anything, the fact that they actually HAVE money and can contribute considerable amounts of revenue into their pop culture constructions (which, clearly, most southerners choose not to.)

If you gauged what rural America was based on popular culture, it appears to be a social wasteland, filled with toothless, rebel-flag waving homophobes and subservient, still-marginalized African-Americans, united only by an admixture of charismatic Christianity, regional kitsch, folksy patois and of course, horrifically unhealthy foodstuffs. In some ways, the public eradication of Paula Deen is something of a symbolic destruction of the cultural systems that the coastal P.C. police consider the main obstructive pillars separating southern folk from assimilation into Camp Democrat. If only the whites and blacks would give up that crazy old time religion, and give up the fried food, and give up the ass-backwards lingo, and start reading Vogue and Newsweek, than maybe, we could civilize those folks into the kinds of consumers we want ‘em to be.

As opposed to other reputable news sources, of course.

The problem here is multi-pointed. First and foremost, the cultural aggressors are apparently unaware that the southland, that worthless stretch of real estate stretching from Virginia all the way to Texas, is not only the most heavily populated region of the country, it’s also…gasp…the wealthiest, being home to approximately one-tenth of the world's Fortune 500 companies.

Looking at the household income of several Southern metropolises, such as Atlanta, Austin and Charlotte, it’s quite apparent that all of us poor honkies and black folk are in reality quite a bit richer than most of the high-and-mighty denizens of Liberaltopias such as Philadelphia and Santa Barbara. The fact that cultural integration -- i.e., the levels of people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds living, commingling, schooling, working and marrying together -- is oftentimes higher in the south than elsewhere is also an inconvenient reality that is all but ignored by contemporary, coastal media. Seems to me that the media complex doesn’t WANT to acknowledge the southlands’ impressive progressivism in terms of race relations and economics, because…well, shit, I just reckon they want some racial holdover around to kick up whenever an uncomplicated answer is needed to complex social problems. “Well, uh, we can explain complicated cultural matters today because…a long, long time ago…there was racial bigotry in the South!” The past indiscretions of Dixie, it seems, is a cultural security blanket the mainstream media never intends on relinquishing -- all the while ignoring  the north's history of racial persecution and contemporary discrimination, of course.

The real rift between the rural South and the coastal media cartel is simply a matter of marketing, however. You see, the left-coast media-makers have a firm idea of what it is that American consumers want -- Tom Hanks movies, gangster rap, TV shows about New York hipsters ala “Friends” and “Seinfeld.” The thing is, people in rural America just don’t give a shit about the stuff the mass media complex keeps telling them they should like, and have instead embraced their own pop culture machinery. Country music is a format that exists entirely outside the domain of contemporary pop culture, a form of music that lives in an apartheid state completely detached from everything else in the industry; and unlike niche genres like death metal and techno, people actually BUY country music, making it, effectively, the most popular genre in the U.S. Of course, you never saw Garth Brooks on MTV, nor did you see the Oak Ridge Boys play at the Grammys -- the record companies are certainly willing to make a cheap buck of acts that cater to rural tastes, but they will be goddamned before they give them a prominent spot in the public eye.

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, movies catering to southern viewers -- stuff like “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Cannonball Run” -- were huge moneymakers for studios, but of course, the makers of such films were ashamed. Not because the films were of a low quality and pandering to rural demographics, but because the movies actually MADE money and people that otherwise had no interest in Hollywood productions actually opened their wallets to see them. Movies geared towards southern audiences today are limited to the occasional “Tyler Perry” movie, with southern viewers of all racial delineations having no interest in Hollywood claptrap like “The Devil’s Knot” -- a film that typifies Hollywood’s almost infantile inability to view southerners as actual human beings as opposed to intellectually-stunted, slow-talking space aliens.

They have beards, therefore, they have to be racists. Clearly.

But really, it’s TV where the rift between Hollywood and Dollywood shows itself the most. Far and away, television is the go-to media format for older southerners. They almost never go to the cinema, they don’t buy music and they’re Internet use is highly limited. Therefore, they watch a TON of TV. Now, since such a huge audience of rural folks (with sizable disposable incomes, at that) are watching television, you would THINK that the coastal conglomerates would try to cater to the format-dedicated audience. While Hollywood tries to sell general America on “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones,” middle America is watching what it’s always enjoyed; trashy daytime talk shows, pro wrestling, Country Music Television, SEC football, “American Idol” and the granddaddy of all old-shame, regional programming favorites, “Cops.” And even when programs of the like net huge ratings for networks -- as the “Blue Collar Comedy” flicks did for Comedy Central -- the same networks try to shy away from what puts money in their own wallets and invest more airtime in “civilized” programming that rural citizens have no interest in subjecting themselves to. This wholly explains why David Cross is allotted money for commercial failure after failure, while proven box office draws like Larry the Cable Guy, despite consistent media success, are considered persona non grata in the entertainment complex.

Strangely, the reality TV boom of the 2000s gave rural citizens its two most prominent slices of pop culture exposure -- “Duck Dynasty” and “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” In a way, both programs are reactionary to the glut of high-society, elitist pop-crap like “The Hills” and “Laguna Beach” -- insight into the phony, plastic-wrap world of make believe debutantes and vapid high-society snobs that has about as much appeal to southerners as an all Canadian Stanley Cup Final.

The truly weird thing that happened with both programs is that, while they were clearly designed as passive aggressive swipes at regional anti-intellectualism, they actually CONNECTED with rural viewers. The misadventures of an obese, energy-drink chugging fourth-grader and the probably-scripted anti-adventures of a bunch of bearded capitalists pretending to be general store stock dunderheads had much more allure to regional viewers than, say, something like “Dexter” or  “The Wire,” if only for the fact that “Honey Boo Boo” and “Duck Dynasty” had an air of sincerity to them. In a way, the southern folks KNOW they are being pandered to with such programs, and they appreciate the honesty with the greatest civic endorsement of them all -- hitting the record button on their DVRs.

Of course, the success of the two aforementioned programs has led to a dearth of pale imitators, all trying to capitalize on the unexpected popularity of  “Dynasty” and “Boo Boo.” The coastal conglomerates MISTOOK viewers’ appreciation of the genuine representation of southern culture as the primary catalyst for the shows’ success, and instead thought that such shows were popular because viewers had a cruel, Schadenfreude streak in them that enjoyed miring in stupidity, aimlessness and the culture of rural poverty. In a recession-rocked world, THEY thought that shows of the like were ways for distressed suburbanites to vicariously pretend to be careless white trash, to fantasize about not having duties, obligations or that precarious feeling of elitist stature. And from that, enter shows about parolees and pit bulls, people that pretend to raid storage sheds for a living and quite possibly the nadir of the entire movement, “Buckwild,” a pseudo-reality program about Darwin Awards-baiting teenagers in West Virginia that incurred an untimely series finale after its star attraction was killed in a bizarre  accident that in no way, shape or form looked like the desperate act of a suicidal youth trying to escape his social confines and unwanted media attention. Tears a plenty were shed by Viacom that day…not because their reluctant lead actor was dead, but because he died BEFORE they could catch him on tape saying something politically incorrect. Suicide in Hollywood is cool, remember, just as long as you don’t commit career suicide first.

And so, Hollywood’s bizarre “white trash exploitation” fad -- a movement in which media producers shamelessly trot out stereotypical product after product and attempt to feign shame when such productions are more lucrative than their “higher brow” offerings -- looks like it’ll be chugging along for quite awhile. Methinks as the trend continues, perhaps the media producers can take their offerings to the next logical step, and utterly embrace the low-budget, hedonistic lifestyles of Southern miscreants. Coming this fall to AMC, it’s “Crankin’ Y’all!” an all-new semi-reality series about small-time meth dealers in Mississippi with third grade educations, whose dialects consist primarily of grunts and racial slur variations. Finally, a show that lifts the veil on a culture the Hollywood elitists so desperately want to exist, a veritable smorgasbord of Caucasoid idiocy and social backwardness! Mullets and illegal firearms and pitiable religiosity and of course, all the blatant, self-righteous condemnation of impoverished racists you can shake a burning cross at!

Meanwhile, the executive suits at A&E and TLC wait anxiously, twiddling their thumbs and praying to the gods they don’t believe in that Honey Boo Boo gets caught dropping an ethnic epithet in front of a TMZ camera crew, because as we all know, the ignorant parroting of a child living in paucity is a far, far greater social ill than a bunch of ravenous adults following around children with the intent of wrecking their social livelihoods. Oh, the joy producers must feel cherishing the thought of one of the “Duck Dynasty” members being recorded saying something homophobic or anti-Semitic! Never mind the squandered revenue, in this day and age, the scent of a burnt cash cow is more desirable than milking a pitiful, rural-icon for millions in annual profits.

Let’s face it; these hyper-P.C., Red-state haters aren’t going to be content until Dixieland burns down for a second time…

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The Recession, Online Media and the Resurgence of American Creativity

How the economic downturn inadvertently closed the gap between technological elitists and “the common man”

Wi-Fi, as it turned out, just so happened to become the last bulwark of democratized society.

You scoff at such an assertion? In a country rattled by mushrooming unemployment numbers (capped off by a severely under-reported national under-employment rate hoovering around 18 percent), wireless Internet has been pretty much the only thing that’s kept the under-class and under-privileged relevant in a society becoming more and more insulated in regards to pop culture. “Technological homogeneity,” I call it: the reality that the upwardly mobile are becoming increasingly distant from the cultural artifacts of the common man and his social relics. That means more and more of the tablet-scribbling, smart phone-using, latte-sipping techno-nerds are beginning to resemble one another in cultural likes and dislikes, no matter their dissimilarities in ethnicity, race, gender or political/social affiliations.

The rhetoric we’ve heard for the last two decades has been that the “Intranet” would be the great unifier of culture. While that is true in some regards, technology has also been a great separator in regards to communal productivity, too. Prior to 2007, who exactly was making the most use of “free” technological services like YouTube, Twitter and even social networking sites like Facebook? The answer, of course, was the early adapters, the technologically-savvy that flocked to such services not as a means of broadcasting, but as a means of insulating. While it seems pretty counter-intuitive to think of such sites as insulated domains now, you have to think about the state of such sites five years ago. If you were on YouTube, it’s because you wanted to share information with very insulated groups of people, not necessarily because you wanted the entire world to comment on your recorded trifles. The whole point of Facebook was to give college kids a venue to chit and chat without the interloping typing of non-academics. Short message services were meant to relay truncated, and occasionally coded, messages to small numbers of people; sites like Twitter and Tumblr became ineffaceable social monuments not because people wanted instant information, but because people originally wanted access to abbreviated and encrypted messages.

Social media, the bloated, overpopulated parasite that it is, was born not of egalitarianism, but good old fashioned elitism. The techno-nerds are in constant search of the next, uncorrupted, unpopulated site, server or service to do their assorted deeds in without having all of the Johnny-come-latelies show up and ruin all of their insulated fun. From a psychosocial standpoint, it’s pretty obvious what’s going on: the original adapters of the Intranet are trying to reclaim their territory, a sort of nostalgic return to the days of online bulletin board systems that seem positively antediluvian these days. When everybody’s online, it’s kind of hard to be “elite,” isn’t it?

By now, we are all familiar with memes, those annoying, usually stupid “jokes” that get popular on the Web and then blow up into cultural phenomena. We’ve seen the three thousand “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” commercials about a million times now. We’ve all been told to go attempt procreation with ourselves by some nameless, faceless “troll” at least once or twice in our online sojourns. These three artifacts are very much driven by the idea of technological homogeneity. If you’re “with” the cyber-crowd, you pretty much have to exhibit certain traits and tendencies; you become a hyper brand loyalist, you find succor in very specific online phenomenon and oh yeah, you consume your way into so much credit card debt that by the time you hit retirement, your live savings ought to number a good six or seven digits to the left of the first decimal. There are very much two kinds of users on the Internet; the technologically elite, and the commoner. Of course, most people are more or less a synthesis of the two extremes, but I’m feeling contentious in a Marxist sort of way this afternoon, so we’ll just assume that you’re “either/or” in this scenario. Now, if you have the technically competent at one pole and the technically incompetent at the other, who do you think will be creating the most popular culture to be found on the Internet?

It’s an obvious answer, of course. Prior to 2007, I would say that a good 95 percent of Internet-based “popular culture” was created, managed and cultivated by the technologically homogenous. That means if you saw a video on YouTube, or read a message on Facebook or clicked a link on Twitter, odds are, the person that put said media in front of you was a person that was leaning more towards being a technological elitist than a commoner that could barely find a way to hook the charger cable up to his cell phone without tripping over the wire.

And then, the economy tanked, and things, they slowly began a-changing.

In the Great Depression, the insolvent drowned their worries in speakeasies and saloons. In the Great Recession, the penniless and hopeless are airing their worries through Vimeo and Reddit. That’s not to say that such tools have become empowering agents in a literal sense (they certainly aren’t helping people overcome economic peril, that’s for sure), but the gap between technologically homogenous produced web culture and commoner produced web culture has diminished greatly since the Lehman Shock of ‘08. This is the case, for a number of reasons.

First off, the obvious one: if people are unemployed, they have more time to do stuff. Methinks the guy that used to work at the carpet factory always wanted to post karaoke videos online, but thanks to the albatross of gainful employment, such creative endeavors never took flight. One of the great, unforeseen dividends of the market crash has been the resurgence of commoner art - a resurgence, I surmise, that can only be attributed to the proliferation of Wi-Fi access over the last six years.

The second reason is a psychological one. Web based “commoner” pop culture is not only the resultant of free time, but distressed mindsets. Your kids are starving, your car has a hole in the gas tank and you’re seriously thinking about throwing a brick through a vending machine to score yourself a week-long supply of candy bars and moderately outdated ‘tater chips. Basically, your only outlets for channeling such psychosis are through immediate violence or metaphorical art - and since Farmville is cheaper than weaponry, you can tend to see why more people these days would rather blow the heads off aliens in “Halo” than the heads off their ex-coworkers.

Of course, my definition of “popular culture”, in web terms, is a lot different than my definitions of non-Internet based “pop culture.” To make a movie, or record an album, or to release a book, or to make a TV show, you probably have to be on the “inside” of the culture industry - or at the very least, have enough money to do some self-media production. To make “web pop culture,” all you really have to do is leave something on the ‘Net that can be found through Google. A lot of “commoners” are producing “web pop culture” without really knowing that they’re producing “web pop culture” - with so many recession-affected souls flocking to social media, it’s quite apparent why the aforementioned “technological elitist / commoner” production gap has exponentially decreased in the last half decade.

There’s definitely not a whole lot of good you can say about the ongoing economic decline, but the resurgence of commoner art and the reduction in the elitist /commoner gap may be one of the few positives we can cull from the crisis. If you’re a proponent of the Flynn Effect, you could even make the argument that a good ten or twenty years down the line, the commoner will become technologically-able enough to create web pop culture of a quality and consistency on par if not better than what the technologically homogenous are pooping out at the current. Of course, only time will tell if Steve No-Job and Suzie Social-Entitlement will harness social media for beneficial political and cultural change - i.e., confronting social injustice and inaccurate media representation instead of posting quasi-racially insensitive comments on vlogs and begging relatives for cash via Mark Zuckerberg’s wondrous, all-encompassing social construct - but, hey, we can all hope, can’t we?

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