LIFE HACK: DON'T DROWN

A Mayor Addressing A Lifeguard Shortage With A Drowning Awareness Campaign, And More Of This Week's 'One Main Character'

A Mayor Addressing A Lifeguard Shortage With A Drowning Awareness Campaign, And More Of This Week's 'One Main Character'
This week we've also got a guy who thought he could move to NYC and dunk on it without getting owned, someone with an unintentionally funny piece of advice and a truly great lake.
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Every day somebody says or does something that earns them the scorn of the internet. Here at Digg, as part of our mission to curate what the internet is talking about right now, we rounded up the main characters on Twitter from this past week and held them accountable for their actions.



This week's characters include a mayor addressing a lifeguard shortage with a drowning awareness campaign, a guy who thought he could move to New York and dunk on it without getting thoroughly owned, a guy with an unintentionally funny piece of advice and a truly great lake.



Monday

NYC Mayor Eric Adams

The character: Eric Adams, New York City Mayor and New Jersey resident

The plot: NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop who is actually anti-cop, has been in office for just half a year, but has already produced a season’s long worth of highlights on the job.

He recently waved a flag as a bulldozer destroyed mopeds and jawed at a former mayor — and now when the city is in desperate need of lifeguards, he’s offering people free advice instead of cutting them checks.

Adams said he wanted to leave “no stone unturned” and rolled out an awareness campaign about drowning.



It’s hard to imagine why Adams will not take a fraction out the city’s $101B budget to help facitilaite some seasonal hiring, which would no doubt save lives on the beach, rather than print a powerpoint one of his staff likely outsourced to their junior-most team member.

We have three more years of this.


The repercussion: Overall the general sentiment hovered around the  “Ah shit, here we go again”-vibe and quite a few people were surprised Eric Adams still had wildcards like this in the tank.


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Adwait Patil



Tuesday

Griffin Green


The character: Griffin Green AKA Grifgreen20, former Denison University linebacker, TikToker, Kroger enthusiast, guy who just found out about black and gay people, stranger in a strange land.

The plot: Earlier this week, a bemused Midwesterner named Griffin Green (Grif for short), who just moved to The Bronx to start a job at a Manhattan startup company, posted several TikTok videos expressing shock at life in New York City. In one video, Green was incredulous by the existence of bodegas and started firing off an insulting stream of consciousness about his new community.

“Okay, so just moved to New York and I’m trying to go grocery shopping and so I type in ‘grocery stores’ on my Apple maps and every fcking one I go to they’re like this sht…”

He then asked where all the Krogers and Whole Foods were in his neighborhood.



Later, Green recorded himself encountering people celebrating Pride in his neighborhood. “Like, is being gay the new thing?” he asked. “I didn’t know this many gay people existed.”



Green also said he wore an NAACP t-shirt to the gym so he’d vibe better with his neighbors.



When someone asked why, he wrote he was supporting the “colored community.”



The repercussion: Green’s videos bashing New Yorkers and their way of life went viral on Twitter and proceeded to get ratioed into smithereens as his ignorant comments came across as Justine Sacco on steroids.

One TikToker proceeded to roast his disrespectful rant about bodegas point by point.


@dutchdeccc #stitch with @grifgreen20 Oy. #nyc #newyorker #bronx ♬ original sound - Dutch

Others dug a little deeper on Green’s background and were shocked that his job title was sales representative.



Green attempted to address the controversy by digging himself even deeper, calling his new neighborhood a “sh*thole.”


@basicblaecgirl Reply to @grifgreen20 This you? the colonizer mind set permeates through generations. So yucky. Act like you been somewhere or maybe just leave NYC.  #gentrification #colonizer ♬ Feel No Ways - Drake

After his videos received widespread derision, his employer tweeted that he was no longer at the company.



James Crugnale



Wednesday

Fahad Tariq

The character: Fahad Tariq, a guy on Twitter

The plot: On Wednesday, Twitter user Fahad Tariq shared an inspirational quote to his feed. It read: “Everything we say at funerals should be said at birthday parties instead. We leave so much love unspoken.” “True isn’t it,” Fahad added earnestly.



Digg’s Main Character posts usually dunk on people with ridiculous and/or horrible takes, but Fahad is not one of them. The guy meant well, we know what he’s getting at, and it’s a sweet sentiment — but it’s also quite funny.


The repercussion: People have responded to the tweet — which currently has a whopping 532,400 likes and thousands of quote tweets — with things that would be normal to do or say at a funeral, but would be very weird to witness at a birthday party.



Darcy Jimenez



Honorable Mention

Lake Superior

The character: The Lake Superior official Twitter account, principled icon, savage shitposter

The plot: There’s no reason you would necessarily have been aware of the Lake Superior Twitter account before last week, when it became the rare good main character of the timeline, though it seems to have had a pretty cool presence online for a while now.



But when the Supreme Court officially announced its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last Friday, it took a stand for women’s rights:



Then Tom Fitton, president of conservative foundation Judicial Watch, decided to try and dunk on Lake Superior’s tweet by posting the below:



Ooooh, call an ambulance… but not for Lake Superior! The Great Lake’s account responded by pointing out the inaccuracy and false equivalence in Fitton’s tweet.



The repercussion: People thoroughly enjoyed Lake Superior’s comeback, not only relishing it but bringing the SS Edmund Fitzgerald into the conversation — a Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior in 1975 (RIP).



Molly Bradley

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Read the previous edition of our One Main Character column, which included a Canadian condiment company that released a gross summer product, a Republican with the most offensive Juneteenth tweet imaginable and more.

Did we miss a main character from this week? Please send tips to [email protected].

Comments

  1. Bruce Denis 1 year ago

    I think funerals are to celebrate life, not death. That meme is a good one, it means well. The word 'Everything' was not a great choice. But if it were changed, what would Twitter do? Probably be sad all day.


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