Author: Lydia Bugg

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: ReelShort TV 🌭

You fools, you probably all believed the rumors of Quibi’s death. Like an evil twin in a soap opera, it’s made a dramatic return, but being played by a different actress because the original one got a recurring role on Law & Order. ReelShort TV took the idea for Quibi, an app with subpar content that was too expensive, and said, “What if we made the content even worse and also more expensive.” Their top shows include Fated To My Forbidden Alpha, Big Bad Husband Please Wake Up!, and who could forget, My Husband Killed Me Then I Won The Megaball. You fools, you think I’m kidding:

The shows are released in segments that run between a minute and a minute and a half each, but here’s the really fun part: you don’t pay a monthly subscription for ReelShort. Instead, you can purchase each episode with Coins. The amount of coins is random and impenetrable. Sometimes, I would have the option to purchase a one minute video for as low as 42 Coins. One video later, in the same series, it was 66 Coins. They seem to get more expensive the further into the series you go, and the first one is always free, like drugs. Their fluctuating prices make it difficult to say what the actual value of a Coin is, but frustrated users reported paying as much as forty fucking dollars to finish a single series. Basically, they’ve constructed a system that treats money like the points on Whose Line Is It Anyway.

The app won’t tell you exactly what Coins are, and they’re not going to shy away from the fact that you need a lot of them. They’ve specifically made it impossible to do this math, but most shows have around 50 episodes and each episode costs at least 42 Coins, though usually more, and 500 Coins are $4.99 or 10,000 for $99.99, so you could pay $24.99 to watch almost two whole shows. That’s a little over an hour of content for $25 meaning you might need to pay $100 to find out if Big Bad Husband ever wakes up (the second time) in Big Bad Husband 2 Please Wake Up! and hold on, wait. Okay, yes, numbers and words have lost all meaning exactly as the ReelShort producers intended.

Of course, if you can’t finance the lavish ReelShort lifestyle, you can always watch ads instead. Between each one-minute episode, there are 60 second ads. That one-to-one ratio seems fair, right? All entertainment should get covered in commercials and smeared across time like the final 15 seconds of a basketball game. I had to watch so many ads while I explored this app because just putting the ReelShort app on my phone made me feel like I was handing over my social security number to a guy selling watches out of a trench coat.

I couldn’t help but notice a theme running through the ads. They all seemed geared toward women; most of them involved heavy emotional appeals, all of them were for apps, and most involved gambling. In one, a woman cried and said she couldn’t afford to feed her baby until she downloaded an app called Bubble Crush. Now her baby can proudly grow up to say, “My mommy is a professional online gambler,” or at least “My mommy lied for a small, one-time appearance fee in a predatory marketing scheme. I was 5 months old and had an unpaid role in the same production!”

It almost feels like the content is specifically designed to weed out anyone who isn’t a woman with extra time and at least a little money on her hands, who maybe isn’t very good at realizing when she’s spent $100 to watch a bad movie on her cell phone. It’s like how those Nigerian Prince scam emails are poorly worded on purpose as part of the screening process for anyone too smart for the scam. Someone looked around at MLMs exploiting low-income women and was like, “Hold my beer.”

Let’s talk about what the tiny chunks of story between commercials actually look like. It’s a little difficult to do because, much like Quibi, ReelShort wants to limit sharing screenshots and videos of its content. Every time you take a screenshot, a warning pops up that sharing the work of ReelShort “may result in legal…” which is the vaguest hint of a threat. I love how it’s worded as if the app can’t help it. Beware of lawyers, they just happen sometimes, and it’s not our fault! It’d certainly be a shame if they…

I understand why they wouldn’t want their content shared. For one thing, their business model is built on people being desperate to learn if the forbidden alpha ever mates with Selene. Mainly though, I think it’s an issue of not wanting people to discover the quality of work they’re paying forty goddamn dollars to watch. There are a lot of big acting choices being made. Eyes are wide; fingertips are maniacally tented, and enormous statement earrings are swung around like nunchucks. All of these actors watched daytime soap operas and said, “Too subtle for me, thanks.”

I would not be surprised to learn these came from AI-written scripts or possibly scripts written by people who aren’t great at English because of some of the unusual phrasing they use repeatedly. For instance, in Big Bad Husband Please Wake Up! and Big Bad Husband 2 Please Wake Up!, everyone refers to a man in a coma as a “half-dead man,” as if they don’t know the word for coma. Maybe being half-dead just sounds more dramatic than being in a coma? I don’t think most doctors describe what percent dead patients are to their families.

I became very invested in the Big Bad Husband Series. But please understand, Big Bad Husband 2 Please Wake Up! is not a sequel to Big Bad Husband Please Wake Up! at all. They are two extremely similar stories, with the same actors, but slightly different enough plots to be called two different things, and they named one a sequel. I… look, I am having so much trouble describing what I experienced here.

The plot of Big Bad Husband Please Wake Up! is that the estranged oldest daughter of the Mitchell family, Ciara, is forced to pretend to be her half-sister Flora to marry a man in a coma or her father will stop paying for her mother’s medical treatment. However, when she kisses the half-dead man at their wedding, he wakes up and rescues her from her terrible family. The plot of Big Bad Husband 2 Please Wake Up! is the oldest daughter of the Holland family, Ellie, is forced by her stepmother to marry a man in a coma to pay for her father’s medical treatment. However shortly after their wedding, the man wakes up and rescues her from her terrible family.

I don’t know how you could mess up a sequel so badly. There’s one rule for a sequel: you put the same characters in a different plot, and they did the opposite of that. It’s the same actors playing different characters in the same plot. Also, the husband is a little meaner in Big Bad Husband 2 Please Wake Up!. He fakes needing a wheelchair and forces his wife to study physical therapy so that she can become his physical therapist (which I’m pretty sure takes more than reading a single book on the toilet, but Big Bad Husband Disagrees; I’m also pretty sure it counts as exactly 50% dead in their universe).

The overall vibe of most episodes is what if softcore porn were all plot. Fated To My Forbidden Alpha is probably the worst of these. It’s about a world where werewolves are businessmen but also rival gangs, sort of. The main character, Selene, is kidnapped as a child and raised as the maid of a rival pack. Then when she turns eighteen, the Moon God chooses a mate for her, and it’s the alpha of the pack that kidnapped her. I have so many questions they can’t answer in one minute. Why are the werewolves also businessmen? Is everyone a werewolf or just rich people? What CGI studio did they use? Because with a budget of only 42 Coins, the wolves do not look as bad as I was expecting!

Maybe the plots move into penetration at some point, but I couldn’t afford it. From devoting hours of my life to watching the beginning of these shows and wading through a crushing mass of ads, it seems like they’re usually about a dramatically mistreated woman who is rescued by a man with a wild Tommy Wiseau accent. If that is worth a hundred dollars, literally anything is.

The app’s user interface is far worse than the CGI wolf. There’s no comment section for videos, and once you’ve paid to watch an episode, there isn’t a way to go back and watch it again. You don’t own the show you paid forty Jesus Henry Christ dollars to watch, and if you want to watch it again, you would need to start all over from episode one.

I wanted to know whose fault it is that ReelShort exists, and it wasn’t easy to figure out. I found an email address in a section of the app where you can submit work to ReelShort for a commission with an email address at Crazymaplestudios.com. So, I looked up Crazy Maple Studio, and it turns out they make a lot of low-end romance game apps, including Big Bad Husband Please Wake Up The Game!

Someone out there has a baseball bat and a vendetta against billionaire husbands. I found a couple of articles from Joey Jia, the CEO of Crazy Maple Studio, where he talks about wanting to give creative people a new storytelling platform, but I don’t understand why. They’ve got one story that seems to be working great for them. I would pay a random amount of coins for fleeting glimpses of this! If you’re not super attached to your money or your identity you should definitely check it out.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Rachel, the romantic microtransaction werewolf.

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Rocket Robin Hood

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Semen Retention 🌭

Have you ever looked at a rich, successful, ripped specimen of a man and thought, “that’s a guy who for sure never fucks. Not a thimble of semen has left that man in decades. You can just feel the power of never, ever cuming, radiating off of him like the spirit of a Catholic kaiju.” That’s right; it’s time to talk about absorbing semen into your bloodstream like a true Alpha Male, a full-on Stay Puft Marshmallow Man full of daddy sauce. Oh no, I’m already enjoying this too much.

This book was written by non-cumming expert, Arcan Scriverius. How does semen retention give people such cool names? Other titles on the same subject are written by Rich King, Mr. Harry Matadean, and Mantak Chia. Yes, there are multiple books on this subject. It’s not an unpopular theory; in fact, the book opens with a quote about the power of semen retention from Nietzsche.

Ah, yes, we should all model our lives after famously stable men, the hermits. By that, I mean we should never clip our nails and live in rich people’s gardens or mountain caves. The book goes on to quote other famous men including Jesus, Mike Tyson, and Kanye West. Important to note that this book was published in 2022, so I’m not sure if that’s before or after Ye’s Alex Jones appearance where he praised Hitler from a full body stocking, but either way, probably not a great role model for achieving spiritual calm and enlightenment, Mr. Scriverius.

There are so many wonderful things about this book. The chapter titles alone are some of the best I’ve seen in all my years at Hotdog. I love them so much that I had to make a tournament-style bracket to determine my favorite.

“The Trials and Tribulations Of Excess Ejaculation” won because it sounds like the title of a soap opera with a main character named Excess Ejaculation.

To establish a baseline for what you’re going to learn, after quoting Nietzsche, the introduction explains how you should think of semen as a super rocket fuel. Not just regular rocket fuel, oh no. That would not be manly enough to fuel a dude rocket. This super rocket fuel is so strong that wasting it can suck the goals and ambition right out of your body. It’s just like my pastor used to say: every time you cum you’re spraying your dreams right out of your penis. It’s the only thing he said, right into the eyes of every child.

Listen, bro, instead of being horny for sex, you should be horny for success. Imagine if every time you thought about sex in a day, you just replaced that thought with whatever goal you wanted to achieve. You see an OnlyFans ad, and BAM, you’re thinking about how to bake the world’s largest soufflĂ©. Obviously, it might be a struggle at first, which is why there’s a whole section called “The Mind Is Your Greatest Adversary.” This book only delivers wisdom in sentences that sound like they could be yelled by a wizard during battle.

The book goes on to talk about how the Greeks, Toaists, and Hindu sages all had various practices of semen retention. Also quoted in the chapter about harnessing the power of the ancients, noted man of ancient wisdom, DJHARDCORETRUTH.

I bet you can guess what the secret elixir is. At this point, I’m only two chapters into the book, and my overwhelming feeling is that maybe some men can’t handle having a penis? While I think it’s weird to brag about how much sex you’re having, it’s somehow even weirder to brag about how much sex you’re not having. Maybe get a hobby that in no way involves your dick? Have you tried just cooking a nice meal? (Sean, I swear to God if you link to that semen cookbook here).

Now I know by this point you’re probably saying, “Show me the science, Lydia. I see a lot of quotes of spiritualism attached to penis colada, but I do not see the hardcore facts. Don’t worry; this book directly cites passages from the internet’s most trusted doctor, WebMD.

There you have it; the facts don’t lie. Semen is good; therefore, hoarding it like a gross little cum dragon will make you super powerful. Also, if you worry you might miss orgasms, fear not; you can learn to have a dry orgasm. This is a better form of orgasm that allows you to maintain your iron grip on your penis pudding hoard.

Now, I’m not a scientist or a penis-having expert, but this seems not natural to me, and there are several other claims this book makes that I find somewhat suspect, including the claim that semen retention can improve your sleep, prolong your mobility and strength as you age, give you thicker, smoother hair, make your voice deeper, slow the process of aging, and act as a natural painkiller. However, the most dubious claim may be that it will make you more attractive to the opposite sex.

Women are not going to start coming up to you in bars, going, “Hey, I couldn’t help but notice you over here, not cumming. That’s hot. It seems like you haven’t jerked off in a long, long time, and that’s impressive. Can you tell me more about that?” Again I would suggest anyone who thinks this could happen get a non-penis-related hobby, something like; I don’t know, maybe you could invent something? (Sean, do not link to Jason’s article on Victorian boner alarms).

“The Trials and Tribulations of Excess Ejaculation” are pretty much just the exact opposite of the positives of semen retention. If semen retention makes you have thick, lustrous hair, excess ejaculation makes you go bald. You lose motivation, “vital nutrients,” energy, and vitality. A lot of men have tried to convince me that semen contains vital nutrients in my life, and I guess this is where they heard it?

The book does go into detail about how to prevent yourself from accidentally gushing out all of your vital nutrients. It’s a surprisingly spiritual method that involves rooting your semen through all of your chakras, sort of like a very wet psychic labyrinth.

A lot of the advice provided in this book is not that bad and honestly might lead to a better quality of life. Stuff like eating a vegetarian diet, exercising, and practicing meditation are all good things that you could totally do without making it weird, dawg. If you’re masturbating so much that you think diverting all your sexual energy could literally build the “coliseum,” maybe taking a little break is great advice!

Something tells me that jerkin’ probably isn’t the only thing preventing you from painting the Mona Lisa. Also, the other examples listed in this book were built by a lot of people. Do you think whoever built the pyramids went home at night to carefully and deliberately not ejaculate? Absurd. Those aliens fucked. Cumming doesn’t have to be your only hobby, artists, industrialists, and aliens! You can do a second thing, I promise!

Most of what is in this book is in every other self-help book. It relies heavily on manifestation, which is the entire premise of the 2006 self-help book The Secret, with the critical caveat that The Secret still allows you to orgasm as much as you want.

So, overall I think I would recommend doing almost anything other than this to improve your life. Putting this much importance on any bodily fluid isn’t good for anyone. The idea that your life force is somehow contained by erectoplasm will not in any way help you. It will only keep you trapped in a weirdly dick-centric world. You can find a better hobby! Maybe try reading! (Sean, don’t make that link to Dick Fight Island).

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Burrito who can lift a car straight over his head. We’re not saying anything about why he can do that, we’re just saying he can do that.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Elf-Help for Coping with Cancer 🌭

There are two things that Christian book companies love: mythical creatures and puns. The popular series Elf-help has both! It’s a bunch of cheerful little cartoons drawn by the same guy who does Paddington Bear, mixed with advice for dealing with life’s little annoyances like:

Oh shit, they gave the Elves cancer? What does that even mean for an Elf? I’m definitely picturing adorable little peppermint tumors. What do Elves even know about medical care? Because I feel like they would do some dumb holistic crap, like try to replace chemotherapy with the Christmas spirit. That’s a recipe for one very dead cancer Elf. Or as Santa would call them, “The only good Elf.”

Can you imagine finding out you have cancer and knowing someone with the audacity to say,” I have a great resource that might help you feel better! It’s Elves! No, no, wait, the Elves also have cancer.” Will staring at a picture of an elf contemplating their mortality make you feel better?

If the haunting vision of a terminal Keebler mascot doesn’t cheer you up, the book also provides fun little platitudes about how maybe you should be psyched to have cancer. Maybe you should see cancer as a gift? What? Why is God giving such shitty gifts? Maybe God could have had a new car pop out when the elf used a biscuits and sausage gravy dispenser? Killing an Elf when you could easily squirt them out a gravy car is something Santa would do, God.

God isn’t mentioned in every piece of advice in the Elf-help books, but a lot of them are in general about how not to be mad at God for being terrible at choosing presents. Apparently, Elves are deeply religious. For the Christian God, too, not for an Elf God or some sort of pagan tree deity.

It’s so funny to me that a book presumably meant to cheer up people with cancer is like, “You probably feel like God has abandoned you, right? That’s probably your basic instinct, but what if, instead, you thought about these tiny, bald Elf children who also have cancer?” Spiritual uplift achieved!

Ok, maybe cancer just wasn’t the best topic for the Elves to tackle. Most of them die from polar bear attacks long before they finish treatment anyway. The point is, it’s pretty hard to make a fun book about cancer. However, there is a light topic they could probably cover with cute little cartoons in a non-depressing way. What else have the Elves helped with?

Ok, this is way less morose than a cancer diagnosis. Divorce rules! There are plenty of upsides to being able to legally end a bad relationship. It’ll be a lot easier to nail the tone of this one. Less bald children who should suck it up and be happy God gave them the gift of poison and more tips for getting your groove back by buying some slutty little Elf lingerie. Let’s see how it starts:

Shit, that’s so heavy. I don’t think these Elves are going to be enjoying themselves at all. Again, please remember these books are either supposed to be purchased by someone going through a divorce and trying to cheer themselves up, or by the friend of someone going through a divorce who thinks this will help them. Or maybe their friend just wants to give them a not so subtle hint. I guess there’s a lot of situations for which this book will be of no help.

The Elves are sick of hearing you complain, Tina. Suck it up, and thank God your husband was railing the mailman. A lot of the advice Elves have for dealing with divorce seems to be geared toward women and reminding them to relax and not gossip about their husbands. It’s another occasion where I’ve found a book that feels like it was written for one particular person who wasn’t taking their divorce well.

Look at that vicious Elven eye roll. That Elf woman is so sick of hearing her friend complain that Legolas had a fourway with Snap, Crackle, AND Pop.

The other advice this book repeats in different ways is that after a divorce, you shouldn’t get fat. You need that itty bitty revenge body to flaunt if you want to win your divorce, ladies!

One of the only pieces of actionable advice in any of the Elf-help books is to exercise. Almost all the generic advice is illustrated with Elves on stationary bikes or treadmills. These Elves are going to be so swole. They deal with every tragedy with fitness, and their vengeful God hates them.

There are male Elves in the divorce book, but it doesn’t have much to say about how to avoid buying Oakleys and panic-purchasing your favorite social media company for triple its value. It does call divorce “the death of dreams you once held dear” and shows a little Elf crying over his wedding picture. I’m sure that cheered whoever bought this book right up. I bet they were glad this Elf is fucked up too.

Well, that’s all you can say about divorce. Let’s see if there’s something a little bit cheerier anywhere in the Elf repertoire. Maybe an Elf-help With Solving Your Wife’s Murder, or Elf-help with Euthanizing Your Beloved Dog…

I’m sure this will deal with depression using the exact same amount of reverence it did for cancer. We’re going to start off immediately with a cartoon Elf staring out a window, looking haunted in a way that will make people laugh and wonder, “What has this tiny man done that’s left him so scarred? Does he have PTSD from the time he saw Tim Allen murder Santa?”

Elf-help For Overcoming Depression suggests that depressed people “observe children at work and play.” Because nothing makes someone feel better than parents at the park telling you to stop creeping around their kids. “Oh, you’re sad? And the Elves said my kids would make you feel better? I’m calling the fucking police!”

I feel like this book is the most elf-aware. By that, I mean it knows the Elves aren’t helping in any way. In fact, they’re actively making the recipients of these gifts feel worse. I say that because this is the only self-help book that advises you to go out and buy more self-help books. It even illustrates an Elf buying a whole cart of self-help books without getting a pitying look from the cashier!

I can’t believe they named the example books U are good and SELF-HELPIN You when there were opportunities for fun Elf puns. The publishers came up with one Elf pun, and then they retired on Elf-help alone. That’s why the ’80s ruled. The 7 Habits Of Highly Elfective People. The Life-Changing Magic Of Repairing Shoes While The Shoemaker Sleeps, Who Moved My Cheerful Little Hat? I’m giving those to the Elf-help people FOR FREE.

The other Elf-help tips for depression include the classic “maybe depression is good, actually?” Depression teaches you so much about yourself, like how long you can stand to go without showering because the silence of your own mind is petrifying. Also, what is the saddest meal you can possibly stand to consume? Plain bread with ketchup? Boiled noodles with absolutely nothing else on them? Raisins? You’ll never know without your good friend Depression.

Other hot depression tips include asking for a miracle! Keep in mind what we learned about God earlier, though. You can’t ask for a specific miracle, and odds are, you’re not getting the gravy machine. If you try to cure your depression by asking for a miracle, the lord might respond with the miracle of cancer, his most generous gift. Use with caution.

Does…does that help? Can you relate to Dobby better, knowing he, too, has faced the pain of divorce? Wait, I just thought of someone these books could definitely help, people with an elf crying fetish. If these books are your kink, you’re welcome!

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Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: POPular TEEN-AGERS

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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: TikTok Shrimp Dance Man 🌭

Quick, there’s no time. I need to warn you about the TikTok Shrimp Dance Man. Don’t say his name out loud. It will only summon him. Keep calm, read this article straight through once, and then delete it from your email forever like it’s a coupon for one free conversation with Twitter founder Elon Musk.

When the TikTok shrimp dancing man was first brought to my attention, I knew I had to learn absolutely everything about him. He’s out there somewhere in the world, and if I don’t know exactly how to avoid him, he could find me and dance little shrimps sensuously across my tongue in front of an audience of horrified yet titillated shrimp lovers.

The shrimp dance is this guy’s whole deal. His TikTok channel is full of him doing this over and over again to men and women of all ages. Every time he plays the same song, “Earned It,” from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack, both in the restaurant and in the TikTok. He’s like the Jeepers Creepers monster. Whenever the song begins, it means he’s on the prowl.

Everything about the shrimp dance is so aggressively horny, but the song is really what disturbs me the most. It’s such a horny song that the music video includes women in pasties and assless underwear making a human centipede. It’s so horny that the bar youtube has that tells you when people rewound to jerk off takes up the entire video. That is a level of horniness that shouldn’t be applied to shrimp.

When the shrimp dance man cranks up the Fifty Shades soundtrack and stalks around the tables looking for his next victim, the people in his restaurant cheer. They’re so aroused by the aggressive shrimp dance they’re about to experience that they’re filled with joy. The man has somehow converted a seafood restaurant into a horny shrimp perverts’ Medieval Times. There’s a bachelorette party atmosphere to the whole thing, but if you went to a strip club and asked for it, they would throw you out. You would be excommunicated from Chippendales for your dark crustacean desires.

There’s only one place on earth where a man will brush your teeth with shrimp and then give you a chloroform hug for your pleasure. It’s called Mr. Barbas Marisqueria or Mr. Beard’s Seafood Restaurant. It seems to have decent reviews on Google, and somehow, not a single one of them says “this son of a bitch shrimp danced me. He took little shrimps and danced them into my mouth while pelvic thrusting my chair. Ten stars, I mean one star.”

I’ve scoured and translated every shot of the menu I could find, and there doesn’t appear to be a sensual shrimp onslaught listed for sale. Maybe you can’t legally sell this type of experience? My best guess is that it’s something off the bar menu because the shrimpees are usually fed a clear shot at the end of the dance by the shrimper.

Mr. Beard also recently expanded his shrimp dance offerings to include a less invasive version of the shrimp dance that involves the customer licking a beer bottle he offers them and then sucking a shrimp from the top. I can’t imagine wanting attention bad enough that I’m willing to perform in public for seafood like a baby seal, but apparently, there are women out there who are so, so into this. All of the top comments are thirsty as hell to clap their flippers for the shrimp man.

“Where is this place at” is the only acceptable comment on these videos. I also want that information because I can imagine a scenario where I walk into a seafood restaurant excited for a nice meal. The lights dim, and suddenly, everyone is looking at me, my nightmare. Then a man comes over and touches my food with his hands, double nightmare. The food is being slapped against my lips aggressively. I pass out. I die of seafood mortification.

Imagine you didn’t know about the shrimp dance, and suddenly it was happening in front of you. Would you try and rescue the person being shrimped, or would your flight instinct kick in? Honestly, I’m not going to lie; I know who I am. I would trip a toddler to escape this man. I would yell, “This baby looooves shrimp!” and yeet them right into that cowboy hat as I sprinted away.

The performance is slightly different every time, so you can never prepare yourself for what’s about to happen. The mystery is part of the torture. Sometimes he sensually stirs salsa while wrapped around the shrimpee as if they’re recreating the pottery scene from Ghost. Sometimes all subtlety is abandoned, and it’s just a lot of pre-shrimp chair humping.

To add another layer to the horror parfait, Mr. Beard posted a few behind the scenes TikToks of himself preparing food in his kitchen while topless, wearing flip-flops and daisy dukes. Every single step of the food preparation process has to be sexy, health code be damned! You think Mr. Beard has read health and safety regulations? This man has only ever read one thing, and it’s The Kama Sutra, But With Shrimp.

The seafood horniness brand runs through all of Mr. Beard’s marketing. They don’t post the shrimp dances on Instagram, instead opting for a deceptively normal-looking social media campaign that involves close-up pictures of the food the restaurant offers. However, the captions on those pictures read like a book with shirtless Fabio on the cover. “Doesn’t your mouth water? Fill yourself with flavor directly from the sea, come and enjoy the best dishes; here I wait for you (address of the restaurant).” This is something a siren calls to a sailor she’s trying to drown.

When the shrimp dance man is not shrimp dancing or pantless stirring, he’s the owner and chef at Mr. Beard’s. When he’s not posting shrimp dance TikToks, he has a pretty typical online presence that includes a lot of gym content and some hustle culture bro power speeches about never giving up, following your dreams, and working hard. That would seem to imply that dancing shrimp is his dream, but it’s actually not. His dream is to own a restaurant; the shrimp dance is his golden cage.

In an older Tiktok, Mr. Beard explains that the shrimp dance is just something funny he did for a friend once that went viral on social media. Suddenly he had people coming into his restaurant begging for the sexy shrimp dance. He was a struggling restaurant owner, and it brought in business, so he danced for them. My God, did he dance. The shrimp has given him everything, and yet it’s also the bars of his fishy prison.

Even after scouring social media, running captions and TikToks through Google translate, and consulting with several seafood psychics, I still have questions about the Shrimp Dance Man, the kind of questions that can only be answered by visiting him in person and experiencing the terror of his art. Welp, it looks like those questions will have to remain forever unanswered. I’m not an idiot. I’m not wandering into that dark basement alone. You’ll shrimp dance me when I’m DEAD.

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This article is brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Timmy Leahy, who has mastered Randy Quaid’s Erotic Chili Presentation.