via Mattew Barra/Pexels
There's one word you can't say on a cruise ship.
There are some things you just don't say. You don't yell out "bomb!" on an airplane, make jokes about carrying weapons while going through security, or, as Michael Scott from The Office knows, loudly proclaim that a boat you're currently on is sinking.
Those are all pretty obvious examples, but sometimes etiquette and decorum are a little more subtle. If you're not experienced in the ways of the venue you're in, you might not know all the unspoken rules. And you might find out the hard way. Cruise ships, for example, have their own very specific set of rules and regulations that guests should abide by.
On December 10, 2023, Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas set sail on the Ultimate World Cruise—a 274-day global trek that visits 11 world wonders and over 60 countries.
9 months is a very long time to be aboard a boat, even a giant cruise ship. Photo by Peter Hansen on Unsplash
This incredible trip covered the Americas, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Mediterranean and Europe with a ticket price that ranges from $53,999 to $117,599 per passenger.
With such a unique and incredible offering, it's understandable that Royal Caribbean wanted to invite plenty of influencers to help them get the word out.
Aboard the Serenade to the Seas was popular TikToker Marc Sebastian, who documented his experience throughout the journey. In one video with over 4.3 million views, he revealed what he’s learned over his first few weeks aboard the ship; the biggest was the one word you’re not allowed to say.
"So here's [what] I've learned about cruising since I've spent 18 nights on this floating retirement home with a Cheesecake Factory attached. First, number one, you're not supposed to talk about the Titanic," he says in the clip.
Titanic! It's the ultimate taboo when you're on a giant ship traversing the ocean. Even after all these years, it's still too soon to make even lighthearted comparisons or jokes.
@marcsebastianf someone get whoopi on the line girl i have some goss for her #ultimateworldcruise #worldcruise #serenadeoftheseas #cruisetok #cruise #9monthcruise #titanic
“Who knew that? I didn’t,” Sebastian said. “I brought it up to an entire room of people having lunch that our ship is only 100 feet longer than the Titanic — when I tell you that utensils dropped. Waiters gasped. It’s dead silent.”
Sebastian was flabbergasted. "It wasn't in the... handbook," he joked. "Not that I read the handbook, clearly."
After the unexpected reaction, his cruise friend told him, “You’re not allowed to talk about the Titanic.” It makes sense.
Who wants to be reminded of the tragedy that killed around 1,500 people while sinking one of the most impressive engineering feats of the era? More experienced cruisers chimed in that they were familiar with the unique piece of etiquette.
Pro tip: Don't ask the band on board to play "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion Giphy
"When I went on a cruise, my mom told me saying Titanic was equivalent to screaming ‘bomb’ at an airport," Mikayla wrote in the comments.
"It’s like saying Macbeth in a theatre, it’s an unspoken rule" another commenter added.
"I’m sorry you’re telling me you had a Harry Potter like experience saying Voldemort at Hogwarts but it was the titanic on a modern day cruise I’m cryingggg" joked another.
Later in the video covering little known cruise facts, Sebastian admits he was surprised to learn that cruise ships have godmothers and that the pools are filled with seawater.
In an update from June of 2024, Sebastian explains that he only stayed on the cruise for 18 nights. He was not booked to stay throughout the entire voyage, and for him, that was a relief.
He initially jokes that he was kicked off the boat for saving a penguin that had jumped aboard. But in the end, he admits he was more than happy to deboard early.
"I walked off that ship not a happy man," he said, saying the ship was overstimulating and stressful. In another video, he films as the ship navigates the Drake Passage, one of the most notoriously dangerous and choppy stretches of water in the world. It looks stressful indeed, to say the least.
Cruising isn't for everyone, let alone for 274 days straight! But now Sebastian knows the golden rule for his next cruise.
This story originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
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A man appears guilty.
Self-conscious emotions often get a bad rap. When we think of shame or embarrassment, guilt is not usually far behind. We often assume these types of feelings are negative, but the truth is—they can be excellent indicators that a person has a pretty decent moral compass.
In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers sought to determine indicators of trustworthiness. The 2018 paper "Who is trustworthy? Predicting Trustworthy intentions and behavior" makes a huge distinction about their intentions right off the bat: "Existing trust research has disproportionately focused on what makes people more or less trusting, and has largely ignored the question of what makes people more or less trustworthy."
Their findings are pretty clear cut: The number one indicator of trustworthiness? Being prone to guilt. "Guilt-proneness predicts trustworthiness better than a variety of other personality measures, and we identify sense of interpersonal responsibility as the underlying mechanism by both measuring it and manipulating it directly. People who are high in guilt-proneness are more likely to be trustworthy than are individuals who are low in guilt-proneness, but they are not universally more generous."
Writer Leah Fessler cites the study in her piece, "Who should you trust? Psychologists have a fascinating answer," for Quartz: "Guilt-proneness is not the same as feeling guilty, and this distinction is key to understanding why guilt-proneness is a positive trait, especially as it relates to trustworthiness."
It's all about the anticipation of guilt, and one's hope is: this trait might prevent someone from behaving in a negative manner. The line of thinking goes something like this: "If I steal money from Emily, that would really hurt her feelings, so I won't do it."
Fessler further explains, "We typically think about guilt as a signal that someone did do something wrong, which is why it’s seen as a character flaw." She references Emma Levine, an assistant psychology professor at University of Chicago. "But feeling guilty about wrongdoing is a good thing," Levine says, "whereas doing something wrong and not feeling guilty would be problematic, as it suggests a lack of remorse and no intention to repair your transgressions."
Explanation as to why guilt can be a good thing. www.youtube.com, Anna Akana
In the article "The Problem with Guilt" for Psychology Today, authors Tara Ceranic Salinas, Ph.D., and Ed Love, Ph.D., explain simply that "Guilt serves an important purpose in guiding our behavior by causing us to evaluate our moral worth and how we fit in the various communities to which we belong. Along with shame and embarrassment, it is part of the self-conscious emotion family, and these inward-facing emotions motivate ethical behavior. (Note: they don't distinguish between guilt or guilt-prone, but we get the idea.)
They acknowledge that "Guilt is tricky. Feeling guilty makes us realize we have messed up–even if we haven’t!" They provide a few tools for processing guilt, such as acknowledgement (owning what they've done), self-reflection (how does it make them feel?), and still having plenty of compassion for yourself after the mistake has been made. None of us are perfect, even those who are trustworthy.
A woman looks guilty. Giphy
The Reddit post titled "Guilt-prone people are highly skilled at recognising other people’s emotions" has another spin on the matter. The guilt-prone aren't not just more trustworthy. They're more empathetic.
A commenter shares, "It's not surprising if you think about the neurobiology of it. Guilt, shame, and empathy come from the same areas in the brain. Psychopaths have less amount of grey matter in the parts of the brain that regulates these traits."
Probably safe to assume that "psychopaths" aren't the most trustworthy, so, yes—it totally tracks.
Canva Photos
Flash Shelton has been nicknamed the "Squatter Hunter" and helps people take their homes back.
Squatters' rights laws are some of the most bizarrely misused legal realities we have, and something no one seems to have a good answer for. Most of us have heard stories of someone moving into a vacant home and just living there, without anyone's permission and without paying rent, and somehow this is a legal question mark until the courts sort it out.
According to The National Desk, squatters' rights are a carryover from British property law and were created to ensure that abandoned property could be used and to protect occupants from being kicked out without proper notice. The argument is that it's better to have someone openly living in a home and taking care of it, properly maintaining it, versus it laying abandoned and rotting away. Families and residents add value to a community, and those residents should have rights — or so the reasoning goes.
It should go without saying that squatter law isn't meant to allow someone to just take over someone else's property, but sometimes that's exactly what happens.
A squatter takeover is exactly what happened to Flash Shelton's mother when she put her house up for rent after her husband passed away.
A woman contacted her with interest in the property, only she wanted to do repairs and look after the home instead of paying rent. Before anyone knew it, she had furniture delivered (which she later said was accidental) and set up camp, despite Shelton's mom not agreeing to the arrangement.
But since the woman had expressed her intention and already moved in, the matter was out of police hands, as Shelton found out when he tried to contact the local sheriff. If that sounds like trespassing to you, well, join the club.
“They said, ‘I’m sorry but we can’t enter the house, and it looks like they’re living there, so you need to go through the courts',” he shared in a YouTube video.
Shelton rightfully didn't want the expense of a court battle, so he took matters into his own hands—not with violence, but with logic. He had his mom lease the home to him, and then told the squatter that she had to move everything out because he was moving things in.
How exactly is squatting not trespassing? It's complicated, for some reason. Giphy
“If they can take a house, I can take a house," he said.
He was calm and clear about her having to get everything out within the day or he would have people come and take it, and thankfully, she didn't put up a big fight.
That experience made him realize how squatter law can be abused, but that there's a faster system for removing a squatter than to go through the court system. If a squatter can move in and force a homeowner to take them to court to prove they are living there illegally, then he could simply move in alongside the squatter, putting the squatter in the position of having to take the homeowner to court instead.
"The legal process is so slow, and at some point when they're in there, you're going to feel like they have more rights than you do and that's how you're going to be treated. So even though you it's your house and you're paying the mortgage or whatever, at some point squatters feel like they have more rights than you, so they don't have an incentive to leave until a judge tells them to, until they're actually ordered to, and that could take months."
After successfully removing the squatters in his mother's house, Shelton has been tackling similar squatter situations for other homeowners in California, earning him the nickname "The Squatter Hunter."
"All I'm doing is becoming a squatter and flipping this process on them," Shelton told CBS News. "I figured if they could take a house, I could take a house."
According to CBS, he's successfully removed a dozen squatters in the past year. ""I'm not going in and I'm not hurting anyone," he said. "I'm not kicking them out, I'm not throwing them out." He's literally just moving in himself, setting up cameras, and then creating small annoyances until the squatters get fed up enough to move out; like making uncomfortable alterations to the home or making a ton of noise at inopportune hours.
Shelton parlayed his success into a reality show on A&E called, fittingly, Squatters. It premiered in July of 2025. To put it lightly, it looks intense! Clips posted on Shelton's social media show hostile standoffs with angry squatters and even he and his team causing damage to the home or creating nuisances to help drive the squatters out.
California isn't the only state that has seen issues with squatters. There are squatter stories from all over the U.S. of people moving into a property and refusing to leave without a court order, tying owners up in lengthy, expensive legal battles.
Though squatting is relatively rare overall, some areas of the country have more issues than others. California, Texas, Georgia, and Florida are areas, in particular, that struggle with squatters and abandoned properties.
Shelton even has a Change.org petition to try to get squatter laws changed to "make squatting in residential maintained homes criminal." Making squatting illegal "will shift the burden of proof onto the squatter and make the crime punishable with restitution an option for damages," the the petition states.
Not all homeowners will have access to someone like Shelton and his team to fight back against squatters. But until the laws change, he's doing as much as he can.
Watch Shelton share his personal story:
- YouTube www.youtube.com
This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
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A mama cat brought her kitten into the hospital to be treated for an eye infection.
A family of kittens in western Turkey has won people's hearts with an emergency visit to a hospital. Not an animal hospital—a human hospital. And it wasn't a pet owner who brought them in, but the mama cat herself. According to Gulf Today, staff had previously left food and water for the stray orange tabby outside the hospital in Izmer, Turkey, but that morning she kept meowing outside.
Finally, she fetched one of her kittens and carried it right into the hospital, clearly on a mission. She wasn't scared or shy as hospital personnel cleared the path for her. With her baby in her mouth, she trotted through the hallways, seemingly looking for someone to help. Medical personnel examined the kitten along with its siblings and consulted with a veterinary clinic.
As it turned out, the kittens had an eye infection. Mama kitty's maternal instincts are really something else. Just look at this sweetness caught on video:
According to the Daily Mail, one of the hospital workers told local media: "We were giving food and water to the mother cat living on the street with other people living in this area. However, we did not know that she gave birth to kittens. As we began to receive patients in the morning, she showed up with her kittens. She asked for help, meowing for a long time. We were shocked. Upon careful examination, we saw that the kittens were not able to open their eyes due to infection. We consulted with veterinarians and gave medicine as described. When the kittens opened their eyes a short time later, we were thrilled. Later, we sent the mother cat and kittens to Uzundere for further care. This is the first time something like this has happened to us. We were emotional and delighted to see that they recovered well."
Doctors made sure the kittens' eye infections were treated. Photo credit: Canva
This isn't the first time that a mama cat has made news for bringing her kittens into a hospital in Turkey, however. Last spring, a different cat brought her kitten into an emergency room at a hospital in Istanbul. Merve Özcan described the scene in Twitter posts that went viral at the time.
"Today we were in the hospital emergency, a cat rushed to the emergency with her baby she was carrying in her mouth," Özcan wrote. "Her baby is a little mischievous, her mother grabs it where she finds it." Mother cat carries her sick kitten into Turkish hospital and 'asks doctors for help' https://bit.ly/2QRQao3 #CatsOfTwitter #Turkey.
Medics examined the kittens for apparent signs of illness, while the mama cat was given milk and food. Then they were sent to a vet.
"The Turks have long been known for their love and care for stray animals," Bored Panda reported, "with many leaving out food and water for them on the streets."
No wonder these cats felt so comfortable bringing their kittens into human hospitals for help.
While we can't know for certain what prompted these mama kitties to bring their babies to these medical professionals, it's clear that their maternal instinct to protect and keep their kittens healthy is strong. And the fact that they seem to trust the hospital personnel to take care of their babies says a lot about how humans have treated them. Good for these Turkish medical workers for setting an inspiring example of kindness to animals.
This article originally appeared four years ago.
via Aaliyah Cortez / TikTok
Bartender shares her $9.28 paycheck to remind everyone why tipping is so important
More and more people are getting fed up with tipping culture and "tip creep" in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted the service industry and now almost everyone is paying the price; being asked to tip at self-checkouts, vending machines, and for drive-through or carry out food orders. Often times, the "suggested tips" begin at 20% and only go up from there. Tipping was meant to be a generosity for great service, not a necessity for business owners to be able to pay their workers.
That frustration, along with overall higher prices of... well, everything, has led to a noticeable decrease in overall tipping. People are annoyed and closing up their wallets. But until the culture and laws change, it's service workers who are the ones really getting hurt.
A server in Texas recently shared some personal information on TikTok to remind everyone why it's so important to tip those who serve us our meals, drinks, and cut our hair.
In 2020, Aaliyah Cortez filmed a video of her paycheck where she shows that although she worked 70.80 hours during a pay period, she only received a check for $9.28.
"So this is why you should always tip your bartenders and servers, anyone who waits on you, or provides a service for you," she said.
@f.aa.ded PSA #psa #fyp #foryou #bartender #server #work #tips #chooseone #CleanFreshHype #photography101 #hardwork #viral
The video shows that even though she was paid the criminally low federal minimum tipped wage of $2.13, the money she received in her check was further reduced by taxes, social security, and Medicare payments.
"Of course, I got tips, but this is what I got for my hourly," Cortez said. "This is why you tip."
The rules for wages in tipped industries vary across the country. Texas is among the 16 states where the state minimum cash wage payment is the same as that required under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act ($2.13/hr.).
Now, if a server making $2.13 an hour doesn't reach the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour with tips, then their employer must make up the difference. Which, to be clear, is still horrendous and does not constitute a living wage. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a single person with no children would need to earn $21.82 per hour to afford basic cost of living expenses in Texas.
What consumers see everywhere we go. Giphy
The calculator also indicates a "poverty wage," which is $7.52 — just a few centers higher than the minimum wage.
The best state to work in for tipped wages is Washington where the minimum wage is $16.66, with no separate wage for tipped employees.
In a follow-up video, Cortez further discussed the issue, noting that she doesn't agree with "state laws that allow restaurants to pay under minimum wage and expect the customer to pay our wages," she said.
"I make great money in tips, she added, "However, this is not the case for all service industry workers." According to Cortez, people aren't always that generous with their tips, even though their "state is expecting them to tip."
@f.aa.ded WATCH MY LAST VID #psa #fyp #foryou #bartender #server #work #tips #hardwork #viral #serverlife #bartenderlife
Cortez's video is a great reminder of two things:
First, that we should all be mindful to take care of those who serve us by giving them a decent tip. If you don't want to leave a tip for the cashier at the grocery store or the ticket-taker at the movies, who should all be earning at least $7.25 per hour, that's understandable.
Save it up and give it to the people who really rely on it for their income.
Secondly, Cortez's video is five years old but just as relevant as ever. It's still strong proof that the U.S. needs to address the issue of the tipped minimum wage because it hasn't changed in 30 years.
"Since 1991, the federal tipped minimum wage has been frozen at $2.13 an hour," gender economist Katica Rot told NBC. "Meanwhile, the non-tipped federal minimum wage has risen 70.6% and consumer prices have gone up 90.24%."
In fact, tipped employees are twice as likely (and servers three times as likely) to live in poverty than non-tipped workers.
Women bear the biggest burden of the tipped minimum wage. They represent 70% of all workers in tip-dependent occupations.
In recent years, Congress has rejected attempts to raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, even though most Americans support it. That fight, however, is far from over.
In the meantime, it means the average person needs to step up and do their part to help out as much as possible. But it's impossible to ignore the systemic nature of the issue at hand. And until business owners are required by law to pay their workers a living wage, no amount of spinning iPads and "suggested tips" will fix anything.
This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated.