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'I’m a little person who joined Tinder as a social experiment. It’s been ridiculous.'

The objectification is rampant. The fetishists are persistent. But sometimes, you meet someone nice.

Warning: Some language in this piece is NSFW. Because this is an article about being a woman on Tinder. And, well, ugh. You know.

If you're a woman and a little person on Tinder, there are plenty of people happy to make your acquaintance — on very ... particular terms.

Laura Cooper, a health care worker and aspiring stand-up comedian, has been on Tinder since last spring. She's 4 feet, 2 inches tall, with a desert-dry sense of humor and a hilariously depressing Instagram feed — aptly named "Laura vs. Tinder" — on which she documents her "Groundhog Day"-like adventures on the dating app.


"They don't say the terrible things right off the bat," she says. "It usually takes them a few back-and-forths, and then they’ll tell me they have a fantasy about me."

Laura Cooper. Photo used with permission.

Cooper signed up for Tinder partly out of boredom, partly as a sort of "social experiment."

"Growing up, I was in kind of the nerdy group, and none of us dated, and in college, I didn’t really," she explains.

Though she didn't foreclose the possibility of meeting someone, she held her expectations in check, having heard dozens of horror stories from friends.

Of course, she doesn't speak for all little people, and hers is just one experience. But for better or worse, she's definitely learned a thing or two. All of it interesting — not all of it super great. And yet, some of it mildly (OK, extremely mildly) redeeming.

1. You are a "bucket list" item.

The way Cooper has decided to use Tinder is equal parts admirable and a nightmare worse than the one where robots are eating your dog: She always swipes right to match. She estimates she's matched with over 3,000 people in her hometown of Cincinnati and that roughly 170% of them send messages that are the dating app equivalent of a low, rumbling fart.

"Everyone has fantasized about banging a little person," Cooper says. If it's an exaggeration, it's not much of one, as evidenced by a quick glance at the kinds of messages she receives.

"I was going to make a joke about how my penis would be a significant percentage of your height," wrote one potential suitor, stopping himself before he said the very thing he obviously implied — and also, let's face it, kind of did say — apparently in a heroic act of herculean restraint.

Not every guy who contacts her is such a master of subtlety. "I bet my dicks [sic] half the size of your body," said someone else, very originally.

"Is my cock longer than your arms?" penned another Shakespeare.

Some men are even more ... direct, like the dude who made a bizarre reference to a specific snow removal tool when he told her he wanted, "to get a scoop shovel and tear into [her] sweet midget ass." Others try really cool awesome unique puns, like the wordsmith who said he was "trying to come over for a LITTLE ... or a SHORT period of time." Or the gentleman who posed the brilliant rhetorical question that speaks to the heart-core of every little woman's lived experience: "Riding dick is better, no?"

Cooper finds the barrage of objectifying messages partly funny, partly pathetic. For a group of strange men ostensibly trying to win her interest, she explains, these dudes could not be doing it more wrongly.

"I would caution people from treating other people like inanimate objects. I’m kind of me first and my disability second," Cooper says, "so it’s weird when my disability is all that people see. I think people need to remember that it’s a human on the other side."

2. There is virtually nothing you can say to turn off really persistent fetishists.

For guys who have made it their mission to find a little person, any little person, to have sex with, the specifics of what that might entail don't seem to matter, no matter how bizarre — much to Cooper's endless amusement.

A post shared by Laura (@lauravstinder) on

"One guy asked me what I liked to do for fun, and I said, 'Make nail clipping mosaics and earwax candles.' And he didn’t even blink at that. He was just like, 'Oh, that’s cool,'" she recalls.

Like mosquitoes, indictments of Trump administration officials, and seasons of "The Big Bang Theory," these horny dudes just keep coming.

3. Except for maybe one thing.

While people with disproportionate dwarfism are a large, diverse group who experience the full human range of health outcomes, certain medical problems have a nasty habit of cropping up at the most inopportune times. Many of Cooper's friends have endured surgeries their entire lives. Cooper herself has been lucky — until one day she wasn't.

"My colon exploded," she says.

Cooper needed an emergency procedure that landed her in the hospital for a month. For the most part, she passed the time resting, recuperating, and enjoying the free incapacitating drugs. Until she got bored.

"I logged onto Tinder once when I was in the hospital," she says. "And he asked me how I was doing. I think my response was, 'I'm hooked up to eight bags of IV fluids and I have a huge gash on my stomach, how are you?'"

This, apparently, was a bridge too far for her anonymous admirer's delicate male sensibilities.

"He unmatched."

4. Men aren't immune from the weirdness.

Cooper started her feed with encouragement (and occasional contributions) from her friends who are little people, many of whom have similar dating app stories. And it's not just the women who get bizarre messages.

"Some of the guys get creepy stuff too," she says. While milder than the requests for driveway-clearing-after-a-Nor'easter-style sex and literal dick-measuring messages, "I've always wanted to hook up with a short man" turns out to be the far more polite but no less objectifying female version of same.

And as much as it's purported to be the Obvious Ultimate Fantasy of Every Man™ to be approached by horny, anonymous women on a daily basis, shockingly, it can be a bit of a mood killer when said women view you as "a dwarf-shaped sex toy."

"The guys are like, 'Mmm, no.'" Cooper says.

5. People expect you to be grateful for the attention, and you can get suspended — or even banned — for disabusing them of that notion.

When confronted with a stream of holy-crap-did-he-just-say-that-gah-of-course-he-just-did, Cooper is faced with two choices: She can either slink away meekly into the digital ether and ignore him, or she can use her wicked sense of humor to engage in hand-to-hand combat.

Unsurprisingly, she often chooses the latter.

A post shared by Laura (@lauravstinder) on

Her retorts have a tendency to surprise and confound her hopeful paramours, many of whom, she suspects, run crying to Tinder's invisible referees like a toddler who had his binky swiped. Rejection, it seems, wasn't part of their plan.

"I've been under review like six times," she says. "I log in, and I see that [red] screen, and I’m like, 'Aw, come on!'"

The suspensions can last anywhere from a few days to several weeks. Though she has no way of knowing for sure, Cooper suspects her jousting would be tolerated in a woman of average height, one who they haven't pegged as "desperate."

"It's usually when I turn them down that they unmatch and report me," she says sarcastically. "Because, you know, I’m not allowed to say 'no.'"

Meanwhile, the dudes who report her are allowed to continue bumping around Tinder despite the crude, objectifying, Axe-body-spray-tinged nonsense they vomit.

6. Cooper's experience is both the same shit every woman has to put up with on dating apps — and also completely 100% not.

Photo by Laura Cooper/Tinder.

Reading just a few of Cooper's messages pretty well illustrates the particular joy of navigating Tinder as an out and proud little person. Still, a quick glance at the Instagram account Tinder Nightmares suggests that women of all heights, sizes, religions, colors, and United MileagePlus Premiere statuses are subjected to horrifically gross man-bile on a minute-ly basis. Do people in Cooper's position really have it worse?

For perspective, I managed to track down former Tinder user and non-little person, Michelle D (name abridged to protect her privacy,) a health care worker based abroad. Michelle tells me she "almost never [got] very forward/over-sexualized messages" when she was on the app and regards her Tinder experience as generally "excellent." I showed her Cooper's Instagram feed. Her reaction was about as measured as you might expect:

"Fuuuck."

The messages were a shock. And Michelle says she rarely, if ever, got anything like them. Still, she explains that some of the behavior Cooper experiences in the app simply migrated to her real-life meetings with Tinder matches — often in uncomfortable, occasionally scary, ways.

"I feel that men can sometimes be less respectful because it's a Tinder hookup," Michelle explains. "Like they're more likely to push more outlandish or even risky sex stuff."

In that sense, Cooper's experience is less an aberration than one extreme end of a spectrum. An objectifying, dark-carnival, creepy spectrum.

7. Tinder's not all nightmarish dystopian hellscape — you can actually meet some nice people.

Miraculously, Cooper managed to weed through the pile of sentient phalluses with faces attached to snag a few dates with some actual human men, who, as it turns out, were kinda cool.

Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images.

"They just had interests and were easy to talk to. And they enjoyed my Tinder posts [on Instagram] too. They both followed me on it." She's also made a few Facebook and Instagram friends through the app. They continue to trade jokes and conversation, none of it about relative body part size or sex acts involving snow shovels.

Cooper especially likes to use Tinder when she travels. For the most part, she says, no matter where she goes, it's the same shit, different city. With one exception.

"Seattle was not bad," she says. "'Cause I think there are smarter people there. People that actually wanted to hang out or [have] real conversations with proper grammar and good spelling. It was refreshing. Like they were very clearly interested in me as a human."

8. But you always wonder what people's true intentions are.

A few positive experiences haven't been quite enough to restore her faith in Tinderkind. These days, Cooper can't help but approach new matches on the app with a certain wariness.

"I think I am going to always wonder if someone secretly has a fetish and just doesn’t say it," she admits. "So even if someone is decent, I tend to think, 'You’re not really decent.'"

The hospital stay was nearly a turning point for Cooper. Hopped up on pain medication and IV fluids, she was "too confused" to swipe in any direction. Yet, as she lay in bed by herself, counting down the hours, she found herself missing Tinder. The game. The trolling. The human connection — even the kind that involves pontificating on the similarities between "ur asshole and a 9-volt battery."

As it turned out, the feeling was mutual.

When she finally got home, she turned on her phone, only to find hundreds of messages waiting for her.

"It was just funny. It was like, 'Oh. They missed me.'"

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5 ways people are going all in this week

From the silliest to the most sentimental, there are so many ways people are going “all in” on the internet this week. Here are our five favorites.

5 ways people are going all in this week
5 ways people are going all in this week
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What does it mean to go “all in” on something? We’ll tell you: Whether it’s an elaborately-themed birthday party for your dog (like this one) or a guy learning Mandarin to propose to his girlfriend, going “all in” means total commitment. There’s no holding back, no second guessing—just full-throttle enthusiasm, with some flair and creativity thrown in. When people go “all in,” something truly special happens as a result.

In this roundup, we’ve scoured the internet for the best examples of people going “all in”—moments where passion, creativity, and commitment take center stage. Some are silly, some are sentimental, but all of them are a reminder that giving 100% is the only way to truly leave a mark on this world. Buckle up: These folks didn’t just show up, they went all in.

This guy's passion for lip syncing 

@pokemonmasterzo every time I see an edit to this mix it’s almost guaranteed tears #beyonce #tyrant #allnight #fyp ♬ original sound - dannyvarr

We all lip-sync from time to time. Sometimes we even get a little bit into it. And then there’s this guy: TikTok creator Pokemonmasterzo, who goes viral every other week re-enacting passionate lip-syncs of trending songs. No matter what song people are listening to this week—a Beyonce mash-up, an old Radiohead hit, or a celebratory rendition of “Love Story” in honor of Taylor Swift’s recent engagement—this guy goes completely all in with hand gestures, dance moves, and quite often even a shot of his face superimposed on the screen (also singing!). His picture is basically next to the definition of “enthusiastic” in the dictionary. We can't get enough.

This trading experiment, brought to you by All In

Remember that story about a guy who traded a paperclip for a house? In a nutshell, Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald started a year-long project back in 2025 to take one red paperclip and keep exchanging it for things of increasing value until he ended up with a house. With the paperclip, MacDonald traded for a pen. With the pen, he traded up for a hand-sculpted doorknob. With the doorknob, he traded up for a Coleman camp stove (with fuel included). On and on it went until 2006, when he finally traded a role in a movie for a two-story farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan. It’s basically a testament to what you can accomplish if you just have dedication, creativity, and vision (aka, you go absolutely all in).

This week, our friends at All In are starting their own version of the paperclip trend, starting with an All In bar and trading up to see what they get. (Though we have to say the phrase “trading up” is debatable, because these bars are delicious.) Check it out and see where they end up!

Another thing you should check out: This incredible deal where you can get a free(!!!) box of All In organic snack bars. Just sign up with your phone number on Aisle, grab two free boxes of All In bars at Sprouts, snap a pic of your receipt and text it through Aisle. They’ll Venmo or PayPal you back for the cost of one box, and that’s it! Enjoy.

This "chicken jockey" ice skating routine 

@k.and.miss.congeniality 🐓⛸️🌟Chicken Jockey from Minnesota 🌟⛸️🐓 @U.S. Figure Skating #nationalshowcase ♬ Holding Out for a Hero - yourmusic4ever💯

If you have children over the age of, say, preschool, you’ve likely heard the words “chicken jockey,” a term from Minecraft, a popular video game in which players can build, create, and interact with others in a 3D world made up of blocks.

A little background: A “chicken jockey” in the Minecraft universe is when, in the course of the game, a baby zombie will randomly spawn onscreen, riding a chicken and attacking the players. (I don’t get it either, I just had to have a child explain this to me just now.)

Anyway, in the Minecraft movie, which premiered earlier this year, there’s a scene where a chicken jockey drops into the arena and Jack Black’s character shouts “Chicken Jockey!” The moment quickly became a fan favorite and turned into something of a movement, where moviegoers would scream “Chicken jockey!” and erupt in chaos, throwing popcorn and just generally going wild (you could even say they were going all in).

Fast-forward to today, and chicken jockey is still a popular term among kids—so much so that this young performer created an ice-skating routine to honor the chicken jockey moment, complete with a full-body costume. That’s right—she ice skated in an inflatable chicken jockey costume. Talk about dedication. The creativity, the enthusiasm, and the cultural relevance truly make this a performance to behold.

This woman's transformation—an entire year in the making

@tiszfit.cpt And I always made sure I was on incline 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨 Was it hard in the beginning? Hell yeah sometimes I would only sprint for 10 secs at a time But I knew if I kept doing it I would get faster , stronger & build my endurance And quess what I did ! Keep going sis !! It’s possible with consistency! #gymtok #motivation #fypシ ♬ Otis nola bounce part 2 - VIP

There’s something beautiful about a person who shows up for herself, day in and day out. In this viral TikTok, creator @tiszfit.cpt recorded herself running on a treadmill in her garage every day, ultimately reaching a goal of eighty (!!!!) pounds lost. Going all in to achieve your goals is one thing to celebrate for sure, but it’s just as meaningful to watch her confidence gradually grow throughout the video. As she continues to run, her garage door opens little by little, until she’s working out unashamedly in open view of her neighborhood. You can’t help but be incredibly proud.

The most tear-jerking college send-off you've ever seen

Finally, here’s one of the most thoughtful (and meaningful) college send-offs we’ve ever seen. In this video, Ben (@its_benzram) walks into the hallway of his parent’s house and finds all of his childhood toys lined up along the walls leading to the staircase. The reason? They’ve all come to “say goodbye” and wish him well as he goes to college. Not only are all his stuffed animals there, his family made handmade signs (“We Love You”) and created a collage of pictures of Ben throughout the years alongside his childhood toys. Parents: Get a box of tissues before you watch this. Not kidding.

Snag your free (!!) snack bars here while this deal lasts.

Some American names sound really funny to Mandarin speakers.

When you see a list of the year's most popular baby names, what you're really looking at are the most common baby names in a specific country or culture. If you live in the U.S., you likely know a whole lot of kids named Olivia, Emma, Liam, and Noah, but if you live in Thailand or Kyrgyzstan or Botswana, you probably don't.

Simply saying common names in different countries can sometimes result in hilarity. A name that sounds beautiful and has a lovely meaning in one language might sound odd and mean something very different in another. For instance, Odd is a common name in Norway, but it sounds…well, odd to and English ear. The former president of Vietnam had the last name Phuc, which surely led to some awkward moments for Americans who had to address "President Phuc." (The "u" is pronounced more like the "oo" sound, but if you'd never heard it said, you wouldn't know.)

Chinese language and culture instructor Dr. Candise Lin is sharing American names that sound funny to Mandarin speakers because of what they mean when pronounced with Chinese phonetics, and it's a hoot.

- YouTube www.youtube.com


1. Robin (pronounced Luo ben) = Running Naked

2. Robinson (pronounced Luo ben shen) = God of Running Naked

3. Nelson (pronounced Niao shen) = God of Pee

4. Benson (pronounced Ben shen) = God of Dumb

5. Mason (pronounced Mei shen) = God of Beauty

6. Nicholas (pronounced Ni kou si le) = You Are So Stingy

nicholas cage, names, surprised, language, translations Surprised Nicolas Cage GIF Giphy

7. Isabella (pronounced Yi sheng bei la) = The Doctor Got Arrested

8. Dylan (pronounced Di neng) = Low IQ

9. Nancy (pronounced Nan si) = Difficult to Die

10. Robert (pronounced Luo bo) = Carrot

11. Ashley (pronounced Ao si ni) = Wear You Down to Death

12. Logan (pronounced Nao geng) = Brain Stroke

13. Tiffany (pronounced Ti fa ni) = Kick Your Ass

tiffany, names, translations, chinese, mandarin Tiffany Darwish GIF by New Kids On The Block Giphy

14. Martha (pronounced Ma hua) = Fried Dough Twist

15. Jeff (pronounced Jie fu) = Brother-in-law

16. Daniel (pronounced Da niu) = Big Shot

17. Gordon (pronounced Gou dan) = Dog Balls

18. Melanie (pronounce Mei ren li) = Nobody Cares

A few of these names actually seem pretty rockstar in Mandarin. Mason as "God of Beauty'? Nothing wrong with that. Nancy being "Difficult to Die?" Heck yeah. But some are particularly unfortunate. God of Pee? Yeesh. Low IQ? Ouch.

Of course, the names in Chinese are based on transliterations that aren't exact. English and Mandarin have different sounds, so many of them are just the closest approximations that there are in terms of pronunciation. (But then along comes Tiffany, kicking ass as clear as day.)

chinese characters, china, mandarin, language, english Chinese characters aren't phonetic in the way that English letters are.Photo credit: Canva

Naturally, people who have some beef with people who bear some of these names are having a heyday, with comments like "Ashley actually makes a lot of sense," or "Not Gordon Ramsay actually being called Dog Ballz Ramsay." But mostly people are just delighted to see how names they see as totally "normal" mean hilarious things in Chinese.

As one person wrote, "This was awesome and about time! Chinese names get a lot of humor attention in English circles. It’s nice to know English names can also be a bit ridiculous in Chinese." It's likely that many of us have never thought about how American names might sound in other countries.

But names not translating well is truly a universal phenomenon, and as long as we're all laughing about it together, finding the funny when things—even our names—get lost in translation can be a fun way to connect across cultures.

Image via Canva

Millennial mom shares why Boomer grandparents are the worst with grandkids.

Every generation has taken a different approach to parenting. From Gen X to Boomers to Millennials, each generation has brought up their kids different than the generation before. And for Millennial parents with Boomer grandparents, some have a bone to pick.

TikTokker Phyllis (@motherphyllis) pointed out three of the biggest reasons why she thinks Millennial parents (like herself) think that Boomer grandparents are *the worst* when it comes to helping take care of their grandchildren. The first reason she is calling out Boomer grandparents is because in her experience, they don't really want to help out if needed, and throw a "you need to raise your own kids" argument if asked for help.

"I’m not raising your kids. They’re your kids take care of them yourself even though trust us we don’t want you raising our kids. No thanks 🤣," she captioned the post.

@motherphyllis

I’m not raising your kids. They’re your kids take care of them yourself even though trust us we don’t want you raising our kids. No thanks 🤣 #fyp #fypシ #grandparents #millennial #boomer #mom #sahm #fypage #honest #truth #foryoupage #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp

In the video, she says, "Because y'all couldn't wait to have grandbabies. You were so excited about it. And then when they get here, you *maybe* stop up at the hospital, *maybe* stop over to the house. You stay for 45 minutes, snap a picture, upload it to Facebook and then you gotta get home to the dogs. And then you might not see the baby again until their first birthday."

She goes on to add that Boomer grandparents also like to add in that they are "not raising your kids. 'They're your kids. I raised my kids. Sorry but I'm not doing that'," she says, adding that when Boomer grandparents are asked to do a small favor like watch their grandkids for a doctor's appointment, they use that argument. "Us Millennials are like, 'Wait! We weren't asking you to raise them. We were asking you to keep them for maybe like, an hour or two."

Her second reason why she thinks Boomer grandparents are the worst is that they are irritated/agitated easily with grandkids. "Honestly boomers are so agitated with the grandkids. My grandma would never 🤣😩," she captioned the video.

@motherphyllis

Honestly boomers are so agitated with the grandkids. My grandma would never 🤣😩 #fyp #fypシ #foryoupage #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp #mom #millennial #momlife #boomer #generations

She goes on to explain that Boomer grandparents do "weird sh*t", like "they won't see the kids for a year, maybe because they're long distance, and they come around and are instantly irritated with the kids. They can't even stand it," she says. "It's like, 'Quit talking! Quit jumping! Quit doing that!' It's like, what are they doing? They're just eating Goldfish. 'The crunching is giving me a headache, it's just annoying.'"

Then she gives another scenario, with Boomer grandparents who live 45 minutes away who "act like it's a total inconvenience to see the kids like, I don't know, once a month or once a week even...Boomers be so irritated with the grandkids these days."

@motherphyllis

Just calling to chat about myself… #fyp #fypシ #foryoupage #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp #sahm #mom #millennial #boomer #generations #funny #honest #truth

Finally, she shares that the third reason she thinks Boomer grandparents are the worst is because when they call to check in, they only want to chat about themselves. "Just calling to chat about myself…," she captioned the post.

"You think they're calling to see how you're doing or how the kids are doing or something of that matter besides themselves, but nope...they're just calling to talk about themselves," she says. "They want to talk about the new beach house, they want to tell you about how they're furnishing it. They might start the conversation with, 'How's everyone doing?', and then when you start to explain how everyone's doing they're like, 'Okay well that's enough! I didn't want the whole story. I was just calling to talk about myself.'"

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.


cruise, 9-month cruise, Marc Sebastian, cruise life, vacation, titanic, unspoken rules, etiquette, cruise etiquette, royal caribbean 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.

cruise, 9-month cruise, Marc Sebastian, cruise life, vacation, titanic, unspoken rules, etiquette, cruise etiquette, royal caribbean 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.

Teachers are quitting in droves for a variety of heartbreaking reasons.

When I was a child, I used to line up my dolls and stuffed animals on my bedroom floor, pull out my mini-chalkboard and in my best teacher's voice, “teach” them reading, writing and arithmetic. Pretending to be a teacher was my favorite kind of imaginative play. In college, I majored in Secondary Education and English and became an actual teacher. I loved teaching, but when I started having kids of my own, I quit to stay home with them. When they got to school age, I decided to homeschool and never went back to a traditional classroom.

I kept my foot in the proverbial school door, however. Over the years, I’ve followed the education world closely, listened to teacher friends talk about their varied experiences and written countless articles advocating for better pay and support for teachers. I've seen a teacher burnout crisis brewing for a while. Then the pandemic hit, and it was like a hurricane hitting a house of cards. Teachers are not OK, folks. Many weren’t OK before the pandemic, but they’re really not OK now.

education, classroom, elementary school, students, teachers, teaching An empty classroomCanva Photos

A recent poll from the National Education Association found that 90% of its members say that feeling burned out is a serious problem, 86% have seen more teachers quitting or retiring early since the pandemic began and 80% say that job openings that remain unfilled have added to the workload of those who are still teaching. And more than half of teachers say they will leave the profession earlier than they had planned. Some surveys show that being a teacher is even more likely to drive burnout and anxiety than being a healthcare worker, and that's saying something.

I checked in with several dozen teachers who have quit recently or are close to quitting, and the response was overwhelming. Over and over I heard the same sentiments: I went into teaching because I enjoy working with kids and I want to make a difference. I love teaching. I love my students. These are teachers who throw their whole heart into their work.

So why are they quitting? The reasons are plentiful—and heartbreaking.

Low pay is an issue many of us think of when it comes to teachers, but it's not the main thing pushing teachers to quit. One teacher told me that in his school district, garbage collectors make $10K more per year and have better benefits than teachers with graduate degrees and a decade of experience, but that wasn't his primary reason for wanting to leave. There’s no question teachers deserve to be paid more—a lot more—but teachers don’t choose to become teachers for the money, and most don’t quit because of the money, either. It’s the issues that make the wages not worth it.

(Many school districts are adopting 4-day school weeks in an effort to entice more teachers to join up and stay. It helps with pay-related issues, but doesn't solve many of the other problems.)

teachers, teacher pay, teachers quitting, education, public education A teacher holds an "I quit" signImage via Canva

One of those issues is a lack of recognition that teachers are actually highly skilled professionals. “Paying teachers like we are professionals would go a long way,” says Bonny D., an educator in Idaho, “but really it's about trusting us to be able to do our work. Many teachers have Master's degrees or have been teaching for many years, but still aren't listened to or considered experts when it comes to helping students succeed.”

Jessica C. has taught middle and high school English in three different states and resigned in December. She says she loved working with kids and designing curriculum, but she finally left after seeing more and more teacher autonomy get stripped away as standardized testing became the primary focus.

“Despite my years of experience across multiple states and my two graduate degrees in education, I felt like nobody with any real power believed I was actually competent at my job,” she says. “I saw evidence that my students were growing as readers and writers, but at the end of the day the only thing that mattered was hitting a certain number on those state assessments. It was really disheartening to feel like nothing else mattered but that test, and that even though the test itself doesn't resemble any real-world reading or writing skills in any way, it was supposed to be the focus of all of my instruction.

teachers, teacher pay, teachers quitting, students, tests, standardized test, education, public education students taking a testImage via Canva

“But let's not forget,” she added, “I also wasn't allowed to look at it at all or even really know what was on it or how it would be scored.”

California elementary school teacher Ann B. shared a similar sentiment: “Teaching over the past decade has lost its charm and sparkle. So many mandates, broken systems, top-down management from people who haven’t spent much time in the classroom made it difficult.“

Sarah K. teaches high school history and AP psychology in Tennessee. Unlike most of the teachers I spoke to, she is having one of the best school years of her career, but she shares concern for the state of public education in general. “I think a lot of teachers feel attacked and are afraid and are feeling like the job can't be done anymore,” she told me. “As a society, we have lost our ability to trust each other, and it is manifesting itself in not trusting teachers to teach, do their jobs and follow our hearts to love and inspire kids.”

In addition to micromanagement from administrators, classroom control from legislators and demonization from parents, I had two teachers share with me that they’d been through a school shooting. ESL teachers from different states shared that their school districts refused to put resources toward programs that would help their students succeed and basically told them that those students didn’t matter. Other teachers feel like their own lives don’t even matter.

students, teachers, teacher pay, education, teachers quitting, school administrators A teacher talks with a school administrator Image via Canva

“A teacher passed away from COVID in January in a different building,” says Jenn M., a 14-year veteran teacher from Pennsylvania. “The kids had the day off. The teachers came in and had no directive of what to do. We got tested for COVID, and that was it. I literally feel like if I die, nobody in the district would care about me. I want to feel important and impactful at work.”

And then there's the mental load that has always existed for teachers but has definitely been exacerbated by the pandemic. Teaching is not 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with the summers and holiday breaks off. That’s just not how it works; not for any teacher I’ve ever known. And it's taxing work on every level. You’re working with dozens if not hundreds of kids every day. You care about them and their well-being, you’re trying to teach them whatever your subject is but also helping nurture them into fully functional human beings. You have constantly changing expectations coming from every side.

teachers, teacher pay, teacher exhaustion, schools, students, teachers quitting An exhausted teacherImage via Canva

“Teaching is all-encompassing,” says an elementary school teacher from New Mexico who wishes to remain anonymous. “It is seriously draining emotionally and physically. It's not just a job that is easily turned off at the end of the day when you go home.

“Everything falls on the teachers,” she adds. “We are stuck in a no-win situation in the middle of a societal crisis. Schools have been pushing higher academics at earlier ages and the need to teach basic social skills, norms and niceties is higher than ever. Our roles and the demands on us are just increasing.”

Bonny D. agrees. “There is a mental load that goes with teaching,” she says. “It's very difficult to specifically identify. It's the workload, it's the constant changing of what's required of us as legislation changes, it's the restrictions on what we can teach, the expectation that we will work outside of the paid contract hours, the fact that it's easier to go to work sick than make sub plans, it's micromanaging teenagers, doing extra things in the school with no extra pay, the low morale created by parents who want to dictate what we do in the classroom without ever discussing it with us or volunteering in the classroom themselves.”

teachers, ross geller, friends, education, gif, students Ross Geller from Friends gets it!Giphy

And so much of what's expected of teachers is self-contradictory, as Jessica C. points out in a bullet list summary of what teachers have been asked to do over the past few years:

- Differentiate your instruction for every child, but don't deviate from what the textbook says to teach.- Teach directly from the textbook, word for word and page for page whenever possible, but also spend hours of your time designing a unit plan (even though one is provided in the textbook company's supplementary materials).

- Turn in detailed weekly lesson plans, even though we really just want you to turn the page and read what it says every day.

- Hold every child to high expectations and keep all your instruction and assessment on grade level, but make sure none of them fail, even if they come into your room drastically below grade level.

- Attend regular PLC meetings, but the principal is going to set the agenda and run the whole meeting and you won't really be asked to contribute anything at all. (Again, we're going to ignore that year-long training you got in your last district about the PLC model and just assume you don't know that we're deviating from the model completely.)

- You should be focusing on instruction, not wasting a minute of class time, but we're also going to expect you to collect T-shirt order forms, and fundraiser money, and take your kids down to the cafeteria for school pictures, and fill in for colleagues on your planning period. Oh, and you'll have to stay late several times a grading period so that you can work the gates at athletic events, because your professional performance review will be based on how much you gave to the school above and beyond your job description and contractual obligations.


The pandemic, of course, has made everything worse. Teachers have borne the brunt of all the upheaval in education, not only in having to completely change the way they teach and implement new technologies overnight, but also in dealing with the emotional and developmental challenges their students are facing throughout all of this. The pandemic has also exacerbated and highlighted issues of inequity in education that were already there.

Catlin G. is an intervention specialist who has taught for 18 years, primarily in schools in under-resourced communities. She says that what many districts are now dealing with—attendance and staffing issues, high variability in children's academic growth, a lack of resources—are all too familiar to her and the students she has worked with.

teachers, students, classrooms, teachers quitting, teacher pay, education, public education An empty classroomImage via Canva

"The pandemic drew a lot of attention to the role of education, but much of it has been focused on issues such as CRT or masking, which have deflected from bigger, long-term problems in schools, such as low literacy rates and crumbling infrastructure. I hope that people don't simply forget about education issues once their kids no longer have to wear masks to school, and begin to think about how we can make education better for all kids."

Some teachers cite student behavioral issues as contributing to their burnout, but most of the teachers I heard from held on in the classroom as long as they felt they could for their students' sake. After all, teachers generally go into teaching because they love kids and want to work with them.

“I never wanted to leave," an elementary school teacher from Washington who quit this year told me. "I cried with my students during my last week in the classroom. Their outpouring of love and understanding melted my heart. I had never felt so conflicted in a decision because I loved the students and my job.”

Between the pandemic throwing classroom teaching into chaos, parents and legislators dictating how and what teachers teach, and increasing assessments and top-down administration creating micromanagement issues, teachers feel like they aren't able to do the jobs they love and signed up for. They're not quitting because they hate teaching—they're quitting because they can't teach under these conditions. It's tragic, truly, and it's up to all of us to throw our support behind educators to stem the crisis a mass exodus of teachers will lead to.

This article originally appeared four years ago.

via KGW-TV / YouTube

NBC correspondent Maggie Vespa

One of the major differences between women and men is that women are often judged based on their looks rather than their character or abilities. "Men as well as women tend to establish the worth of individual women primarily by the way their body looks, research shows. We do not do this when we evaluate men," Naomi Ellemers Ph.D. wrote in Psychology Today.

Dr. Ellers believes that this tendency to judge a woman solely on her looks causes them to be seen as an object rather than a person. "As a result of focusing on their outwardly visible features, we are tempted to overlook their inner states, ignore markers of their intentions, beliefs, and desires, and less likely to empathize with their plight," Ellers continued.

Women in the spotlight are constantly being judged based on their looks rather than their performance in a given field. Serena Williams once won the French Open but all the press was about what she wore on the court.

For example, Hillary Clinton has been constantly being criticized throughout her political life for what she wore or her hair style rather than her accomplishments.

Maggie Vespa, a news anchor at KGW-TV in Portland, was criticized for how she dresses by a male viewer, so she brilliantly took the incident and used it as a way to talk about the double standards women face.

Maggie Vespa, Portland, NBC, Chicago, sexism, twitter, X The sexist message Maggie Vespa receivedTwitter

"Just wanted to let you know that the clothes you've been wearing, especially those crazy pants that ride half way up your torso, are not cool looking, in any way!," Jeffrey, a male viewer, wrote to Vespa on Facebook. You're way too pretty to look so foolish."

The next day, he sent her another message. "OMG, you really looked uncomfortably tonight. Try dressing like a normal woman. Doesn't KGW pay you enough for a wardrobe makeover?" Jeffrey wrote.

Maggie Vespa, Portland, Chicago, sexism, twitter, X Another sexist message sent to Maggie VespaTwitter

Vespa posted about the emails on social media and received hundreds of responses, so she carved out a few minutes to discuss the situation on the news.

"Let's just get this out of the way at the top. This is dumb," Vespa responded.

There was no way she was going to start dressing for the male gaze.

"These are my pants. I like them. I bought them."

Maggie went on to show photos of five different pairs of high-waisted pants that she wore in the week following Jeffrey's messages. Maggie's colleagues also got in on it, donning high-waisted pants to show their support.

Maggie Vespa, NBC, Portland, Chicago, Twitter, sexism Maggie Vespa in her previous newsroom via KGW-TV / YouTube

Vespa said the harassment "hit a nerve" with people on social media who used it as an opportunity to discuss "the pressure women obviously face, especially those in the public eye to embody the epitome of physical attractiveness at all times."

"If we don't, it's somehow seen as a sign that we're less credible or less capable and, by and large, guys don't have to deal with this," Vespa continued. " As my awesome male coworkers can and have attested to."

Vespa then brilliantly spun the harassment into an empowering message for women.

"Our goal here is to send a message, to women, to girls, to everyone: Dress how you want, look how you want, and if anybody tries to make you feel less than because of that, that's their problem, not yours," Vespa said.


This article originally appeared six years ago.