Listen, we live in Google’s world for better or for worse. Living in Google’s world means practicing radical acceptance while also practicing focusing on the things you can control (very little) and trying to ignore the things you can’t control (practically everything) while also forgiving yourself and forgiving everyone around you while also meditating and working out and taking your meds.
What I mean is, living in Google’s world is like trying to say the serenity prayer at the top of your lungs while you’re burning to death.
And to this end I mean you can’t have two sticky players on your page. It’s not allowed. Google says it’s not allowed. At least, I think it’s Google. Who makes the rules in the internet when the internet isn’t really supposed to have any rules?
I’ve been thinking a lot about capitalism lately, probably because it’s the holidays, but also because the hellscape is feeling a little more hellscapey than usual. Today I was scrolling through Instagram stories and it was wildly alternating between death figures in Palestine and holiday gratitude posts and dates for protests and photos of turkey (side note: does spatchcocked turkey make anyone else feel filthy? Just me?) and sonograms and “sixteenth holiday without you Grandpa” over a photo of an old person who probably doesn’t want to be remembered that way.
Anyway here’s a sticky player.
I feel like I got off track with that capitalism rant – the unspoken part of it is a “the golden rule: the guy with the gold makes the rules” kind of thing. Google is potentially being ordered to break up with itself in order to shift the monopoly but like, is that going to stop Google from making the rules of the internet?
How embarrassing would it be to go through all of this only to discover that Google is not the reason why we can’t have two sticky players on a page? You know how I could find the answer? I could Google it. I could Google a question about Google on Google using Google’s Googleability. And it would probably tell me the truth, or at least as close an approximation to the truth that we can get right now.
This morning I had a really hard time getting out of bed and right now I sort of feel like crying. Couldn’t really tell you why, to be honest. I mean, things have been fine. You know? Like my life is really pretty good. Yesterday I led an AA meeting and I was talking about how when I first got sober I would hear people in the room talk about how incredible their lives were and I like couldn’t even fathom it for myself. And now it’s fifteen years later and I’m realizing that I’m that person the younger me would hear and be like “Wow, I don’t even know how somebody does that.” Like that’s how good my life is. But I’m still sitting here at my desk feeling like crying because I can Google Google on Google using Googles Googleability. Like my life is really beautiful and also the world is burning up.
Here’s another sticky playlist, hopefully this one is stationary.
There’s an episode of Rocko’s Modern Life where Rocko goes grocery shopping during the last ten minutes of a 99% off everything sale at his local grocery store. Hilarity ensues (obviously) but there’s one part where a piece of liver like totally randomly crawls out of its packaging and sneaks back into the butcher room, and you see the butcher sitting there sobbing into his hands being like “I’m just a fat ugly, ugly butcher from Brooklyn. I’ll never get married.” (he goes on to say something about the Stardust Ballroom which I think is maybe a reference to something but I didn’t get it in the 90s and I don’t get it now). And then he sees the loose piece of liver and he goes “Oh, look at this! One of the livers got out of the package again!” and it like totally turns his mood around and he’s like “You know what, maybe my life isn’t so bad.” And I think that’s a pretty good summation of my emotional well-being right now.
Also at the end of that episode Rocko misses the sale by like half a second and his grocery cost shoots up to the high high price of $150. Do you know what I would give to buy the amount of groceries Rocko got in that episode for $150? There’s so much we didn’t see coming in the 90s.
Update: that part with the butcher is a reference to the film Marty.
You know what? Maybe my life isn’t so bad.
Another update: this is me coming back after having to edit this post like four times to get it to work the way I wanted it to. Basically, you can’t just drop two randomass embed tags from the playlists section of the pub dash – what this will result in is 1. the video just going wherever the Raptive gods (is that us?) decide to place them (which is SUPER embarrassing when you’ve included references in your text for where the videos are supposed to be) and 2. one playlist showing up while the other one just…doesn’t exist.
Instead of going from Playlists, you have to go from Library in the pub dash and grab the embed code there. For this particular test, I overrode the global setting for both videos and set them to sticky (because the current global setting for this site is stationary). This allows me to check that even if a creator tries to put two sticky players on the page, one will become stationary automatically. We’ll see if that’s actually true.
A third update: it IS true!
Life, it turns out, is worth living – if not only for these moments at work where I get to be funny all by myself and think about writing and reading instead of my day job.