We all know that we’re all going to Memphis, but do y’all have any other lines you like to misquote like misheard song lyrics? Or am I just the crazy one?
Some of my favorites:

• Any character that says “Comin’ at ya!” I always hear “Hamunaptra!” like the lost city in The Mummy
  
• Ken’s lvl 3 super ends with “Shinryu Grandpa!”
  
• Dosukoi is “Tolstoy!”
  
• Gief’s lvl 3 ends with “GLORIA!!”
  

I’d love to see if anybody else is a dumb as me and add some some silly phrases like these to my lexicon

There have been an increasing number of juniors visiting this sub asking for advice about writing essays. Below are some tips and advice for making your essay stand out as excellent. Feel free to ask questions because I will answer every single question in the comments.
I know from experience that many of you are struggling to identify a good topic for your essay. Conventional wisdom says to start by brainstorming a list of potential topics, and chances are, you have already started a mental list of ideas. You might think you only have a few choices for topics, based on your activities or experiences, or essay examples you read, or the rough draft you already started (or worse, that GPT started...). I advise, however, that you put down your list of topics and back away from it. Forget that exists for a moment. Seriously - thinking about this initial list tethers you to certain ideas that might not actually be your best options.
Now you can begin brainstorming with a clean slate.
Start with thinking about what you want to show in your entire application, not just one essay. Every single component in your app has one purpose – to tell more about YOU. Filling out the rest of the application by rote and focusing solely on the essay is short-sighted and will leave so much potential untapped in your application.

It's About You. Tell Your Story - And Be The Protagonist

An admissions officer’s goal is to understand you fully, in the context of your background and the rest of the applicant pool. They will begin this with assessing your academic abilities and potential. Then they will evaluate how you will fit into the student body they’re trying to curate. All of this can be somewhat broad and diverse and touch on several institutional goals. But they will dig deep to find out what each applicant is like, what your core values and motivations are, what kind of student you will be, how you will contribute to the vibrant and intellectual campus community they’re building, etc.
Your goal with essay brainstorming is to ascertain how to powerfully tell your story in a manner that will fit these criteria. The entirety of your application (again, not just one essay) aims to showcase your abilities, qualifications, and uncommon attributes as a person in a positive way. Before you begin outlining or writing your application, you must determine what is unique about you that will stand out to an admissions panel. All students are truly unique. Not one other student has the same combination of life experiences, personality, passions, or goals as you do. Your job in your application is to frame your unique personal attributes in a positive and compelling way. How will you fit on campus? What personal qualities, strengths, core values, talents, or different perspectives do you bring to the table? What stories, deeper motivations/beliefs, or formative experiences can you use to illustrate all of this?
It is always helpful to start with some soul-searching or self-examination. You might not immediately know what you want to share about yourself. It’s not a simple task to decide how to summarize your whole life and being in a powerful and eloquent way on your application. Introspection prior to starting your application takes additional time and effort rather than jumping straight into your first draft. But it is also a valuable method to start writing a winning application that stands out from the stack.
You'll see the advice everywhere that all essay prompts are really about the same thing - you. The goal of each essay then is to showcase who you are, what matters to you, and how you think. I guarantee if you're on this sub enough, you'll hear the advice to "show, don't tell" when writing about yourself. But what does this mean really, and how do you do it well? How do you even get started on an essay that does this?

Introspection Questions

It’s often easiest to start thinking in terms of superlatives, especially those related to personal insights -- what are the most meaningful things about you, and what do you value the most? Here is a list of questions to help you brainstorm broadly before you narrow down your focus for writing:

• What are your interests?
  
• What sparks your curiosity?
  
• About what topics do you enjoy reading?
  
• With whom do you enjoy spending time? Who has impacted your life the most?
  
• Reflect upon “superlatives” in your life. What moments were most memorable, formative, enlightening, enjoyable, or valuable? What physical possessions, experiences, dreams, or lessons could make your superlatives list?
  
• Stop and think about what things, people, or circumstances in your life are really unique, fascinating, or outlandish. Are there any that really have a lot of "cultural flavor" (whatever your culture is)?
  

I have a free introspection worksheet with over 100 questions like this designed to help you find ideas worth exploring in your essays. You can find it on the A2C Discord or download it directly here.

Find Your Story And Arc

Think of a small anecdote or story from your life that you could share that serves as a microcosm of who you are and what is important to you. It will massively help you narrow this down and find a gem of a story if you first start by thinking about your application arc or theme. This is the one-phrase summary of your entire application. It could be "brilliant entrepreneur who started her own successful business" or "talented athlete who wants to study economics and finance as they pertain to sports", or even "avid baker whose hobby sparked an interest in chemistry". It doesn't have to be related to your intended major, but it can help your arc be stronger and clearer if it is.
Once you have an arc determined and a story to share, think about what you want that story to say about you. This is where it can help to think of this as something you would share on a date - what impression does it make about you to the reader? Once you know this, start showing, not telling this attribute of yourself through your story. For example, instead of saying that you're compassionate toward others, you show an example of a time you were compassionate, then elaborate on why, and what it means to you.

Essay Brainstorming Techniques

If you are having trouble finding a story, or simply have writer’s block once you have picked your topic, here are some ideas to get your juices flowing:

• Stream of consciousness writing -- Start writing whatever is in your head, and don’t stop for 30 minutes. You probably won’t use what you just wrote for your essay, but it will help you find a starting point.
  
• Journaling -- Answer the prompt as if you were writing in a journal. This will get you in the habit of writing about yourself and establish comfort with the concept. It will also take you to a new level of introspection and self-awareness.
  
• Twitter X style -- Write several rapid-fire responses to the prompt in 280 characters or less. Choose an idea from these responses to expound upon in your essay.
  
• Read each essay prompt, then go through your introspection worksheet responses and connect the stories and insights to one or more of the prompts. Some students like using color coding to visually see how their different ideas might work together.
  

Why Essays Matter

Here's the thing a lot of people don't realize about college admission: it's not an award for being the smartest, most accomplished, or most impressive. It's an invitation to join a community. Far too many students think that if they can just show that they're smart enough, they'll get in. Yale even says right on their admissions website that 75% of their applicants are academically qualified to succeed at Yale. But only ~4% are getting in. That should tell you that they're looking for more than just top tier test scores and grades. To be perfectly clear, you will need top tier grades and (optionally) test scores to show that you're qualified, and the vast majority of my students come to me with this part already in the bank. But what sets the admits apart? It's personal insight - sharing who you are, how you think, what matters to you, and how you engage community. You can't just say "/IAmVerySmart, please admit me," or even "I did a cool thing guys! Isn't that neat!" You need to go deeper and show them your core values, personal strengths, motivations, aspirations, character traits, foundational beliefs, personality, etc. And you need to do it in a charming, winsome way that makes them like you and want to invite you to join their community.
So how do I get students to do this? All of my students complete that introspection worksheet. We go through it and find the stories, examples, anecdotes, conversations, memories, relationships, and other things from their life that will help us craft a strong and personally insightful narrative. We also make lists of the values, strengths, and key personal qualities we want to showcase. Once we have some topics, outlines, abstracts, or rough drafts, we talk about which stories to tell where, how to tell them well, and what details to include to present the best they have to offer. Then we refine, edit, polish, and enhance over and over until the story sings, but more importantly shows their heart and soul. We also go through all the other application components to ensure consistency, quality, and distinctiveness.
Here's why this works so well: at most highly selective colleges there is a primary reader (or 2-3) who will review everything first and then present it to the admissions committee, who then votes on whether to admit you. That presentation typically goes one of three ways:

1. Total enthusiasm, energy, and excitement. They strongly advocate for admission and paint a clear picture of how you will contribute to their goals and community. Everyone in the room picks up on that energy and is leaning forward in their chairs, looking for reasons to admit you. This is quite rare, generally less than 5 out of every 100 applications, even among those which are "fully qualified." When you do this right, you show depth, meaning, and valuable personal insights so the reviewer is learning about who you are and how you might engage the community they're curating. You come alive off the page as a person, not just another file.
   
2. Business as usual. You're another great applicant in a pile of great applicants. They share a basic review of the facts, your profile, stats, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Maybe someone on the committee finds something they love, and they really push for admission. More likely, not and you get deferred/waitlisted even though there wasn't anything "wrong" with your application. They just didn't love you enough to commit.
   
3. "Here's a stack of 20 applications that I didn't find all that compelling, so we won't present them individually, but you guys are the committee and you make the decisions. So let me know if there are any you want to talk about." In this case, unless there's a letter of endorsement from an athletics coach or your last name matches several buildings on campus, you're probably not getting additional consideration, much less admission. They will regret to inform you.
   

Everything we're doing is designed to help them get to know themselves, present the best they have to offer, and land in that first group. Having top tier essays is the single best way to get there. Get started on brainstorming in the next few weeks so you'll have time to get a few essays completed over the summer.

Of course, I messed up at some point, but when? That is the question.
Well, let’s go back to the time when things were actually decent. No drama, no responsibilities, no overthinking, no illnesses, no school stress or at least not as much. The time when I was dying to get to where I am right now; a time when I didn’t realize how silly my dreams were.
A 14-year-old boy; a smart, fun, energetic and loved one who’s about to start his high school life. My ambitions were skyrocketing after seeing my grades and being aware of what I can achieve. “Oh boy! This about to be lit” said the 14 years old me.
The year started great. I will be taking classes with my friends from the hood; what could be better than this? Fortunately, there was a thing, a heavy laptop that my dear father bought me. “ here is to help you with your studies little fella” said my father. Unfortunately, that wasn’t fortunate. I like to believe that that was the start of it all.
As that year was going by, my uncle was getting married. “My youngest uncle is finally getting married ” was the constant phrase wandering in my mind the day he told us. He got married to a lovely woman who later converted to Islam and took the name Zainab for herself. Zainab spoke English most of the time and that was everything I wanted to be able to do at the time; speak English. “ wait! I have a laptop, and I can afford some internet?” I asked myself. Let’s learn some.
Like every boy with or without a computer back in the day, I created a Facebook account and put my finest pictures on there. Day after day I became more knowledgeable about what is going on on the internet. My English was improving, no doubt, but I needed interactions with natives. “What do I do?” I started asking as if it was the end of the world if I couldn’t figure out a way.

I hate when someone asks 'whats wrong/the matter with you?' when you're clearly upset/in a bad mood. Maybe I'm silly but I feel like that's very different from asking 'what's wrong?', like adding the 'with you' always makes me feel like they're implying I'm the problem or being accusatory, which is probably a me problem, and I know it's probably pretty dependent on tone, but in general I just don't like the sound of that phrase. It might be irrational and nitpicky but it just annoys me

I was scrolling through the sub's top posts to see if any other secrets had been discovered and I was surprised to find one of the top posts was saying they preferred WoL's systems to SoL. No disrespect to that poster or the devs, but I just wanted to make a quick post about why I feel EXACTLY opposite.
For both WoL and SoL, the fun of the game is the humor, not the mechanics. They are silly, they're fun, they've got neat puzzles and ridiculous dialogue and outlandish items. The gameplay, imo, is just there to give structure to the writing. The puzzles are decent, the combat is serviceable, and that's all they need to be, honestly.
However, WoL's systems felt like a chore, act 3 (regions G and H) have an enormous amount of extremely dull backtracking, and 2 of the 3 main story arcs (the cows and El Vibrato) are EXTREMELY missable. SoL fixed nearly all of this.
First of all, the combat mechanics in SoL just work better. They're still not great, but WoL was the most "make the numbers go bigger" game in the history of "make the numbers go bigger" games. Elemental attacks had nearly no impact on gameplay, sleaze and stench are used extremely sparingly, it almost felt senseless to even include them. Combine that with M-stats serving as both offense and defense, and every fight is just a competition of "is my M-stat big enough, or do I need to make my M-stat more bigger?" This isn't a critique of WoL really--like I said, it was serviceable, and what mattered was that summoning a bean golem wearing a mobster hat was funny. But the switch from a %-age based damage resistance armor system to a numbers based damage threshold armor system, the actual incorporation of different damage types, and the (low) hard caps on M-stats made the combat much more tactical. Now, you actually have to consider the damage type of your weapon. You can look at which enemies are going to attack which allies and consider who you want to attack, and with what.
Likewise, having equipment slots be more specialized in their function was a great choice. Rings provide special effects or buffs to combat abilities, hats and accessories provide specific stat buffs, shoes are ordered from the Ministry of Silly Walks. Now, instead of choosing to use melee or pistol based on which of your enemy's stats are lower (muscle or moxie), you use the weapon that is best for your character's stats, and you can uses special items to transform other weapons into melee/ranged/magic weapons if you like, which is funny (just add gun parts to a baseball bat, simple as!).
And the skill checks are great, they did the right thing replacing a single speech skill with "a speech skill, and also your 3 M-stats."
Backtracking is way less tedious because shadow enemies in previous chapters get harder as the game progresses AND there's more content in each region worth visiting everyday (cats, stores, fishing, the odd boon here and there). In WoL, there is an El Vibrato monolith in Shaggy Dog cave that is revealed only when you get an object in region H. Who is going back to Shaggy Dog Cave after you've been to region H? Who is going back to the snake pit, where there is a time portal, after you've been to region H? The only way to see that late game content is to revisit sites you have no reason to revisit after the game has already effectively ended, with nothing but fights which you can easily oneshot to pad out your journey through empty sites you've already seen.
Finally, imo the puzzles are better in SoL. I was surprised how many people didn't like the Longerfellow puzzle--the game gives you the hint about the Cabin Boy Standard Format in the basement, and the cabin boy's name is left in a note on the outhouse. It was a good, clever little puzzle imo. I really like the puzzle from the house of the dolls as well, it was satisfying to solve the last "she does everything twice" by figuring out the names of all the different dolls. The only puzzle I thought was kind of ridiculous was Mudhenge, and even there SoL gives you a pretty strong hint by saying "A phrase so nice, you've heard it twice," strongly hinting that there's some significance to the code you've received. Meanwhile, WoL has the Military Cemetery INSANE puzzle, the impossible "fivepiles" solution at the West Pole, and even a puzzle at Reboot Hill that I thought was pretty tricky and definitely required a pencil and paper, as well as both safecrackin' and lockpickin'. Oh yeah, and since you can only start with either Safecrackin' or Lockpickin' (not both), that's even more tedious backtracking once you buy the other skillbook at Breadwood. Just to open some safes or locked doors! At least in SoL, the locations of Shadow gates mostly make sense, they're mostly in locations that make you say "huh, I wonder if a shadow gate opens there--yep, it does."
And the companions and familiars are better too. Being able to mix and match mid playthrough is just so nice, and the vignettes are silly and fun.
Again, this isn't to throw shade at WoL. I was just surprised because when I picked up SoL, I was expecting the mechanics to feel as slapdash as the did in WoL, and I was surprised by just how much better they were. My first thought was "oh, neat, they actually made the game side of the game much better, not just the humor." So I was surprised to see the top post here expressing the opposite opinion. I thought WoL was fun as an adventure, but not that great as a game, and SoL just feels like a step up in every way.
Finally, just because I saw some people say it felt unfinished--I kind of agree. I've run into a couple weird bugs, almost all of them in The Big Moist, that just feel like they should have been patched out (Inspector Legrade came back to life in my first playthrough???). It's a shame because The Big Moist's quests are my favorite in the game. But compared with the ending of WoL, which ramps up to Frisco, lingers on for a weirdly long time after Frisco without much interesting gameplay to pad it out (backtracking...), and whose cow quest is extremely missable, SoL is just so many miles ahead.'

Hello, Goddardians of the Galaxy 😁😁😁 (No shade to that one person, who thought me calling all of us Goddardians is turning this into a cult 🥲🥲🥲)
Thank you so much for that overwhelming response on the first part of this post
I actually did not expect to have such good conversations with people, and never did expect to make a part 2 of this.
The comments I got on the post, and the replies I wrote, made me realise there were a few points that were missing from Part 1. I have curated them here.
I hope this too helps everyone, just as much as the first one. Any way, here is part 2:
DETACHMENT IS KEY - This is something that I took a while to understand. Everyone had a different explanation about what detaching meant for them. I think, detachment basically means taking away the importance of that desire. It means normalising it, making the desire feel lucky to be mine (eg. desire a SP? No, the SP desires me). So simply put, detach the importance of it, and like attach the importance to yourself (if that makes sense?)
BE YOUR STUBBORN SELF // CHANNEL YOUR INNER, SPOILT BRAT - When I was a child, my father always said that “DontCallMeAPrincess” always gets whatever she wants and desires. And he wasn’t wrong. I always got whatever I wanted and desired. Like I think I had lucky girl syndrome, without realising I had it. And that is importantly. So going forward, I plan to just continue being a spoilt brat that always always gets everything I want, because this is my reality, I am a master manifestor, and I always always get everything I want and desire
CONTINUE THE WORK, EVEN IF YOU HAVE WHAT YOU DESIRED - This is so important. I have burned my fingers one too many times by skipping this. Just getting my desires is not the end of the story. Especially if I let the old story repeatedly creep in. That messes the 3D up, and I end up going back to square one. It is extremely important to continue the assumptions, and in fact, let them grow, and not allow any doubt to creep in, no matter what happens
BEING DELULU IS THE ONLY SOLULU - I think GenZ really knew what they were doing, when they coined this phrase. Because being deluded has gotten me such great success. Like phenomenally, mind blowing successes, in the worst possible circumstances too. And I genuinely think it’s such an easy and solid tip that every one of us should channel (along with being spoilt brats)
PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE - I unfortunately don’t have Alladin’s magic lamp, where a genie can instantly change the 3D to the 4D. There is a slight lag, and the 3D takes time to catch up. It can sometimes take minutes, hours, days or even months. It all depends on nobody, but me. Manifestations can come by in minutes and hours too, if I allow them to. By this, I mean that I need my assumptions to harden into a fact (by believing it’s the one and only truth). I cannot affirm for an hour, and spend the rest of the day being the old man. I need to murder the old man, and bury him. And after that, I need to be patient. Because impatience is a sign of lack, which is a sign of mr stuck in the 3D and basically still allowing the old man to exist
HAVE NO BACK UP PLANS - Neville always said that we cannot serve two masters. And having a back up plan = serving another master. I cannot have a desire and also have a back up plan. That’s just going to confuse me, and I will not know what to manifest. In fact, I will end up manifesting neither of these things. So, when it comes to a desire about a specific thing, I will make sure it’s only one desire (eg. I want to marry my SP, but I cannot also have a back up plan about another person who is amazing and nice. I would much rather add the qualities of the back up plan to my SP and marry a version of him that is as amazing as the back up plan)
BE SPECIFIC - This one makes me laugh so hard. I have read so many success stories where people were vague about their desires and ended up manifesting them, but not the way they wanted. The funniest one I have read, is about this one person who would visualise himself surrounded by wads of cash. He ended up manifesting a job as a bank cashieteller 😂😂😂😂😂 So I am extremely particular about my assumptions. I am detailed about what I want. But one mistake I don’t make, is detailing how and when it comes to me, because that isn’t my problem. I just know I have my exact specific desire. The rest is taken care of!
NO MANIFESTATION IS BIG OR SMALL - I have this silly habit of compartmentalising things as big (becoming a gazillionaire, marrying my SP), and small (getting free cake, seeing random things). And when I do this, the small things come easily, but the big things are taking too long. And I really wonder, why am I being this dumb? Why am I giving more weightage to one thing, and making the journey difficult for me? Because as a God, manifesting becoming a gazillionaire should be as easy for me, as manifesting seeing pink cotton Candy? This is my world, and my reality. Why am I making things difficult and unnecessary? And I implore you all to think about this, and stop making things big or small. All your desires are small, and you effortlessly manifest it all (repeat this and make it a hardened fact)
THIS IS NOT A CHORE - It’s good to have a routine, and a plan, but the minute I have made it a chore like “omg it’s 4:36PM. I must hop on one foot and affirm ten times, and twirl ten times, only then will I get my desire,” I have lost the battle. Manifestation is supposed to be fun, easy and breezy. It is who I AM (literally). I cannot make it difficult, boring, and a chore for me. No wonder I keep slipping and having to “come back” to doing things // manifestation. Repeat after me: Manifestation is easy, peasy, squeezy for me. And go around, hop, twirl and dance because you want to
TAROT, ASTROLOGY VIDEOS NEED TO BE TAKEN WITH A PINCH OF SALT - When I was in NC with my SP, I got a lot of videos that were a reflection of my inner self. If it was a day I was in a good spot, the videos were all talking about how I will be reconciling with someone who loves me dearly, and is yearning for me. I won’t lie, I kept taking those as bridges of incident. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. But I also ended up seeing a lot of videos where it spoke about how a certain person lied, backstabbed me, yada yada yada. The point I am trying to make here, is while Tarot may be right, a reading can throw you off your game. When I said videos about being stabbed in the back, in barely a few seconds, I would revert to the old self. And I inadvertently delayed my journey. I even took personalised tarot sessions that spoke against my SP, and they too brought back the old man. So, long story short, learn from my experience and take these videos at face value (and only if they feed your delusions)
AND LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST
RELAX - This is your life, and your reality. Of course everything is going exactly the way you want to. Stop stressing about whether or not you’re doing a technique right, whether or not your way(s) of getting about your results is the right way, or not (just because someone posted something that was the polar opposite). Just RELAX and live in the feeling of knowing you are doing right, and already have it all!
Apologies, this one was longer than the previous one. But, I really really hope this covers it all (and that I don’t have to come back and make a part 3 🤭🤭🤭)
Until then, take care, and have a magical week ahead, manifesting your dream life ✨

So far we don't have a lot of information so this will be mostly spitballing on what I hope the story of the album turns out to be, if there's any story at all. Said information being the name "VANISHER" the tagline "HORIZON SCRAPER" and the snippet of a boat with the lyrics "I don't get better than this."
While I do find the idea of the new Quadeca album being pirate themed silly I do see some merit in that assumption. From what I can tell this album gives off the story of a life on the sea. Seeing how ships when venturing off into the unknown "vanish" and the horizon line as they go over the Earth's curvature. The snippet of the pirate ship strengthens this idea and the repeated phrase of "I don't get any better than this" seems to refer to the exhilaration of Quadeca being at sea, or at least having a sense of wonder and freedom.
The font of the Vanisher snippet has an aesthetic that I would compare to the regal feel of 1800s British navy ships. While not exactly pirate, it's a very seafaring looking font.
Now while I believe the idea of Quadeca being at least an explorer of some sorts still "vanishing at the horizon line", I don't necessarily believe it has to be in piratey seafaring form. Could be a space travel or land travel for all I know.
What I do feel could be a big point on the album is Quadeca's character wanting to travel away and experience the world. Vanishing from normal society to go off on some grand adventure to have some fun in his life. Hence the phrase "it don't get any better than this, no". The album detailing his silly escapades ala Gulliver's travels, with some introspection and deep thoughts thrown in.
So basically Quadeca is making a One Piece style album.

Just finished MotF book 2 and I've had a really good time with this series, will continue. There are just a few little things that felt odd to me, and some thoughts about where the series is going from here. Major spoilers ofc.
I don't really get what is going on with Alex reminding himself that he "did not have issues" in his inner monologue. It came up when he was momentarily fixated on the person he's in love with ... so that's ... completely normal? Another time it was because he wants Brutus to like him. Yes, that is indeed how people are around dogs. So what's this about issues? I don't know. To me an "issue" would be a problem, or at least something that's confusing, or requires some kind of action to address. It's an odd choice of phrase for just experiencing normal feelings. Normally.
I had some trouble with how long it took Alex to talk to anybody at Generasi about his mark. This guy is shown to be fairly brilliant at adapting to new and challenging situations. That's kind of his whole thing. And yet it took him six months of living full time in a country far away from Thameland, where nobody gives the slightest shit about Thameland, to lose this silly idea that if people find out about his Mark, he's going to get dragged off in chains by the Thamish authorities -- authorities who very obviously have no jurisdiction and no presence in Generasi. I mean, Alex is a smart guy and this stuff isn't rocket science. He also didn't need to be super specific about it in every case. When the force magic professor was giving him crap for not putting in an effort, all he had to do was say "look I have some peculiar circumstances going on that make it super difficult for me to cast offensive spells, I swear that it's not for lack of trying" and that probably could have resolved the conversation.
On a similar vibe, Alex is described as being surprised in situations where that doesn't really add up. Like, he goes to collect a 3000 gold bounty that he knows is going to be split 8 ways, and when the clerk tells him his share is 375 gold, his "jaw nearly dropped open". But why though? There's no way he didn't already know what that number was going to be, our boy is a genius wizard, he can do basic arithmetic.
It'll be interested to see where the series goes from here and what kinds of conflict will need to be resolved. Here at the end of book 2 he's already figured out, and mitigated, most of the downside elements of the Mark. It seems like his golem almost completely solves his combat problems, so the Mark is pretty much just a (huge) advantage at this point. It seems clear that the Ravener is going to raise the stakes on trying to kill Alex after the failed assassination, especially with this expedition back to Thameland. And this mystery with the Traveller's writing in the book is a cool thread. I look forward to seeing where that goes. There's been a whole lot of foreshadowing about the priests of Uldar being an antagonistic force, but so far they haven't really done anything except (maybe) be involved in the demon attack at the protest.

Here's part 2! I am very happy enjoyed the first post! If you have any questions I might be able to answer them.
Now back to August 2013. When they did the new effects they were fixing Indy's dialog back to normal. You can run into a few videos online where Indy isn't saying his normal incorrect second phrases. Instead, he would be saying something like this:
Careful down there! I've got a bad feeling about this "Gear Switch" I've got a bad feeling about this.
You would be getting this for a few days. (Mind the fact that this fix was being done during the night, not during a refurb. Now that is the Disney I miss.) Then after some time, you would be hearing this:
Careful down there! I've got a--Uh oh, Uh Oh! Get me outta here!
This same thing happened to the other phrases. One of the best fixes done! Later on they successfully fixed all 4 phrases.
However, the audio dialog isn't played the same as it was from 1995 to mid-2007. Or like the old source audio that we have online. They made some slight changes to it by adding pauses in the audio for two of the beginning phrases. For the Sallah dialog, there is a brief pause after he says "Get some light down here! For the "Uh oh, no" The "no" has been cut out entirely from the audio, mainly due to the fact that you couldn't hear it that well. It was very quiet, even for back then when the speakers were pretty loud.
There is a fun fact for you guys regarding his audio phrase error.
Little thing about Indy's boots in the Boulder chamber, first off I would like to apologize for the title stating that it was a goof-up when in fact it wasn't a goof-up at all. The original boots the animatronic had from 1995 to mid-late 2010 were very close in style to what Indy wore in the movies. While be it, you didn't really get a good look at these shoes during normal ride-throughs. Just a little fun change to mention to you guys. Later in 2010, the boots were replaced with Red Wing 2211 boots, which look good when the orange light hits them from above, giving off a unique look, but when those purple-ish side lights, which, here is another fun fact, those lights only lasted from 1995 to January 1st, 1996, they then were turned off and we were left with the iconic Indy under just the dim orange light. Then after the park reopened in April 2021, they brought these lights back. Which, exposes the weird sole design under the boots. Later in 2023, after the refurb, they re-adjusted the purple lights upward.
A little forward in 2013, something strange happened to the real rope that you would see swing between Indy's boots when we got to Indy in the Boulder Chamber. Engineers cut the free-moving rope and left the cut part empty until 2017... (I made a report about the rope missing because it was so odd to see it no longer there because it was a nice eye-catching detail, despite how short the scene was. It was very clearly moving around. I made this report way later because I thought I would annoy them about something that was kind of small, but they actually listened to the report!) I should mention that I think the reason for the removal was because the rope was starting to break.
After Indy was reopened in 2017 after a 2-month refurb, the rope was brought back, but not in the way one would expect. For some reason, they hardened the rope to the point where it's like they stuffed the metal rod of a broom into the rope to keep it from swinging. (To answer my own question, it was probably done to prevent the rope from breaking, but this caused issues down the line.) I did not notice this "fake rope" replacement until 2018, got me good for sure. It's a weird change. Here is something else to add, they also reprogrammed the Indy animatronic to move slowly, plus they brought back an effect where the animatronic would be swinging side to side, instead of forward and back. This is what caused me to think a normal rope was brought back. Let's move away from this. It seems rather silly.
Into mid-2014 Indy gets another refurb, but one I like to call "The Year Of Glitchy Nonsense!" Why the name? Well, first off, this refurb is what caused the original L.C.U to get lost for good. It's also when they disabled The Chamber Of Destiny in preparation for the new Mapping projections. This confused everyone since all the lights were off and nearly pitch black. Not exactly "pitch darkness", you were still able to see the room because of the mirror you passed by had the normal lights reflect off of it and into the chamber. There was this one time that the chamber itself worked, no normal lights of course, the mirror reflecting the light helped, but I got future! Glad I remember this, it was the last time I saw the effect work. The mirror was a part of the story as it would show you riders going into whichever door they were chosen to enter, while keeping you guys, outside the chamber, safe from accidently looking into Mara's eyes.. The mirrors also moved to whichever jeep was about to go. This effect was disabled in 2012 during that 3-month refurb.
One of the worst incidents to occur was for the Boulder Chamber! It was horrendous! The scene itself, not the Indy animatronic, but the room, sequenced lighting, pretty much everything was being set off after a jeep left. You would, just about, 50% of the time be going into the scene as it was just about to end. Indy himself was saying his lines as if this glitch was not occurring. The light above Indy was functioning normally as well as his movements.
Regarding the EMV, it was indeed true that the movements were fairly extreme! On rare occasions in this day and age, the jeep you are in might have a malfunction and be very intense. When this happens those EMVs are sent into the back for maintenance. The EMVs also lost their 160k randomly sequenced movements, this would happen on and off. In 2014 Engineers tried to get them to work again, which did last for a good long while, but the EMVs reverted to their broken selves. Repeating the same movements. Once in a blue moon will the random movements with the unique return spiels and random spiels come back.
In 2015, when the new mapping effects for the chamber doors were added, an error occurred where the visual syncing of Mara's mapping effects got extremely out of sync and has not been synced up back to normal since then. What I find strange about this is the fact that the people who implemented these visuals have not seen this. Being an audio editor, and always a little bit OCD about synchronizing audio to the visuals, this drives me nuts. Lol. It might seem like nitpicking, I know. But these are things I have noticed and should not go under the radar.
Fun fact about the large Cobra animatronic, it had glowing eyes. I am not exactly sure which year this change happened, but I believe it was 1998 up until 2004. Afterward, while getting the new one worked on, the infamous stand-in snake was in place.
2004 is also when the position and style of Indy holding onto the rope in the Boulder Chamber was changed into the style we see nowadays.
The Gates of Doom Indy was changed on October 18th, 2009. One of the coolest changes for the ride, we got to see a new and improved animatronic that looked way too real to be one! The face of it was spot on with details really looking like Harrison Ford. Indy is blocking one side instead of the middle of the two doors, while a big broken piece from one of the snake columns is blocking the left door. The new effect behind the double doors was a reflective translucent curtain that waved with the changing lights of green, blue, and purple. I think the purple color was added later. The beam of light was still an effect here, (Before this upgrade, it was a bright green beam of light. but its position was more towards the middle in the upgrade, rather than off to the right where you see the 3 snake columns, which have green neon paint added to them, to add an extra lighting effect for the scene. As if the lights were illuminating onto the snake columns. I am not sure when this paintwork was done, possibly in 2006. I might re-edit this part to add a correct year of when the update was done.
Something interesting about the lighting of the Boulder. The light that exposes it has changed a total of 3 times. The design from 1995 to 2010 was a triangular type of light. Then from 2011 to 2013 it was a rectangular light, all lights had a gobo detail that were shadows of roots. Now (2013-current.) the light is a mixture of these two. Squarish with a triangular design. Giving it a sharp edge. In the 2023 refurb, engineers removed the root shadow gobo.
Indy in the boulder chamber received an interesting detail where you can see the lips move as well as his eyes. I might be wrong regarding the year, but I think it was in 2013 after they fixed Indy's lines, but I feel like it was mainly in 2014 when they fully added this. Because before they did not have those 1995 side lights briefly turn on. Yes, those lights were still used, but it was in 2014 when they began using them again. Not like how they are now. They would turn on, while be it very dim, when the scene starts, then would turn off.
Now, for the grand final Indy, he was updated in 2010 after the Gates of Doom Indy was. Once again, looking way too real, it truly looked fantastic. Nowadays the animatronic looks alright, but not as awesome as before.
I need to correct something regarding a phrase for this Indy. It is stated that it was removed in 2012 when in reality it was removed in mid-2007. I'm not sure why this awesome phrase was removed.
The phrase was: You were good in there. You were very, very good!
One thing that will annoy anyone is that in the April reopening of the park, a large speaker was left out in the open behind the Indy animatronic. If there weren't any lights, the speaker is still seen, it's that bad. The quality is very high and clear, but they should have at least put the speaker where it should be. (You notice that weird texture of the wall to the left of Indy? That is where the original speaker was hidden. I can share a photo to show you where it's at.)
Made you feel like you accomplished something, I hope one day they bring this back.
A fun myth about the gates of doom! It's been said that there is meant to be low-lying fog on the track on your way up, this is meant to be Mara's curse carrying your jeep. I've searched through many old recordings of the ride and unfortunately, it seems this might be a myth. The old camcorders picked up the blacklighting way differently than what our new cameras do now, the blacklight would light up the fog and make it appear purple. It may have been a part of the early previews of the ride before officially being opened to the public. If anyone has a recording of the ride during a preview please do share!
What wasn't a myth is a new removed effect at the double doors of the gates of doom. Someone who was one of the lucky few to ride the attraction during the previews stated that there used to be fog being sucked through the doors, creating this unique visual. It was apparently removed because the fog was too heavy and the effect didn't work like it was intended to. The fog just lingered.
I might do a part 3, as I may have forgotten a few things, however, I am glad you guys liked the new info, it's something that I always wanted to share, but never knew exactly what way I needed to do so.

Hey there, I assume this would be a good place to ask this question but if I’m wrong and it would be better suited elsewhere, please enlighten me (not sarcasm, I genuinely don’t know). My question is simply put, in Quranic Arabic, or Classic Arabic, or rather the form of Arabic most people speak / understand, as I have been told that MSA can be fairly useless other than getting a base understanding of some fundamentals. Tangents aside, what is the proper way to say “May Allah reward you abundantly.” ? As I have a couple people who seem to disagree. Now I know the sayings/affirming statements of “Jazakallah” and “Barakallah Fik” and the like. I’m not asking for a replacement or a similar phrase. My question is, is there a translation of this phrase that still includes the word “abundantly.” Thank you, it’s a silly dispute I know, but any help would be very very well appreciated, as I don’t trust any AI when it comes to learning language!
The Phrase Again:
“ May Allah reward you abundantly! “
[ Transliteration + Arabic Script would be nice, but either or will do just fine! ]

Edit: o7
Responding via edits is silly. Standard hyperbolic response, as I mentioned below. But I gotta address two things just so y'all aware that I can offer a rebuttal if need be. 4THOT says:

Here's the full interview with the UN Rapporteur on Violence against Women claiming she isn't aware of the rocket attacks - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bar-shemur-8b1bb23b_the-un-rapporteur-on-violence-against-women-activity-7171212859895459841-gq6B

I don't know why he's attempting to "find" the "full interview". The linkedin video he has given here is literally the exact same video I gave in my comment. Click the hyperlink saying "the lengthier clip." They're both posted by the interviewer, Bar Shem-Ur. Mate, did you even read my original comment? If you scroll down this page (part 3), you can see I say "the segment that aired on Hazinor, Channel 13 is exactly the same." I searched for where the footage originally aired and found no additional material. 4THOT, mate, the "clip-chimp" is this 30s clip the Jerusalem Post originally posted. When I say "lengthier" clip, I am talking about the 5min segment that you had to "find" despite the fact that I already found it.

nvm this dipshit didn't find the actual interview, this is a cut from twitter

Once again, the video from Twitter I provided is the exact same video as the linkedin one. There is no entire, unedited full interview anywhere without the tiktok rapid cuts. There might be more footage out there, who knows, I've literally never claimed to have found the "full" interview. I called it a clip compilation because I don't know if more footage exits. Another baffling response. Anyways, I'll leave the rest, this is not the way to have a back-and-forth. Toodles! XD
Edit 2: Just to clarify what I was attempting to do in my comment, 4THOT still has not directly answered this question from part 3, the main post:

Do you think Alsalem holds the position that Hamas or Hezbollah have never fired rockets against Israel?

I honestly don't remember the last time I saw someone claim that Hamas has never fired rockets against Israel; this would be an astronomically fringe position. If you read the headline of the JP alone, and maybe even the article, you can still come away with the conclusion that Alsalem believes that Hamas has never fired rockets against Israel. I gave evidence of the fact that some people came away with this conclusion in the redacted comment:

Because if they've lived their entire lives unaware of the rocket attacks,

I don't believe that to be true; Alsalem has not lived her entire life unaware of the rocket attacks. We need more evidence to establish that then this interview.
Notice how I have actually quoted 4THOT verbatim down below? But for some reason, I need to provide a "direct link" to it, even though you can see it if you just scroll down the page? Baffling, like I said. "Isn't that interesting?" You're quoted verbatim mate! What do you think is "interesting" here?
4THOT you are killing me:

Here's the actual thread where you were banned.

You do realize that I've linked the thread I was banned twice? A third time as well if you want to include the moment where I linked someone else's comment in that thread. Unbelievable.
I never said the headline is "incorrect" these are the actual words I used in my direct appeal:

If the headline is poor, I might present information in the comments in order to ensure that the criticism is well-directed.

I believe that the headline could lead to a misinterpretation. I was later proven to be correct. I provided evidence of that misinterpretation in the direct appeal. And 4THOT refuses to engage with any of it. Again, these edits reply are so silly. I have no idea why he's so reluctant to have an actual exchange, but judging by how he's already responded, I get it mate. Finito once more. I gotta go get some cheese balls...

The Short Version can be found here.

Part 1 here. Part 2 here.

The Beekeeper. Bzzt:

Ah, I'm so fucked. 💀

Challenges...

This part is going to be an interesting challenge. I would say I’m walking a tightrope here, but that metaphor implies that there’s some slim chance where one can write a section like this and not get banned, um, again (and again?). The original plan was something a bit more comprehensive, where alongside another matter, I would make the case that there have been a number of pro-Palestine users that have correctly addressed misinformation on this sub, where they do a decent job of breaking circlejerks, adding some sordid nuance to threads that otherwise would have devolved into the ones laid out in Part 1 and Part 2. These users will, inevitably, have an “interaction” with 4THOT at some point; they will subsequently be banned on justifications that I obviously believe are nonsensical, where said justifications are also exhibited by 4THOT, whether in that exchange itself or in other threads; and these users are not interested in returning to the sub.
I abandoned this plan for a long litany of reasons; there’s two in particular I’ll highlight here: (1) I don't believe I can achieve the effects I desire; and (2) I'm keen to avoid any accusations of this section being some “hit-piece” or “hate-post.”
I do not intend to present arguments against any other aspect of moderation that I might find to be problematic; I do not intend to make comments on character. I am simply razor-focused on one aspect of moderation here, and one aspect of the unbanning process.

...and Goals

This part will attempt to try and have my other goal — which is shared by many other users in this sub — come into fruition: I believe users should be able to participate in this sub without needing to take into consideration what 4THOT’s personal views are on a matter.
The only things a user should be cognizant of is what are Reddit's site wide rules, including those specific to this sub; what are the subreddit rules; and what are Destiny's desires in terms of what comments and submissions are allowed here. I also believe subreddit rule 6 (rule 5 on new reddit) needs to be amended to remove the arbitrariness.
If a user comes away with a different interpretation of events than 4THOT does, and said user doesn't exhibit any other behaviour in their comment or submission that violates those stated parameters, then that user ought not to be banned.
If 4THOT’s personal opinion is something that we need to be mindful of — and Destiny approves of this notion, agreeing that opinions 4THOT alone finds to be beyond the pale warrants an immediate ban — then, unironically, that stipulation should be added to the subreddit rules.
Furthermore, as mentioned in the TL;DR, I am requesting clarification on if there’s any procedure by which you can get unbanned when 4THOT sets a condition on the unban — and whether or not he should be setting conditions on the ban. 4THOT has mentioned that "Ninou has orders to not unban certain [regards.]"
As it stands, it’s not clear if Destiny approves of this behaviour. I say this because I have not seen him comment on this aspect of moderation when it comes to the subreddit. If he already disapproves of this behaviour, then I would request that this sentiment be conveyed to 4THOT, which should hopefully reduce the likelihood this reoccurs in the future.
I'm asking that Destiny clarify here because then it's something that can be clipped, and moderators here can use that clip when, well, moderating.
One final point before I critique the bans. There’s a noticeable difference between this section on 4THOT, and his um, passionate challenge to Kelly Jean: she’s easy to avoid. Just close the stream mate! Whereas 4THOT has control over who can participate in this subreddit, Kelly Jean can't dictate who can and can't appear on stream. Mashallah. 🙏 Thus, I feel this submission has justification.

The Bullet: A Forlorn Attempt for Consistency

The second ban is infinitely more interesting, but I’ll briefly address the first 30-day ban. I am not here to relitigate this discourse. The post in question that led to the infraction was removed, but it's still available if you’re a moderator, and I won't be reposting it here. The gist of the post was a question on whether or not we should be banning people for misinformation, referencing a user who received a 90-day ban from 4THOT for posting a misquote from a mainstream Israeli news outlet, during a live translation of a speech Netanyahu was giving. I’m pretty sure 4THOT knows who i24News are, so I couldn't quite follow his thought process here.
Moreover, if you’ve gone through the examples above, then you can easily imagine my bafflement here as well, particularly because a couple days earlier a Twitter clip was posted of an individual clearly misspeaking.
The user who submitted this post was only banned for 10 days — despite doubling down on this not being a misspeak — and I was bemused by the inconsistency being applied here. Being completely consistent in terms of my own principles, I mentioned in my post that I don’t think either of them should be banned, but if this is the standard that is going to be maintained, then it would only be reasonable that some level of leniency is given if you happen to inadvertently post misinformation from a reputable news outlet.
Regarding the Netanyahu misquote, I am in full agreement with 4THOT that it is a misquote, but it is regrettable that, well, some chose to challenge him on this front, arguing that the corrected quote is functionally the same, or worse. Take note of how civil his interlocutor here is up until the point 4THOT used an insult; unwisely, his interlocutor chose to match tone. I’m only mentioning this because, despite the insults 4THOT might use against me, I have no interest in engaging in a similar style of rhetoric as I don't find it to be conducive to a productive conversation, and I’m hoping I don't have to deal with a level of vitriol here that users are sometimes not allowed to match — not that I have any interest in doing so. There’s a couple tame jokes in this post, but hopefully I don’t get a response like this:

Thank fucking God that guy died because he'd absolutely kill himself by biting off his own tongue to choke on his own blood if he ever read the obese shithead redditors backseating one of the most extreme acts of political protest any human being can ever do.
HE INTENDED TO DIE NIGHTMARISHLY YOU IDIOT THAT WAS THE POINT

Frisco, you got cooked mate 😭.

A Guardian Angel?

Now, after I was banned, another user made a post about the ban upon myself, which generated a fair amount of interest, you fucking drama frogs. Here, I simply wish to make four remarks:

• I'm sure you can see how different in tone, rhetoric, and substance OP’s post is compared to my original post (for those of you that remember reading it), and compared to this post. There are a number of insults that are frequently used against 4THOT which I don’t use as I’m looking for good-faith engagement from him. That being said, I appreciate the fact that OP wasn’t looking for a meaningful, productive exchange with 4THOT here, and thus they didn’t feel the need to temper their rhetoric.
• In the pinned comment, 4THOT uses a fair amount of hyperbole. The original post was very benign, and didn’t come anywhere close to conveying a sentiment that “this Reddit is ruined” or “4THOT is literally the IDF.” I don’t see how you can come away with this reading considering how mild the post was.
• Once more, I am not here to relitigate this, but I would have loved to address some of the criticism levelled against myself in the comments under OP’s post; I certainly wasn’t going to re-open those conversations a month later. That being said, I appreciate users like Wannabe_Sadboi for making the arguments that I, more or less, would have made had I had the opportunity to immediately respond. Just to quote one of their comments: “People shouldn’t be banned for being partisan, they should be banned only for breaking rules, and Splemndid didn’t break any rules.” But, apparently, there are rules being broken here, and it is not clear what these rules are, and whether or not Destiny approves of them.
• If the original post was problematic because it was too indirect, then hopefully this post which is significantly more direct — but kept well under the threshold of something that could be constituted as a “hate-post” — should not be a problem.

Chilling Effect. Brrr 🥶

When I was hit with the 30 day ban, I sent a direct appeal hoping the length of the ban would at least be reduced, which didn't receive a response, and neither did sending an unban request via the unban request form. No biggie. At least with a temporary ban I know when to expect to be unbanned.
After the 30 day ban, I decided to give up doing two things: (1) making attempts to get other users unbanned when I felt the justifications were not cogent or fair; and (2) participating in I-P threads that 4THOT himself had already made comments within — in particular, those where he was actively arguing with other users on the subreddit. This is a bad chilling effect; even if I see a comment they have made where they’ve made a false claim, or I disagree with their analysis or moral claims, I’m choosing not to engage because I'd rather not go through yet another cycle of bans. I value shitposting in the subreddit more than having arguments with 4THOT.
Moreover, I’m also not interested in getting caught in the crossfire when, upon finishing his Reddit debate, he bans his interlocutor from the subreddit, and also those who have made similar comments to the one his interlocutor has espoused elsewhere in the thread. He does not always do this, and I would literally never make the claim that he just “ban everyone that disagrees with [him]”. I won’t call this hyperbole as I’m sure someone has levelled this incorrect accusation against him. 4THOT is capable — and has demonstrated on myriad occasions — of being able to have dispassionate disagreements. The issue is that I’m not interested in rolling the dice here with another ban.
Thus, I decided to avoid 4THOT entirely while participating in the sub as normal, making the usual shitposts. (Y’all are welcome for the template, btw. I went frame by frame, looking for the shot of Destiny at his most euphoric.) Alas, woe is me, I made a fatal error: I can’t avoid 4THOT if I choose to comment in a thread first. Browsing new, the bane of my existence, Hobbitfollower you dastardly devil.

The Nuke: A Muddled Statement and Different Interpretations

In the trenches of new, I came across a submission which posted this version of a Jerusalem Post article. If you've read The Six Points, then you can see what I'm attempting to do in my comment, that was apparently egregious enough to warrant banning me “until Israel/Palestine is over.” Before I go over this, I’m going to once again link the comment I made on this subreddit defending Israel from the accusation that they have been siding with ISIS for years.

Consistency

I apply the exact same methodology when dispelling conspiracy theories on Israel as I do for the UN official whose comments are the subject of the post. I’m digging up the relevant primary sources; I’m searching for archived versions of articles posted on inactive websites; I’m reading multiple articles from different Israeli outlets reporting on the same speech; and I’m reading the entire transcript of the nearly hour-long speech by the head of the Israeli Military Intelligence at the time, Herzi Halevi, just so I can make an informed comment here. At no point am I ever concerned that I could be banned for this comment. I can freely talk about anti-Israel propaganda, and I know no moderator is going to bat an eye at that.
I recently watched a Hasan video because dgg taught me the art of hate-watching, and now I hate-watch dgg while they hate-watch Hasan. Early on in the video, an article headline by the Intercept is shown: “Leaked Cables Show White House Opposes Palestinian Statehood.” Ken Klippenstein appears in the byline, which immediately sets off a red flag for me because I’ve found reporting by him in the past to be absolutely dreadful, including the time when he used to work for the Grayzone, where he gave Seymour Hersh a softball interview, and allowed him to spread risible conspiracy theories. The Intercept article shown in Hasan’s video doesn't provide the cables they are reporting on, but they are available on Ken’s substack. Without going on a tangent, unsurprisingly, the Intercept’s piece on these cables misrepresents them (IMO).
Similarly, when I had a discussion with a tankie on another subreddit on whether or not the 2010 Australian Labor Party leadership spill was “a US-backed coup”, I once again seeked out all the relevant and many Wikileaks cables, read them all, and made my own assessment.

Dolls

Enough examples! You get the idea! I have a consistent principle that I am applying here. Upon opening up the JP article OP submitted, I see Danielle Greyman-Kennard in the byline. This is a person who previously wrote an article claiming that a dead Palestinian baby was a doll (which is not the first or last time this has happened in general; Pallywood amirite?). When it was brought to her attention that this is a body going through rigor mortis, she doubled-down in a patronising tweet.
Eventually, someone at the JP realized the fuck-up, and the article was retracted. There are a number of journalists and writers for Israeli outlets that seek to publish or tweet out any information that casts pro-Palestine organisations or individuals in a bad light — and that’s fine. If you’re pro-Palestine, and you’re saying or doing some dumb shit, that’s on you, not the individual that wants to report on it. However, there are biases at play here, where one must be cognizant of how these biases can filter down into how information is presented.

Direct Appeal

The following is the direct appeal I sent when I was banned which will serve as a clarification on the comment:
What up, I initially disagreed with your assessment, but upon re-reading it, now I'm unsure what our disagreement is, and what you think I was trying to address in my comment. Hopefully, the following will serve as clarification.
When I opened up the submission, I read the headline, I read the article, I watched the clip contained within, and then I sought out any additional footage from the interview that was readily available. The safe assumption I make when it comes to article submissions on reddit is that folk are generally not going to read the article, and will likely only comment based on the headline. If the headline is poor, I might present information in the comments in order to ensure that the criticism is well-directed. The headline of the Jerusalem Post article is:

UN Special Rapporteur 'unaware' of rocket attacks on Israel

If you asked the average person what they thought this headline meant, they would think the UNSR thought there had been no rocket attacks launched against Israel ever or since the start of the war. As evidence that some came away with this conclusion, you can read [redacted link] here posted on [redacted subreddit] (emphasis mine):

This can't be real right? This is a fake article right? Or a satire piece? Because if they've lived their entire lives unaware of the rocket attacks, then they have no right having anything to do with the global politics or whatever it is the UN does. That's just insane.

In other words, this individual is in disbelief, and they're astonished that Reem Alsalem, the UNSR, is completely unaware of any rocket/missile attacks that have been fired against Israel ever. Here I hope we can acknowledge two things: (1) Alsalem does believe there have been missile attacks against Israel at various points in time; and (2) most pro-Hamas sycophants aren't going to deny these missile attacks have taken place -- they want these attacks to take place. Alternatively, they might seek to diminish the destructive capability of these attacks, or assert that it is Israel's fault these attacks are occurring. It's pretty rare to come across someone claiming they've never happened, period.
My comment was made to highlight that she was really caught up in the frequency of the attacks and how she was possibly misinterpreting the question. Reem Alsalem has a wide litany of dumb beliefs that you can criticize her on; in this case, I thought the criticism would be better directed for being unaware of the frequency of attacks. The JP itself does include a line that would have better served as a headline:

[UN Special Rapporteur] unaware of the frequent rocket attacks made by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel.

As mentioned, I was trying to ensure that commenters didn't make comments like the one I linked. Re-reading my own comment, it could have been phrased better to make sure that those who read it understood my intentions.

Further comments

The rest of the direct appeal consisted of me clearing up any misconceptions that I might be pro-Hamas, providing various links of comments that demonstrate what my beliefs are. This my attempt to "pass the litmus test" as I don't believe I'm being engaged on the merits of my argument.
Once again, as I’ve hopefully established by now, we know there can be a widespread reluctance here to sometimes read past the headline and open the article, and even the article itself might not have sufficient context to truly parse what is being said. At the time, the only additional footage available from the interview was the five minute, heavily edited clip compilation available on the interviewer’s Twitter. It is just… irritating to watch. Partly because, as I said, I have to suffer through listening to Alsalem’s asinine beliefs, but also because it’s so chopped up that I can't quite tell what’s been cut out, what statements are directly following from which questions, and so on.
Other users also had interpretations of their own to give, taking note of the fact that there may be an edit after she says "but". I actually don’t think there was anything additional said, and it’s just awkwardly edited. However, unlike with Herzi Halevi’s speech, I and everyone else watching these clips are working with scraps here, and the segment that aired on Hazinor, Channel 13 is exactly the same. There is ambiguity here; an amorphous, nebulous, incoherent jumble of statements where one can make a range of interpretations — but one of those interpretations was not permissible on the subreddit. My own of course.
I’m still baffled as to what 4THOT’s contention here is. He comments:

!cleanse nvm you're an idiot. She says she has seen "attacks" but does not specify from where or whom or when. When he specifically asks if she's seen rocket attacks that have been reported from the north from Hezbollah and South from Hamas without "every single day" and is asked about rocket attacks from those areas says she hasn't seen it.

I presume the position he holds here is that Alsalem is being sly: when she says that she has seen attacks, she is actually referring to Israeli attacks, not Hamas or Hezbollah. For further clarity, I would have asked 4THOT:

• Do you think Alsalem holds the position that Hamas or Hezbollah have never fired rockets against Israel?
• If no, do you think Alsalem holds the position that Hamas or Hezbollah have never fired rockets against Israel since the initial barrage of rocket attacks on Oct. 7th?

In his first reply to my comment, he armed me and said I was his “strongest soldier.” 😳 Must have noticed these guns 💪😎. It seems like he originally agreed with me, and I don't know what impact, if any, this had on the ultimate decision.
I remember staring at this section of the unban request form thinking, "Err, I don't know." Like you all, when I've been banned by Destiny in the past, I know what to write here. He doesn't like snark; if you're being a condescending prick, get that ass banned. I have a general understanding of what sort of comments Destiny hates in this subreddit, and thus I know how to participate in the subreddit without being on the receiving end of a ban.
Taking the recommendation of another user, I cobbled together something for the unban form, and figured I'd just try again in a month. Alas, both the form and my last exchange with 4THOT was unsuccessful, and I would not have even attempted to send an unban request form to Ninou had I known that she had "orders to not unban" certain users. While I can understand that there may be certain users whose offenses are so egregious that a ban conditional on a lengthy period of time having been passed first is warranted, I don't believe I fall in this camp.
It's often stated by both Destiny and other moderators that the "process to get unbanned is pretty easy." Conditional bans tarnish the smoothness of this process, where good-faith unban requests are rejected due to the condition set, and I don't believe this should be the case.
If Destiny could offer further clarity here, that would be appreciated by both myself and others who have had this conditional ban placed upon them.

The Litmus Test:

Scroll up all the way to the top of Part 1, and what do you notice I've done in the preamble? I’m keen to avoid guilt by association; I believe Destiny just calls this being “webbed.” In the TL;DR I specifically mention the "pro-Israel crowd"; I know what this will invoke in the minds of people reading this, the associations people will draw to other people who have made criticism against the pro-Israel crowd. Thus, I feel the need to ensure that I dissociate myself from those people. That’s why you see the statement about Hasbara and brigading; it’s me raising a giant flag screeching, “Hey, I’m not like the others, this post is different!”
Let me give a couple examples here (suffer through some more examples…you must suffer…).

Example I - An Odd Title and an Audacious Inquiry

In this submission, OP posts a Twitter video with the submission title: “Reuters video shows militants armed with assault rifles atop aid convoy trucks and shooting at palstinians [sic] approaching the trucks.” Now, no one mentioned this in the comments, so to add some clarification here: this is not Reuters reporting, this is a clip from a Reuters live stream showing a view from a tent camp in Rafah. (Specific timestamp here.) Anyone watching this stream can clip whatever noteworthy event they see and add their own statements on what has transpired. As far as I can tell, that seems to be what the original clip here from N12 news has done, and it was also posted on their website, with no additional details.
This individual (henceforth called Doc) asked some fair questions. They made mistakes, of course, such as watching the clip on mute (you silly goose); but I would agree that “shooting at palstinians [sic]” invokes an image of, well, Palestinians being riddled with bullets, and instead we get what seems to be shots fired into the air. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that the title reflect this distinction. What’s unfortunate here is that merely attempting to get an accurate summary is enough for OP to assume the worst about them, and thus we get the rebuke: “Keep dicksucking the terrorists stealing the aid.” I’ve seen Doc’s comments before, when they say they’re an “Israel stan”, they are. But for OP, they immediately engaged in “the web”, guilt by association, etc., and that was enough to result in this petty infighting. I thought leftists were the only ones that did that?

Example II - No Steelmans Allowed

In the second example, it’s me that’s on the receiving end of the purity test. Personally, as someone who is not a leftist (see what I’ve done there?), I do think a considerable number of y’all miss the mark when it comes to criticising leftists, and I attempt to steelman their positions as I find that to be more conducive for better discourse. Feel free to disagree with the steelman, the point is that merely providing that steelman is enough for OP to assume that these are my own positions — despite clearly stating multiple times that I’m not pro-Palestine, that I support Operation Prosperity Guardian, etc. Once again I bring up that I have defended Israel from silly conspiracy theories when they mentioned “your tribe”, as that’s my attempt to pass the litmus test, demonstrating my impartiality here.

Example III - ???

I'm not sure if 4THOT engaged in a similar type of purity testing both for the initial comment I was banned for, and also in my last exchange with them on another subreddit. The exchange was pretty bizarre: I asked if they checked Reddit DMs; they replied that they do, and “our agreement stands.” In their next reply, they mentioned that they confused me with another person, and said that, “Yes, once I/P is over I will let your people go.” That phrase “your people”, is quite similar to how the OP in the previous example said “your tribe” and “your side.” This seems to be the guilt by association I spoke on: I’m being lumped in with a group whose views generally don’t align with my own. That’s why part 1 begins with an introduction on myself. I need to pass the litmus test first before I can get good engagement — and it’s unfortunate that I feel compelled to do that.

Engage in good-faith

The conclusion here is a simple one: don't assume what positions your interlocutor holds merely because they're skeptical about that framing of certain stories, or because they attempt to provide a steelman for the opposing side.

Finito for Real

What I’m looking for here is clarity. UN officials will continue to say and do stupid things; that applies to pro-Palestine people, that applies to leftists. But every now and then, upon seeing one of these submissions, I might think, “Eh, this is pretty stupid, but I think it’s stupid for slightly different reasons to everyone else.” Can I express those opinions here? Must I add a preamble to every comment so that people don’t assume the worst? Do I need to be thinking, “Hmm, I wonder what 4THOT thinks about this story?”

Free me OOOO 🐟

Thanks to everyone that offered feedback. :)

The Short Version can be found here.

Part 1 can be found here.

Example 5 - There's more to a BBC YouTube title

Returning to this dastardly subreddit, for my next example, points 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 are relevant. OP provided a screenshot of a BBC YouTube title, stating: "Israeli hit squad dressed as doctors kill Palestinians in hospital." Per point 2, by failing to immediately link to the video, or immediately mention what the video contains, folk could come away with the conclusion that the BBC never reports that these were militants. In other words, some might believe that the misreporting here extends past the video title, when it does not, and this could be avoided by providing salient details sooner rather than later. This submission was made during the temporary ban, and I thought it was interesting enough as a case study to come back to.

Example 6 - Oxfam's full position

For this submission/meme, points 1, 2, and 6 are relevant. I saw that we weren’t going to get good-faith engagement with the entirety of Oxfam’s position here on why they initially opposed airdrops, and I attempted to outline the full extent of their views so that it can be critiqued appropriately. This meme is not too dissimilar from some Twitter leftist fixating on one short clip of Destiny during one of his heated gamer moments; his actual positions aren’t being engaged with, and it’s intellectually dull. There’s more to Destiny’s positions than a twenty-second clip; there’s more to Oxfam’s position than the one tweet. The fact of the matter is that there’s a long series of tweets here, and while the tweet OP chose to highlight is risible, is dumb, and is insufferable, we are more than capable on this subreddit in being more nuanced and fair when it comes to our criticism.
As I highlight, there were some concerns here that were not entirely unreasonable. At the time of my comment, there weren’t yet any reports on injuries due to airdrops. These reports appeared in the following days and weeks, where Gazans were killed when a parachute in an airdrop failed to deploy, and some drowned in their attempts to retrieve parcels that landed in the sea. Retrospectively, I wouldn't say that aid should not have been airdropped merely because it would result in these deaths, but a fair assessment of Oxfam here at the time should have taken these concerns into account.
Oxfam’s associate director also endorses a Twitter thread where some prescriptions are given on how ought this aid delivery be facilitated. He recommends that the Gaza port be reopened, and to open more crossings. The Biden administration recognized that airdrops would not sufficiently alleviate the problem of being unable to get sufficient quantities of aid distributed, and while the port was not reopened, Biden did announce that a temporary port would be built. Further, Israel approved the reopening of the Erez crossing.
The misinformation in OP’s post stems from the fact that folk will be disinterested in reading the twitter thread or any additional threads where they might have elaborated on views. Out of the thousands that interact with the post, a significant chunk will come away with the incorrect belief that Oxfam’s opposition to airdrops was merely due to what was stated in the meme. That is misinformation being propagated — not the most egregious, Hamas-esqe level of misinformation in the world, but misinformation nonetheless.

Example 7 - NYT: Bananas, or Cool as a Cucumber?

For our final example points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are relevant; it’s the whole shebang. To give a quick recounting here, Hobbitfollower isn’t the only masochist that might, occasionally, choose to exclusively sort by new. When I saw the submission, I read the article, and I was a bit annoyed that the Jerusalem Post article doesn’t even link to the mission report that I was interested in reading. I searched for it, posted a link to the report in the very first comment of the thread as surely my fellow dggas would also like to read the report, and then I, well, read the report.
When I returned back to the thread, I quoted favourably from the mission report to support another individual's comment. (I would again quote from it in another thread the next day to highlight why Israel struggled to acquire forensic evidence.)
But as I scrolled down the thread I came across the subject of our example; 50 upvotes, no article linked, and clearly a charged comment. Consider the steps involved to truly engage with this comment; one would need to:

• Click and read the article.
• Search for the mission report.
• Read the mission report (as some folk probably won’t wanna read 20 pages right off the bat).
• Search for the NYT article; bypass the paywall (which is trivially easy nowadays but is still a barrier, and people are lazy); and read the article.

This is a very charged thread: there are going to be a large group of pro-Israel folk browsing this thread, frustrated and irate as bad memories are invoked of all the times they’ve had to deal with or seen pro-Hamas folk engaging in rape denialism. In much the same way a leftist sub is not going to be interested in a dispassionate analysis of an Israeli strike with high civilian collateral damage, this sub — at times — will struggle to calmly assess the subject matter. An expected behaviour isn’t necessarily the correct behaviour — the actions we believe one ought to take.
When a misleading tweet goes viral, the damage has already been done, as a considerable amount of people won’t see the subsequent Community Notes that might be slapped on it. Likewise, some of the thousands who see OP’s highly upvoted comment will think, “Oh, this has a lot of upvotes, I guess it must be true. How horrible of the NYT to frame this as a both sides issue”, and thus misinformation has spread. This incorrect belief will mold their perceptions of the NYT. When they encounter more reporting by the NYT on I-P in the future, they might even think back to this moment: “Ah, I remember when these bozos tried to say that the Israeli accusations were the same as the Palestinian accusations.”
I also referred to OP’s comment as disinformation. In every example discussed so far, I don't assume malicious intent. I just begin with the foundation that a mistake was made, and I don’t enmesh myself by throwing out accusations of lying. In this case, however, OP has indirectly acknowledged that I was correct, but they still haven’t bothered to edit their original comment. Once again, this comment is a really good example of point 1. I obviously also disagree with their conclusion, and the process by which they’re arriving at their conclusion is still very flawed — and other people are simply going to adopt their conclusion while not even attempting to reach there by their own independent assessment. If you see someone quote from an article, and they don’t even link it, and the comment is very charged, I would encourage y’all to seek out the article yourself; you may come away with a different interpretation.
I'm sure you've seen this meme before: "I'm just waiting for Destiny to comment on this so that I know what to think 😎." We meme about it, but there is, of course, an undercurrent of truth here, as we have confidence in Destiny's ability to research, and thus we feel comfortable adopting his beliefs and opinions. It's nice not having to do the research ourselves. Lazy fucks.
This applies to Reddit comments you see as well. Don't just adopt the conclusion of someone else because their beliefs align with yours and they're speaking with authority. Do the legwork yourself; be mindful of The Six Points; and you might find that someone on your own side is actually spreading misinformation, or is espousing an opinion that you disagree with.

Purgatory

I was perma-banned some time after my previous comment for a comment I made in a different thread. Before I get to that in the next fuck-me-who-knows-how-I'm-gonna-write-that-I'm-so-fucked section, I did want to bring up two final examples.

Example A - Haaretz and Amputations

For Example A, points 1, 3, 4, and 5 are relevant. Obviously, I can’t attempt point 6 because I was banned. Now, I actually agree with OP as I share their skepticism towards the notion that these amputations are “routine”, but referring to the article as a "fake story" is too strong, and, as always, their process here is flawed. The claims they make here about the Haaretz article and CNN article are misleading, but it is immediately upvoted because it feels right, particularly because the first reply just poisons the well. Haaretz did not speak to an anonymous person, they are reporting on a letter they have seen written by a doctor and sent to senior Israeli officials; the doctor did not justify the claim that the event is routine based on having seen only two amputations, that's merely the amputations they saw in the week they wrote the letter (but the phrasing here is ambiguous, as the doctor could be referring to the handcuff injuries as being the "routine" event); and the IDF did not confirm or deny all the claims, but gave a fairly standard, boilerplate response instead. The misleading claims in this comment was eventually addressed — and, as I’m sure you’re irritated by the repetition by now, the goal of this post is to turn this “eventually” into an “immediately.”

Example B - Wikipedia and Devious Editing

For Example B, points 1 and 5 are relevant. I want to be very careful with this one as I don't want to be misconstrued. Similar to the previous example, I mostly agree with their conclusion that these Wikipedia pages can be very flawed, and partisan editors can tarnish the objectivity that we wish could be maintained across all articles. However, you know the drill by now, point 1. There’s much to be said about the infamous “24-hour window” debacle, and I made a submission a while ago on this. I think there are parts of this story that both the pro-Palestine and pro-Israel crowd get wrong — but the latter is generally more correct, and I would agree with OP here that the information here is, at the very least, incomplete.
However, per point 5, the articles they are critiquing are not linked. How many people here actually sought out the two articles referenced here? As I’ve already demonstrated, we know how many misleading or false claims you can get away with before they’re finally addressed. A user in that thread made some edits to the contentious lines in question in the Wikipedia article. This was the Wikipedia article at the time OP’s comment was made. OP quotes this section:

Prior to the raids, Israel had called for the more than a million people living in the north half of the Gaza Strip to evacuate during a 24-hour window, while Hamas instructed those residents to stay put.

The two citations here are a Reuters article and a Politico article. The Politico article is arguably redundant, but it’s not being cited because it’s supposed to make a statement about a 24-hour window; it’s being cited to support the statement about Hamas:

Hamas is complicating the situation, urging residents to stay in their homes.

The Reuters article also mentions this:

“We tell the people of northern Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in your homes, and your places," Eyad Al-Bozom, spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry, told a news conference.

Contrary to what OP said, both articles use the word “evacuation” at some point. The first part of the quote from the Wikipedia page is supported by this statement in the Reuters article:

On Friday Israel gave more than a million residents of the northern half of Gaza 24 hours to flee to the south to avoid an onslaught.

In a follow-up comment OP claims that the archived link, which pulled the earliest version of the Reuters article available, does not support the line. This seems to have been an error on the part of whoever chose this hyperlink. When the Wikipedia article first mentions calls for evacuation, this was how the Reuters article cited looked like at the time; regardless of the veracity of the claim, the article did support what the Wikipedia page mentions.
To reiterate, OP is completely correct about this pernicious problem with Wikipedia. It’s just that in this example, I don’t think it qualifies as a case of those darn pro-Palestine editors back at it again. The nuanced position here is pretty difficult to get to, and I don’t think the editors wrote this line in the interest of distorting the truth to serve their own side.

Example B.5: A better yet slightly flawed post on Wikipedia and Euro-Med Monitor

This post about how Hamas supporters are influencing Wikipedia does better in terms of substantiating their claims — but there are issues here that I would have loved to address, and there is a good critique on OP’s prescriptions that was buried at the bottom. Unfortunately, OP has been suspended from Reddit. If you’re reading this mate, call me 🥺.
There are a lot of hyperlinks in OP’s post (lol, sez fucking me), and it’s completely reasonable that someone won’t feel inclined to click every single one; that’s not an expectation I would ever demand. From going through the post, there are several small critiques I would have made (e.g., while I don’t believe the Mondo article should have been cited, OP claims that in the article, “The only people criticizing Wiesel here is the author of the opinion piece.” FWIW, the article does reference and cite a Haaretz article, and a Foreign policy article, both of which levy criticism against Wiesel), but I’m just going to focus on this line:

In fact, it is owned by a man named Ramy Abdu, who is a literal Hamas lobbyist.

If you’re going to call someone a literal Hamas lobbyist, that is definitely a link I’m clicking. What I know about Abdu is simply what I can assume about his beliefs from various tweets I’ve seen by him over the past several months; but I’ve never looked into their background other than being aware of their position at EMM. Upon opening the link I see… a 2013 article about Clare Short. From reading the article, it looks like OP missed some steps in outlining how they arrived at their conclusion, and I saw only a few people inquiring about this. To fill in the steps on what I presume OP wanted to say, from the article they linked:

Moshe Ya’alon, former IDF chief of staff, outlawed the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR) – a Belgian non-profit organisation that lobbies on behalf of the Hamas-led Gaza Government – using emergency defence regulations.

I haven’t looked into CEPR, and they obviously disputed the lobbying charge; I’m just going to take the claim at face-value. In 2011, Abdu was assistant director of the CEPR, and still held a position there for several years. They've since left the organization, but per point 1, if this is how OP arrived at the conclusion that Abdu is a “literal Hamas lobbyist”, I think it could use a bit more work, with additional clarification on what they mean by lobbyist here. I’m sure they can do it, it just happened to not be in this post.
I'm not going to harp on about point 5 here as I only apply that to incidents where a claim is made; one or two articles are linked; and then no one reads them, assuming the claim must be true as long as articles are provided. I would literally never make the prescription that if someone writes an effort-post, we must click every hyperlink to fact-check. I mean, it's not like I would have any other motivation for saying that... sweats profusely 🙄
Just to make one final point on EMM, it is a rubbish outlet, and any time I encounter one of their articles, I roll my eyes knowing I’m going to get some outlandish claim where I can find fuck-all for corroboration from other outlets. However, sometimes there is corroboration, where EMM was the first to notice that the IDF labelled a bicycle as an RPG in the drone footage they published, and then the NYT confirmed the finding (except for the other stupid claim made in the tweet.) But anyways, these moments are astronomically rare.

Example C - A Mysterious Royal Website (What a weaselly little --)

Okay, I lied, one final example as it’s interesting to see how people here parse articles and headlines, but before I address the example, let me talk about Reuters headlines.

Reuters headlines

They’re not always consistent on this front, but I generally like how Reuters writes their headlines. A Reuters headline will often contain the phrase “US says”. [30] [31] [32] What I’m expecting in the article when I see a headline containing this phrase is some official representing the Biden administration outlining what their particular policy, position, belief, etc., is on whatever the subject matter may be, or some action they took which makes it clear what their position is. In the given examples, we have statements from Biden, Blinken, the US military, and so on. Sometimes the US officials remain anonymous, sharing information in private briefings.
If there isn’t an official statement by the US available on a matter, the headline might use the phrase “source says” to talk about ongoing developments. [33] [34] “Reuters will use unnamed sources where necessary when they provide information of market or public interest that is not available on the record. We alone are responsible for the accuracy of such information.” [35]
Relevant to Example C, Reuters uses the same guidelines for “Saudi Arabia says” [36] [37] and “sources say” for information relevant to Saudi Arabia. [38]

Israeli outlets, A royal family website, and Saudi sources: An amusing chain of events

Keeping the previous section in mind, when I came across this version of a Jerusalem Post article posted to this subreddit, you can imagine what I’m expecting here — particularly because this would be momentous news to see Saudi Arabia make a public statement that they helped defend Israel. Instead, we get reporting on what Saudi Arabia’s royal family said on their website, and what a source connected to the Saudi royal family told KAN, another Israeli outlet — and we don’t get links to either of them. If there was no statement on the royal family’s website, this would have been a bad headline to write based on what this source said. Unfortunately for the JP, there is no official website for Saudi Arabia’s royal family. You’ll see in the current version, they remove the reference to that website, and also add the following line:

The Al Arabiya news site said sources had informed it that Saudi Arabia had not participated in the interception of Iranian drones and missiles.

Here’s the article by the Saudi state-owned outlet, which is essentially their mouthpiece to deny the ongoing report. I24news, however, didn’t get the memo:

Saudi Arabia publicly acknowledges role in defending Israel against Iranian attack
While Jordan had openly disclosed its role in the defensive maneuver, Saudi Arabia's acknowledgment came in the form of a summary on its official website

When I first saw the JP submission on this subreddit, I bookmarked it for later to come back to and find the sources, as it’s not the first time I’ve seen dubious reporting from KAN news. I was also curious if anyone in the thread was going to highlight some of the discrepancies in the article, and, well, shoutout to this keen reader! Fact-checking the JP article slipped my mind, but thanks to a comment I saw on another subreddit, they correctly pointed out that the website referenced was not affiliated with the Saudi royal family, and thus the article the JP and other Israeli outlets had presumably read should not have been taken as an official statement. Christ, this is obvious from the very first line:

A source from the Saudi royal family, who prefers anonymity, converses with the Kan public broadcaster. The individual subtly acknowledges Saudi Arabia’s supposed involvement in thwarting Iranian attack drones bound for Israel the previous evening, citing that Saudi Arabian airspace automatically intercepts “any suspicious entity”.
The same figure takes a swing at Iran, accusing them of instigating a conflict in Gaza. This, they suggest, is a deliberate attempt to unravel the progress established towards normalizing relations with Israel, as per Kan’s report.
In the words of the official, as put forth by Kan, “Iran is a nation that endorses terrorism, and the world should have curtailed it much earlier.”

Why would the official Saudi royal website use an anonymous source within the royal family to make their public announcement, and why would they quote what the official said to an Israeli outlet?!
It’s fascinating to see this play out: the supposed source spoke to Kan News; Houseofsaud presumably sees this and makes an article on the Kan segment; the JP sees this article and the segment, poorly reads it, and then cites it and the original Kan segment; outlets like the Daily Wire pick up on the story from the JP; and then on it goes, spreading like wildefire, before the Saudis take note (“oh fuck, oh fuck, where are these reports coming from?”) and disseminate a message denying that any “official” website publicly confirmed their involvement. The Saudis are involved, and they’re keeping tight-lipped about the extent of their involvement.
Just to quote one more line from the i24news article because it’s shockingly poor:

The post subtly hinted at Saudi Arabia's involvement in intercepting suspicious entities in its airspace, highlighting the kingdom's proactive stance in safeguarding regional stability.

This is written based on this line from the HouseofSaud article:

A source from the Saudi royal family, who prefers anonymity, converses with the Kan public broadcaster. The individual subtly acknowledges Saudi Arabia’s supposed involvement in thwarting Iranian attack drones bound for Israel the previous evening, citing that Saudi Arabian airspace automatically intercepts “any suspicious entity”.

It’s the individual/source who is being subtle, not the post itself as i24 news mentions.
Anyways, this is not a case of misinformation by the subreddit. There's nothing wrong with posting a JP article, and this is easily the least offensive Example, but point 5 is nicely relevant here. I thought y'all might find this to be interesting, particularly because some people probably still believe that Saudi Arabia has publicly acknowledged their involvement, and maybe that could be someone reading this section. It's also another example where, because I’m banned, I can’t offer a bit of nuance. stares intently at 4THOT
It’s a shame Destiny didn’t finish reading the article, I’m curious what he would have said. He speculates that the report was from intelligence or monitoring, but moves on before finishing the article; it’s also the updated version of the article, without the tidbit about the Saudi royal family website.

Finito

I'm going to close out this section here. There's always more to include, more examples that demonstrate the aforementioned points, but I'd rather focus on my own comments instead of threads where I was unable to contribute my thoughts. There's been a plethora of discourse here surrounding the campus protests, and maybe those are still ongoing if I manage to post this at a sooner date. For completely legitimate and fair justifications, all of these threads are going to be very charged; and maybe upon reading this post some of y'all might feel more inclined to analyze these situations dispassionately, mindful of cases where the reporting might not be the greatest.

Example D - A Late Fact-check (Still lying, dude!)

I fucking lied again, there’s more. Literally the day after I finished writing the above paragraph, a new example popped up that I can’t resist the temptation to include. Stop giving me material! As I spoke of above, the campus protests have resulted in a charged atmosphere on the subreddit, which means that this post stating that a “Jewish-Israeli family’s restaurant was targeted in a hate crime” is immediately catapulted to the front page. The biggest problem here is that, per point 2, the presentation of the post led folk to believe that this was a recent event because OP had omitted the date this took place, and this led to one user to thoughtfully suggest that it might be worth setting up a GoFundMe to help the owners with the repairs.
To reemphasize the point I’ve made throughout this post, I’m looking to incentivise better behaviour to occur sooner. It took nearly 10 hours before one jolly chap came along to do the fact-check. Naturally, had I seen this post while browsing arnew, I would have done the same, and so would a couple other users here as well who are good for this sort of thing — and that's unfortunate that I’m saying a “couple” instead of “many.” There is no curiosity amongst everyone who interacted with this post to inquire into the event; not even something simple as requesting OP for an article. So folks, always ask for a source if OP doesn’t provide one just so you have a bit more context. (Also, I am fascinated with the anecdote OP attached to this post. Did they just make up their credentials?)

Example E - Hebrew Sources and False Confidence

This is a wonderful example to close out this section because it exemplifies so many of the problematic behaviours that I have demonstrated in this post. I was only made aware of this thread because a user here DM'd me a link to the thread. I will refer to the individual posting misinformation in the comments as "OP", and I'll refer to the submitter of the post by their username, Sylmd. The rebuttals to OP are excellent, and I will focus more on the behaviour here.
Sylmd posted a submission doing a quick lil' fact-check on a Destiny tweet, noting the fact that he seemed to have misread or misremembered a particular report. I say "seemed" here in case Destiny was referring to some other report or article he had read, but that seems unlikely as he has referenced this report in several of his debates, and the report was the subject of his previous tweets. Regardless, it was a small mistake, and apart from failing to immediately link the tweet and the report (link your sources you silly goose), Sylmd's post is civil, calm, and makes no accusations of malicious intent.
According to OP, Destiny was actually right, and 300+ IDF soldiers were in fact injured. Now, there's so much that is astonishingly problematic with OP's comment, and I gotta... mention it all! Sorry!
Naturally, they don't ever quote from their sources, which means it's on us to try and find the relevant sections. OP claims that the articles linked will demonstrate that 380 Israelis were injured -- despite the fact that Sylmd is obviously doing a fact-check on how many Israeli soldiers were injured, and that's literally the subject of Destiny's tweet.
Whatever, I'm sure the articles at least "discusses around 380 injuries"? Fuck no they don't! There's no mention of this figure anywhere, and OP somehow racks up 50 upvotes when they accuse Sylmd of lying after they correctly point this out. Did these people actually read the articles, find this magical 380 figure, and think, "Grrr, Sylmd you mendacious scumbag, I see through your Hamas propaganda." Sylmd was sitting at -31, one hour after the thread was made. (If you refer back to Example 2, you'll see that I felt compelled to make a submission when I saw a user was being downvoted for correctly pointing out that an article did not prove a particular claim.)
It gets worse. Apparently, you have to "click through all the links in these articles buddy." Well, okay, that's pretty elaborate, how silly of us not to realize this. OP wants us to open up nine Hebrew articles, translate them, and then tally up the number of casualties. Problem? Surely we get to the 380 figure if we click through all the hyperlinks in the article? Fuck no we don't! And even if we did, this is the most blisteringly cumbersome way to prove a claim. The sheer condescension in OP's comment is equivalent to that of a Twitter leftist: "It's not my job to educate you honey, you must read the literature."
So where does this mysterious figure come from? Well, as Sylmd correctly pointed out (before OP mentioned it), they are grabbing this figure from Hebrew Wikipedia. Sylmd doesn't provide a link to the article in question, so I will provide it here, and as you can see, the two articles that OP linked came from this Wikipedia page. I'm not convinced OP actually read either of these articles.
That's not all. They then linked a report in Hebrew in their edit. Where did they get this report from? It's not on the Wikipedia page, maybe this is something they have bookmarked? Nope, they got it from another user in the thread! After all is said and done, they still somehow racked up 270 upvotes for this awful rebuttal, and they were, "Proud to take a blast for defending the truth."
Do I even need to mention the points here? It's an authoritative comment; the linked articles give an "aura" of being correct; and there's confidence in all their comments.
To quote from Example 1:

Anyways, since I began this post it looks like the upvotes and downvotes on the original comment have since shifted. Mashallah. It's the behaviour I was describing before: all the low-effort garbage gets upvoted first, and then other people break the circlejerk and try to add nuance. But it would be nice if the nuance was added first and foremost without the need for tedious fact-checks.

That still holds true today.

Consistency and Principles

Do I only address misinformation from the pro-Israel side? Not that it should matter, but no, I will address misinformation from the pro-Palestine on this subreddit if I see it and I feel like addressing it. I was irritated to see muppets like Rob Rousseau spread conspiracies about a "suspicious link" between ISIS and Mossad, and I encountered a user here who was sprouting similar conspiratorial nonsense. You’ll notice that (1) I was blessed to be called a “Reddit pseudo intellectual libtard” (not wrong, not false, this hurts bro); and (2) I apply the exact same methodology here as I do for the examples of misinformation I've addressed elsewhere — which isn’t to say I’m doing anything commendable here. I just read the articles, trying to find the primary sources where relevant, and then see if the “reporting” accurately conveys what was said or written.
However, digging up the original source can be a time-consuming endeavour, and compounded by the fact that I might not speak the relevant language — which means that there was a case where I inadvertently made a comment containing misinformation. A couple months ago someone requested a steelman of the argument that Israel is conducting a genocide against Gazans; I offered one, and to support the case I used a misquote taken from a Bloomberg video which omitted a crucial part of Yoev Gallant’s statement: the reference to Hamas, and thus radically changing the context of the statement. I hold myself to the same principle when it comes to curbing misinformation, and I was more than content to edit my comment to ensure it did not propagate further than it already had.
Some of you eagle-eyed readers might recognize this Gallant quote, as it made a very marked appearance within… South Africa's genocide case against Israel. Here, that salient reference to Hamas is also omitted, and the accompanying footnote cites the same Bloomberg video that I did. As I wished in another reply, Bloomberg did indeed take the video down eventually. Now, I can be excused for my mistake as I’m not making the positive case outside of my steelman. For South Africa, this is unbelievably shoddy work when you're officially bringing a genocide case against another state.
Anyways, I've gone through many examples in this schizo-post, and it's entirely possible that I've made an error at some point; the irony is not lost on me. Feel free to point these errors out. I might not agree with your assessment, but I'm always willing to hear the arguments.

Prescriptions: The Six Points (Déjà vu)

I'm going to end with The Six Points because that's the focus of Part 1 and Part 2. As previously mentioned, this post is not intended to demonstrate that the misinformation the pro-Israel crowd spreads is as egregious as the misinformation the pro-Palestine spreads, whether in general or on this subreddit. While misinformation from the pro-Palestine crowd slips by every now and then on the subreddit, I would make the case that, generally speaking, it is quickly addressed. In my experience, however, I was finding quite a few cases of misinformation from the pro-Israel crowd were taking a concerning amount of time to be addressed; and in the interest of ensuring that it does get addressed in a more timely manner, I believe the following prescriptions would be helpful to keep in mind when browsing the subreddit:

1. Value the process just as much — if not, more — than the conclusion.
2. Be wary of how the presentation of information or the omission of pertinent information can lead to the inadvertent spread of misinformation.
3. Be aware of how “charged” topics/threads lead to poor reasoning that lacks dispassionate analysis.
4. Be aware of how pre-existing beliefs about an individual or organization alongside the usual biases leads to a reluctance to fact-check, where claims are taken at face-value because they feel right.
5. Link the article. Read the article. (Thoroughly.)
6. Redirect criticism to areas where it will be the strongest.

Click here for Part 3. Warning: you might get stung by a bee 🐝

I have two children aged 8 and 6. My 8-year-old who I'll call C has been diagnosed with ADHD and he's currently taking medication for it in the morning which lasts till around lunch time. He's not taking anything for later in the day because we've had only awful experiences with that - affecting his appetite and preventing sleep.
My 6-year-old who I'll call S hasn't been diagnosed but I think she probably has it too.
Our biggest problem in life right now is that certain times where we're all confined together for a period of time, namely family meals and car trips, are becoming a total hell for my wife and I. This is because C and S when together get super super hyper and get carried away with their own special "silly talk". It involves jokes and phrases that only make sense to them, loud silly voices, etc. It is a huge impediment to being able to have a normal adult conversation, and it make my wife and I feel stressed and angry. It also drags out the meal time to 45-60 minutes, sometimes even more, because they are distracted from eating. We don't have anything against kids being kids, having fun and talking nonsense, but we want it at least to be a little bit quiet, and not 100% of the mealtime or journey. At other times of the day they have free rein to talk and play.
On car journeys it's similar. The noise level gets high enough that it's really hard to have a conversation, and sometimes it feels dangerous having so much distraction in the car.
They seem to be incapable of controlling it though. Threats of consequences and pleas to tone it down don't help. When they are doing well we try to notice and give praise. Our last resort technique for meals is to bring one of them out of the room to wait while the other eats. Then the distraction is gone, and things go smoothly but this takes even more time.
It's reached a crisis point where my wife just can't cope and will go away from the dinner table because she's not coping, and will be very upset about it for hours. I *can* cope, but when things go this way it's still pretty horrible for me in the moment (I just bounce back faster). It must be stressful for the kids as well, getting constantly told off. We really want to make these times nice for everyone.
Does anyone have recommendations of things to try, things to read, etc?

tl:dr: Spouse left for a weekend trip after I confessed I was feeling suicidal from a medication change, how do I move forward?
I (36F) recently had a medication change with a very scary side effect: it made me feel suicidal (this effect is no longer happening, I'm currently okay). I talked to my spouse (58M) of over 10 years about it, how I was scared to be alone, and didn't know what to do. The feelings were coming on in the morning and evening, but I was feeling fine throughout the day. This was on a Thursday, and he was leaving the next day for a weekend event (entertainment, not work related) where he would have no cell service.
We talked about options, about reaching out to my doctor (which in hindsight would have been the smart choice, but I was not thinking clearly), reaching out to a friend, or maybe him just staying home for the weekend -- all of which I felt awful about, because I don't like being a burden on others.
He... I guess for lack of a better phrase, talked me back from how serious it felt. Told me I was strong enough to get through this, that it felt bigger than it was. He honestly made me feel like I was being silly and dramatic. He agreed to stick around long enough in the morning until I felt better, and he did do that much, but felt like he was eager and impatient to leave.
That night was very rough, and I did reach out to someone who talked me down. I was not okay.
When I was feeling more like myself again, I spoke with my spouse about how much this interaction had hurt me, how it felt like he's chosen the fun event over me, to put it mildly. He said his intent had been to empower me, that he was sorry he hurt me. That he honestly thought I was going to be okay.
The advice I'm seeking is, how can I move forward? I'm still feeling very hurt, and like I can't rely on my spouse. I don't know how much of this might be me overreacting (my mental health, my responsibility), how much I might be underreacting. I'm just. Tired, mostly.

May seem like a silly question, but the second phrase is SOO much clearer that it leads me to think that the first phrase has some underlying meaning that isn’t communicated very well by the second one. Or maybe both have different meanings within the law.
Does the first one imply that the “deprivation of rights” is illegal/unconstitutional? While the second one is sometimes legal/constitutional?

Ok hear me out. Felicity, from the first Style Savvy game, calls us “Sweet Tea” a lot, right? As a kid, I didn’t think much about it. I’m from the south myself, we love our sweet iced tea. But I’m realizing now that I’ve never heard anybody use it as a nickname- usually it’s sweet PEA, or sweetie.
Now, as an adult, I’ve studied Japanese for several years and even at one point thought translating video games would be super fun, right? Well, as any of you who study Japanese know, when you’re speaking Japanese and use a word that is borrowed from another language, you write it in Katakana. So, naturally, this may become confusing at times when it’s English being spelled out phonetically, because some words will be very similar or even identical, causing mistranslations to occur every now and then.
スイーツティー would be the English words “sweet tea” written in katakana. Of course Japanese has its own words for sweet tea, but again, if we are spelling the English word in Japanese phonetics, this is how it’s spelled out; for example on Lipton Tea, it’s スイーツティー, right?
Now, Japanese doesn’t use spaces much in words or phrases, so the pause is indicated by the character ツ- which, in a Japanese word is pronounced tsu, most of the time the vowel “u” making a pretty short sound but can be longer; however, when ツ is used in English words, it’s incredibly rare for the “u” part to actually be part of the word. Usually it’s in place of a consonant to indicate a pause, whether in the middle of a word like “kitty”, or at the end of a word, like “cat”. When it’s a T sound in the middle of ONE word it’s small like ッ, but if it’s stopping a word that ENDS in a T sound, it’s big like ツ.
Okay. So let’s recap. スイーツティー is how we would write sweet tea in English, in Japanese, in katakana- right? So then what is スイーッティー? Sound it out- if the first is sweet•tea… the one with the small ッ is not a full stop in the middle and is… sweetea… sweetie. Sweetie. IT’S SWEETIE.
Now, I have never played the Japanese version of the original ds game (Girls Mode), but I do know that some older Japanese games didn’t include a full keyboard with smaller characters since it was already hard enough to see the normal sized ones in pixels- so some games just assumed the players would already know the words and be able to understand what they were, I guess sorta like how some English games were in all caps back then because they couldn’t be bothered to try to make the more ~curvy~ lowercase letters when anyone could read caps just fine, and there just weren’t enough pixels to do it without making the font super big and take up a lot of space.
So these are my theories:
•Felicity has been calling us Sweetie the whole time and NOT Sweet Tea, because the spelling of the two are identical if you only have big katakana to work with- so whoever translated and localized the game read it as sweet tea, because that was the literal translation.
•If the game DID have the small katakana, either same thing as in the first theory, or even possibly whoever originally wrote her dialogue made a spelling mistake. Either way, it was a translation error- whether it was the original writers spelling sweet tea, or the localizer translating the translation.
Regardless of what happened, I think it's a very endearing silly nickname that got in the game because Felicity herself says she was named after a Southern Belle, and I can definitely see it going past someone's head since we do love our sweet tea down here- I definitely think it made her memorable. I didn't even realize it was probably a translation mistake until just now, age 25, at midnight playing the game and wondering if anyone calls each other that, only to have a lightbulb moment that it sounded like SWEETIE, which we DO use daily in the south.
Anyway, idk who is actually going to sit down and read all of this, but I had to let everyone know because this stuff fascinates me. I love learning how languages work, and how tiny translation errors go over our heads sometimes haha.
She was trying to call us sweetie this whole time. But I always loved being called sweet tea 😭

Book report guy back, with the Bryan Danielson book from 2014 and it has some fun backstage stories from his time in WWE!
Solid wrestling book, though not super memorable in my opinion. Some solid detail and dirt like you expect, but honestly it felt like he was holding back.
As always, it's in chronological order as best as I could do that. Hope y'all enjoy!
Bryan is a weird dude, while describing his adolescence, he casually says that he has a lot of weird hypothesis on various subjects, and we should ask Nigel McGuinness about Bryan's theory on how a penis grows. He doesn't expand on this more. He just says that and moves back to talking about his childhood.
Bryan rants a bit about how modern medicine has stunted human evolution because kids who would have died off got to live and reproduce and pass their "defects" onto the next generation. He says that he is one of those defects, sick all his childhood and sick a lot as an adult. He says that his wife Brie is also a "defect" but says she can share the details in her own book if she ever writes one.
When Bryan was 16 years old, he contacted Dean Melanko's wrestling school and was told it would cost him $2,500, but he needed a $500 deposit to secure his spot. Bryan was scared that there were hundreds of people on the waiting list and worked extra shifts at McDonald's in order to get the cash together asap. He put $500 deposit down for a wrestling school he couldn't go to for 2 more years.
Three months before Bryan graduated high school, the Melanko Wrestling School contacted to inform Bryan that the school was shutting down permanently. When Bryan asked for his $500 back, he was told that they no longer had it and that he was SOL.
While watching Monday Night RAW, an ad flashed advertising a 900 number (an old pay-per-minute phone concept that was always a money drain on the caller), and it advertised Shawn Michaels opening up a wrestling school. After an expensive phone call, Bryan was told to pay $20 more for a package to be mailed to him with more info. He did, and when he got the package, it detailed how Michaels wrestling school would cost $3,900 dollars, and it had another 900 number to call if you're interested. Bryan was demoralized and almost didn't call. When he did, though, he was speaking to Shawm Michaels mom, who was helping Shawn run it. Bryan's mom ended up doing all the talking, and the two mothers helped Bryan get set up with a place in San Antonio where the school was. They agreed to let Bryan pay monthly to help him with the finances.
Bryan's first day of wrestling school went exactly like everyone else's first day of wrestling school, with 90% of the students gassed and vomiting. Bryan said out of the 10 guys there, only he and Lance Cade didn't end up vomiting.
Bryan remembers how much Shawn Michaels prioritized his training to Lance Cade. One of the first days, Lance did a basic jump and got so much air that Michaels loudly proclaimed, "I smell money!"
Even though it was Shawn's school, the primary instructor was Rudy Boy Gonzales, a pretty insignificant wrestler from the 80s and 90s. Bryan puts over Rudy as a passionate trainer who motivated him to try harder. Bryan said Rudy would show Bryan anything Bryan saw on a tape and wanted to try.
Bryan says that he and "The" Brian Kendrick became friends immediately as they were both around the same size in the training and had the same level of passion for wrestling.
I always heard that Shawn Michaels wasn't very present for this school, but Bryan tells a different tale, putting Shawn over as someone who was always around and always showing them how to be better.
Bryan does remember some days that Shawn would come in with his sunglasses on, sit at the back of the class, and then dip out early. Bryan didn't realize then that Shawn was in deep with a bad painkiller addiction, and so some days he wasn't as present. Since Bryan grew up with his dad's addiction issues, Bryan says seeing Shawn actually kick the addiction fully put Shawn on a pedestal in Bryan's eyes.
After a couple of months, Shawn was telling the students to start thinking of ring names, and when Bryan couldn't come up with one, he asked Shawn about using his real name. Shawn thought about it for a second before adding "The American Dragon" to it. When Bryan asked why that name, Shawn said it's because Bryan wrestled like a Japanese guy. Bryan took that as a massive compliment.
Bryan didn't tell Shawn, but Bryan initially hated "The American Dragon" name.
Bryan had trouble being expressive and emoting in the ring, so Shawn had him wrestle under a mask.
On October 4th, 1999, Bryan wrestled his first ever match for Shawn Michaels' small promotion, Texas Wrestling Alliance. His opponent was Brian Kendrick (then known as Spanky), and Bryan says as rotton as it was, everyone in the back was super excited for their performance, including Shawn.
Bryan confirms that Kendrick called himself "Spanky" as a masturbation reference.
Shawn arranged for Bryan and Lance Cade to head over to Japan and wrestle for Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling, a bit of a "mudshow" wrestling promotion. Shawn got Bryan and Lance a spot on their card by agreeing to referee a match for the company.
Bryan remembers seeing one guy shove a bottle rocket up his opponents butt and light it off at that FMW show. So yeah, some pretty outlaw stuff.
Bryan describes attempting a moonsalt to the outside of the ring during this Japan tour, but he slipped and cracked his head on the cement. Bryan says, "When I came to, I didn't even know where I was" before describing how he stumbled his way through the match. He notes how concussions have always been a problem for him.
Lance Cade was invited back to FMW later for a 2nd tour, but they didn't ask for Bryan back. That's when Bryan realized that at his size, he needs to get much, much better.
In February 2000, HBK got Bryan, Lance Cade, Brian Kendrick, and another student named Shooter Shultz, a dark match on an episode of Smackdown. He says they planned for a 15-minute tag match before being told last minute that it's been cut down to 6 minutes. Bryan says HBK went and yelled at some people about "his guys" until he got it bumped up to 10 minutes.
Bryan says he got his first documented concussion that match, because they weren't used to a literal ramp, and Bryan cracked his skull on it, doing a pointless dive. He says the WWE doctor backstage told him to just make sure he doesn't fall asleep.
Bryan says when they got backstage after their match, HBK was excited and pumping them up, telling everyone backstage that they should sign all 4 guys immediately. This was on Tuesday, and by Thursday, when WWE still hadn't contacted them, Shawn called them up and threatened to take the 4 to WCW where Kevin Nash would make sure they were signed. Bryan says WWE quickly offered all 4 guys developmental contracts for $500 per week. Bryan says HBK was a great guy to have in your corner.
Shortly after getting the developmental contract, Bryan and Kendrick wrestled a main event ladder match for Shawn's TWA promotion. At the time, Bryan believed that in order to stand out, he would need to wrestle a more daredevil style, so he did some dumb stuff in this match. He did some ridiculous spot that ended with Bryan separating his shoulder. After the match, he took a table bump that legitimately knocked him unconscious for a full minute.
A week or 2 later, the teams had a rematch in a steel cage where all 4 agreed to blade for the first time. Why is he doing this dumb shit right after being offered a WWE contract?
Bryan says those ladder and cage matches made him realize he needed to change his style up and become more mat based. He wouldn't have had a long career if he kept getting hurt. At this point, Bryan has only been wrestling for 6 or 8 months and already suffered maybe 3 concussions. At least 2 for sure.
Bryan Danielson, Lance Cade, Brian Kendrick, and Shooter Shultz all moved to Memphis, where WWE's development primarily opperated out of at the time. William Regal was also a developmental system at the time, trying to show he had kicked his addiction issues.
Memphis Championship Wrestling was the territory they wrestled for, and Bryan remembers wrestling in all sorts of crazy locations like a WalMart parking lot once.
Although Shawn eventually took the mask off Bryan in TWA, the guys at MCW immediately put the mask back on Bryan.
The only time Bryan thought he might get called up to the main roster was in January 2001, when he heard rumors that WWE wanted to start up a cruiserweight division and use Danielson and Kendrick That didn't happen, though, and Bryan never heard another rumor or wiff of him being called up.
In June 2001, someone from WWE talent relations came down to evaluate talent. Brian was let go and told that despite his talent, they just had no plans for him.
In October 2001, Bryan was offered a spot in California based All Pro Wrestling's annual King Of The Indies tournament. Danielson would beat Kendrick in the first round, and after the show, Nick Bockwinkle, who was there watching, loudly told promoter Roland Alexander, "If you don't put that guy over." Bockwinkle said while pointing directly at Bryan, "You're crazy!"
APW head trainer Donovan Morgan was scheduled to beat Bryan in the second round and go on to win the tournament, but promoter Roland made the call to have Bryan win instead.
Bryan says this that while this really pissed Donovan off, what really upset the guy was when Roland offered Danielson and Kendrick trainer positions alongside Donovan.
Kendrick turned the offer down, but Bryan took it and moved to California in January 2002, where he became the head trainer. Though Bryan says he was a lousy trainer and no good at motivating anyone.
On February 2002, Bryan sat down with Gabe Sapolsky, who, after being inspired by the Super 8 tournament Bryan won, wanted Bryan part of his new promotion, Ring of Honor.
Bryan remembers both William Regal and John Laurinaitis said they would try to get Bryan an in to Japan, but both came up short, and both eventually stopped returning Bryan's calls.
In March 2002, Bryan Danielson, Christopher Daniels, and Brian Kendrick got a tryout with New Japan in Santa Monica. Antonio Inoki was actually there to oversee, but he literally had his back turned to the ring while Danielson and Kendrick wrestled. Inoki never bothered to turn around and watch them, instead watching someone stretch, Bryan says. Bryan later heard that New Japan never intended to hire anyone. They just wanted their dojo to look full for press.
After the "tryout," Bryan says that Inoki fell and had to be helped up by a bunch of people. Only the three of them didn't get up to help, with Kendrick saying loudly, "serves the motherfucker right."
Bryan kept making trips to the Santa Monica dojo every couple of weeks until Shinya "Togi" Makabe told him that if Bryan really wanted to be taken seriously, he had to be at the dojo every single day. Bryan took the advice seriously, quit his training job and moved to Santa Monica.
Bryan says he was offered to come tour with New Japan after only training at the dojo full time a few weeks. It was on this tour where Bryan first wrestled in the Tokyo Dome.
In May 2003, Bryan wrestled another Tokyo Dome show, where Bryan, Rocky Romero and TJ Perkins were all pulled aside in the hotel after the show, by Justin Cully. Cully literally slapped each man across the face, saying the slaps are from Inoki, who was disappointed in their proformances that night. Apparently Inoki expected them to wrestle more of a shoot style fight and was very upset.
In March 2004, Bryan won his first title with New Japan, the IWGP Junior Tag titles with Christopher Daniels, and Bryan would spend the majority of the year with New Japan where he wrestled 8 different tours.
Bryan pitched a 3 hour long match to Gabe Sapolsky for a ROH show and is disappointed they didn't go the full 3 hours.
Going into 2005, Bryan expected to wrestle his whole career in New Japan, but was startled when New Japan didn't get his visa renewed for the January tour like they always do. He was told it was a mistake and he would be back for March tour, but again he was told last minute they didn't have a visa for him. In May they contacted him last minute inviting him for a tour, but at a ridiculous pay cut down to $500 per week. Bryan turned the offer down and never went back to that Santa Monica dojo or work for New Japan again. He later heard that he was used as a pawn in a power struggle with the Dojo and New Japan.
In mid-2005 Bryan got an email from CM-Punk about a rumor suggesting that both WWE and TNA were interested in Bryan, Punk and Samoa Joe. Joe would quickly sign with TNA after this and Punk took a developmental deal with WWE. Bryan never heard from either company, and a few months later Gabe Sapolsky told Bryan he wanted to build ROH around Bryan but wanted a promise that Bryan wouldn't just leave to WWE or TNA. Great timing Gabe, because Bryan immediately said yes.
After winning the ROH World title in September 2005, Bryan says his title reign was falling flat until he started being cocky and cutting those "best in the world" promos. Bryan even shades Jericho and Punk a little by saying at the time no one else was saying it and that's why it worked so well for him.
Bryan puts over his matches with Nigel McGuinness in summer of 2006, but points out one in particular he regrets. Nigel had the idea for Bryan to pull Nigel's face into the steel ring post 3 times to get real blood. After 3 attempts and no blood, Nigel yelled, "One more time!" They got blood on the 4th time, and gave Nigel a severe concussion.
Five minutes into an hour long match with Colt Cabana in August 2006, Bryan landed bad on the outside of the ring, where he separated that same right shoulder as before and tore two tendons.
Three weeks later, Bryan defended his ROH title against KENTA of all people, who legitimately targeted his hurt shoulder all match. Then Bryan went to tour Japan with Pro Wrestling Noah where he and KENTA had a rematch.
Bryan would finally drop the ROH title in December 2006 and then take nearly 4 months off. This is the first time he took off since he started wrestling in 1999.
After doing a tour of Japan with Pro Wrestling Noah in April 2007, Bryan was excited to come back to ROH and signed a 2 year contract.
In June 2007, Bryan and Nigel wrestled an extremely physical match that featured a spot where the two traded headbutts. The match didn't air until September that year and in the mean time, the Chris Benoit double murdesuicide happened and the talk of concussions and safety concerns changed completely. The match was not recieved well and Gabe later told Bryan that they shouldn't have aired it at all.
ROH struggled after the Benoit incident and most everyone had to adapt and tone down their styles. Bryan wasn't one of those people, and actually refused to tone down his style. Later in 2007 he would rupture his ear drum exchanging open palm strikes with KENTA and he would suffer a detached retina in a match with Takeshi Morishima. To this day, he has trouble hearing from his left ear and has trouble with vision.
Bryan remembers being super late for a show and not even being able to meet his opponent beforehand. To Bryan's suprise, his opponent, who despite being green, was great to work with and the two had good chemistry. That was a young Jon Moxley.
In Summer of 2008, Shawn Michaels was fueding with Chris Jericho and they incorporated Lamce Cade on Jericho's side, since Shawn trained Lance. Shawn actually reached out to Bryan about also joining the WWE and being involved in the story.
Bryan met with Vince McMahon and remembers how taken back Vince seemed when they first met, and thinks it was because of Bryan's size and how plain he looked. Bryan also didn't sell himself well in the meeting, saying he is "just okay." Head of talent relations John Laurinaitis told Bryan that they would call him, but he never did.
When Bryan returned from a Japan tour in October 2008, he was shocked to find Gabe Sapolsky had been fired by ROH and replaced by Adam Pearce. Bryan details that while Gabe liked to book long shows with everyone on the card trying their hardest to steal the show, Pearce booked shorter shows and had the lower card guys preform well, but not to try everything under the sun to outshine the main event. You can see why Jim Cornette and Adam Pearce get along so well.
Bryan notes how he was fueding with Claudio Castignoli when Gabe was fired, but Pearce immediately ended that program to which Bryan says he and Claudio were disappointed.
After another failed attempt to get into WWE I'm early 2009, Bryan refocused his energies by moving to Las Vegas where he started training in kick boxing and other forms of mixed martial arts.
Bryan trained religiously for months under a former MMA fighter Neil Melanson. Neil is the one who taught Bryan the LaBell Lock.
When Bryan's ROH contract expired in May 2009, he called John Laurinaitis and left a message, but never heard back.
Bryan says in mid-2009, he was talking to Gabe Sapolsky about starting up a new promotion that would become Evolve. Bryan says that Paul Heyman was even involved with these talks.
Brian Kendrick called Danielson up to pitch Danielson coming to WWE as Kendrick's tag partner. Danielson even went and filmed a bunch of promos with Kendrick and fel optimistic. Unfortunately, Kendrick was fired just a few weeks later before any of those vignets aired and that opportunity was gone as well.
Bryan had given up ever going to WWE when John Laurinaitis called him in September 2009 offering him a main roster contract. Bryan was so excited he didn't have to go to developmental, that he would be right on the main roster immediately. Or so he thought, I guess they didn't bother telling Brilyan about NXT at that time, even though it sounds like he was signed with that in mind.
Nigel was also signed at the same time (probably also meant for NXT) but before either man could start, they had to pass WWE medical tests. They asked them both about past injuries, and Bryan just lied, saying he never had anything wrong and was fine. Didn't mention his shoulder being separated twice, or the detached retina, or any concussion. Nigel on the other hand, was very honest about his injuries, including a torn bicep that he didn't get worked on, he just rehabbed it. Nigel figured he was a lock and didn't see the need to lie.
WWE was concerned about Bryan's elevated liver enzymes, and wanted Nigel to get surgery on his bicep before they would sign him. Both guys were wrestling a farewell tour with ROH and both genuinely concerned they wouldn't actually be leaving. In their last match for ROH, Bryan accidentally gave Nigel a concussion, because apparently these guys only know how to wrestle at one speed!
Nigel couldn't afford the bicep surgery and his own doctor was telling him he is fine, so Nigel went to TNA instead. Nigel would only wrestle for another year before his body would break down too far on him and he would retire.
Bryan signed his WWE contract on October 2nd, 2009, nearly 10 years to the day of his debut match. William Regal actually told Bryan, "Your wrestling career came before this and is over now. Anything else that happens now is a bonus."
William Regal came up with the name "Daniel Bryan" for Bryan to use in WWE. Brian tried arguing to Laurinaitis to use his real name and citing John Cena as an example, Laurinaitis simply told Bryan, "We don't do that anymore."
In early 2010, Bryan and seven other guys were told one day about the NXT concept and how they would be used. Bryan found out who his NXT "pro" would be just like everyone else, when WWE posted it on their website. Bryan initially legit wanted Regal as his "pro" but soon realized being paired with Miz gives him a story immediately.
Bryan describes his time in NXT as the most unusual of his career. The "rookies" all legitimately didn't know what was going to happen on any show and everything they did was 100% unscripted and improvised.
The first night in NXT, all the "rookies" were told 15 minutes before the show, that their "pro" would cut a promo on them and they needed to react accordingly. Bryan had no idea that his pro, the Miz was going to tell him to head to the ring and cut a promo on himself, literally telling him on live TV to make the fans care about him. Bryan had no idea what to say, no real direction he was given to go in, and no tome to plan or rehearse. Miz also told him to come up with a catchphrase, and Bryan said he always hated catch phrases.
In the ring, Bryan cut a generic promo where he said he lost his train of thought and was super greatful when The Miz came out to finish the promo off. Bryan didn't know that would happen and Bryan definitely didn't know Miz was going to slap him at the end. Bryan says that later, The Miz confided to Bryan that he was worried Bryan would try to fight him over the slap.
Bryan credits Chris Jericho for getting him over in his first WWE match, and says that neither he, nor Miz knew that Miz was to beat up Brian after the match. Apparently, Miz was informed during the Jericho/Bryan match that he was to attack Bryan after the finish. Wild how much "flying by the seat of their pants" that WWE did with early NXT.
After the show, Jericho told Bryan that Vince was impressed, though he noted how Vince said, "Ugh, but he doesn't even eat meat!"
Bryan describes promo class with Vince as kinda insane to be honest. One time Bryan accidentally spilled a water bottle, and Vince asked everyone how that made them feel about Bryan. Stuff like that.
Bryan says the NXT rookies weren't allowed to use the regular dressing room and had to use some tarped off part of the backstage area.
Bryan notes how most of the NXT season, the NXT rookies never really knew what was going to happen. The 2nd week Bryan lost to Wade Barret and wasn't told that Chris Jericho would be attacking him after the match.
Bryan says his initial storyline with The Miz wasn't a losing streak idea, but something where each loss had meaning and was being built with purpose. Miz was very hands on with each show and helped to put over Bryan and the storyline, but when Miz missed 2 weeks in a row, the producers left in charge basically just turned it into a losing streak storyline, which Bryan says, "never works."
One time on a plane, Ezekiel Jackson asked "which rookie has an isle seat?" Bryan raised his had and Ezekiel said, "Not anymore." Bryan stood his ground and refused, offering his seat to anyone but Ezekiel. Ezekiel got pissed but William Regal came over and chastised Jackson, saying Bryan is like a son to him and how Bryan has more talent in his pinky ginger than Jackson has in his whole body.
Bryan says the NXT "Pros Polls" were legitimate voting done by the pros. That's why Bryan ended up in first place, despite losing every match.
A week after Wrestlemania in 2010, NXT's direction and purpose shifted away from being serious to silly, and Bryan says they were suddenly doing dumb game show competitions and putting over how demoralizing it was.
Bryan says Skip Shepfield (Ryback) was the only rookie taking the competitions seriously and trying to win each game. Sounds on brand for the big guy.
Bryan says he was trying to be humble when asked who should be eliminated and he said himself. He figured since he lost to everyone he didn't have a right to say any of them. Backstage Miz told him he made a mistake and shouldn't have put that perception out there.
A week later they liked the rookies up on TV (an hour before it goes live) and informed Bryan and fellow rookie Michael Tarver that they are both eliminated, without telling them beforehand. Bryan felt this validated all the warnings guys like Colt Cabana and other gave him about WWE.
Right after Matt Striker interviewed him backstage and when asked an insulting question, Bryan snapped and started talking down about "Daniel Bryan" and started to put over "Bryan Danielson!" Bryan says he could hear Vince screaming into Striker's ear piece and apparently Vince threw his headset when Bryan said his real name.
They made Bryan retape the interview without saying that, but still aired his original interview.
Bryan was surprisingly called back to NXT the following week to start a rivalry with Micheal Cole, who had been verbally obliterating Bryan on commentary since Bryan debuted. Bryan seems to be greatful for that program since it kept him on tv and made him confident that he would keep his job.
The RAW after NXT season 1 ended, all the rookies were pulled into Vince's office and told about Nexus and the attack in the main event. They were told not to tell anyone or else they will be fired. Bryan says he even lied to William Regal, when asked why he was dressed to wrestle.
They were supposed to attack John Cena and Rey Mysterio in the main event, because WWE let the fans vote on Cena's opponent and they assumed Rey would get it. Surprisingly it was CM Punk, and Bryan isn't sure how much Punk was told about the angle.
Bryan legit choked Justin Roberts during the melee, leaving red marks on his skin with his tie. Bryan said he doesn't trust non-wrestlers to sell good so he did it for real, with Justin going purple on Tv. Later during the brawl, Bryan was grabbing a cable to choke someone else when a cameraman told him "no choking!" Bryan does note that he thinks Justin Roberts found it pretty cool to be involved. And later Heath Slater grabbed the dismantled ring ropes to choke Cena, but Cena told him as well, "No choking."
Cena told Bryan before the angle, "It's not the hit you do that's important, it's what you do before the hit that matters." This is why Bryan spit in Cena's face before kicking him in the head.
Backstage, Bryan was reprimanded twice, for choking and spitting. Two days later Vince McMahon personally called Bryan to tell him he was let go and apologized to Bryan for it. Bryan, arrogant as all hell, responded with, "Don't apologize, I'll make more money this year on the independents than I would have working for you."
Bryan called John Laurinaitis to clear up details and Laurinaitis was shocked to hear Bryan was fired. Apparently Vince didn't tell anyone, just called Laurinaitis up and asked for Bryan's number. The comment Bryan made about money seemed to get to Vince since Laurinaitis called Bryan back and asked about it. Laurinaitis actually told Bryan that he can start working independent dates immediately if he wasn't on TV.
After working several shows and making good money off merchandise for several weeks, Bryan was shocked when John Laurinaitis called him in August and asked him to come back for a big angle leading into SummerSlam. Bryan sheepishly asked for a raise and made sure he could make all his already planned independent bookings.
Bryan says Nexas should have won at SummerSlam, noting how they went from dangerous to jobbers in one night.
Bryan remembers a taped RAW after SummerSlam where he did an angle with The Miz. When he got backstage Vince was so mad at how it came off that he made Bryan and others go back out there and do it again. It was the first time Bryan ever had to redo something like that and he said he felt humiliated.
Bryan didnt seem to see much value in being US Champion outside of how it would keep him on tv and maybe monthly ppv matches.
At Hell in a Cell 2010 ppv, Bryan had a good match with Miz and John Morrison, but was scolded after that match for a spot where Bryan threw Miz's stoog Alex Riley off the stage where he landed on cameraman. They showed the two guys the footage and accused them of doing it on purpose to get themselves over. Bryan started regretting coming back and really hating his time in WWE.
Bryan was paired with the Bella Twins in a storyline he hated, that was based on the Twins confusing the word "vegan" for "virgin" and competing to sleep with Bryan. Despite how bad that storyline was, Bryan and Brie would develop a relationship and would start dating in February 2011.
Sheamus was given a choice of Wrestlemania opponents that year between Rey Mysterio and Daniel Bryan, and Sheamus chose Bryan. Bryan was greatful but concerned Sheamus chose wrong and their match would be cut but Sheamus wasn't worried at all. A week before Mania they were informed their match was on the pre-show at a meeting with literally every other wrestler. Bryan says Sheamus buried his face in his hands and remembers how Rey Mysterio got on the card in a match with Cody Rhodes. Bryan says Sheamus picked the wrong guy.
Bryan got some details in his book messed up where he talks about Miz winning the WWE title off Cena at Wrestlemania 27 and he talks about how Miz was WWE Champion going into Over The Limit ppv 2011, but Miz lost the title by then. It's notable because he says he pitched hard for a "Rocky style" storyline where he would challenge Miz for the WWE title at the Over The Limit ppv.
Bryan says the 2011 Smackdown Money in the Bank winner wasn't decided until the day of the show but it was always between Wade Barret, Cody Rhodes and Bryan. He says despite winning the briefcase, his tv time tricked down and eventually he was spending weeks off tv, until he was randomly inserted into the World title program between Mark Henry and Big Show in late 2011.
Bryan was being left at home and off shows, even watching Survivor Series 2011 from home and was suprised when WWE had him come to the December TLC ppv show, last minute. The day of the show he was told he was cashing in and winning the title and the only direction Vince McMahon gave him was to act like he won the superbowl, so that's where Bryan's over the top celebration came from. He didn't even tell his girlfriend Brie Bella about the plan and says she was shocked when he came backstage afterwards.
The only direction Vince gave Bryan as champion is to celebrate every appearance like he won the lottery, saying, "there is no too over the top here."
Bryan said he adapted his "Yes" chants from MMA fighter Diego Sanchez who was celebrating in a similar way at the time.
Bryan's favorite moment from that first world title run was the closing sequence in the 2012 Elimination Chamber match with him and Santino Marella.
Bryan originally expected he and Sheamus to get 15 minutes or so at Wrestlemania for their match, but was shocked when Chris Jericho told him he heard it would be 8 minutes, including the pre & post match stuff. A week later Arn Anderson confirmed to Bryan that he would lose a 1-move match, dropping the world title to Sheamus at Wrestlemania that year. Bryan and Sheamus were both pissed, to say the least.
Sheamus expressed concern that the short match would turn fans against him as a new champion. Smart man.
Bryan says a bunch of guys came up to him after his Mania loss and were pissed at what they did to Bryan out there. Great Khali even came up and told Bryan that it was bullshit in his broken English.
Originally Sheamus was planned to move into a fued with Alberto Del-rio right after Mania, but the crazy crowd support for Bryan forced them to extend they story another month. Bryan says his Extreme Rules ppv match with Sheamus in 2012 is one of his favorites. Mine too!
Bryan acknowledged the weird booking of Punk as champion in 2012, noting how heels would face John Cena, lose, then be sent to face Punk with no momentum. Interesting take on the situation.
Bryan mentions how when he and Punk fueded in 2012, they never got main event spots outside of non-televised events. One time at a house show, Bryan and Punk veered too far into comedy and after the match John Cena chastised Bryan by pointing out that they didn't wrestle a "main event style" match. Apparently the next house show, Cena was moved into the main event spot with Punk/Bryan being before the intermission. An enraged Punk went and yelled at people until he got his main event spot back. This time, no comedy spots were done and they stayed the main event for the circuit.
Bryan had brand new, edgier gear made up prior to Money in the Bank 2012 and didn't tell anyone backstage. He wore shorts over his trunk and hid the jacket until he had to go out. When he got to the ring, the ref told him to lose the jacket, because I guess Vince was in gorilla position freaking out over how Bryan looked. Dean Melanko was the producer for the match, and Bryan felt bad when Vince blamed him for allowing Bryan to wear it.
Bryan was originally planned to wrestle Charlie Sheen at SummerSlam 2012 in a celebrity match, but Charlie "bailed" as Bryan put it.
Bryan was trying to be "Mr Small Package" by winning matches with Small Package and then boasting about how he has an "inescapable small package!" It didn't get over.
Bryan thought his anger management vignets with Kane and Dr Shelby were going to be terrible.
The only reason they stopped using Dr Shelby is because he had limited days off from his regular teaching job.
Bryan and Kane really wanted their team name to be "Team Friendship" and they even had shirt ideas but Vince let the fans vote and he always kept those votes legit, so their team name was "Team Hell No" which Bryan brings up a good point about. He said as a team primarily appealing to kids, a name with "Hell" in it would be hard to sell merchandise to those kids.
The plan was to break up their team so they could have a good heated fued together, but they were so popular that they kept teaming for 9 months.
Bryan says his first good Wrestlemania experience was in 2013 when he teamed with Kane.
One night after Mania in 2013, when Bryan tagged with Kane and Undertaker to face The Shield, Vince McMahon told Bryan that he would pay him several thousand dollars if he could get Undertaker to hug Bryan in the ring. After the show Bryan got on the mic and tried his hardest to get the hug but couldn't quite do it.
Bryan says that both he and Kane agree that teaming together was some of the most fun in either man's career.
Bryan was scheduled to win the biggest match of his career up to that point, he would be beating Randy Orton clean on RAW. Bryan would botch a dive that left both arms nunb and him unable to stand. He got feeling back in one arm but eventually the doctor called the match off. Backstage Bryan started screaming at Triple H for calling the match and called him a hypocrite for doing so, citing his own injuries in matches. At one point Orton tried to calm Bryan down, but Bryan snapped at him and Orton started yelling too. Brie got Bryan away to calm down, but when Vince came to talk to Bryan, the shouting started again. Much later, William Regal advised Bryan to apologize to both Vince and Triple H, to which Bryan took his advice. The next week, Bryan would get his win over Orton and he says that that drama over everything made that win matter more.
An MRI showed that one of Bryan's disks was pushing into his nerves and eventually he would need surgery. With his momentum starting to rise, Bryan opted to put surgery off.
John Cena pitched facing Daniel Bryan at Money in the Bank 2013 ppv. When Vince asked why, Cena said because it's the biggest match they could do at that time. Vince ended up agreeing, but deciding that it belongs at SummerSlam that year instead!
As proud as Bryan is of the build to and match with Cena at SummerSlam, he acknowledges that the ppv didn't do good numbers, nor did the house show business the following 2 months when Bryan was the main protagonist. He thinks a lot the the Authority promos on him stemmed from some truth.
Bryan isn't satisfied with the quality of matches he was putting out in the latter half of 2013 amd he specifically calls out the series of bad finishes he had with Randy Orton in ppv main events. From the fast counting crooked ref, to that terrible one with Big Show knocking everyone out, and then to Shawn Michaels betraying Bryan at Hell in a Cell ppv.
Bryan initially thought he was getting a Wrestlemania match with Shawn Michaels after that Hell in a Cell finish, but after talking with HBK, it was clear that was never in the cards.
Bryan feels he failed as a main eventer in the 2nd half of 2013, regardless of match quality. He didn't move business and that's all that matters.
The Slammy's were fan votes and Vince didn't think Bryan would win and almost laughed when Bryan asked him what he should say if he does win. Vince said, "whatever you want." I wish I could have seen Vince's face when Bryan won later that night.
When Bryan started fueding with Wyatt Family in late-2013, Bryan was pitching for him to be "brainwashed" and join the group. He suspects that his rising popularity in early 2014 is what convinced WWE to have Bryan turn on Bray and leave the group. At the time, Bryan was hoping to stay with the group and be involved in the planned Cena/Wyatt Wrestlemania program since Bryan had no plans for Mania at that time.
Bryan says he was disappointed when Vince told him he would be facing Sheamus again at Wrestlemania 2014. No disrespect to Sheamus, but Bryan felt he belonged in a higher spot.
Bryan felt bad for the way Rey Mysterio was boo'd at the 2014 Royal Rumble.
When Punk quit WWE after Rumble that year, Bryan remembers how plans didn't change too much for a few weeks, and he assumes Vince expected Punk to come back and for Batista to win the crowds over, and neither happened.
Triple H was being vocal about wanting to face Bryan at Mania that year, but Bryan was trying to not get his hopes up since he had seen Triple H try and fail to get his ideas on screen.
Bryan and Brie only agreed to let Total Divas shoot their wedding, because Total Divas agreed to pay for the whole wedding! Hard to say no to that!
Bryan is very satisfied with his matches at Wrestlemania 30 and says he was so focused between matches that he missed Undertaker losing to Lesnar. He heard the ring bell and looked up at the monitor in shock. He says they cameras should have filmed the guys and girls in the back because their reactions were wild, apparently.
Five days after Wrestlemania 30, Bryan and Brie got married, but 2 days after their honeymoon ended, Bryan's dad unexpectedly passed away at the age of 57. Bryan was devastated and described how he was crying still as he was writing about it.
The book ends on a complete downer, very unlike most other wrestling books. Bryan says that as long as he wrestled when asked if everything he was missing or sacrificing was worth it, Bryan always said yes. He assumed he would have more time when he was done and could catch up on what he missed, but his dad is gone and Bryan openly admits that it wasn't worth it. If he could, Bryan would change a lot of his decisions if it meant more time with his dad.
He says he is still wrestling though because he literally doesn't know what else to do or what comes after. This is especially depressing 10 years later, when Bryan is still wrestling despite having started a family of his own. I hope he doesn't regret any time missed with his daughter.
He ends the book by describing the last time he saw his dad, on Christmas in 2013, where his dad dressed up as Santa. Fuck. I'm sad now.

Solid wrestling book, though not super memorable in my opinion. Some solid detail and dirt like you expect, but honestly it felt like he was holding back.
As always, it's in chronological order as best as I could do that. Hope y'all enjoy!
Bryan is a weird dude, while describing his adolescence, he casually says that he has a lot of weird hypothesis on various subjects, and we should ask Nigel McGuinness about Bryan's theory on how a penis grows. He doesn't expand on this more. He just says that and moves back to talking about his childhood.
Bryan rants a bit about how modern medicine has stunted human evolution because kids who would have died off got to live and reproduce and pass their "defects" onto the next generation. He says that he is one of those defects, sick all his childhood and sick a lot as an adult. He says that his wife Brie is also a "defect" but says she can share the details in her own book if she ever writes one.
When Bryan was 16 years old, he contacted Dean Melanko's wrestling school and was told it would cost him $2,500, but he needed a $500 deposit to secure his spot. Bryan was scared that there were hundreds of people on the waiting list and worked extra shifts at McDonald's in order to get the cash together asap. He put $500 deposit down for a wrestling school he couldn't go to for 2 more years.
Three months before Bryan graduated high school, the Melanko Wrestling School contacted to inform Bryan that the school was shutting down permanently. When Bryan asked for his $500 back, he was told that they no longer had it and that he was SOL.
While watching Monday Night RAW, an ad flashed advertising a 900 number (an old pay-per-minute phone concept that was always a money drain on the caller), and it advertised Shawn Michaels opening up a wrestling school. After an expensive phone call, Bryan was told to pay $20 more for a package to be mailed to him with more info. He did, and when he got the package, it detailed how Michaels wrestling school would cost $3,900 dollars, and it had another 900 number to call if you're interested. Bryan was demoralized and almost didn't call. When he did, though, he was speaking to Shawm Michaels mom, who was helping Shawn run it. Bryan's mom ended up doing all the talking, and the two mothers helped Bryan get set up with a place in San Antonio where the school was. They agreed to let Bryan pay monthly to help him with the finances.
Bryan's first day of wrestling school went exactly like everyone else's first day of wrestling school, with 90% of the students gassed and vomiting. Bryan said out of the 10 guys there, only he and Lance Cade didn't end up vomiting.
Bryan remembers how much Shawn Michaels prioritized his training to Lance Cade. One of the first days, Lance did a basic jump and got so much air that Michaels loudly proclaimed, "I smell money!"
Even though it was Shawn's school, the primary instructor was Rudy Boy Gonzales, a pretty insignificant wrestler from the 80s and 90s. Bryan puts over Rudy as a passionate trainer who motivated him to try harder. Bryan said Rudy would show Bryan anything Bryan saw on a tape and wanted to try.
Bryan says that he and "The" Brian Kendrick became friends immediately as they were both around the same size in the training and had the same level of passion for wrestling.
I always heard that Shawn Michaels wasn't very present for this school, but Bryan tells a different tale, putting Shawn over as someone who was always around and always showing them how to be better.
Bryan does remember some days that Shawn would come in with his sunglasses on, sit at the back of the class, and then dip out early. Bryan didn't realize then that Shawn was in deep with a bad painkiller addiction, and so some days he wasn't as present. Since Bryan grew up with his dad's addiction issues, Bryan says seeing Shawn actually kick the addiction fully put Shawn on a pedestal in Bryan's eyes.
After a couple of months, Shawn was telling the students to start thinking of ring names, and when Bryan couldn't come up with one, he asked Shawn about using his real name. Shawn thought about it for a second before adding "The American Dragon" to it. When Bryan asked why that name, Shawn said it's because Bryan wrestled like a Japanese guy. Bryan took that as a massive compliment.
Bryan didn't tell Shawn, but Bryan initially hated "The American Dragon" name.
Bryan had trouble being expressive and emoting in the ring, so Shawn had him wrestle under a mask.
On October 4th, 1999, Bryan wrestled his first ever match for Shawn Michaels' small promotion, Texas Wrestling Alliance. His opponent was Brian Kendrick (then known as Spanky), and Bryan says as rotton as it was, everyone in the back was super excited for their performance, including Shawn.
Bryan confirms that Kendrick called himself "Spanky" as a masturbation reference.
Shawn arranged for Bryan and Lance Cade to head over to Japan and wrestle for Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling, a bit of a "mudshow" wrestling promotion. Shawn got Bryan and Lance a spot on their card by agreeing to referee a match for the company.
Bryan remembers seeing one guy shove a bottle rocket up his opponents butt and light it off at that FMW show. So yeah, some pretty outlaw stuff.
Bryan describes attempting a moonsalt to the outside of the ring during this Japan tour, but he slipped and cracked his head on the cement. Bryan says, "When I came to, I didn't even know where I was" before describing how he stumbled his way through the match. He notes how concussions have always been a problem for him.
Lance Cade was invited back to FMW later for a 2nd tour, but they didn't ask for Bryan back. That's when Bryan realized that at his size, he needs to get much, much better.
In February 2000, HBK got Bryan, Lance Cade, Brian Kendrick, and another student named Shooter Shultz, a dark match on an episode of Smackdown. He says they planned for a 15-minute tag match before being told last minute that it's been cut down to 6 minutes. Bryan says HBK went and yelled at some people about "his guys" until he got it bumped up to 10 minutes.
Bryan says he got his first documented concussion that match, because they weren't used to a literal ramp, and Bryan cracked his skull on it, doing a pointless dive. He says the WWE doctor backstage told him to just make sure he doesn't fall asleep.
Bryan says when they got backstage after their match, HBK was excited and pumping them up, telling everyone backstage that they should sign all 4 guys immediately. This was on Tuesday, and by Thursday, when WWE still hadn't contacted them, Shawn called them up and threatened to take the 4 to WCW where Kevin Nash would make sure they were signed. Bryan says WWE quickly offered all 4 guys developmental contracts for $500 per week. Bryan says HBK was a great guy to have in your corner.
Shortly after getting the developmental contract, Bryan and Kendrick wrestled a main event ladder match for Shawn's TWA promotion. At the time, Bryan believed that in order to stand out, he would need to wrestle a more daredevil style, so he did some dumb stuff in this match. He did some ridiculous spot that ended with Bryan separating his shoulder. After the match, he took a table bump that legitimately knocked him unconscious for a full minute.
A week or 2 later, the teams had a rematch in a steel cage where all 4 agreed to blade for the first time. Why is he doing this dumb shit right after being offered a WWE contract?
Bryan says those ladder and cage matches made him realize he needed to change his style up and become more mat based. He wouldn't have had a long career if he kept getting hurt. At this point, Bryan has only been wrestling for 6 or 8 months and already suffered maybe 3 concussions. At least 2 for sure.
Bryan Danielson, Lance Cade, Brian Kendrick, and Shooter Shultz all moved to Memphis, where WWE's development primarily opperated out of at the time. William Regal was also a developmental system at the time, trying to show he had kicked his addiction issues.
Memphis Championship Wrestling was the territory they wrestled for, and Bryan remembers wrestling in all sorts of crazy locations like a WalMart parking lot once.
Although Shawn eventually took the mask off Bryan in TWA, the guys at MCW immediately put the mask back on Bryan.
The only time Bryan thought he might get called up to the main roster was in January 2001, when he heard rumors that WWE wanted to start up a cruiserweight division and use Danielson and Kendrick That didn't happen, though, and Bryan never heard another rumor or wiff of him being called up.
In June 2001, someone from WWE talent relations came down to evaluate talent. Brian was let go and told that despite his talent, they just had no plans for him.
In October 2001, Bryan was offered a spot in California based All Pro Wrestling's annual King Of The Indies tournament. Danielson would beat Kendrick in the first round, and after the show, Nick Bockwinkle, who was there watching, loudly told promoter Roland Alexander, "If you don't put that guy over." Bockwinkle said while pointing directly at Bryan, "You're crazy!"
APW head trainer Donovan Morgan was scheduled to beat Bryan in the second round and go on to win the tournament, but promoter Roland made the call to have Bryan win instead.
Bryan says this that while this really pissed Donovan off, what really upset the guy was when Roland offered Danielson and Kendrick trainer positions alongside Donovan.
Kendrick turned the offer down, but Bryan took it and moved to California in January 2002, where he became the head trainer. Though Bryan says he was a lousy trainer and no good at motivating anyone.
On February 2002, Bryan sat down with Gabe Sapolsky, who, after being inspired by the Super 8 tournament Bryan won, wanted Bryan part of his new promotion, Ring of Honor.
Bryan remembers both William Regal and John Laurinaitis said they would try to get Bryan an in to Japan, but both came up short, and both eventually stopped returning Bryan's calls.
In March 2002, Bryan Danielson, Christopher Daniels, and Brian Kendrick got a tryout with New Japan in Santa Monica. Antonio Inoki was actually there to oversee, but he literally had his back turned to the ring while Danielson and Kendrick wrestled. Inoki never bothered to turn around and watch them, instead watching someone stretch, Bryan says. Bryan later heard that New Japan never intended to hire anyone. They just wanted their dojo to look full for press.
After the "tryout," Bryan says that Inoki fell and had to be helped up by a bunch of people. Only the three of them didn't get up to help, with Kendrick saying loudly, "serves the motherfucker right."
Bryan kept making trips to the Santa Monica dojo every couple of weeks until Shinya "Togi" Makabe told him that if Bryan really wanted to be taken seriously, he had to be at the dojo every single day. Bryan took the advice seriously, quit his training job and moved to Santa Monica.
Bryan says he was offered to come tour with New Japan after only training at the dojo full time a few weeks. It was on this tour where Bryan first wrestled in the Tokyo Dome.
In May 2003, Bryan wrestled another Tokyo Dome show, where Bryan, Rocky Romero and TJ Perkins were all pulled aside in the hotel after the show, by Justin Cully. Cully literally slapped each man across the face, saying the slaps are from Inoki, who was disappointed in their proformances that night. Apparently Inoki expected them to wrestle more of a shoot style fight and was very upset.
In March 2004, Bryan won his first title with New Japan, the IWGP Junior Tag titles with Christopher Daniels, and Bryan would spend the majority of the year with New Japan where he wrestled 8 different tours.
Bryan pitched a 3 hour long match to Gabe Sapolsky for a ROH show and is disappointed they didn't go the full 3 hours.
Going into 2005, Bryan expected to wrestle his whole career in New Japan, but was startled when New Japan didn't get his visa renewed for the January tour like they always do. He was told it was a mistake and he would be back for March tour, but again he was told last minute they didn't have a visa for him. In May they contacted him last minute inviting him for a tour, but at a ridiculous pay cut down to $500 per week. Bryan turned the offer down and never went back to that Santa Monica dojo or work for New Japan again. He later heard that he was used as a pawn in a power struggle with the Dojo and New Japan.
In mid-2005 Bryan got an email from CM-Punk about a rumor suggesting that both WWE and TNA were interested in Bryan, Punk and Samoa Joe. Joe would quickly sign with TNA after this and Punk took a developmental deal with WWE. Bryan never heard from either company, and a few months later Gabe Sapolsky told Bryan he wanted to build ROH around Bryan but wanted a promise that Bryan wouldn't just leave to WWE or TNA. Great timing Gabe, because Bryan immediately said yes.
After winning the ROH World title in September 2005, Bryan says his title reign was falling flat until he started being cocky and cutting those "best in the world" promos. Bryan even shades Jericho and Punk a little by saying at the time no one else was saying it and that's why it worked so well for him.
Bryan puts over his matches with Nigel McGuinness in summer of 2006, but points out one in particular he regrets. Nigel had the idea for Bryan to pull Nigel's face into the steel ring post 3 times to get real blood. After 3 attempts and no blood, Nigel yelled, "One more time!" They got blood on the 4th time, and gave Nigel a severe concussion.
Five minutes into an hour long match with Colt Cabana in August 2006, Bryan landed bad on the outside of the ring, where he separated that same right shoulder as before and tore two tendons.
Three weeks later, Bryan defended his ROH title against KENTA of all people, who legitimately targeted his hurt shoulder all match. Then Bryan went to tour Japan with Pro Wrestling Noah where he and KENTA had a rematch.
Bryan would finally drop the ROH title in December 2006 and then take nearly 4 months off. This is the first time he took off since he started wrestling in 1999.
After doing a tour of Japan with Pro Wrestling Noah in April 2007, Bryan was excited to come back to ROH and signed a 2 year contract.
In June 2007, Bryan and Nigel wrestled an extremely physical match that featured a spot where the two traded headbutts. The match didn't air until September that year and in the mean time, the Chris Benoit double murdesuicide happened and the talk of concussions and safety concerns changed completely. The match was not recieved well and Gabe later told Bryan that they shouldn't have aired it at all.
ROH struggled after the Benoit incident and most everyone had to adapt and tone down their styles. Bryan wasn't one of those people, and actually refused to tone down his style. Later in 2007 he would rupture his ear drum exchanging open palm strikes with KENTA and he would suffer a detached retina in a match with Takeshi Morishima. To this day, he has trouble hearing from his left ear and has trouble with vision.
Bryan remembers being super late for a show and not even being able to meet his opponent beforehand. To Bryan's suprise, his opponent, who despite being green, was great to work with and the two had good chemistry. That was a young Jon Moxley.
In Summer of 2008, Shawn Michaels was fueding with Chris Jericho and they incorporated Lamce Cade on Jericho's side, since Shawn trained Lance. Shawn actually reached out to Bryan about also joining the WWE and being involved in the story.
Bryan met with Vince McMahon and remembers how taken back Vince seemed when they first met, and thinks it was because of Bryan's size and how plain he looked. Bryan also didn't sell himself well in the meeting, saying he is "just okay." Head of talent relations John Laurinaitis told Bryan that they would call him, but he never did.
When Bryan returned from a Japan tour in October 2008, he was shocked to find Gabe Sapolsky had been fired by ROH and replaced by Adam Pearce. Bryan details that while Gabe liked to book long shows with everyone on the card trying their hardest to steal the show, Pearce booked shorter shows and had the lower card guys preform well, but not to try everything under the sun to outshine the main event. You can see why Jim Cornette and Adam Pearce get along so well.
Bryan notes how he was fueding with Claudio Castignoli when Gabe was fired, but Pearce immediately ended that program to which Bryan says he and Claudio were disappointed.
After another failed attempt to get into WWE I'm early 2009, Bryan refocused his energies by moving to Las Vegas where he started training in kick boxing and other forms of mixed martial arts.
Bryan trained religiously for months under a former MMA fighter Neil Melanson. Neil is the one who taught Bryan the LaBell Lock.
When Bryan's ROH contract expired in May 2009, he called John Laurinaitis and left a message, but never heard back.
Bryan says in mid-2009, he was talking to Gabe Sapolsky about starting up a new promotion that would become Evolve. Bryan says that Paul Heyman was even involved with these talks.
Brian Kendrick called Danielson up to pitch Danielson coming to WWE as Kendrick's tag partner. Danielson even went and filmed a bunch of promos with Kendrick and fel optimistic. Unfortunately, Kendrick was fired just a few weeks later before any of those vignets aired and that opportunity was gone as well.
Bryan had given up ever going to WWE when John Laurinaitis called him in September 2009 offering him a main roster contract. Bryan was so excited he didn't have to go to developmental, that he would be right on the main roster immediately. Or so he thought, I guess they didn't bother telling Brilyan about NXT at that time, even though it sounds like he was signed with that in mind.
Nigel was also signed at the same time (probably also meant for NXT) but before either man could start, they had to pass WWE medical tests. They asked them both about past injuries, and Bryan just lied, saying he never had anything wrong and was fine. Didn't mention his shoulder being separated twice, or the detached retina, or any concussion. Nigel on the other hand, was very honest about his injuries, including a torn bicep that he didn't get worked on, he just rehabbed it. Nigel figured he was a lock and didn't see the need to lie.
WWE was concerned about Bryan's elevated liver enzymes, and wanted Nigel to get surgery on his bicep before they would sign him. Both guys were wrestling a farewell tour with ROH and both genuinely concerned they wouldn't actually be leaving. In their last match for ROH, Bryan accidentally gave Nigel a concussion, because apparently these guys only know how to wrestle at one speed!
Nigel couldn't afford the bicep surgery and his own doctor was telling him he is fine, so Nigel went to TNA instead. Nigel would only wrestle for another year before his body would break down too far on him and he would retire.
Bryan signed his WWE contract on October 2nd, 2009, nearly 10 years to the day of his debut match. William Regal actually told Bryan, "Your wrestling career came before this and is over now. Anything else that happens now is a bonus."
William Regal came up with the name "Daniel Bryan" for Bryan to use in WWE. Brian tried arguing to Laurinaitis to use his real name and citing John Cena as an example, Laurinaitis simply told Bryan, "We don't do that anymore."
In early 2010, Bryan and seven other guys were told one day about the NXT concept and how they would be used. Bryan found out who his NXT "pro" would be just like everyone else, when WWE posted it on their website. Bryan initially legit wanted Regal as his "pro" but soon realized being paired with Miz gives him a story immediately.
Bryan describes his time in NXT as the most unusual of his career. The "rookies" all legitimately didn't know what was going to happen on any show and everything they did was 100% unscripted and improvised.
The first night in NXT, all the "rookies" were told 15 minutes before the show, that their "pro" would cut a promo on them and they needed to react accordingly. Bryan had no idea that his pro, the Miz was going to tell him to head to the ring and cut a promo on himself, literally telling him on live TV to make the fans care about him. Bryan had no idea what to say, no real direction he was given to go in, and no tome to plan or rehearse. Miz also told him to come up with a catchphrase, and Bryan said he always hated catch phrases.
In the ring, Bryan cut a generic promo where he said he lost his train of thought and was super greatful when The Miz came out to finish the promo off. Bryan didn't know that would happen and Bryan definitely didn't know Miz was going to slap him at the end. Bryan says that later, The Miz confided to Bryan that he was worried Bryan would try to fight him over the slap.
Bryan credits Chris Jericho for getting him over in his first WWE match, and says that neither he, nor Miz knew that Miz was to beat up Brian after the match. Apparently, Miz was informed during the Jericho/Bryan match that he was to attack Bryan after the finish. Wild how much "flying by the seat of their pants" that WWE did with early NXT.
After the show, Jericho told Bryan that Vince was impressed, though he noted how Vince said, "Ugh, but he doesn't even eat meat!"
Bryan describes promo class with Vince as kinda insane to be honest. One time Bryan accidentally spilled a water bottle, and Vince asked everyone how that made them feel about Bryan. Stuff like that.
Bryan says the NXT rookies weren't allowed to use the regular dressing room and had to use some tarped off part of the backstage area.
Bryan notes how most of the NXT season, the NXT rookies never really knew what was going to happen. The 2nd week Bryan lost to Wade Barret and wasn't told that Chris Jericho would be attacking him after the match.
Bryan says his initial storyline with The Miz wasn't a losing streak idea, but something where each loss had meaning and was being built with purpose. Miz was very hands on with each show and helped to put over Bryan and the storyline, but when Miz missed 2 weeks in a row, the producers left in charge basically just turned it into a losing streak storyline, which Bryan says, "never works."
One time on a plane, Ezekiel Jackson asked "which rookie has an isle seat?" Bryan raised his had and Ezekiel said, "Not anymore." Bryan stood his ground and refused, offering his seat to anyone but Ezekiel. Ezekiel got pissed but William Regal came over and chastised Jackson, saying Bryan is like a son to him and how Bryan has more talent in his pinky ginger than Jackson has in his whole body.
Bryan says the NXT "Pros Polls" were legitimate voting done by the pros. That's why Bryan ended up in first place, despite losing every match.
A week after Wrestlemania in 2010, NXT's direction and purpose shifted away from being serious to silly, and Bryan says they were suddenly doing dumb game show competitions and putting over how demoralizing it was.
Bryan says Skip Shepfield (Ryback) was the only rookie taking the competitions seriously and trying to win each game. Sounds on brand for the big guy.
Bryan says he was trying to be humble when asked who should be eliminated and he said himself. He figured since he lost to everyone he didn't have a right to say any of them. Backstage Miz told him he made a mistake and shouldn't have put that perception out there.
A week later they liked the rookies up on TV (an hour before it goes live) and informed Bryan and fellow rookie Michael Tarver that they are both eliminated, without telling them beforehand. Bryan felt this validated all the warnings guys like Colt Cabana and other gave him about WWE.
Right after Matt Striker interviewed him backstage and when asked an insulting question, Bryan snapped and started talking down about "Daniel Bryan" and started to put over "Bryan Danielson!" Bryan says he could hear Vince screaming into Striker's ear piece and apparently Vince threw his headset when Bryan said his real name.
They made Bryan retape the interview without saying that, but still aired his original interview.
Bryan was surprisingly called back to NXT the following week to start a rivalry with Micheal Cole, who had been verbally obliterating Bryan on commentary since Bryan debuted. Bryan seems to be greatful for that program since it kept him on tv and made him confident that he would keep his job.
The RAW after NXT season 1 ended, all the rookies were pulled into Vince's office and told about Nexus and the attack in the main event. They were told not to tell anyone or else they will be fired. Bryan says he even lied to William Regal, when asked why he was dressed to wrestle.
They were supposed to attack John Cena and Rey Mysterio in the main event, because WWE let the fans vote on Cena's opponent and they assumed Rey would get it. Surprisingly it was CM Punk, and Bryan isn't sure how much Punk was told about the angle.
Bryan legit choked Justin Roberts during the melee, leaving red marks on his skin with his tie. Bryan said he doesn't trust non-wrestlers to sell good so he did it for real, with Justin going purple on Tv. Later during the brawl, Bryan was grabbing a cable to choke someone else when a cameraman told him "no choking!" Bryan does note that he thinks Justin Roberts found it pretty cool to be involved. And later Heath Slater grabbed the dismantled ring ropes to choke Cena, but Cena told him as well, "No choking."
Cena told Bryan before the angle, "It's not the hit you do that's important, it's what you do before the hit that matters." This is why Bryan spit in Cena's face before kicking him in the head.
Backstage, Bryan was reprimanded twice, for choking and spitting. Two days later Vince McMahon personally called Bryan to tell him he was let go and apologized to Bryan for it. Bryan, arrogant as all hell, responded with, "Don't apologize, I'll make more money this year on the independents than I would have working for you."
Bryan called John Laurinaitis to clear up details and Laurinaitis was shocked to hear Bryan was fired. Apparently Vince didn't tell anyone, just called Laurinaitis up and asked for Bryan's number. The comment Bryan made about money seemed to get to Vince since Laurinaitis called Bryan back and asked about it. Laurinaitis actually told Bryan that he can start working independent dates immediately if he wasn't on TV.
After working several shows and making good money off merchandise for several weeks, Bryan was shocked when John Laurinaitis called him in August and asked him to come back for a big angle leading into SummerSlam. Bryan sheepishly asked for a raise and made sure he could make all his already planned independent bookings.
Bryan says Nexas should have won at SummerSlam, noting how they went from dangerous to jobbers in one night.
Bryan remembers a taped RAW after SummerSlam where he did an angle with The Miz. When he got backstage Vince was so mad at how it came off that he made Bryan and others go back out there and do it again. It was the first time Bryan ever had to redo something like that and he said he felt humiliated.
Bryan didnt seem to see much value in being US Champion outside of how it would keep him on tv and maybe monthly ppv matches.
At Hell in a Cell 2010 ppv, Bryan had a good match with Miz and John Morrison, but was scolded after that match for a spot where Bryan threw Miz's stoog Alex Riley off the stage where he landed on cameraman. They showed the two guys the footage and accused them of doing it on purpose to get themselves over. Bryan started regretting coming back and really hating his time in WWE.
Bryan was paired with the Bella Twins in a storyline he hated, that was based on the Twins confusing the word "vegan" for "virgin" and competing to sleep with Bryan. Despite how bad that storyline was, Bryan and Brie would develop a relationship and would start dating in February 2011.
Sheamus was given a choice of Wrestlemania opponents that year between Rey Mysterio and Daniel Bryan, and Sheamus chose Bryan. Bryan was greatful but concerned Sheamus chose wrong and their match would be cut but Sheamus wasn't worried at all. A week before Mania they were informed their match was on the pre-show at a meeting with literally every other wrestler. Bryan says Sheamus buried his face in his hands and remembers how Rey Mysterio got on the card in a match with Cody Rhodes. Bryan says Sheamus picked the wrong guy.
Bryan got some details in his book messed up where he talks about Miz winning the WWE title off Cena at Wrestlemania 27 and he talks about how Miz was WWE Champion going into Over The Limit ppv 2011, but Miz lost the title by then. It's notable because he says he pitched hard for a "Rocky style" storyline where he would challenge Miz for the WWE title at the Over The Limit ppv.
Bryan says the 2011 Smackdown Money in the Bank winner wasn't decided until the day of the show but it was always between Wade Barret, Cody Rhodes and Bryan. He says despite winning the briefcase, his tv time tricked down and eventually he was spending weeks off tv, until he was randomly inserted into the World title program between Mark Henry and Big Show in late 2011.
Bryan was being left at home and off shows, even watching Survivor Series 2011 from home and was suprised when WWE had him come to the December TLC ppv show, last minute. The day of the show he was told he was cashing in and winning the title and the only direction Vince McMahon gave him was to act like he won the superbowl, so that's where Bryan's over the top celebration came from. He didn't even tell his girlfriend Brie Bella about the plan and says she was shocked when he came backstage afterwards.
The only direction Vince gave Bryan as champion is to celebrate every appearance like he won the lottery, saying, "there is no too over the top here."
Bryan said he adapted his "Yes" chants from MMA fighter Diego Sanchez who was celebrating in a similar way at the time.
Bryan's favorite moment from that first world title run was the closing sequence in the 2012 Elimination Chamber match with him and Santino Marella.
Bryan originally expected he and Sheamus to get 15 minutes or so at Wrestlemania for their match, but was shocked when Chris Jericho told him he heard it would be 8 minutes, including the pre & post match stuff. A week later Arn Anderson confirmed to Bryan that he would lose a 1-move match, dropping the world title to Sheamus at Wrestlemania that year. Bryan and Sheamus were both pissed, to say the least.
Sheamus expressed concern that the short match would turn fans against him as a new champion. Smart man.
Bryan says a bunch of guys came up to him after his Mania loss and were pissed at what they did to Bryan out there. Great Khali even came up and told Bryan that it was bullshit in his broken English.
Originally Sheamus was planned to move into a fued with Alberto Del-rio right after Mania, but the crazy crowd support for Bryan forced them to extend they story another month. Bryan says his Extreme Rules ppv match with Sheamus in 2012 is one of his favorites. Mine too!
Bryan acknowledged the weird booking of Punk as champion in 2012, noting how heels would face John Cena, lose, then be sent to face Punk with no momentum. Interesting take on the situation.
Bryan mentions how when he and Punk fueded in 2012, they never got main event spots outside of non-televised events. One time at a house show, Bryan and Punk veered too far into comedy and after the match John Cena chastised Bryan by pointing out that they didn't wrestle a "main event style" match. Apparently the next house show, Cena was moved into the main event spot with Punk/Bryan being before the intermission. An enraged Punk went and yelled at people until he got his main event spot back. This time, no comedy spots were done and they stayed the main event for the circuit.
Bryan had brand new, edgier gear made up prior to Money in the Bank 2012 and didn't tell anyone backstage. He wore shorts over his trunk and hid the jacket until he had to go out. When he got to the ring, the ref told him to lose the jacket, because I guess Vince was in gorilla position freaking out over how Bryan looked. Dean Melanko was the producer for the match, and Bryan felt bad when Vince blamed him for allowing Bryan to wear it.
Bryan was originally planned to wrestle Charlie Sheen at SummerSlam 2012 in a celebrity match, but Charlie "bailed" as Bryan put it.
Bryan was trying to be "Mr Small Package" by winning matches with Small Package and then boasting about how he has an "inescapable small package!" It didn't get over.
Bryan thought his anger management vignets with Kane and Dr Shelby were going to be terrible.
The only reason they stopped using Dr Shelby is because he had limited days off from his regular teaching job.
Bryan and Kane really wanted their team name to be "Team Friendship" and they even had shirt ideas but Vince let the fans vote and he always kept those votes legit, so their team name was "Team Hell No" which Bryan brings up a good point about. He said as a team primarily appealing to kids, a name with "Hell" in it would be hard to sell merchandise to those kids.
The plan was to break up their team so they could have a good heated fued together, but they were so popular that they kept teaming for 9 months.
Bryan says his first good Wrestlemania experience was in 2013 when he teamed with Kane.
One night after Mania in 2013, when Bryan tagged with Kane and Undertaker to face The Shield, Vince McMahon told Bryan that he would pay him several thousand dollars if he could get Undertaker to hug Bryan in the ring. After the show Bryan got on the mic and tried his hardest to get the hug but couldn't quite do it.
Bryan says that both he and Kane agree that teaming together was some of the most fun in either man's career.
Bryan was scheduled to win the biggest match of his career up to that point, he would be beating Randy Orton clean on RAW. Bryan would botch a dive that left both arms nunb and him unable to stand. He got feeling back in one arm but eventually the doctor called the match off. Backstage Bryan started screaming at Triple H for calling the match and called him a hypocrite for doing so, citing his own injuries in matches. At one point Orton tried to calm Bryan down, but Bryan snapped at him and Orton started yelling too. Brie got Bryan away to calm down, but when Vince came to talk to Bryan, the shouting started again. Much later, William Regal advised Bryan to apologize to both Vince and Triple H, to which Bryan took his advice. The next week, Bryan would get his win over Orton and he says that that drama over everything made that win matter more.
An MRI showed that one of Bryan's disks was pushing into his nerves and eventually he would need surgery. With his momentum starting to rise, Bryan opted to put surgery off.
John Cena pitched facing Daniel Bryan at Money in the Bank 2013 ppv. When Vince asked why, Cena said because it's the biggest match they could do at that time. Vince ended up agreeing, but deciding that it belongs at SummerSlam that year instead!
As proud as Bryan is of the build to and match with Cena at SummerSlam, he acknowledges that the ppv didn't do good numbers, nor did the house show business the following 2 months when Bryan was the main protagonist. He thinks a lot the the Authority promos on him stemmed from some truth.
Bryan isn't satisfied with the quality of matches he was putting out in the latter half of 2013 amd he specifically calls out the series of bad finishes he had with Randy Orton in ppv main events. From the fast counting crooked ref, to that terrible one with Big Show knocking everyone out, and then to Shawn Michaels betraying Bryan at Hell in a Cell ppv.
Bryan initially thought he was getting a Wrestlemania match with Shawn Michaels after that Hell in a Cell finish, but after talking with HBK, it was clear that was never in the cards.
Bryan feels he failed as a main eventer in the 2nd half of 2013, regardless of match quality. He didn't move business and that's all that matters.
The Slammy's were fan votes and Vince didn't think Bryan would win and almost laughed when Bryan asked him what he should say if he does win. Vince said, "whatever you want." I wish I could have seen Vince's face when Bryan won later that night.
When Bryan started fueding with Wyatt Family in late-2013, Bryan was pitching for him to be "brainwashed" and join the group. He suspects that his rising popularity in early 2014 is what convinced WWE to have Bryan turn on Bray and leave the group. At the time, Bryan was hoping to stay with the group and be involved in the planned Cena/Wyatt Wrestlemania program since Bryan had no plans for Mania at that time.
Bryan says he was disappointed when Vince told him he would be facing Sheamus again at Wrestlemania 2014. No disrespect to Sheamus, but Bryan felt he belonged in a higher spot.
Bryan felt bad for the way Rey Mysterio was boo'd at the 2014 Royal Rumble.
When Punk quit WWE after Rumble that year, Bryan remembers how plans didn't change too much for a few weeks, and he assumes Vince expected Punk to come back and for Batista to win the crowds over, and neither happened.
Triple H was being vocal about wanting to face Bryan at Mania that year, but Bryan was trying to not get his hopes up since he had seen Triple H try and fail to get his ideas on screen.
Bryan and Brie only agreed to let Total Divas shoot their wedding, because Total Divas agreed to pay for the whole wedding! Hard to say no to that!
Bryan is very satisfied with his matches at Wrestlemania 30 and says he was so focused between matches that he missed Undertaker losing to Lesnar. He heard the ring bell and looked up at the monitor in shock. He says they cameras should have filmed the guys and girls in the back because their reactions were wild, apparently.
Five days after Wrestlemania 30, Bryan and Brie got married, but 2 days after their honeymoon ended, Bryan's dad unexpectedly passed away at the age of 57. Bryan was devastated and described how he was crying still as he was writing about it.
The book ends on a complete downer, very unlike most other wrestling books. Bryan says that as long as he wrestled when asked if everything he was missing or sacrificing was worth it, Bryan always said yes. He assumed he would have more time when he was done and could catch up on what he missed, but his dad is gone and Bryan openly admits that it wasn't worth it. If he could, Bryan would change a lot of his decisions if it meant more time with his dad.
He says he is still wrestling though because he literally doesn't know what else to do or what comes after. This is especially depressing 10 years later, when Bryan is still wrestling despite having started a family of his own. I hope he doesn't regret any time missed with his daughter.
He ends the book by describing the last time he saw his dad, on Christmas in 2013, where his dad dressed up as Santa. Fuck. I'm sad now.

There's a phrase resting in the back of my head
looping like a neglected vinyl on the needle.
Because I ended my shifts with its screams weaving
hundreds of knots into my back and shoulders.
Because I went to physio and the doctor made me
do all these exercises, I wheezed it at every push up.
Because I couldn't escape my aches, or brain, on my day off
that I kept crumbled receipts between my nails on my walk
until paper dust covered my phone screen and fingertips.
Fumbling, scratching, clenching, breaths hitching, dead gazing.
Because I read this one book over eight months,
every page turned was a new pain,
every new line was hot coal behind the eyes.
And I said "No more."
​
"I'm in a coffee shop, I can't cry."
"I'm at the bus stop, I can't cry."
"I'm in a mall now, I can't cry."
Curled up in a corner, I cannot cry.
I just feel fires licking behind my eyes
I just see withered lights and dried up stars
climbing on my neck and arms.
"Am I there yet?" I asked
"I promise, I won't wish for happiness
so have I finished the test?
When will this end?"
Silly thing, dead dreams can't speak now, can they?
Just lay there sweetly, meekly while the vinyl plays
​
No more.
Please, no more.

"Maybe in the next life we'll meet each other for the first time--- believing in everything but the harm we're capable of."
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong)
At this point, I don't write poems, I write word vomits. *stare at ceiling*

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