The TSA has an image problem, so they tried to fix it the same way
any outdated organization fixes their image problems, by hiring
an intern to run their social media pages. Hi, and welcome back to me talking to you about
whatever I want. Today, I want to talk about the TSA and how they're basically trash. Yeah,
that's the thesis of this video, the TSA is trash. But first of course, I'm going to do a
comment shut out from my last video. This comment actually goes out to Julia Mae Huley who says,
"Your channel is growing so fast. I subscribed a couple of weeks ago when you had 60K subscribers,
you'll reach 100K by tomorrow no doubt. Congrats." Well, this person predicted the future, because
here we are 100,000 subscribers. When I say it out loud, it doesn't even sound right, but thank
you. Honestly, I enjoy making these videos and apparently you enjoy watching them, so I'm just
going to keep doing what I'm doing. That's why today we're going to be ranting about the TSA.
Now, if you're an American citizen or you travel frequently among airports, you might've just
immediately groaned when I said TSA. But if you're unfamiliar with them, first of all,
consider yourself lucky. TSA stands for the Transport Security Administration,
and basically it's just the United States' airport security. But listen, I cannot explain to you
via a simple introduction just how awful airport security is in the United States.
I know that it's terrible everywhere, because I see all these news stories, but I just feel
like the US took all the worst elements of international airport security and they just
train all of their employees to follow those. Also if you're watching this and you're a TSA employee,
I just want to say, I'm sure you're not like that, I hope. Please. Please, don't be like that.
So I always have wanted to address the TSA in some way or another on this channel,
but I couldn't really find the perfect angle. What exactly is so bad about this,
but still vaguely internet related. Well, then I found their Instagram account and that just
led me down the rabbit hole of TSA trauma. So of course, I want you to relive that with me.
So first things we can do, just so you can get a picture of how terrible this government-funded
organization is, is we're going to look at some of their recent incidents. So I have right here,
TSA destroys custom-made instrument. Now to me, honestly, that headline wasn't surprising in the
least, just because this is what I tend to expect from these people. But at the same time, you have
to wonder, what exactly are they doing with these instruments for them to wind up in this condition?
So this musician from Mali named Sissoko, I'm not even going to try to pronounce his first name,
I'm sorry. He apparently plays the kora, which I must admit, I've never heard of a kora before
this. But here's a picture of him playing the kora at a concert in Paris. As you can see, it's huge,
and the bottom's decked out with stars, and from what I understand, it's a cultural instrument.
Well, he made the mistake of trusting it with the TSA, but here's the thing, he didn't realize
that they destroyed it, because it was in its case. So he gets home and opens it up,
and it's this. As you can see, the tall part is completely disconnected from the body. Honestly,
I don't even play musical instruments, but this just hurts my soul. On top of that,
you can see that all the strings are disconnected and just tangled. It literally looks like
somebody snapped his instrument in half. Now the weird thing about this is that the
TSA denied that this happened, their official statement was, "It's most unfortunate that Mr.
Sissoko's instrument was damaged in transport. However, after a thorough review of the claim,
it was determined that TSA did not open the instrument case,
because it did not trigger an alarm when it was screened for possible explosives." So, he just
broke his instrument in half and then attached an official TSA note to it. That makes sense.
So because they claimed that it wasn't them, from what I understand, they don't
even have to reimburse him. So here we have an irreplaceable cultural instrument just destroyed,
because some TSA agent was having a bad day. He brought up a good point too, the TSA doesn't
open all musical cases. In fact, as they said in there, they tend not to open them if they
don't set off an alarm. But he questioned if it was a violin case, would they have opened it?
Point is like me, the TSA probably had no idea what a kora was and they just saw a
weirdly shaped case, but my excuse is that I'm an American and people don't use the kora in
our pop music. You would think that if you work at an international airport, you would at least
be familiar with various instrument cases and not just open them because they're shaped weirdly and
you've never seen it before. So yeah, I couldn't help but feel like a bit of cultural ignorance was
factoring into him having his instrument broken. But nonetheless, as you can see,
it's just totaled, it's done. It doesn't matter, because his instrument is not coming back.
Now, I just want to give one last story before I talk about the TSA's internet presence. Just a
quick warning, this one is very inappropriate and involves harassment. Now before I bring this up,
I just want to say, I have people in my family, specifically women who refuse to fly, just they
don't hop on airplanes. When I asked them why, they said because they don't want to go through
the TSA security checks. I'm not going to lie, I never understood why. I always thought it was an
exaggeration, I thought they can't be that bad. Well, this article popped up into my timeline
and now I completely understand feeling unsafe. This article made me feel unsafe. Basically,
a 22-year-old TSA employee tricked this lady into walking off with him,
because he claimed that he needed to do a further search. You can kind of see where this is going,
right? So, he invited her to follow him into a separate area with no other people in it. So they
were taking the elevator to that area, but then he says, "Hey, we can do the search right here."
Now at that point, think about this. They're in an elevator traveling with a closed door,
so she cannot leave that situation. In other words, I'm just dancing around saying
he falsely imprisoned her in an elevator, and then of course he forced her to strip. Without
getting into too much detail, he claimed he needed to see everything pretty much.
One 22-year-old TSA agent, Johnathon Lomeli, used fraud or deceit to falsely imprison the traveler.
He reportedly first asked the woman to look inside her bra to make sure she wasn't hiding anything,
then told her to hold her pants far enough from her waist so he could look inside. Lomeli
reportedly asked the woman to, "Show me your full breasts," and looked down her pants a second time
before telling her she was free to go. So, obviously she showed him everything,
because when you're trapped in an elevator with a scary person and you have no way of escaping,
I think prioritizing your safety at that point is very understandable. So, that's horrifying. Now,
obviously this isn't the TSA's fault, kind of, because while he did work for them,
clearly nobody instructed him to do that. But at the same time, he still worked for them. So,
they quite understandably denounced him saying his behavior was unacceptable, ending a front
to the hardworking and committed members of our workforce.
So, I bring this all up to say the TSA has an image problem. So, they tried to fix it the
same way any outdated organization fixes their image problems, by hiring an intern to run their
social media pages. Behold, @TSA on Instagram. Welcome to the official Instagram profile of
the Transportation Security Administration. So this account has one million followers,
but based off of how few likes they're getting, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say
half a million of those were purchased. I actually have posts with more likes than
some of these, and I don't even have 20,000 followers yet. But anyway, let's pretend the
TSA just has a million stans, because we stan the TSA. Don't let the Instagram bio fool you,
they are not posting travel tips and guidance, prohibited items and canines, they are shaming
people who got caught in TSA security checks by posting their prohibited items online. Okay,
I guess in a way that is posting prohibited items, which they did say they were doing, but nobody
would assume that this is what they meant. So if it's not bad enough that this is some
weird public shaming blog for all intents and purposes, they have somebody write these really
cringy Instagram captions just full of puns. So apparently someone got caught trying to
carry a ninja star with them, which maybe the TSA has a point. Now, listen to this caption.
"We hate to burst your bubble, but ninja really think this was gonna fly? Shuriken
this passenger wasn't thinking when packing for his trip." I'm sorry you had to hear that.
So, someone brought a slingshot apparently, which are not allowed on planes, which I didn't know,
but it does make sense. They said, "Ay, caramba! Don't get all bart out of shape about forgetting
your krusty ol’ sling shot in your carry-on. It's just not worth having a cow over,
man." Get it? Because Bart has a slingshot and he talks like that, and pop culture reference.
It's literally just so cringy. Also, I will point out this post has 5,600 likes,
but they have one million followers. Someone apparently tried to carry a knife,
bullets and ... wait, what? Somewhat tried to carry C-4 onto an airplane. Anyway,
this happened around Thanksgiving, and so the TSA says, "With Thanksgiving a week away, allow us to
provide you with some helpful travel tips. First, don't be a turkey and arrive at least two hours
prior. Second, don't arrive with an empty magazine knife and C-4, our officers may suspect foul play.
National Stuffing Day got a new meaning when our officers discovered these items stuffed in
the passenger's ..." They're not even trying. So, I think you get the point, right? There's
this weird item shaming subculture going on on the TSA. Initially, I started this video off
to criticize them for that, but I'm kind of living for it. But then every time I appreciate the post,
I see the caption and my will to continue this video just dies. So, I guess this
weapon apparently looks like cheese and it says, "You gouda brie kidding us!? What do cheese and
guns have in common? Nuffin except some cheese head forgetting his loaded weapon in his bag."
I can't do this anymore. I have encountered many a cringy social media presence from a faceless,
soulless entity, but this has got to be taking the cake. Because as much as I want to make
fun of this, I can feel somebody putting their whole heart and soul into these puns.
So, that's the prohibited items they post. As for the travel tips and guidance,
they just don't post that. I'm not sure whether that's in their bio, there's no travel tips and
guidance on their entire Instagram feed. So if you came there for help, I guess you're going to wind
up violating the rules and getting your stuff taken and memed about by the TSA. Obviously,
imagine just trying to mind your own business, but getting your stuff confiscated and becoming
a TSA meme, I would never live that down. So, then the only other thing they post
on their profile are their dogs. But of course they can't just leave these precious dogs alone,
they have to accompany them with these god-awful puns. "What time does your shift start?" "Around
Tennish". 10. Ish. It's almost like they know that their puns are a point of contention among
the general American public, because this post right here says, "You can't skele-run
from our skele-puns, so let's get this party started and give ‘em pumpkin to talk about."
You know what? Right now America is in a very divided place, for reasons that I will not be
getting into, but you know what I think can unite all of us? Give me a political candidate who
will stop whoever's at the TSA from just going ham with these puns. I will literally vote for
you solely off of that one specific platform. Now from their Instagram, I also had the great
misfortune of discovering that they have a TikTok account. The thing is, as an American citizen,
as a tax paying American citizen, that tax money that they're taking from every
single paycheck Google gives me is funding the TSA's TikTok. When I think about that,
it makes me want to avoid my taxes and get arrested, but I don't think I'd be able to make
these videos from jail. Actually, what if I could? Jail vlog, that's not funny. That's not funny at
all. Some people are actually in jail, but then again, they're not watching this. Jail vlog.
See, the thing about the TikTok and the dogs and the cringy Instagram posts is that, as I said,
the TSA's government-funded, but they're not a product, they're not selling anything. They don't
need a PRT. The only time you encounter the TSA is when you're at the airport, which is obviously a
very specialized incident. So the fact that they need to put forward this face of memes and dogs
and we're on TikTok, when they don't really need to and it's not really increasing their traffic,
really shows you that they know how horrible their reputation is at this point. Dogs aren't
going to absolve your sins. They might be cute, but y'all still broke that man's instrument.
So in conclusion, I had to comment on the mess that is the TSA, because I feel like everyone in
America knows this, but it's just such common knowledge that we don't often verbalize it.
Anyway, I hope you were able to cringe through these posts with me, because y'all can't let
me do this by myself, okay? But ultimately, the TSA is not really going to matter to me anyway,
because at some point I will be moving back to Mars. So honestly, who cares?