- Hey everyone, I'm Riley and I am so sweaty.
It is so hot in Sydney right now,
I'm melting, I even have lights up
because the light is uneven coming through the window,
so I'm just a big ball of sweat.
If I melt during this video,
I'm sorry, but a girl's gotta film
some videos even when it's two million
degrees outside and super humid.
Trying a new little setup,
my mic is here because
it wouldn't effectively hide offscreen,
but we are here today because I wanna use my computer
to tell you about the time
that my girlfriend tried
to get some discounted potato wedges,
and it became weirdly viral.
Me and her are both really confused about it but it's funny
and I wanna talk about it,
mostly because it was just fun and silly and something
like happy in the world for once.
Austrian birds are so loud.
The wildlife hasn't been
as deadly as I anticipated when I came here,
but it has been much louder than I anticipated.
Anyways, the story was just fun.
It was just my girlfriend being goofy,
she's just a funny person.
By the way, her name is Fiona,
she's at the channel neonfiona
that I'll link in a card up here.
Go subscribe to her, she's great.
But so Fiona is just a funny person,
does funny things and she just tweeted about it and it was
like fun for a whole five minutes until people showed up
to just be assholes because it's the Internet,
I guess, or Twitter.
People are just determined to be mean about everything,
even stuff that really really you don't need
to be mean about, 'cause it doesn't matter, it's just fun.
So basically what happened,
I'll link her Twitter thread in the description,
but I'll explain it for you here.
Fiona got off work and she
was stopping by the grocery store on her way home
and normally I work from home
and I'm there when she gets home but I had something to do
that evening and so I was out
and earlier that day she had forgotten her keys,
which meant that she needed
to wait for me to get home before she could get home
because otherwise she would
just be waiting outside her front door,
and so she had some time to kill after work,
and got to the grocery store and was just like,
hey, these are probably gonna be discounted soon.
She thought it was gonna be like five or 10 minutes,
and so she waits, and they didn't do it,
and at that point she's
like committed you know so she's staying there and waiting,
and she could see that they were discounting other stuff
and they would get to that soon,
and so I think they just
took a little bit longer than normal to get to it.
She said when they did come out and mark it,
they seemed like rushed
because they realized they were supposed
to put it reduced earlier,
and so eventually they reduced the potato wedges from $3
to $1.50, and so she got a little snack
that could tide her over until we could go home
and have dinner together,
and that's it, end of story,
that's the little cute story about my girlfriend getting
some potato wedges, and you'd think it would end there,
but this is the Internet.
So she tweeted about it in classic Fiona fashion and it got
like weirdly big, big enough
that it became a Twitter Moment.
It was under like the haha section,
which by the way just sounds sarcastic
when the section is just haha.
At least make it, I don't know,
a capital lol or like hahaha or something,
but the moment was called being frugal can be
a waiting game, potato emoji.
And yeah, just a cute little moment about Fiona getting
these potato wedges and there's lots of people being like,
yeah, that's awesome, or
like sharing other stories of times they have been frugal
and it's really funny, but then, then the assholes come in
and let me tell you, all of these guys,
and I'm pretty sure all,
if not most of them are guys,
are literally trying to like mansplain
the concept of time and money to Fiona.
I'm not gonna read any of them out individually
because I don't want to give them the attention,
but there's literally guys being like,
well, if you had worked for
that hour that you were waiting for the potatoes,
you could've earned like this amount of money
and your time is obviously worth more than $1.50, and it's
like yeah, no shit, but not everyone like,
not every minute of your life is monetized.
Like I know capitalism makes you think of your time as
like productivity and if you're not
like working all of those minutes then you're
wasting your time, but sometimes you're just not working.
You are off work, you are waiting for a girlfriend
to get home, you got some time to kill.
It's like you're not gonna fill that time by working,
and she works like nine to five,
she got home, it's not like it was me
where I literally can be working all of the time,
but even then, that's a stress
you shouldn't put on yourself.
You need to have some time off anyway,
but that's another topic.
I just can't believe like obviously Fiona knows
that she could've spent
that time doing something that would earn her more money,
but I don't think that the goal
of waiting for the potato wedges was to
like earn a ton of money,
it was just waiting for some discounted potato wedges
and then the wait became
a little bit longer and then she got them.
Like it's just not a big deal,
it's not like you have to,
as soon as the potato wedges weren't discounted,
you like leave because you can't do that,
because now you're wasting your productive time.
Like what was she gonna do?
Come back here to the locked house
and work outside the house?
She has like a nine to five.
That doesn't make any sense,
why like, she knows her life better than anyone else.
Why do these random strangers on the Internet think
that they can tell her about her life and what's best her?
And like some of them were clearly being assholes,
like they were being like, "oh,
you should've done this,
you stupid girl," but others,
it's like they think that they are helping like, "oh,
well there, little lady,
how do you value your time and what can you
to be doing better?"
like fuck off, it's just condescending.
They phrase it in a way that sounds positive like,
"oh, I'm just trying to help you."
No, you're just trying to be a dick and
like flaunt your superiority complex
because you think you can spend your time
so much more productively than everyone else in the world
and that makes you a better person because of it,
like fucking chill dude, they are just potato wedges.
Just chill and eat the potato wedges.
Ugh, and then of course,
of course, there's assholes talking about health.
There's some replies just being like,
well, it's not the healthiest thing you could be eating or
like you could've waited for healthier thing, fuck off.
People can eat potato wedges,
they're fine, they are not gonna kill you.
I swear, people can post about
like smoking and binge drinking
and all sorts of unhealthy activities
but then you get some potato wedges
and people want to talk about health?
I just, why can't we let people eat potatoes?
Your whole diet doesn't have to be like kale,
you are allowed to eat things
that taste good, like potato wedges.
I don't even like potato wedges that much
and look what you made me do.
Defend potato wedges.
Shoestring fries are obviously superior,
but I don't think there are any shoestring fries on discount
or I might have asked Fiona to get me some.
The point is, fuck off with your fake concerns about
everyone else's health in the world.
You're not, you shouldn't go around tweeting
everyone everything that they are talking about
and telling them what's the more healthier option,
like that's just a douche thing to do,
you don't know these people.
They are strangers, but it's very clear
that it is selective, that people don't go
and yell this stuff at thin people,
like I never get people commenting about my health when
I eat junk food and it's
because they are just concern trolling,
it's not actually about health,
it's about being mean to anyone who is not superthin,
and then you're just being a fucking jerk.
Mind your own business,
mind your own health, everyone can worry about
their own shit, thank you very much.
Okay, and then some of the news outlets,
oh my god, their coverage of it is so funny,
because in the tweets, you can see,
Fiona gives you like specific times,
like you can see for one, the timestamps
of her tweets when she started waiting
and when she actually got the potatoes,
but then she's also, like towards the end
of her tweet thread, she's like
I have been waiting here nearly 30 minutes,
and that should be like,
if you're just reading the tweet thread,
you should see her mention 30 minutes,
even if you don't look at the timestamps and be like,
oh, like, 30 minutes, nah nah,
people who are gonna write articles about this
are not gonna catch that little detail,
that little integral detail to the story.
So there's one article
from WSFM 101.7, "woman waited three hours
for half price potato wedges."
It's just not true.
Like it's just objectively not true,
and what I think they got
is that Fiona said in her tweet she said
it has 3:15 as the timestamp,
and now it's 6:25 and surely
they don't leave these things out longer than three hours,
but she wasn't saying that
she had been there since 3:15, she was saying
that potatoes were marked as put out at 3:15
and so she was guessing that three hours later,
they would be marked reused.
Fiona was at work up until that point,
she probably left at like I don't know,
5:30 or something, six?
So you have to like really misread that
and not look at any of the timestamps
and not look at any of the later tweets,
which like if you're gonna write
an article about the tweets,
you should probably read them,
and then the thing about the article
is that it's not an article.
It is a single sentence in the beginning,
Twitter user @neonfiona waited hours
in a supermarket for the fresh potato wedges
to be reduced to half price,
no period, that's just how the sentence ends,
then all of Fiona's tweets and then at this point,
everyone on the Internet simultaneously rejoiced
at the success of the mission, no period again.
Does this website not like periods?
Lives forever changed, no period,
so three sentences, no periods,
and all quoted tweets, that's not content,
that's not an article.
You are curating the same things
that everyone else can see other places.
You literally just saw that there was a Twitter moment,
quoted all the tweets and put
like 2 1/2 sentences in, that's not content.
And you got it wrong, they're like,
one big sentence you had,
the one sentence that are more than like six words,
you got it wrong, it wasn't hours.
How do people do this?
Like I understand when there's a big complicated stories
and like people have tons of editors
and fact checkers and stuff and there are
like so many facts to confirm and everything,
but like this is the smallest thing,
it's just potato wedges,
you don't, if there's anything
that shouldn't be fake news, it's potato wedges.
You just have to put in
like the tiniest tiniest amount of effort,
it's not even an article,
oh, okay, anyways, the next one
is from the Evening Standard.
Austrian woman's tactical hour-long wait in supermarket
to secure half-price potato wedges goes viral.
I don't know where they got the hour from.
I kinda understood the last one,
how they misread three hours,
I don't know where this one got hour-long.
Nothing in the tweets mentions an hour.
Like it's very clearly almost 30 minutes,
like 20 something minutes if you look at the timestamps,
and this one, there's at least more content in the article
like they actually write about her
and like say she began by writing on Twitter,
quotes here, also they called her YouTuber Neon space Fiona
which just looks really funny to me,
'cause it's all one word, yeah,
so they're just, all of her tweets,
they're kind of like rephrasing it.
They said, the young woman said she faked two phone calls
to her housemates as she waited
for the reduction to be added.
It's just so funny how they've
like remade her tweets kind of into their own content,
With all of their ads along here, which is nice for them.
And quoted someone who quote-tweeted her
who said "pretty inspirational thread here folks,"
this is just funny.
I mean, you got it wrong
with the hour thing, but it's funny.
Still, kind of content, I guess,
okay, and then we've got one from Guacamoley.
This person put in a ton
of effort just to get discount potato wedges,
and we are here for it,
and they go on like a whole spiel about the type
of person who you complement their sweater
and they go on a monologue about how they got it discounted
or whatever and then all of Fiona's tweets broken up by
like paragraphs of stuff.
At least that's an article.
That's content, slightly better,
and then, okay, there's actually,
there was one good coverage of this
and it's from Punkee, and it said,
meet the Aussie hero who patiently waited for Woolies wedges
to be discounted, and honestly,
I should make that my Twitter bio,
the girlfriend of Aussie hero who waited for potato wedges,
that's how I want everyone to recognize me from now on,
like oh my god, are you that girl's girlfriend?
The girl with the potato wedges?
And this is actually like,
this is more articlely,
like they reached out to Fiona,
they got some quotes, they talk about her tweets,
it actually gets the times correct.
I think it was the first article
to actually get the times right which is not difficult,
you just look at the timestamps or read the tweets,
but congratulations, they actually got it right,
which is more than I can say for the other websites,
yeah, and they even mention in a couple sentences
that there were like shitty responses to it,
like not all responses have been positive though,
because well, it's Twitter.
She has also copped abuse for her life choices,
which is rather baffling.
Thanks, writer of this Punkee article,
I agree, it is baffling.
And then the last thing that I want to mention
is that I googled it just
to see if any other places covered this and it wasn't
like a full article but kitchen.nine.com.au does a roundup
of food that caused controversy,
and I love it, that's a big enough section.
They have been updating this for like a while,
there's 52 things currently on here and each one goes back
like a week or so, so I think once a week,
someone just looks around on the Internet for food
that caused controversy,
and the newest one, the newest addition
to it is woman's potato wedges goes viral for best reason,
and then yeah, it's a similar thing,
just like a couple sentences talking about her tweets,
none of them are actually embedded,
but oh my god, that's so funny.
Fiona will forever go down
in history as the woman
who got discounted potato wedges and I love it.
So anyways, that's what happened with the potato wedges.
Please go subscribe to Fiona,
she's great and funny and follow her
on Twitter, she is amazing.
She is also at work right now,
and coming home soon and
I don't think she's getting potato wedges today,
but I could text her, see
if she wanna get something else discounted,
maybe she could have another viral thread.
It's just unbelievable,
we've been talking about this
and we don't know why it got big,
like Fiona tweets a lot of
like ridiculous funny stuff
like this where it's like not serious it's just kind of
like fun, and most of it goes kind of like unnoticed,
and then this one randomly got turned into a moment and then
like picked up by media outlets,
and we just, we don't know why.
I mean, it's great.
I'm so glad to see it happening,
I just wish I could have some hope for humanity when
looking at the replies, you know?
Oh, I'm so sweaty, I'm actually like drenched right now,
my ponytail is hitting like the sweat on my back,
ugh, okay, I'm gonna stop filming now ugh.
Anyways, so go check out Fiona's channel on Twitter,
I'll link them in the description.
I am having so much trouble talking today,
I'm probably gonna cut out most of the mistakes,
but I can't be bothered to say that sentence again.
Thanks to Fiona for making some great content
that I could then make some content about.
We love the happy circle of content.
And if you'd like to support me on Patreon,
you can click over here.
If you would like to subscribe to my channel,
you can click up here, and thanks so much for watching.
I will see you next time.
(upbeat music)