Author Archives: Daniel Craig

Craig: New Twitter brilliantly documents party hookups

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Close your eyes for a second. Well, keep reading this, so don’t close your eyes. Never mind, just clear your mind for a moment.

Picture yourself in a filthy basement, your vision fuzzy and personal censor removed. Drenched in sweat, a remixed version of some top-40 hit is blasting so loud you can feel your eardrums trying to pop out of your skull.

Your friends are texting you frantically to come get Chinese food with them, but you’re a bit preoccupied. There’s no room in your mouth for General Tso’s chicken, because it’s currently being occupied by the tongue of someone you’ve just met. They taste like a combination of flat keg beer and cigarettes, but that doesn’t stop you from groping and necking like the world is about to end and this is the last person you’ll ever have any intimate interaction with again.

Chances are, you’ve been in this situation before. A party, a dance, a random hookup; most have enjoyed  – or regretted, depending on who you ask – the occasional consequence of party life on a college campus.

Yet no worries, because this embarrassing display is just a moment lost in time, a brief footnote in the history of your college career to laugh about the next morning. Right?

Wrong. So, so wrong. Because an incredible new Twitter account, @TempleMakeouts, is documenting these scenes from the underbelly of Temple’s weekend nights, and you’re only a friend’s iPhone away from being exposed to almost 2,000 followers for your actions.

“If someone doesn’t want to be put on @TempleMakeouts, they have to realize we have created a campus-wide social networking game on the weekends,” said one of the six admins for @TempleMakeouts, who all remain anonymous, “People go out targeting to submit pictures of people getting freaky on the dance floor.”

That’s right, partygoers. Watch out, because @TempleMakeouts is the new social equalizer. It doesn’t matter who you are, because the camera shows no mercy. @TempleMakeouts gives us the gritty portrayal of a side of Temple that you won’t find in the school brochure; a beautiful canvas filled with brief encounters of lust and substance fueled acts of desire. And I can’t get enough of it.

For a longer commentary piece on @TempleMakeouts, check out the Opinion section of the March 19 issue of The Temple News.

Daniel Craig can be reached at daniel.craig@temple.edu.

Craig: Harlem Shake symbolizes a powerful revolution

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“Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of angry men!” – Les Miserables

A revolution starts with a spark, a small flame to ignite a peoples with a common goal. In this case, a Facebook event is all that was needed to round hundreds of inspired young adults to sacrifice their Friday afternoons for a common cause: dance.

Temple Students gathered around the Bell Tower this afternoon to recreate the famous Harlem Shake videos, creating a sea of costumes and fist pumping that clearly said, “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Yet to what oppressive force can we attribute this phenomenon? With so much going on, it’s clear these Youtube pioneers were making a statement about something.

What about President Obama and his policies?

“Absolutely,” said sophomore Harmon Sachse, “Obama is directly related to this.”

Could this be in response to the recent debate surrounding immigration?

“I think it says nothing at all about immigration,” said junior Joseph McGovern, “I think everyone who’s here was already in the United States.”

Maybe this video will be a defiant rejection of corporate culture. A Temple student, who to protect his identity decided to go simply by “Tim,” commented on this possibility.

“Um,” said Tim, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s about like overplayed pop music that’s exploited by record companies.”

Although the direction of this movement is not clear, we can say for sure that it is a bold expression of our Wayne and Garth given right to party on.

Daniel Craig can be reached at daniel.craig@temple.edu.