Civilian career Īfter his honorable discharge from the Army, Mast was hired as an explosives specialist for the United States Department of Homeland Security. Mast and his family were awarded a custom ADA-compliant home by the nonprofit organization Helping a Hero. The explosion resulted in the amputation of both his legs and his left index finger. On September 19, 2010, while clearing a path for United States Army Rangers in Kandahar, Mast stepped on an IED along the road. He served in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Mast later joined the elite 28th Ordnance Company, a special operations explosive ordnance disposal unit that works alongside personnel of the 75th Ranger Regiment. Army and became an explosive ordnance disposal technician. In 2006, he transitioned to the active U.S. Military service Īfter graduating from high school, Mast enlisted in the United States Army Reserve in May 2000 and became a combat engineer assigned to the 841st Combat Engineer Battalion. from Harvard University Extension School with a concentration in economics and minors in government and environmental studies. Mast graduated from South Christian High School in 1999. His maternal grandparents were immigrants from Mexico. He is the son of James Mast and Tixomena Trujillo. Beauty looks a lot of different ways,” Adams said.Mast was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Sometimes everything we see isn’t necessarily the truth.
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Still, they hope the yassify meme, as ridiculous as it may be, ends up being a force for good. “The yassification of language, if you will.”Īdams, the Nebraska art student behind says they hope the memes entertain people - at least for a few more weeks, as they warn they won’t be paying another $4.99 for another month of the FaceApp subscription. “It’s just so much fun, and I think a natural part of how humor can devolve to meaningless words that are only funny because of the process it took to get there,” Gallegos said. “It felt like a corporation trying to communicate with a queer person,” said Gallegos, “or maybe an overly-enthusiastic ally trying to seem non-threatening, or even a white person misusing AAVE (and I think it’s important to acknowledge that many of the words the queer community uses comes from ballroom culture and black queer people).”Īs Gallegos’s video makes clear, when this slang gets layered on top of one another and spoken again and again, it loses any semblance of reality - much like semantic satiation or the FaceApp filters. Gallegos told BuzzFeed News that his video was inspired by some audio he had heard in which someone said, “Wow, queen, you look so vagina slay.” “Happy Pride month! We are sashaying away with deals!” “Hi, gay!” Stalter said vacantly in a phrase that has since been embraced by the LGBTQ community. Think of comedian Meg Stalter’s extremely viral video from June in which she pretended to be a butter company spokesperson who was uncomfortable with queer slang. “The bottom line is it’s a satire of this ageist technology and insane beauty standards through these artificial intelligence apps,” they said.īut the meme’s embrace of both camp ridiculousness and vapid emptiness feels reminiscent of the ways parts of queer culture celebrate a sort-of performance of extremes, whether it be over-the-top drag, reclaimed limp wrists, or even language.Ĭrucially, most of the fun for the LGBTQ community involves being aware of the artifice of this performance, as well as the extent to which outsiders - from straight people to corporate brands on social media - then try to participate.Įven the word “yassify” - a derivation of the term “yaaass queen,” which has roots in 1980s ball culture but went mainstream in 2013 thanks to Broad City and a video of a Lady Gaga fan - is an example of this: something that started as slang but has since morphed into popular nonsense that many queer people would now probably never say in real life. “Technology like this has a creepy way of making it so uncannily realistic that it makes people uncomfortable. I think there’s a conversation to be had about how unhealthy that culture is,” said Adams. Here, the FaceApp has just turned the volume up to 100 so the subjects now sit in a sort of social media uncanny valley. We’re used to seeing women channeling this overstylized glamor on magazine covers and in Instagram influencer posts.
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With lips plumper than a Kardashian, contouring better than Adele’s, and a complexion that has been smoothed over more than Calista Gingrich’s on FaceTune, each yassify photo looks cartoonishly ridiculous - but also strangely familiar.
![gru gay meme gru gay meme](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/83/6e/e9836e8ebc51a79ec3dce66f9cdd8504.png)
If all of this sounds absurd to you by now, that’s kind of the point.