I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not always up on the latest “lingo” used by our younger generations. But one trend I’ve caught wind of recently is FAFO. For those not familiar, FAFO stands for “F–k Around and Find Out”. It is used over videos of people making incredibly stupid decisions and almost immediately living to regret them. Think of the person that tries to pet or take a selfie with the buffalo at Yellowstone National Park and then gets stomped by the one-ton wild animal. Or the person who, when caught shoplifting, decides that fighting a cop is the best course of action to take before getting tazed in spectacular fashion.
I find it interesting that two generations–Millennials and Gen Z–who believe that they shouldn’t be held accountable or responsible for anything that they do are so entertained by these videos and have adopted FAFO as a mantra. Isn’t taking out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt to get a degree in poetry only to find out there aren’t a lot of jobs for poets nowadays FAFO? Or would you consider rallying to support a terror organization like Hamas leading to the loss of your job at a Jewish-owned business FAFO?
For years I’ve tried warning people of the likely outcomes of their demands for things that personal experience gained over 52-years have shown are doomed to fail. And the usual response has been “OK Boomer” (even though I’m Gen X). Well now, I’ve decided that I’ll just adopt the attitude of FAFO–and enjoy people living with the disastrous results of their choices.
It’s why I have completely flipped my attitude toward the firing of Wisconsin Football Coach Luke Fickell. Anyone within earshot heard me warn that firing Paul Chryst and not retaining interim coach Jim Leonhard was going to be a huge mistake. Why did I think that? Well, for 17-years of my life before the hiring of Barry Alvarez and his “ground and pound” philosophy of the game, Wisconsin was one of the worst football programs in the country. But since that hiring and change in philosophy, the team won three Rose Bowls, went to three more, played in multiple Big Ten Championship games, was consistently ranked in the top 20, won 9 or 10 games almost every year, and was considered one of the best programs in the country.
But all that wasn’t good enough for some people (especially younger folks that didn’t live through the “pre-Barry” era). “You’ve got to get out of the stone age, old man!!” “You can’t win championships running the ball!!” was the justification for completely changing course that I heard over and over and over. My only response was “This is going to be an abject disaster” and all I would get is “OK Boomer”. Now I wish that I had used “Alright, FAFO!”
And boy, have we ever found out. By adopting the style of football used by nearly every other team in college football–when there is a clear lack of enough good quarterbacks to play a quarterback-centric offense that mirrors what 8-year olds play in Madden Football on the “easy” setting–the Badgers are now unquestionably the worst team in the Big Ten. If nine or ten wins a year and New Years Day bowl games weren’t good enough for you in the past, enjoy having no bowl games, 11:00 am kickoffs every week, and a half-empty Camp Randall Stadium for the foreseeable future.
I was ready to fire Fickel after his first underwhelming season, and my calls had only grown stronger after no bowl game or rivalry game victory last year. But now, I want UW to honor the remaining five years of his contract. I want all of those “experts on the modern game” to have to sit there and take the week in and week out poundings that their petulant demands led to. Consider it the “finding out” part of FAFO.
I’m applying FAFO to politics as well. For the last 10-years I’ve been warning that Donald Trump is neither a Republican nor a man to be trusted with any position of power. And all I would hear in response is “OK, libtard” A majority of Wisconsinites in two of the last three presidential elections have disagreed with that and voted to put Trump in the White House–with his supporters claiming his wins are going to “Make America Great Again”.
How’s that working out? The first time around you had a global pandemic that shut everything down and forever scarred the social fabric of our country, economic downturns, two impeachments, and protesters storming the Capitol on worldwide television trying to stop the administration of a fair election.
This time around, Wisconsin farmers have nowhere to sell their soybeans because of (unconstitutional) tariffs Trump put in place against China that drove the Chinese to buy their beans from South American countries, prices haven’t come down, the military is in the streets, air traffic control systems are slowed down dramatically, National Parks services are reduced, and you still don’t have the Epstein files. Consider this the “finding out” part. And there will be three more years of “finding out” to go–if we all make it that long.
And to the voters of New York City I say “FAFO” in your upcoming election for Mayor. Go ahead and vote for avowed Socialist Zohran Mamdami. Usually I would be sounding alarm bells about the largest city in the country electing someone who believes free markets and capitalism are inherently evil. Someone who believes society is safer by not doing all you can to enforce laws. Someone who thinks education can be improved by doing away with gifted and talented programs because they “perpetuate inequitable results” in the system. Someone who believes that he can make things like housing, transportation, and food cheaper by increasing demand for them. And someone with absolutely no managerial experience put in charge of systems serving nine-million people.
One of the reasons that Socialism is so “cool” with the kids these days is that so many of the people who either lived under it or who have vivid memories of it from the outside are dead–or they are just old and therefore are to be ignored. So I say to New Yorkers, FAFO. What’s the worst that could happen? Besides corporations moving out, parents choosing more private schools for their kids, buses still not running on time, a return to the crime-ridden eras of the past, and rents still being too damn high. Although, that last one might be solved by New Yorkers that FA’ed and then choose to be like Californians who moved to Texas and Colorado to escape the consequences of their decisions and never really FO’ed.
The one problem with FAFO is that when it’s the aforementioned idiot tourist or the shoplifter getting their come-uppance on social media video, it doesn’t really affect you directly. You just get to laugh and scroll to the next video. But in some the cases I mentioned before, I actually have to live with the results of others f—-ing around. Sometimes for the second or third time.
