why 1996 was the year America peaked

Shortly after I jumped back on Twitter last year I saw this take: (from user @TurboThaad) “I found the moment! Transformers (2007) ending with an unironic Optimus Prime monologue about the promise of mankind as camera pans to Shia Labeef & Megan Fox making out on the hood of an '07 Camaro as sun sets and “What I’ve Done” by Linkin Park fades in was when America Peaked” I remember nodding to that and for many different reasons. But recently I got to thinking about that again and have slight disagreement with the timing. Here’s what I posted about it in the BerserkerMail Facebook group: ==== …recently I started wondering if America peaked 11 years earlier in 1996, at the end of a different Michael Bay movie — The Rock, which I screened for Stefanie Settle and Willis a couple nights ago — when Stanley Goodspeed steals the microfilm from the church and asks his new wife if she wanted to know who really killed JFK. The Rock was the last action film of its kind imo — which was very fitting considering it is one of Sean Connery’s most memorable roles for us GenX’ers, with one of his most memorable lines: “Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and ___the prom queen.” It’s all just fanboy opinion. But I will say this: Michael Bay takes a lot of flack for his movies. And I don’t even disagree with all the complaints about him or his work. But since 2009 I deliberately starting modeling part of my own email approach after his filmmaking approach — and wrote an email/blog post about it at the time — since some of his best movies often do tap into a part of the American psyche that has to do with love of nation, healthy distrust of bureaucrats, and with unrepentantly masculine guys with big guns and unrepentantly feminine chicks with big bewbs triumphing over evil. Possibly related to that: A few years before The Rock came out is also when comicbook artists like Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee did the same thing for Marvel Comics… right before they left to form Image Comics, and Marvel’s long descent into the social activist abyss it’s since become took root, to the point where I am pretty sure their comics are no longer even profitable — with the movies and old IP picking up the slack, even as they make the same mistakes in the movies as they did in the comics. Something else: One reason Troy and I created BerserkerMail was to play our own little part in taking the side of guys like us who want to be able to make money and not constantly have to look over our shoulders to see if we’re going to lose our lists and businesses to some overachieving social activist with the power to cancel accounts abusing that power. I remember seeing that happen to all kinds of people starting as early as 2017-2018. At the time I was using Aweber and they weren’t really engaging in the cancel game. But, fast forward to early 2021, when Troy & I were debating whether to do BerserkerMail's No-Images rule. I was indifferent to it since I never used them either way. But Troy was adamant having seen how they can potentially affect inbox deliverability and/or get good people flagged for any reason or no reason at all from when he used to send/test/track/automate as many as 50 million emails per month for various clients. (And it I would not be surprised if it’s something other platforms will do in the next 5-10 years as well, for reasons I won’t bother with here.) Literally the day after that we decided to do no-images I saw a blog post by a very popular blogger I don’t think I am even allowed to name without violating this platform’s community standards (how meta!) And because of that post, Aweber canceled his account. And the reason they canceled his account was because he put a meme (image) in the email that a bunch of people complained about to the point where Aweber must have decided it was better for their platform to eject him. From what I understand they did give him his list & data before dropping the hammer on him at least. So that was good and I am not even saying they were wrong. Platforms have to do what they have to do to stay off spam blacklists, etc. We certainly do and always will with BerserkerMail if someone runs afoul of our community guidelines written by Email Players subscriber and BerserkerMail client himself Mike Young wrote for us. And I can only assume that meme the guy posted (intended to trigger a bunch of people on his list) probably got him a ton of spam complaints. I remember showing Troy and we were both thinking: Had he not used an image, and had either (1) described the image using his words (a reader’s imagination can be far more powerful and persuasive than an image if a writer knows what he’s doing anyway) or (2) linked to it on his blog or something … he probably would not have gotten a bunch of complaints or lost his account. We’ll never know. But that is an example of how our No-Images rule that gives a lot of email goo-roos heartburn helps potentially protect the BerserkerMail platform from our clients, helps protect our clients from themselves, helps protect us from our clients, helps protect our clients from us. (Yes, including Nicole English, John Wood, Troy — we all follow the same rules) And help protect all of us from ourselves.. If you haven’t gotten a BerserkerMail test drive see the URL linked in this group. If you do decide to use us: Nicole English or Lance Hunt — both Email Players subscribers who use email in their own respective businesses, and are not just hired guns stacking support tickets & parroting bad advice — will migrate you over, try to make it all as frictionless as possible for your business to make the switch. === That’s all I got today. If you want a BerserkerMail test drive go here: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/berserker]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA