Don’t be a Dick: Follow the Karaoke Rules so Everyone Has a Great Time
The social contract might be mostly dead, but we can help revive it one karaoke bar at a time.
There I was, fully sweating through my knock-off Spanx in an impossibly humid outdoor theater in Cancun while some dude named “Adam” hork-bawled his way through his second whiny-bro anthem in a row (in a row!) at the Mexican resort’s karaoke hour. Adam’s first song had been one of the more forgettable wank-rock hits of the oughts—a lesser Lifehouse release, or possibly a Puddle of Mudd deep cut. Bad but tolerable, as is the way of karaoke: The promise of a better performance is always on the horizon. But in this case, next came more of the same. New karaoke technologies that sideline the critical role of the karaoke deejay—the “KJ”—are on the rise, and Adam’s bachelor-party buddies had gamed the resort’s wholly unmoderated virtual queue to put Adam and all his unresolved issues on repeat display.
And thus, a tragedy: I could do nothing but drink watered-down mango margaritas and wait, cringing while the saddest man in paid paradise sat cross-legged with his back to the crowd, crowing through that Staind song (you know the one).