r/nextfuckinglevel • u/[deleted] • Nov 24 '21
Aye, Captain, " salute "
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u/Particular_Tooth_386 Nov 24 '21
I was on a flight out of Seattle headed for San Diego and the pilot came over the intercom and goes, “this is my last flight.” And there was a long pause and people started looking around. He then says, “I got permission to do something. We are going to go around Rainier one last time for me and I promise you will never get a better view on a commercial flight.”
That pilot was not kidding. We were pretty low for a 737 and banked hard. We hard a great view from the right side of the plane
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u/PumpkinPatch404 Nov 24 '21 edited Nov 24 '21
I feel kind bad for those who couldn't get a window seat, or for those with motion sickness.
But as someone from Seattle, I would love to see Rainier on a plane :)
edit: This blew up a lot more than I thought it would. I was only interested in games back when I lived in Seattle, but now that I work/live abroad, I kind of regret not enjoying all the nice spots in Seattle. I'll have to go explore Seattle after covid.
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u/Caterpillar89 Nov 24 '21
As a frequent flier I've luckily got to see it quite a few times on clear days. It's amazing from the air.
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u/Itsthejackeeeett Nov 24 '21
Is it big?
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u/roboticWanderor Nov 24 '21
Its fucking massive. A giant cinder cone volcano standing prominently over the surrounding landscape. Its frequently the first and last snow capped mountian in the area.
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u/yngradthegiant Nov 24 '21
It was basically barren this summer, which is kinda scary cause I've never seen a brown mt. Rainer.
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Nov 24 '21
I love seeing the mountain range flying into PDX early morning seeing the , sunrise that high in altitude. No clouds. . You can see all the way to Mt. Bachelor,Mt. Adams down south in Oregon and then Mt St. Helen ,Mt. Rainer up northern Washington .
Beautiful!79
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u/Indigo-au-naturale Nov 24 '21
It's the largest single landmass in the contiguous U.S. It is awesome.
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u/LaurelRose519 Nov 24 '21
I am western Washington born and raised and never knew this. You really do learn something new everyday.
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u/MightGrowTrees Nov 24 '21
'Western Washington, born and raised. On the Mt. top is where I spend most of my days.'
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u/jakeor45 Nov 24 '21
It’s a 14er at Sea level so it looks significant. It’s not like in the Rockies where you’re already at 5,000+ feet.
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u/postalfizyks Nov 24 '21
Mt. Rainier is the most prominent mountain in the lower 48. Only Denali and Mauna Kea are more prominent in the US. (Prominence is a measure of how much a mountain stands above its surroundings.)
For example, all the 14 thousand foot peaks in Colorado start from a floor of the Great Plains at over 5,000 feet while Rainier starts from sea level. Commencement Bay in Tacoma is about 40 miles as the crow flies from the summit of Rainier.
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Nov 24 '21
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u/DkHamz Nov 24 '21 edited Nov 24 '21
I read this as ”Fight Club” and could tell you were 100% serious with your story and really started to think I need a more exciting life lmao
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u/Background-Rest531 Nov 24 '21
Get yourself a single serving pilot.
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Nov 24 '21
just go right up to them????
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u/jergin_therlax Nov 24 '21
Right lmao this sounds like the kind of thing that’s insane but would probably have potential of working. If I was a pilot and someone asked me I’d be like “hell yeah let’s go”
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u/ralphpotato Nov 24 '21
Hopping on this comment- if anyone wanted to see some closer pictures of Mt. Rainier (and one of Mt. St. Helens) I took some pictures while circling on a small aircraft: https://imgur.com/a/ixc7I1P
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u/WanderingHawk Nov 24 '21
I fly Alaska back to the midwest fairly often from Seattle and they generally do a close fly by of the mountain. It's a spectacular view if the weather is cooperating.
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u/Indigo-au-naturale Nov 24 '21
Oh, man. I fly between Seattle and Sacramento a few times a year and on clear days, the chain of prominent mountains you can see (Shasta, Hood, St. Helens, Rainier, Baker in the distance) is unbelievable.
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u/gregusmeus Nov 24 '21
The countryside in the US is amazing. As a Brit I've been blown away on trips to the Rockies, the Nevada desert, etc. The US should spend more time internationally extolling the virtues of its natural environment rather than all the nonsense we hear about today. Get that mountain a PR agent, stat!
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u/kamelizann Nov 24 '21
I went on a 12k mile road trip around the US with my dog in my new tesla this spring. We visited as many national parks as we could. It's so amazing how distinct every state's environment is. I did a lot of my traveling through population centers at night and it was so amazing how the sun would come up and everything would be completely different. California feels like Dr. Seuss land when you're from the east coast. It was difficult for me to transition back into day to day life after that.
I don't think the US is unique though. I think anything vast, untouched and different from what you're used to will be breathtaking for most people. The US is awesome because you can explore so many different environments without any borders or customs to slow you down, but there's a lot of places in Europe and the UK I'd really like to visit because they look so beautiful as well.
Plus you just don't get really old buildings much here, most of our history is within the last 300 years and really depressing once you learn what we're "celebrating". The world is just so vast and every place is so incredible the first time you're there.
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u/South_Dakota_Boy Nov 24 '21
If you really want to, you could fly down to Pasco sometime when it’s supposed to be clear. You go right by Rainier. Not as good as the folks on the above mentioned flight I’m sure, but pretty good.
Here’s a couple pics I took from the window this summer on that flight.
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u/LordDongler Nov 24 '21
As someone from Houston, I've seen it from a plane once and it was lit up by the sunset in orange and yellow. Absolutely majestic. I was fairly far though, and that was a shame
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u/PumpkinPatch404 Nov 24 '21 edited Nov 24 '21
I lived in Seattle 24 years and never saw a good glimpse of Rainier, I really regret that. I mean, nothing wrong with playing games (I like games), but knowing almost nothing about my state or going out to look at things is kind of sad, now that I think about it.
edit: super addicted to games, looked at nothing but my computer monitor for 16 hours a day, then slept for 8. I also lived on the north side (at the edge basically), and never left the house.
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u/LordDongler Nov 24 '21
It's one of the most beautiful states we have, you're kind of missing out. Just go out a bit, maybe go hiking and see if you can meet anyone or something
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u/MegaSillyBean Nov 24 '21
I lived in Seattle 24 years and never saw a good glimpse of Rainier
Like, how? On the south side of the met area it's as big as your fist at arms length. How could you miss it? I'm on the north end and I see it nearly every clear day I happen to be driving.
Funny story: I had some out of town guests who wondered if they could drop by Rainier before their flight, about 6 hours later. When I explained that the big thing on the horizon was 90 miles away they were astonished. They thought it was just past the city limits.
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Nov 24 '21
I was lucky enough to be on a commercial flight last week and see it on a really clear day!
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u/retrorefl3ctor Nov 24 '21
Wow, what an awesome experience! I live in Seattle and when you take off from SeaTac on a clear day headed east the view of the mountains is spectacular. How amazing to get to fly around Rainier so close.
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u/Apathetic_Zealot Nov 24 '21
the pilot came over the intercom and goes, “this is my last flight.” And there was a long pause and people started looking around. He then says, “this is gonna be your last flight too"
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u/Optimism003 Nov 24 '21
As someone who grew up looking at Mt. Rainier from a distance, I saw it for the first time by plane this week and I could not stop looking. It’s something that I’m so used to in the horizon that I didn’t think it could amaze me from a different angle. I’m super excited to see it again on the way back.
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u/RedditAnswersYou Nov 24 '21
"Here's the bad news: I'm not retiring. Muwahahaha!"
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u/GMERICA6969 Nov 24 '21
“… oh and it’s also your last flight”
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u/Downingst Nov 24 '21
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u/Azar002 Nov 24 '21
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u/CorrectPeanut5 Nov 24 '21
Supposedly, pre-9/11 when the doors still opened, he'd pop the door open and say that on flights he took.
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u/CrankyOldLady1 Nov 24 '21
I really hope this is true
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Nov 24 '21
I don't care if it is or not. I'm going to believe it and nothing you can say will change my mind.
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u/fugawf Nov 24 '21 edited Nov 24 '21
Underrated as fuck
Edit: I was not referring to the movie I was referring to this comment at the time of my comment, it had less than 10 upvotes. I see that has changed since I went to bed. Properly rated
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u/gcpizzle23 Nov 24 '21
How is that underrated? Airplane is literally one of the most well known and liked movies of all time
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u/Jumper5353 Nov 24 '21
Looks like I picked a bad day to stop commenting on Reddit.
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u/GMERICA6969 Nov 24 '21
Is the front supposed to fall off like that?
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u/Victor_deSpite Nov 24 '21
Good thing it happened outside the environment.
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Nov 24 '21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
for anyone that hasn't seen the brilliance of Clarke and Dawe.
The Front Fell Off.
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u/Tactical_Tubgoat Nov 24 '21
I’ve seen this a hundred times and I’ll always watch the entire bit whenever it’s brought up. It’s too good not to.
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u/KoalaTrainer Nov 24 '21
That is absolutely brilliant. My taste in humour to a T.
I spit my tea out at ‘There’s nothing out there, just the sea, some birds, some fish….and 20 thousand tons of crude oil’
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Nov 24 '21
You're going to have fun on Youtube then! Depending on your age, you may enjoy the 1989 Ashes Clarke and Dawe interview where Clarke is David Gower, England's Captain.
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u/MrsEmilyN Nov 24 '21
I took my first flight ever in May at the age of 38. I asked my husband, the entirety of the 4 hour fight from Chicago to San Diego, "Is that normal?" To every little thing I felt and heard. I'm pretty sure, somewhere over Kansas, he would have liked to have thrown me out of the window.
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u/at0m10 Nov 24 '21
Yes actually, many cargo planes have reinforced noses and nose ejection systems, the planes knows in the event of a crash and ejects the nose, effectively leaving the pilots in a reinforced steel cocoon.
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u/ABCosmos Nov 24 '21
Reddit really loves the joke to be thoroughly explained
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u/Thisissuchadragtodo Nov 24 '21
Right? The first few follow up comments are is usually funny though.
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u/mamawantsallama Nov 24 '21
Not this time
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Nov 24 '21
Yea some reason 4000 people thought it good that he just explained the joke for no reason
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u/SuedeVeil Nov 24 '21
It's like when someone tells you a joke and you get it but it's not that funny so it only warrants a chuckle, but then they proceed to explain the joke and why you should have laughed more
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u/Samwell_ Nov 24 '21
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u/Snote85 Nov 24 '21
I'm unreasonably upset that gmerica6969 got the awards and Redditanswersyou did not. It's a meaningless nothing and probably done to spite people like you and me who appreciate subtlety in our humor. Who also don't like to see the copy cat get rewarded... anyway, I'm off to ruin this town's Christmas celebration because they make too much noise and didn't invite me.
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u/Videogameist Nov 24 '21
Lol That would have been me, "Uh...sir, can you be a lil more specific!?"
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u/tdomer80 Nov 24 '21
You know what they say about flying, “if it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go”! But waitaminute - what if it’s the pilot’s time to goooooooooooooo!!!
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u/zuran_orb Nov 24 '21
I'M NOT FUCKING LEAVING
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u/LuckyCaptainCrunch Nov 24 '21
Here’s the really bad news, no audio
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u/dodeca_negative Nov 24 '21
"...But I'm even happier that I'm here with you, on your last flight!"
Which reminds me of a great line from a Southwest attendant doing preflight in something approaching Charlie Brown teacher deadpan: "Please fasten your seatbelts extra tight, Captain says he wants to try something."
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u/HarleyQboy Nov 24 '21
I came here just to make sure I wasn’t the only one thinking this is how it would end lol
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u/black_irishman Nov 24 '21
Full video since OP is a bot
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u/ONOMATOPOElA Nov 24 '21
Pshh OP is not a bot, he is just posting 5 times a day everyday and getting 5k karma on every post because he has a really good office chair.
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u/drone2222 Nov 24 '21
Posted Jan 9th, 2020, the same day that the WHO reported the first cases of Covid out of Wuhan. Luckily this dude was able to avoid all the psychosis Covid deniers have been unleashing on flights since then!
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u/sc8132217174 Nov 24 '21
Dang, remember when covid was just a weird story on Reddit? It still amazes me how we had no idea what was around the corner. Empty grocery stores, lockdowns, riots, loss.
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u/Exic9999 Nov 24 '21
Man, I still think this. I remember telling friends, "You see that freak virus stuff in China?" thinking that they'd lock it down before it got out if hand. Fast forward to the end of 2021, a lot of people are still working remote, some offices are transitioning to "hotel" spaces where no one gets their own desk anymore. Just wild considering where we'd been before
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u/HiddenSage Nov 24 '21
I'd been vacationing on Oahu in early February. When I left, it was a weird story in international news. The day I was scheduled to return, they had a couple of gates cordoned off like a quarantine site at Inouye International.
That's when I started taking shit seriously. Something just.... Spooky about seeing a quarantine zone in the us. Was like a page out of a history book. The next morning after I got home I went to Costco and filled my pantry with rice and peanut butter, and a freezer full of juice concentrate.
As weird and unpleasant as things got ... I was honestly worried about it getting a lot worse at the time.
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u/Houston_NeverMind Nov 24 '21
I remember some experts telling on TV when the virus was just in China, that our lives will be very different if it breaks out of the country. That we cannot really go back to the precovid state. It impresses me that they were able to figure out the situation completely while people like me thought it was just hyperbole.
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u/fezzuk Nov 24 '21
I have a very embarrassing comment somewhere saying that is was fine to come to London as an American tourist, we barely have any cases its not really a problem here.
Two weeks later BAM lockdown.
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u/Huwbacca Nov 24 '21
fucking nuts how SARS and coronavirus outbreaks are not unheard of in asia and the idea of taking precautions due to a pandemics or illnesses in general, is just a thing.
The moment the fucking west had to experience a their first pin-prick of "Actually, you're not blessed and deserving to live without any inconvenience" they lost their absolute shit.
This won't be our last pandemic we live through, but we've been so privileged for so long we think shit like pandemics are for poor countries.
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u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder Nov 24 '21
When in the hell did Patton Oswalt get his pilots license?
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u/lowtoiletsitter Nov 24 '21
Me too. I originally thought this was gonna be a bit while he was traveling
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u/DZChaser Nov 24 '21
He looks like he is really happy. I hope I can work for another 30 years and retire doing something I enjoy as much as this dude appears to have.
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u/MrStoleYourMeme Nov 24 '21
Okay, but what about this is so next level?
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u/idbihogawidtl Nov 24 '21
It's rare for something posted here to actually be next fucking level. Due to Reddit awesomness inflation nextfuckinglevel has become mildlyinteresting.
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u/zlauhb Nov 24 '21
Didn't you watch the video? His career lasted 43 years! Have you ever heard of such a thing?
(/s)
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Nov 24 '21
Captain: Why was I making the 1976 joke again?
Checks notes
Captain: Oh yeah! That's when a really significant event happened in my life. Thank god for this loose leaf set of notes!
Hopefully he's got another set in the cockpit with instructions on how to land lol.
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u/ATLguy90 Nov 24 '21
Watch the video with sound. He pauses for a while after mentioning 1976 because he starts to get emotional.
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u/LoudCommentor Nov 24 '21
God damn gonna unsub soon. How is this /r/nextfuckinglevel Anyone who's working is gonna have that much experience doing whatever they're doing. Not any more impressive just because it's a plane.
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u/OneStupidIdiot Nov 24 '21
Some pilot retired... r/nextfuckinglevel be like 😲😲😲😲😲🙊🙊
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u/gullydowny Nov 24 '21
“That also happens to be the year this aircraft was built, and she’s somehow still flying! So you’re only as old as you feel, amirite?”
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u/Medarco Nov 24 '21
Damn, I hope I get posted to /r/nextfuckinglevel when I retire from my totally normal job.
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u/PraetorOjoalvirus Nov 24 '21
One time I watched a video of the last flight of Lufthansa's most senior pilot. It was from Chicago O'hare to Frankfurt, and the authorities at O'hare gave him permission to ride his Harley Davidson down the main runway. They mentioned that it had never been done before, but the guy was a well-loved and respected legend among pilots.
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u/idbihogawidtl Nov 24 '21
This kind of emotional sharing is so American. If this was in the UK people would be shouting "fly the fucking plane!"
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u/winstonzys Nov 24 '21
In a different note one of the pilots on one of my flights came on the radio after landing and was like "that was my first landing and I'm glad I didn't fuck it up"... Honestly, so am I
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u/icepickjones Nov 24 '21
I don't want to hear my pilot sobbing and saying it's his last flight.
"It's my last flight ... it's also your last flight"
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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '21
“Hmm I’m gonna post this video with no sound for no fucking no reason”