The History of Burst Culture

While driving someone through Uber the other day we came onto the discussion of what I want out of life. I told him about how my old website - www.burstculture.com got destroyed (before being sold off to American T-Shirt merchants). He asked if it was backed up on the webarchive.

I came home and I checked out the web archive. And it was in tact up until March 2016. So I lost a lot of content that I had produced and commissioned but I had restored a lot of what I had lost. I was ecstatic. I backed up everything onto my computer. I'll probably post some things that aren't too dated here.

But using the webarchive I found out that I was not the first owner of burstculture.com. From what I can tell I'm actually the third.

The first owner was in 2007 by Ed. Ed ran his website the same way I ran Burst Culture. He'd blog about pop culture and nonsense. He's actually on blogger as http://burstculture.blogspot.com.au/ and calls his blog No TV and No Beer make Eddy Something Something. And he has used blogger templates. My website looked nicer, but his blogger looks better than mine (currently).

The second owner was Puffy Chrissy. I've checked out his Twitter and the guy looks famous https://twitter.com/PuffChrissy. Looks like he wrote some books and created a character called Drunk Hulk. I guess he is like The Incredible Hulk but Drunk. So that's cool.

Since Puff Chrissy it looks like the domain was just held onto by sitters. It wasn't until I bought it in 2015 that the domain name was given justice again.

My first blog was actually Culture Burst, but someone else had the domain name, so I switched and was much happier with it.

Now it's a shirt store.

How to rate Uber Passengers

Welcome to the world of Uber, where not only do you rate us, but we rate you!

It's a little disgusting that we rate people, but the ratings are not on the person as a whole, but how they are passengers. Now, normally I would rate someone a 5/5 as long as they don't annoy me. But I do have some general rules that will affect a passenger's rating from me.

How to Lose Stars

Putting in the wrong pickup location- 1 star (if you even end up finding them)

Putting in the wrong destination- 1 star

Texting or calling saying they are going to be out in a couple of minutes- 1 star

Finishing a smoke before they get in my car- 1 star

Asking to smoke in my car- 1 star

Touching my head unit- 1 star

Asking if I have an AUX cable

Asking if I have water for them- 1 star

Asking if I have mints- 1 star

Asking if I have drugs- depends which drug

Complaining about the size of my car 1 star (usually middle-aged women)

Giving backseat directions 1 star

Spilling something- 3 stars

Yelling out windows- 3 stars

Maccas run- 2 stars

Littering out window- 5 stars

Throwing up- 5 stars

How to Gain Stars

Passengers starts with 5 stars

1 extra star for every 10 kilometres

3 stars for any surge over 2x

Tipping - $5 per star

Finding alcohol in the backseat and giving it to me 5 stars

Being a genuine good person- 5 stars

I give most people 5 stars. Most people are great and just want to get to their destination. It's the people that are expecting chauffeur service, more stuff at my expense, I don't like it. They're already getting a bargain on Uber rates.

I don't pick anyone up with a rating below 4.6 stars unless it's a surge. Or really close. 

So passengers, I hope you have learnt a bit about etiquette. Drivers, I hope you've learned a little about how to be stingier with your stars. If you have any additions or queries, let me know in the comments.

If rating people sounds like fun then read here to earn an extra $200 on signing up for Uber.