Main Character of the Week is a weekly column that tells you the most prominent “main character” online (good or bad). It runs on Fridays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
The internet is a stage, and someone unwillingly stumbles onto it weekly. This makes them the “main character” online. Sometimes their story is heartwarming, like the guy who mistook a Cybertruck for a dumpster; usually it’s a gaffe. In any case, that main character energy flows through the news cycle and turbo-charges debate for several business days.
Here’s the Trending team’s main character of the week.
It’s the woman who was unfairly profiled at SeaWorld’s waterpark, Aquatica.
A San Antonio woman took her family to SeaWorld because it’s the summer and theme parks remain an efficient way to spend an afternoon with children. Of course, no one ever really wants to go to these places besides children but it’s something we reluctantly actualize.
So this woman gets to the top of the waterslide, and we all know what an exhausting side quest it is just to ride these dang things, and is told to get on the scale.
I’m sorry? Are we in middle school?
There is little more damaging to the psyche than being forced to jump on a scale in front of your peers. It is an unacceptable act of degradation that should have been left behind in a sixth-period gym class 20 years ago.
I remember playing Pop Warner football and worrying that I weighed more than the allotted poundage and wouldn’t be able to play as a starting defensive lineman in a pointless football game where all the teams wore Dallas Cowboys stars on their helmets anyway.
You can probably guess where this is going: After wandering in the desert for 40 years and getting to the front of the stupid ride, this woman was forced to weigh herself and then walk by herself away from her children and back to the bottom.
She claims that she is not in fact over the weight requirement for these rides, and this was a two-person raft so she’s likely correct, and so what seems most likely is that a power-tripping 19-year-old lifeguard made an example out of her.
Sure, regulations matter. But I can’t understand why there’s a scale at the end of the line for a waterslide at SeaWorld. Why not put the scale at the beginning of the line? Before you embark on a Homeric quest up a tower, holding an inflatable tire?
We’ve reached out to SeaWorld about this.
Anyway, this mother made a TikTok video about the incident and went viral because her story is timely, relatable, and upsetting. As adults, we still live with the insecurities of our high school experience, and being forced to confront this at an amusement park resonated with many.
Never mind that Seaworld should definitely no longer exist.
Surely, this is an opportunity for management to find a better way when it comes to the logistics of these rides. One that does not involve singling out customers and humiliating them in front of other patrons.
It’s funny—my brother asked this week if I’d like to join his family at a waterpark in Pflugerville, Texas on Sunday. I politely declined. So did my parents—i.e. Grandma and Grandpa. Waterparks are overwhelmingly unpleasant once you hit age 13.
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