50 People. 50 Inexplicable Talents. Zero Regrets.
An Experiment in Human Weirdness
Every person on Earth has at least one skill that defies easy explanation. A thing they discovered they could do, probably by accident, that serves no practical purpose but that they have nonetheless spent an unreasonable amount of time perfecting. A talent that, if listed on a résumé, would get that résumé immediately moved to a special pile.
We wanted to find those people.
So GlumboUploads did what GlumboUploads does best: we opened the floodgates, asked our community to film whatever weird thing they could do, and then sat back and watched the submissions roll in like a beautiful, deeply strange tide.
Fifty people responded. Here's what we learned.
The Submissions: A Field Guide
Category One: Competitive Speed Anything
Americans, it turns out, will compete at speed in any domain if you give them half a reason.
Marcus T. from Louisville, KY sent in a two-minute video of himself folding a fitted sheet — a fitted sheet, the white whale of domestic tasks — in under 45 seconds. Perfectly. Symmetrically. With what can only be described as contemptuous ease. The video has become our most-commented submission this month, with responses ranging from "TEACH ME" to "this man is not human" to one user who simply wrote "I need to sit down."
Dana R. from Phoenix, AZ competes in competitive speed-eating, but her specialty is so specific it almost loops back around to being an art form: she can consume an entire sleeve of Oreos — dry, no milk, no dunking, no shortcuts — in under a minute and a half while maintaining what she describes as "full conversational ability." Her submission video includes a full spoken-word recap of her weekend plans delivered mid-Oreo. It is unsettling. It is impressive. It has 2,200 views.
Then there's Jerome K. from Baltimore, who submitted a video of himself assembling a 500-piece puzzle in just under 18 minutes. No edge-first strategy. No sorting by color. Just Jerome, the puzzle, and what appears to be a deeply personal vendetta against the concept of leisure time.
Category Two: Sound Effects That Should Not Come From a Human
This was, statistically, our most-populated category. We were not prepared.
Becca S. from Minneapolis can produce a sound that is indistinguishable from a dial-up modem connecting to the internet circa 1998. Not a rough approximation. The actual sound. Complete with the handshake negotiation sequence at the end. She demonstrated this at a family dinner, she told us, and her uncle didn't speak to her for the rest of the meal. She seems proud of this.
TalonMcFly (we're using usernames where requested) from somewhere in rural Tennessee submitted a video in which he recreates, entirely with his mouth, the complete ambient soundscape of a McDonald's during a lunch rush. The fryer. The beeping. The vague background argument. The ice machine. All of it. Simultaneously. We watched it four times. We still don't fully understand how.
Honorable mention goes to Priya V. from Chicago, who can mimic the exact sound of a shopping cart with a bad wheel with such accuracy that she once caused a woman in a Trader Joe's parking lot to turn around and look for the cart. There was no cart. There was only Priya.
Category Three: Unusual Pet Training Methods That Actually Work
Look, we've all seen dogs that can sit and shake. We've seen cats that can high-five. We were not expecting what our community sent us.
GlumboUser FeralMomEnergy from Austin, TX submitted a seven-minute video — seven minutes — of her cockatiel, named Broccoli, performing what she has trained him to do whenever someone in the house says the phrase "board meeting." We will not describe what Broccoli does, because part of the joy is not knowing in advance. We will say only that it involves the bird, a tiny mirror, and what appears to be a choreographed sequence of events. The video ends with Broccoli seemingly taking a bow. We rewatched the ending six times.
DerekFromDuluth trained his golden retriever, a dog named Spreadsheet, to react with theatrical devastation — full collapse, paw over eyes, the works — whenever someone in the room says the word "budget." Derek works in finance. He uses this at actual work meetings via Zoom. His colleagues are aware of Spreadsheet. Spreadsheet has a Slack channel dedicated to him.
Ruthanne P. from Savannah, GA submitted the most serene video of the entire batch: her elderly tortoise, Gerald, navigating a small obstacle course she's spent three years designing and refining. Gerald moves at tortoise pace. The video is twelve minutes long. It has a 97% completion rate on GlumboUploads. People are watching all twelve minutes. Gerald has fans now. Gerald doesn't know this.
Category Four: The Completely Unclassifiable
This is the category we didn't plan for but probably should have.
SteveActually from Portland, OR can identify any U.S. state solely by the shape of its outline drawn freehand on his forearm in ketchup. Blindfolded. He submitted a video. It is real. He got 49 out of 50 states correct. He missed Idaho. He's still upset about Idaho.
KarenNotThatKaren from suburban Ohio submitted a video of herself parallel parking a full-sized pickup truck into a space that, by our estimation, was approximately four inches longer than the truck itself. In one try. While on a phone call. Without looking in the mirrors once. This is either a talent or a threat.
Big Mike from Detroit can whistle any song in a range of over three octaves while simultaneously beatboxing a separate rhythm. He submitted a three-minute medley that included the Jurassic Park theme, Old Town Road, and what we think was the Law & Order dun-dun. He did this in his car. In a Burger King drive-through. The employee at the window appears to have genuinely enjoyed it.
Why Do People Share This Stuff?
We asked several of our submitters why they decided to upload their particular talent to GlumboUploads specifically, rather than, say, keeping it a private joy known only to themselves and their confused family members.
The answers were surprisingly consistent.
"I've been doing this thing for years and nobody in my real life gets it," said Becca, the dial-up modem woman. "I wanted to find the people who would."
"It felt like a waste to keep it to myself," Marcus the fitted-sheet folder told us. "If I can bring even one person peace by showing them this is possible, then it was worth it."
DerekFromDuluth put it most succinctly: "Spreadsheet deserves an audience."
And that, honestly, is the entire philosophy of GlumboUploads in a sentence. Weird things deserve audiences. Niche skills deserve witnesses. The dial-up modem lady and the tortoise obstacle course and the man who parallel parked a truck with his eyes metaphorically closed — they all deserve a place to exist online that isn't just the algorithm deciding whether they're commercially viable.
The Takeaway (Besides Wanting to Meet Broccoli)
America is full of people who have spent years quietly perfecting something that makes absolutely no sense to anyone outside of their own head. That's not a bug. That's the whole thing. That's the feature.
Got a talent that defies categorization? A skill that makes your family uncomfortable at Thanksgiving? An ability that you've never been able to explain but can absolutely demonstrate on camera?
Upload it. Tag it #GlumboTalent. We'll find your people.
They're out there. They're watching. And at least one of them is probably also really good at folding fitted sheets.
