And every time I visit any type of social media outlets, I just see more things to hate. The "duckface" alone drives me mad - why are women still doing this?! For those of you unfamiliar with the term, duckfacing is that horrible new trend where women put on a smug face and stick their lips out. It's meant to evoke mental images of fellatio:
Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on my generation. But pick any random girl on Facebook, and you'll likely find at least 1-2 of these. And it's not uncommon to find hundreds on a single profile. Now that everyone has a camera in their phone, people feel the need to take pictures of themselves on an almost daily basis, and this pose has become the standard. It's just a perfect symbol of the vapid, self-absorbed nature of this generation. They have no idea what's going on in the world, because they're too busy showing their online friends how cool they are by making blowjob faces at parties.About the time I was leaving on my trip, a video called "Kony 2012" suddenly became incredibly popular. It seemed like everyone in the world was posting that video and acting like they gave a shit about Uganda, even though before that video was released, they hadn't spent even a moment learning about what's happening there. Without even seeing the video, I knew enough about it to know that it was made by a sleazy fame hog who was trying to cash in on the suffering of other people. In reality, the people of Uganda have far worse things in their lives than Kony - and to be honest, Africa has far worse rulers. Kony's just an easier target to exploit. And sure enough, within 10 days our "hero" filmmaker was arrested for vandalizing property and masturbating in public. And as quickly as it started, American support for Uganda vanished. They never cared about those people. They were just emotionally affected by a film; and once the initial emotion wore off, they not only stopped caring about the film, but about the people of Uganda. Here are the Google statistics for "Kony 2012" over the last few weeks:
And that's the problem with people today. Even decency is rooted in vanity. Right now, horrific crimes are being committed in Syria, Palestine, Sudan, and so many other places around the world. But because these things are depressing and because they require a fair bit of research to understand, most Americans just ignore them outright. They'll never take the time to really understand global politics or current events. But if a youtube video comes along that plays sad music and makes them feel like a part of history for watching it, they can't wait to post it on their profiles to show their friends how much they care about these problems, which have been going on for years but they've just now learned about.
But these shallow people will always be more loved, more admired, and more successful than those of us who don't care about being popular. Being shallow actually gets you ahead in life. And it's because somewhere in our recent history, people starting equating "happiness" with "truth", as though they're the same thing. Whenever I get off on these rants, people tend to disagree, but they're reasoning is always the same - "You just need to be more positive". And that's their ultimate point - I'm not making them happy, so I must be wrong. And people take that approach in almost every part of their lives. Their religions are true because it makes them feel good. The best politicians are the ones who talk about "values" and "the real America". The world really isn't a bad place, as long as you picture it to be happy. We've reached a point now where people will believe anything they're told, as long as it makes them happy. From horoscopes, to homeopathic medicine, to ghost-hunting cell phone apps, to organic food, to the thousands of self-help books teaching you how to get rich/be psychic/improve your love life, people will jump into any sucker deal imaginable as long as it makes them feel good about themselves. If I didn't have a sense of dignity, I could become a millionaire lying to people. People actually think that the world can be a better place if they simply believe that it is.
But maybe things are so bad because we're unwilling to face them. When a poor African nation falls to brutal warlords and famine, it's hard to think about it, so we just don't. But we don't want to be totally ignorant, so every few months we'll find a piece of sappy propaganda to rally around until we're bored with it. "Kony 2012" has already gone the way of the Occupy Movement and the anti-war rallies, joining the list of "things that we still sorta care about, but which won't make us look cool online anymore". After all, talking about those things now just makes you seem behind the times. 85 million people already posted that video. But don't worry - maybe next week, someone will make a cheesy video about Bashar al-Assad or Robert Mugabe, and then we can pretend to care about them for a week to impress our friends.
There is an answer to this, of course. Maybe our online profiles don't need to have 100 pictures of ourselves that we took on our phones for no reason. Maybe we could replace our trendy little activism with real education. And maybe we can start to accept that just because something makes us happy, that doesn't make it right or true. But to do these things would take time and effort, and the admission that maybe we're not as special as we thought we were. In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for it.
"To hell with the young. The young are scum. May they grow old, may they get real."
-Christopher Hitchens