30 Years

     Today marks the beginning of the fourth decade on this planet for me. Thirty years—what a ride! And, what a weird time to be alive! I’ve said it many times before and I will continually say this: We are living in the most pivotal point in humankind’s history. Never before have we had such unfettered access to information. We have the entirety of humankind’s knowledgebase at our fingertips. So, when I stop and think about the incredible amount of technology that has been developed in the past three decades alone, my immediate thought is that I can’t wait to see what we’ll develop over the next thirty years. Then I think about what we do with current technology and, quite frankly, I’m horrified. You could assume that the natural outcome of having so much information at our disposal would be a far greater level of intelligence throughout society. You could assume that, having reached a point of such streamlined, automated production and distribution, starvation at the very least would be a thing of the past. However, can we say that this is the case? (And the survey says…) Fuck no! Instead, what we currently have is an endless stream of competitive witticism.

     Have you noticed that lately? Let anything happen—good, bad, ugly—and it’s a race to the comment sections of the news articles to be the first to unload an arsenal of insults and memes. Empathy died long ago and was replaced with a smug sense of self-entitlement and cherry-picked emotional offense. That is, the amount of hypocritical rhetoric out there is staggering. It’s amazing to me that people that can barely piece a legitimate sentence together jump right online to bestow upon the masses little nuggets of pseudowisdom in the forms of anecdote, misquotation, misinterpretation, and baseless opinion. We’ll argue vehemently about things that don’t even affect us. For what? What does it accomplish if the moment we put our phones down and look around the world, we have no answers by our own memories and cognition for why the world is the way it is? What does it accomplish if all we do is share information without understanding it?  What does it accomplish if all we can say is, “Well, I can look it up!”? The fact of the matter is we all spend far too much time in this fictitious realm pretending to be something we’re not; pretending to know things we don’t; pretending we unquestioningly need these avatars in order to matter.

     It seems weird speaking in terms of, “I remember when…,” but it’s difficult not to when I experienced an explosion of mind-boggling technology in my lifetime while simultaneously witnessing the erosion of social values. Nothing satisfies anyone anymore. Nothing. It’s probably because we can’t focus; our phones are practically grafted to our hands. You see, I graduated from high school in 2005 and I remember sitting in classrooms with people that were generally engaged. Was everyone there paying attention and participating? Of course not. There were simply people that didn’t give a shit. But, they were few and far between. And, according to my timeline, they are all doing exceptionally well nowadays. Success stories—every single one. (-__-)

I remember how amazing it was when teachers didn’t have to fear for their jobs and schools didn’t have to fear frivolous lawsuits when telling an unruly student to get the hell out of the classroom so that people that did care could focus and actually learn. What the actual fuck happened in 11 years?! Now I sit in college classrooms (COLLEGE CLASSROOMS!) and it’s like people can’t resist being on some type of device for a measly 50 minutes! They can’t sit there, shut the fuck up, and pay attention to the PhD at the front of the class that they are paying to teach! No, no—they have to turn to their buddy for a mini Mensa conference, ignore the professor giving the lecture, and exercise such a disgustingly profound sense of entitlement that the horrified feeling I talked about earlier becomes exponentially worse. The guy works at CERN; therefore, whatever you have to say is irrelevant. All of your questions that are about topics covered 3 semesters from now and needlessly take up precious class time now—irrelevant! As if it couldn’t get any worse, I then realize that some of these people I’m in school with will likely go on and get the chance to build rockets. Those rockets are going to fucking explode!

     But, that’s not all. With all of that connection we have to this digital world, we are becoming increasingly disconnected from the real world. We’re ignoring the very scientific method that produced these wonderful devices which is also telling us that we are catalyzing an environmental catastrophe. For fuck’s sake, there are still people that actually believe Earth is flat! They’ll sit in front of a screen that is connected to the Internet, never having even stepped foot in a science classroom, let alone a laboratory, and hammer away furiously at the keyboard about all of the “research” they have done. Clearly, these people know far better than the astronauts currently in orbit around the Earth. It’s this type of unashamed idiocy that leads to the debacle that is the presidential race of 2016. Yeah, you knew I would eventually get here. How could I turn 30 and not address this ridiculous bunch of fuckery?

     America: WHAT THE FUCK?! Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK?! I know I’m cynical but holy fucking shit! My cynicism seems like a refreshing, homely review of a delicious meal at a quaint little mom & pop shop compared to the actual state of this country right now. Hillary FUCKING Clinton?! Donald FUCKING Trump?! These are the idiots you all are arguing over? I’m not sure who is worse: you or them. You fuckwits are coming up with arguments to show your unwarranted support for one scumbag rich fuck head over another scumbag rich fuck head. Here, I’ll make it easy for you: We’re fucking doomed in any case. And it has nothing to do with either of these clowns; they really don’t give a fuck about you and never will. No, my fellow Americans, this has to do with YOUR apathetic outlook toward anything that doesn’t conform to your (generally narrow) worldviews—those hand-me-down opinions from the days of yore mixed with a newfound, safe-space-reinforced, seemingly unshakeable self-entitlement. There’s just one little problem: Someone forgot to remind everyone that our opinions are irrelevant and safe spaces are NOT real. But, coming back to the point at hand, someone also forgot to tell everyone that you reap what the fuck you sow. I’m so glad we have such beacons of Integrity, Trust, Honesty, and Respect to “choose” from this (s)election. Honestly, America, we deserve whatever we get! I really wanted to begin my next 30 on a non-cynical note but when I think about all of the stupid shit that I pump into my eyes daily (that’s right, I’m not exempt from any of this bitching!), I really can’t help it. And, if you know me then you know I can easily go on and on and on. But, most of you have stopped reading this by now and it wouldn't matter because nothing will change. The cycle of bullying, glorified dick and fart jokes, and ghosting continues. So, Happy FUCKING Birthday to me and enjoy the show, folks!

Love,

Kyle