The Idiots of YouTube

Whenever I watch a YouTube video I like to quickly scan the first page of comments to see what other people have to say. Lately, ever time I take a quick glance at the comment thread I am cluttered by ridiculous chain letters.

Here is an example:

wwygmaya (1 day ago)
“PLEASE DON'T READ THIS you will die in seven days if you don't post this comment on 10 videos in the next hour. if you do, tomorrow will be the best day of your life.”

With YouTube’s growing popularity, its stupid people population has also grown. There are absolutely no motives for wwygmaya to post this, other than the fact that he or she believes it! The level of superstition people have really scares me. They are probably just falling for the Pascal’s Wager Paradox, which goes like this:

Just substitute the word ‘God’ with ‘The Chain Letter’
· You believe in God.
o If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
o If God does not exist, your loss is nothing!
· You do not believe in God.
o If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
o If God does not exist, your gain nothing & lose nothing.

The biggest flaw with this wager is that it has to assume that believing the chain letter will grant you the rewards it promises. It is quite obvious that the chain letter should not be believed and I must conclude that the people who do believe them are plain idiots. Luckly, I know how to end this cycle of idiocy. I will submit my very own chain letter and believing in it will only negate all the other chain letters.

Here is goes:
PLEASE DON’T READ THIS YOU’LL REGRET IT! Your family will die in a car crash if you believe any other chain letter except for this one and you must post this in 10 other videos.

Atheism, the cool kids are doing it.

I am disappointed at today’s youth; they are failing to realize that being an atheist is the cool thing to do!

Most teenagers go through a rebellion period and conform to minority sub-cultures. Some of these rebellious sub-cultures include Emos, skaters, or Goths. I think that Goths have recently gained majority status and there exists sub-sub-cultures within the system of Goths. The taxonomy of such a system might be something like “Wrist slitters,” “Wannabe wrist slitters,” “Learning to slit wrist, but too afraid to try,” and the ever famous “Stopped slitting wrist because they ran out of room.”

I think it is pretty common knowledge that atheists are a minority in America. This is a perfect opportunity for young rebellious go-getters to capitalize on this un-touched fad. Becoming an “Athei” would be a lot cooler than, lets say, becoming an Emo. If you are an Athei, you are rebelling against the mainstream yet still maintaining an intellectual persona. There still is a problem with becoming an Athei, they lack all the neat perks that other sub-cultures have. Getting around this problem won’t be easy, but I’ll give it a try:

Emo Vs Athei

Cool haircut that covers your emotion filled face – instead we have – “The just-got-out-of-bed haircut” because we stayed up all night reading scientific journals.

Skinny jeans – instead we have – Normal fit jeans

Skinny button up shirts – instead we have – Sweatshirts with witty anti-god slogans

Fall out boy as a role model – instead we have – Richard Dawkins

Being able to express teenager angst – instead we have – Apathy

Sappy Poetry – instead we have – The Origin of Species

Eye Liner – instead we have –Trendy reading glasses


With the new Athei sub-culture, being an Emo just doesn’t look appealing anymore:


Nuff said.

Do you hate speeches?

Have you ever been nervous before a speech? I am assuming you have, but can you pinpoint exactly why you felt that way? There are as many answers to this question as there are people who get nervous before a speech. Some people, like me, might be well prepared and are confident about not screwing up, but still manage to be nervous before a speech! I have realized that my irrational fear is on a completely different logical level than most reasons for being nervous. I am actually nervous about being nervous!

My level of anxiety is a subset of a certain level of nervousness, however, this subset is that same higher level of nervousness, thus going in an endless loop. To better understand the recursive nature of my anxiety, consider a movie within a movie. The original movie would be on a higher logical level as the movie within the movie. Basically, I could be nervous about being nervous about being nervous about being nervous about being nervous…

Maybe we have a whole set of other emotions that are on lower levels of the logical hierarchy. Realizing these undiscovered emotions might help you reason them out and eventually overcome them. I think that really irrational phobias like Pogonophobia (fear of beards) might stem lower level emotions. This is why it is harder for a person to think rationally to overcome their phobia.

The Apple Guy

I was once asked by a 9 year-old I baby-sit “Why do we celebretize people?”

I couldn’t really give him a real social-economic answer because the attention span of a 9 year-old is equivalent to the average length of a TV commercial. Instead I gave him an answer that was along the lines of “People who feel that their lives are too boring like to celebritize others.”

I was very impressed by how he asked his question. He did not ask me “why are there celebrities?”

The question tells me that he already knew that celebrities are ordinary people and there is a certain thing that society does to transform these individuals into celebrities.

I think that businesses realized there was a demand for a celebrity image and then brainwashed society to further demand celebrities (for certain monetary reasons). I think a more interesting question would be “What makes a celebrity?”

A long time ago, without technology, those who were written about in scriptures were sort of celebrities. They were made up of army generals, religious leaders, inventors, leading scientists, government officials, etc. Now a day all it takes to be a celebrity is the right public exposure. Celebrities now range from Britney Spears to William hung to Jared from Subway.

Celebrities are very profitable for businesses in many different ways. The problem is, the bigger the celebrity the more costly they are to acquire for sponsorships and/or endorsements. To get around this problem, businesses should take non-celebrities and create them into celebrities themselves. This way, businesses have a celebrity to profit from and only at the cost of what it takes to turn that person into a celebrity. For example, Apple should take an average guy and have him in every commercial, banner, billboard, etc. This guy will be known as the “Apple Guy,” he will have a catch phrase and a hip button up shirt he always wears. Not only will they have a celebrity, people will be talking about the Apple Guy and thus perpetuating free additional advertisement.

I need to lose a few pounds

For some reason, everyone says that they can “lose a few pounds,” no matter how fat or skinny they are. They do not even specify how much they want to lose. The easy part about saying “I need to lose a few pounds,” is that it’s very ambiguous. You may want to lose those pounds because of health reasons, physical appearance, or you just aren’t happy with how your body exists in accord to Newtonian law.

Whatever your reason may be you probably should be doing more than just losing a few pounds to reach that goal. If you need to be healthier, you may lose a few pounds and still be as unhealthy as you were to begin with. If you are overweight and lose a few pounds to look better, you’re probably still going to be as unattractive as when you started.

Take a look at this person. Losing a few pounds is exactly what she needed to do to reach her goal:



She literally needed to reduce the amount of space her body takes up so she could give higher quality hugs; a perfectly legitimate reason to lose a few pounds.

Say cheese!

Are you the kind of person who’s self-conscious when getting their picture taken? Or are you the type of person who’s annoyed by the person who’s self-conscious when getting their picture taken? I have to admit that I am the second type of person. Other than finding it annoying, I find it quite amusing too.

The really self-conscious types would yell at you for trying to include them in a group photo, those are the annoying ones. The funny ones are the moderately self-conscious. They will allow you to take a picture of them, but once the camera is pointed at them, they morph into some sort of amateur model. They quickly pucker their lips, give you a seductive smile and position their face to make you get their ‘good side’. Imagine how much practice they must of done in order to reconstruct the exact facial expression that would yield the most favorable photographic outcome.

I would say that the average person is moderately self-conscious when it comes to having their picture taken. The average person will probably only consider 1/25 of their photos to be presentable. This is an unfortunate ratio when it comes to deciding their main profile picture in whatever social networking website they use. Lets say you find a suitable profile picture of yourself with your best friend. The probability of your best friend being suitable in the picture is only 1/25! So do your fellow photo buddies a favor and crop them out of the photo.

Making Fun of ‘Special’ People

“Its not funny until somebody gets hurt.”

I am assuming most of you have heard or read this phrase sometime in your lives. Most of you would even go as far as to agree with its message. In my opinion, it’s really not that funny when someone gets hurt and it is your moral obligation to help that person. Sure, a frail 108-year-old woman tripping over a pinecone is always a humorous spectacle, however, other people are looking and you are the closest one to help her back onto her wheelchair. In this situation, you have two choices 1) grasp her body firmly and lift her back unto her wheelchair or 2) laugh hysterically.

I am surprised there isn’t a social stigma against laughing at people that get hurt. If you laugh at a guy with Down syndrome eating an ice cream with his ear, you would be damned to hell! I am inferring that it isn’t socially acceptable to laugh at a retarded individual because they did not have the choice to be retarded. If somebody gets hurt because they try showing off with their skateboard, then it’s funny because he made the choice.

Do we really have a choice? Assuming there is no free will, our conscious minds are just a product of external forces. Can we really laugh at the kid who decided to show off with their skateboard? To put things in better perspective, would that kid still have shown off to you if he didn’t have the knowledge that skateboarding was cool? We shouldn’t blame this kid for choosing to show off because it’s not his choice to do so.

In the end of the first paragraph of this post I presented you with two choices and a situation. I can almost guarantee that 95% of you would choose the first option (or neither) in reality. There is too much social brainwashing for you to consciously choose the second choice. Well, I can’t blame you for choosing the first option, just like I can’t blame the skateboarder for showing off.

If we laugh at people getting hurt, shouldn’t we also be allowed to laugh at retarded people?

Analysis of College Party

When I look at a party, I see a mathematical function for fun. There are variables such as alcohol, chasers, hot girls, ugly girls, guys, and location. All these variables work together to produce a final product of fun.

How a guy sees a party:

Alcohol

Lets start with alcohol, the most effective and well-known catalyst for fun. Right around 4/5 of the duration of the party, alcohol maximizes its fun output. At this time, people’s inhibitions have reached its lowest point in the party. Any further affect alcohol contributes is negatively proportional to fun (throwing up, falling, death, etc).

Ugly Girls

At first, ugly girls do not contribute to fun and actually bring down the fun in the first quarter due to consumption of food (hint: opportunity cost). When alcohol peaks and consequently inhibitions peak, ugly girls become an easy hook-up.

Guys

At first, other guys are just competition for getting girls. As the effects of alcohol kick in, you may of not hooked-up with a girl yet, but suddenly, guys become amateur stand-up comedians. When the party time is coming to an end, guys become competition once again.

Chasers

These may include soda, juice, energy drinks, etc. These are good additives for the consumption of alcohol and good pre-occupiers for the shy or sober. However, as the party nears to an end, all that is left is a pile of half full soda and juice bottles. A substantial portion of these will be spilled over no matter what.

Hot Girls

These serve as nice eye candy at the beginning of the party. Once they are actually hit upon, they will flee in an instant or bring their fairly large and unyielding boyfriends.

Location

It is just nice to have a place to party so the fun output remains fairly steady. A minor dip in fun occurs later on when people start smashing into walls and jump off of roofs.

Average Fun

As you can see, a party offers a good amount of fun with moderate growth. This is a rough estimate considering it is the average fun output of an average college party.

Awkward Silences

I was looking through Facebook the other day and I came across this group called “Awkward moments.” One of the moments they describe is that of awkward silences. A lot of people commented about that awkward moment, which is understandable because it is almost inescapable in one’s lifetime. Then I read a comment that read “my friend and I like to break an awkward silence by saying ‘gay bunnies’ lol.”

Ok, so this person decided to cancel out the awkwardness with an awkward phrase. Unfortunately, human interaction is more complicated than a simple mathematical postulate. Imagine how much awkward the situation would get if they silence continued after saying ‘gay bunnies.’ When it comes to breaking awkward silences, I will stick to the traditional method of pretending to have a conversation with my voice mail.

Awkward Pictures for your enjoyment

Money in the Bank

I was recently in my friend’s car involuntarily listening to mainstream rap and R&B. The song Glamorous by Fergie caught my attention when I heard the phrase “I’ve got money in the bank” be repeated a good number of times. I would put this phrase on par with “pimpin ain’t easy” or other ubiquitous phrases that I have become desensitized to. However, when I heard “money in the bank,” I thought to myself, “why would I want to put my money in the bank?”

Putting your cash in the bank is one of the worst ways to stash away your money. In an interest yielding CD, you are going to make about 3-5% annually; this doesn’t even account for possible inflation! I would put my money into a mutual fund, hedge fund, or invest in real estate. They should change that phrase to “I’ve got money in a 20% yielding account,” maybe I would change the 20% to 50% because those rappers love to be sarcastic with how much money they really have.

This just goes to show that rappers and/or R&B artists don’t know how to manage their money. They just happen to be a human asset in the music industry. Unfortunately, human assets have the option of quitting whenever they want so we must pay a hefty sum to keep them interested.