A Society In Crisis - V1

[Zorro]

This is version one of a series of upcoming threads I'll be posting here with illustrations about the negative direction modern society is headed.

http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/912989/im-too-beautiful-sneak-peek.jhtml#series=2214%26seriesId=5232%26channelId=1%26id=1708126

I just saw this mentioned on FoxNews. This stuff is everywhere, but this is a great example of it.

[BlackCat]

I either love or hate True Life episodes. The ones I love are of young people actually facing real problems such as the lady with Tourette's syndrome, the three people that stutter or the dude with a traumatic brain injury -- people I can actually care about given their conditions.

On the other hand, episodes with titles such as "I'm too beautiful" or "I envy my ex" or perhaps "I want what I can't get" are just so stupid that I am convinced this nature of television dumbs down today's youth or maybe brings them to be more vain absent some sort of reprehension conveyed by other people in the show.

In any case, producers highlighting trashy people for their "problems" surely gives the attention of the conceited who have asked to be on the show. Indeed, you can go on MTV's website and see a list of future True Life episodes that the producers are looking for. Over a year ago I saw on their website that they were wanting someone who has social anxiety to be on the show and I thought that nobody with social anxiety would reach out to MTV and have a camera crew come to their house. Recently, this episode aired and just as I thought, the lady who was featured for her social anxiety was indeed a liar and just wanted another 15 minutes of fame as she had been on TV before. From this point on, I find it hard to believe some of the scenarios on the show are reality rather than "reality."

MTV has so much influence on young people that my junior yearbook (2009-2010) had "True Life" plastered on the cover in the exact same style as the show with various strings such as "True life - I'm a basketball player, True life - I'm a freshman" etc. While this isn't necessarily bad, certainly it illustrates how much of an impact MTV has on young people and their increasingly vain lives, especially while being accompanied with social media.

I was taking Spanish II when a show called "Skins" came out in early January of 2011. All of the little girls in my school, aged 14-15, were watching it and I know this because many of them were in my Spanish class and they were religious viewers of the series which was rated TV-MA. They loved it. The show was about high schoolers having sex, doing drugs, drinking, passing out at parties, etc. Most of the girls who watched it got pregnant later on in the school year.

2013 is a year that I finally realized how bad the younger generation is heading down the tubes. I made note of this when I was on campus with a friend on a skywalk downtown and we were checking out all of the people that were walking under us. At the bus stop we noticed three people all within a close proximity with each other and they all had one thing in common; they were looking down and texting. I turned to my friend and said, "You know we're in 2013 when you see that." Jokingly, he pulled out his cell phone and started texting. Texting, texting, texting everywhere at my campus! Texting in the hallways, texting while the professor talks, people walking, running into stuff, etc. Remember the dude who was texting and ran into a bear? Remember the lady texting and running into the fountain?

There have been many studies that generation Y is less empathetic because they're not used to dealing with people face to face like their older generation counterparts and that they have grown up in an environment where they have the technology to not be expected to say anything. The other day I had a guy interested in one of the many bicycles I have for sale. I gave him my number so he could call me before he heads out to check it out. Instead, he texts me and texts me, "Is the seat original, are the handlebars original, do you have anything else that comes with it?" etc. Shut up and call me so we can talk fast as I have things to do like going on the CIX forum to rant about this very issue.

Zorro, I'm looking forward to hearing more about today's society crisis. Carry on.