Copy/Paste Sheep
Sep. 12th, 2013 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
r_grayjoySheesh. People will copy/paste ANYTHING without stopping to think about it, won't they?!
I saw two pretty dumb ones last night that annoyed me enough to make this post. So... rant mode: ON!
Part 1: The Fallacy of "The Good Old Days"
This one was being posted/crossposted/reblogged all over the place by people who are roughly my age, give or take a few years:
"Anyone who was born in the 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s... We are the last generation who played in the streets. We are the first who played video games, the last to record songs off the radio on a cassette tape. We walked over a mile with no worries [of] being taken... We learned how to program the VCR before anyone else, we played from Atari to Nintendo... We are the generation of Tom and Jerry, Looney Toons, Captain Kangaroo. We traveled in cars without seat belts or airbags, we lived without cell phones. We did not have flat screens, surround sound, ipods, Facebook, Twitter, computers or the internet... But nevertheless we had a great time. Repost if you're a 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s baby!!!"
Okay, I'm just going to ignore the spots where the facts are incorrect, because that's not the point here. Instead I'm going to use this a perfect example of the "good old days" fallacy. As long as there's been recorded history (and probably longer), people have been convinced that some earlier time was far surperior to the one in which they're living. They've usually been DEAD WRONG.
See, we have the sad tendency to mistake the feeling of nostalgia for the belief that the past was somehow "better." These days, a whole lot of people seem to be convinced that their childhood or teenage years were some sort of ideal period and that everything has gone to hell since then. The above paragraph of questionable grammar illustrates this pretty well.
I was born in 1976. When I was a kid, if you played in the streets or went wandering around a mile from home by yourself, you were a damn idiot. Anyone else remember those sessions where they taught you about what you should do if a stranger approached you? Yeah, we had those in "the good old days." Riding around in cars without a seatbelt on is a pretty dumb idea too, regardless of the decade.
Sure, being able to say that you were there for the original Atari and Nintendo (and Intellivision, for those who remember that one) is kind of cool in a dorky sort of way. It's a nifty memory. But would you really rather be playing with an Atari than whatever game console you have now? Really? (If you're tempted to say "yes," go play an Atari/Intellivision emulator for an hour or so and get back to me. I bet you'll be bored out of your everloving mind.)
Who the hell wants to record songs off the radio onto a cassette?! Whoever wrote that clearly doesn't remember what a pain in the ass that was. Sitting there and waiting for a particular song to be played... Having the beginning and end of the song cut off by the DJs talking or the overlap of other songs... Not to mention the sheer fact that cassette tapes were about as durable and long-lasting as undersized dollar store panties.
Nothin' wrong with Tom and Jerry et al., but personally I'm pretty glad that animation has come a long way since then -- not only in the technical sense, but also in terms of variety of style, subject matter, and appeal to adults.
No cell phones? Just wait 'til this person's car breaks down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and then see how happy they are that they don't have a cell phone with them! HA! (As for me, being able to send pointless text messages toeeyore9990, ragdoll, acatnamedeaster, and nxtwothou is one of the only things that keeps me from dying of boredom or annoyance on the bus. And finding your friends at cons is SO much easier since the advent of mobile phones! Hee!)
And NO INTERNET?! SCREW YOU, YOU PINKO COMMIE!! And no, the irony in the fact that the author of this meme used the internet and social networking sites to disseminate it hasn't escaped me.
I don't mean to imply that every single aspect of the current day is better than it was two or three or four decades back. But a whole lot are. And if you want to convince me that we were all better off in the past, you're going to have to put in a lot more effort than this.
The next time you find yourself longing for "The Good Old Days," stop for a moment and consider. Was it really such an ideal period, or are you just frustrated with today's problems and stresses? Were things REALLY so much better back then, or are you just wishing you could be a kid again for a day? And for the love of kittens, don't crosspost this kind of junk without thinking -- or at least fixing the shitty SPaG!
Part 2: How NOT to Raise Understanding and Awareness of an Important Topic
Saw this one on a friend's Facebook. The friend is usually a lot more intelligent than this (despite the fact that she uses Facebook regularly. Maybe Facebook useage is to blame for the loss of IQ points?!)
"Depression, anxiety, and panic attacks are NOT a sign of weakness. They are signs of having tried to remain strong for way too long. Would you post this on your wall, at least for one day? Most people won't, but it's Mental Health Awareness week. Did you know that 1 in each 3 of us will go through this at some point in our lives? Share the support! Let those who struggle know they're not alone, that they are loved and surrounded by a lot of people who care."
Urk. More atrocious SPaG. And I'm highly suspicious of that "one in three" figure they came up with. But what really raised my blood pressure on this one was the first two lines.
The first part is true enough. Depression, anxiety, and panic disorders (and a host of others in that general spectrum) aren't signs of weakness. However, they're also NOT indicators that someone has "tried" (and apparently failed?) to "remain strong" until they've reached some sort of breaking point! Suggesting this only serves to undermine the point the author of this hot mess was (presumably) trying to make.
What such disorders are a "sign" of is that the person has a biological irregularity -- an imbalance in brain chemistry or faulty brain wiring. Sure, environmental factors play a role. But rarely are genetics, biology, and/or physiological makeup not at the core of the problem.
Unipolar depression, bipolar disorder, various anxiety disorders, etc. are legitimate chronic medical illnesses every bit as much as diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis or coeliac disease. Yet no one (in their right mind) would claim that a person has rheumatoid arthritis because they didn't have the mental and emotional fortitude to resist it! Implying that a person suffering the effects of depression or anxiety somehow isn't "strong enough" to handle the stresses of day-to-day life and has cracked is playing into the misunderstanding and social stigma that surrounds mental illness and prevents so many sufferers from getting the medical treatment that they need.
I imagine that isn't the message that the author of the above paragraph really intended to convey, but... well, for someone writing about "Mental Health Awareness Week," this person certainly isn't very, you know, AWARE. Good intentions... Road to hell... Stick that in your depressed, anxious pipe and smoke it.
I saw two pretty dumb ones last night that annoyed me enough to make this post. So... rant mode: ON!
Part 1: The Fallacy of "The Good Old Days"
This one was being posted/crossposted/reblogged all over the place by people who are roughly my age, give or take a few years:
"Anyone who was born in the 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s... We are the last generation who played in the streets. We are the first who played video games, the last to record songs off the radio on a cassette tape. We walked over a mile with no worries [of] being taken... We learned how to program the VCR before anyone else, we played from Atari to Nintendo... We are the generation of Tom and Jerry, Looney Toons, Captain Kangaroo. We traveled in cars without seat belts or airbags, we lived without cell phones. We did not have flat screens, surround sound, ipods, Facebook, Twitter, computers or the internet... But nevertheless we had a great time. Repost if you're a 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s baby!!!"
Okay, I'm just going to ignore the spots where the facts are incorrect, because that's not the point here. Instead I'm going to use this a perfect example of the "good old days" fallacy. As long as there's been recorded history (and probably longer), people have been convinced that some earlier time was far surperior to the one in which they're living. They've usually been DEAD WRONG.
See, we have the sad tendency to mistake the feeling of nostalgia for the belief that the past was somehow "better." These days, a whole lot of people seem to be convinced that their childhood or teenage years were some sort of ideal period and that everything has gone to hell since then. The above paragraph of questionable grammar illustrates this pretty well.
I was born in 1976. When I was a kid, if you played in the streets or went wandering around a mile from home by yourself, you were a damn idiot. Anyone else remember those sessions where they taught you about what you should do if a stranger approached you? Yeah, we had those in "the good old days." Riding around in cars without a seatbelt on is a pretty dumb idea too, regardless of the decade.
Sure, being able to say that you were there for the original Atari and Nintendo (and Intellivision, for those who remember that one) is kind of cool in a dorky sort of way. It's a nifty memory. But would you really rather be playing with an Atari than whatever game console you have now? Really? (If you're tempted to say "yes," go play an Atari/Intellivision emulator for an hour or so and get back to me. I bet you'll be bored out of your everloving mind.)
Who the hell wants to record songs off the radio onto a cassette?! Whoever wrote that clearly doesn't remember what a pain in the ass that was. Sitting there and waiting for a particular song to be played... Having the beginning and end of the song cut off by the DJs talking or the overlap of other songs... Not to mention the sheer fact that cassette tapes were about as durable and long-lasting as undersized dollar store panties.
Nothin' wrong with Tom and Jerry et al., but personally I'm pretty glad that animation has come a long way since then -- not only in the technical sense, but also in terms of variety of style, subject matter, and appeal to adults.
No cell phones? Just wait 'til this person's car breaks down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and then see how happy they are that they don't have a cell phone with them! HA! (As for me, being able to send pointless text messages to
eeyore9990, ragdoll, acatnamedeaster, and nxtwothou is one of the only things that keeps me from dying of boredom or annoyance on the bus. And finding your friends at cons is SO much easier since the advent of mobile phones! Hee!)And NO INTERNET?! SCREW YOU, YOU PINKO COMMIE!! And no, the irony in the fact that the author of this meme used the internet and social networking sites to disseminate it hasn't escaped me.
I don't mean to imply that every single aspect of the current day is better than it was two or three or four decades back. But a whole lot are. And if you want to convince me that we were all better off in the past, you're going to have to put in a lot more effort than this.
The next time you find yourself longing for "The Good Old Days," stop for a moment and consider. Was it really such an ideal period, or are you just frustrated with today's problems and stresses? Were things REALLY so much better back then, or are you just wishing you could be a kid again for a day? And for the love of kittens, don't crosspost this kind of junk without thinking -- or at least fixing the shitty SPaG!
Part 2: How NOT to Raise Understanding and Awareness of an Important Topic
Saw this one on a friend's Facebook. The friend is usually a lot more intelligent than this (despite the fact that she uses Facebook regularly. Maybe Facebook useage is to blame for the loss of IQ points?!)
"Depression, anxiety, and panic attacks are NOT a sign of weakness. They are signs of having tried to remain strong for way too long. Would you post this on your wall, at least for one day? Most people won't, but it's Mental Health Awareness week. Did you know that 1 in each 3 of us will go through this at some point in our lives? Share the support! Let those who struggle know they're not alone, that they are loved and surrounded by a lot of people who care."
Urk. More atrocious SPaG. And I'm highly suspicious of that "one in three" figure they came up with. But what really raised my blood pressure on this one was the first two lines.
The first part is true enough. Depression, anxiety, and panic disorders (and a host of others in that general spectrum) aren't signs of weakness. However, they're also NOT indicators that someone has "tried" (and apparently failed?) to "remain strong" until they've reached some sort of breaking point! Suggesting this only serves to undermine the point the author of this hot mess was (presumably) trying to make.
What such disorders are a "sign" of is that the person has a biological irregularity -- an imbalance in brain chemistry or faulty brain wiring. Sure, environmental factors play a role. But rarely are genetics, biology, and/or physiological makeup not at the core of the problem.
Unipolar depression, bipolar disorder, various anxiety disorders, etc. are legitimate chronic medical illnesses every bit as much as diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis or coeliac disease. Yet no one (in their right mind) would claim that a person has rheumatoid arthritis because they didn't have the mental and emotional fortitude to resist it! Implying that a person suffering the effects of depression or anxiety somehow isn't "strong enough" to handle the stresses of day-to-day life and has cracked is playing into the misunderstanding and social stigma that surrounds mental illness and prevents so many sufferers from getting the medical treatment that they need.
I imagine that isn't the message that the author of the above paragraph really intended to convey, but... well, for someone writing about "Mental Health Awareness Week," this person certainly isn't very, you know, AWARE. Good intentions... Road to hell... Stick that in your depressed, anxious pipe and smoke it.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-09-13 10:03 am (UTC)On the second one, though, I'm SO WITH YOU! I utterly despise those style of comments. Not only are most of them dead wrong - like that one - or potentially hurtful to those who actually suffer from whatever illness they talk about. (I know a cancer survivor who gets pissed off every time she sees those about cancer.) They are a stupid guilt trip and I don't do well with being guilted into stuff. It's not positive in any fucking way.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-09-13 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-09-13 07:18 pm (UTC)One of my friends got killed by a car while playing in the streets - in 1958.
And I taped old TV shows onto reel-to-reel tape (which, unlike cassettes, didn't break and spew tape everywhere), and filmed friends with a hand-wound cine-camera that never ran out of batteries - because it didn't use them - so much for technology improvements.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-09-14 12:03 am (UTC)I have a stack of playlists, so I could recreate them (mostly - I'm sure there are a few songs here and there that aren't available,) but I know it wouldn't be the same. The little bits that were cut off, the deejays' patter at the start or the end, the faint static when the signal wasn't coming in so well, it's all kinda part of the charm.