WTF... Say?

There is nothing scarier than a mass of humanity. It is not a coincidence that all those classic horror films end with a mob. Some people try to argue that there is a potential for good in individuals, but when you get a group together at let all that “group-think” start, you are in for some major evil. Even if it usually presents itself as ignorance. (Which is still evil, we just somehow give ignorance more of a pass.)

For examples of this truth, you do not need to go back to 1930s Germany (or, if we are being honest, much of the world in the 1930s, with eugenics, Marxism and fascism running rampant all over). Just take a look at the internet.

People regularly support, prop-up, and further the cause of utter stupidity on the World Wide Web. Even in the act of declaring something stupid, we give that stupidity the only commodity that counts on the web: clicks. (OK, I do see the irony of this whole post now. You don’t need to highlight that fact.)

Just look at two of the biggest internet memes of 2013: the “Harlem Shake” and “The Fox.” These memes are the very definition of stupidity. People readily recognize that fact. In the case of “The Fox” that was the whole driving force behind the song. It is a commentary of the stupidity of what is popular. And yet people can’t download it fast enough. Everybody who watched a “Harlem Shake” video, saw how pointless it was, and proceeded to fall all over themselves trying to top the stupidity.

Not since the early nineties when MTV made a show that made fun of its viewers’ stupidity—and that show went on to become the favorite of those same belittled viewers—has such stupidity been so well illustrated.

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