Society is SMRT

I'm amazed at the complete stupidity of society.

Yeah. I went there.

I'm getting sick and tired of the news media. Not necessarily about the particular slant, or outright lies (Fox "News") that a news outlet may spin a particular story. No. I'm exceptionally tired of the rumor/gossip/star-watching mill that today's news media boils down to.

Case in point: Tiger Woods.

To this point, he's done a very good job of keeping his PRIVATE life out of the news. Now, he's just one of the countless "celebrities" who have a very ARTIFICIAL importance in the world today. Every move he makes is scrutinized and over-hyped to the point where all other news in the world takes a back seat to what Tiger did today.

So very tired of this bullshit.

Today's society has ridiculously screwed up priorities and people are profiting and promoting them. People are making a killing off celebrity worship. What have they done of REAL importance? Who was the last celebrity to invent something that improved the life of millions? Who was the last celebrity that served in the military to keep the peace, to protect the weak, or sacrifice themselves to save a comrade? Which celebrity has done charity work and not publicized it or profited from it in terms of their image? Yeah, I thought so. These people are worshiped. These people are loved. Why? Media's created a self-sustaining, totally addicting market for people to consume meaningless information about random "important" people's lives. Rather than focusing this energy on bettering the world, even through something as simple as volunteering locally to make a difference (note that I haven't gone over the top and said: Hey! We can stop world poverty!) its wasted completely.

Society is ill, and its going to get much worse before it gets better.. if it gets better. Essentially, its going to take a "World War II"-sized event to derail this bullshit. Society is so hung up in celeb-centricity that having the trendy clothes, electronics, cars, etc, is more important than having the ability to EARN these things.

As I get older, I see a distinct rift between my generation and the current group of highschool/early undergraduate kids. I look at my generation, I realize that by and large, we haven't had our defining moment, such as a moon landing, or a world war. There hasn't been a single event that has been a catalyst for focused effort. However, the majority of people that I've gone to high school with have made something of themselves. They've gone out there and put forth effort to do something. Effort that yielded results.

Now. Especially in the last two/three years, I've noticed that the generation that grew up with the "Everyone deserves respect/nobody fails/you can be what you want to be, even if you don't bother to put in the effort" mentality has started to head out into adult society. Unfortunately, that mentality has followed them. Generally those messages are positive, but people who gave them to this batch of kids must have forgot the important caveats. Everyone deserves respect: respect is earned through actions, not given when demanded. Nobody fails: when they put sufficient preparation and effort in. You can be what you want to be: with hard work and perseverance. Someone along the way dropped the ball with these kids, not drilling into them that you actually have to work for things in life. Seems like the messages were too "front loaded" with the good, popular, happy overarching messages, without outlining the importance of hard work and effort. From personal experience in teaching labs at my University, I've run into the following situations:

1. Student does nothing in the lab. Doesn't listen to the lecture portion, doesn't do the assignment, then complains to the prof that I didn't teach *him*, and that I'm responsible for his failures.

2. Student does the lab assignment incorrectly. Acknowledges that they made mistakes. Demands full marks based on the fact that they bothered to hand in the assignment.

3. Student that I've never seen in the lab comes on the last lab period and demands that I give him the marks for the whole semester, since he showed up.

Yeah. Unfortunately, these are all true. The "Give me" generation will be in full control shortly. To quote Clint Eastwood:

"The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits."

Soon these twits will be in control. Heaven help us.