One of the things I will never comprehend is how so many young people are so adept at technology yet they cannot grasp the concept that putting their stupid shit out there every day, every hour, and sometimes every minute will eventually hurt them.
Now, some of you may be sitting there shaking your heads thinking to yourself, “Isn’t this exactly what this crazy broad is doing?” Well, I haven’t grasped that concept yet either, but, somehow since I reached the age of 50, I just don’t care.
I can say that I really am glad that I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s and we didn’t have all of that Faceplant and Snaptwit around. I mean I really did some stupid shit. In thinking about this today I was going over all of the things that I did while growing up and what the horrible ramifications could and would have been if they were recorded and floating around out there in the universe for everyone to see. But yet, were they really that bad?
I didn’t do drugs, of any kind, and I rarely drank. Well, there was this one time that I happened to go to a party of my then boyfriend’s older brother. He introduced me to the concept of a beer bong but using cheery kool-aid and Mad Dog-2020. I was so hungover and sick the next day and as it happened that next day I was supposed to go with my boyfriend to a family friend/Catholic priest who was going to talk to us regarding how “close” we were. He served the driest piece of white cake; it was probably some type of purified and blessed Catholic cake but when it stuck in my throat I chokingly asked for something to drink. He handed me a glass of cherry kool-aid that after one quick swig of that; well, let’s just say that may have been where William Peter Blatty got his idea of the “puking on the priest” shot in The Exorcist. Me and my then boyfriend were never that “close” again.
Anyway, how lucky was I that this little incident wasn’t tweeted the next day?! I was probably mentioned in the “Pray For” section that Sunday but, who doesn’t need a few extra prayers, right?
And besides that one time where my roommate and I broke into her ex-boyfriends home when he wasn’t there and tried on all of his new girlfriends’ bras, I was pretty tame. Or lame, whatever you want to call it.
But if I did have all of the technology available to me then, would I have been dumber? Probably so. I think stupid young people today see what other stupid young people are doing and decide they could be just as, if not, stupider so that is exactly what they do. And they send it out for everyone to see. And even though our memories are not as good as they once were, we all have plenty of gigabytes to help remind us and repeatedly show us just how stupid stupid can be.
And yes, we can tell people about all of the crazy shit that we did when we were younger; and even though our verbal tales of yesteryear do end up making us seem crazy, they also make us seem cute and lovable. I mean, just thinking of my sugary baptism makes me smile.
I think you would agree that seeing that as a post on my Facebook Timeline wouldn’t have the same effect.
The Bad Example 