Ban the Blog!
The teen blogging epidemic must be stopped. Xanga,
Livejournal, and god knows who else have created a massive
cholesterol-wad of idiocy that is clogging the heart of
America. We are doomed as a nation. Teenagers were once
content to to hang out in the convenience store and not buy
anything, back when they were still merely annoying and not
pathologically stupid. The rub is, blogging has given them
the opportunity to share with the world their every petty
squabble and pubescent mundanity. It needs to end. When new
media scholars talk about "participatory culture," I hope
to any available god that this isn't what they are
referring to.
To demonstrate, I went to xanga.com, and simply searched
for the words sixteen, seventeen, and teenager, then dug
through the results to bring you the most blood-curdling of
internet moron-horror. See! kids desperately rub their two
remaining brain cells together to think pseudo profound
thoughts! Shriek! To a lack of any sense of design or even
readability! Be shocked! This is our future!
l3eautiiful's Blog
Let's start with the lovely l3eautiiful, whose interests
include "my boyfriend matthew, [...] hot topic, wet seal,
nail polish, make-up, eyeliner, lip gloss, mascara, [...],
fuse, mtv, punk boys, lip/brow piercings, glittler,
rock/punk music". Also, she proclaims her expertise in the
areas of "kissing n hugging, loving my boyfriend, caring
for my friends, bitching n yelling". What a kind, kind
person. Clearly, she loves her boyfriend with every ounce
of her little seventeen-year-old heart. She reflects her
skills through her very girl, very pink design, which is
mercifully readable. It does, however, contain some very
unfortunate animated sparkles, and a color changing flower.
Aww. Somebody's going to be gunning for a trophy husband in
five years.
What really makes this blog special is the the deep
profundity of the writing, and elegance of her prose. "well
this weekend has been fun. last night I chilled with my mom
all day. it was fun. we went tanning, and went to my aunts
house, and went to wal-mart. omg at wal-mart there were
these teenagers there, and they had that shag chopped long
hairstyle and they were very skinny and tall and wore the
tight kinda punk clothes only they weren't punk punk they
were the other type." Picture Anthony Hopkins reading that
and have a good laugh. This passage his highly
representative of everything that is wrong with the youth -
awful grammar, tanning, crass consumerism, and a total
misunderstanding of even the most idiotic of subcultures.
You know, not punk punk, punk. Yech. What is here that
anyone would ever care about? What's wrong with keeping a
little pink journal with a heart-shaped lock under your
bed? All it does is make a generation of narcissistic
little twats that much more self-loving. And god forbid
anyone actually post a comment. This girl would probably
think herself the next, I dunno, who are the kids into
these days? Paula Abdul?
IJustNeedPerfection's
Blog
Or how about this one? Let's put some bits together here. "
Interests: losing weight, keeping my son and boyfriend
happy." Yeah, son. She's 18. Her son just turned two. Teen
mothers shall never, ever be allowed to blog in Alex's New
America(TM). They will be required to spend all their time
training their kids not to be like them. Also, she posts
what she ate every day, as if we cared that she is a fat
slob. Combine that with "Had a party thing at my house on
Saturday. It was fun, took tons of pictures, got smashed,
all that nice stuff. Ate like a pig too. Of course", and
you have the picture of modern motherhood: Anorexic, drunk,
and teenaged. Shouldn't the department of child protection
of whoever takes babies away be reading Xanga? I'd be
sending in the SWAT team to steal that little fucker right
out of there. And she wants to put this out there for
everyone to see. Why not just stand on a busy street corner
and hit your kid with a crowbar? It gets the same message
across.
xBLOODYxPETALSx's
Blog
At least some of these kids have the sense to not allow us
to read their journals even if they write them. It's like
that stupid joke about the polar bear in the snowstorm, but
in this case it's a polar bear of incoherent teenage
ramblings in a matrix-letter-storm. God forbit you actually
try and read it, and you end up with this. "It's the
beginning of the end - the funeral of hearts. I'm under the
rose. My soul is on fire - and I am beyond [the point of]
redemption. It's all tears from here on out. I am probably
going to lose you tonight. Killing lonliness is no longer
helping the situation. The serpent ride has neared the end.
I'll fade into you. I can't enjoy the silence. For you, I
would do anything. The secret in my heart is gone. This is
love's requiem. Our diabolikal rapture. Dark light has
consumed me. I'm stupid." Does that mean anything? Is there
any added meaning coming from the alternation of large and
small font? Likely not, coming from a person whose
interests include "All rock/heavy metal music, techno &
bubblegum (J-pop) music. Hmm what else from my sadistic
life... vampyres, witchcraft, blood, drawing &
painting, stalking people... yeah that just about covers
it." Spooky. Bottom line, if you are young and dumb, and
you commit art, you are committing a crime.
quotess____x's Blog
How do you, as a person, define yourself? Your deeds? Your
sense of humor? Your grand ideas? No? How about just
defining yourself through song lyrics and TV quotes then?
It's so much easier! You hardly even have to be a real
person, just a media sponge like this girl. And, of course,
if you're gonna take that route, you may as well stick with
the really profound stuff, like Lennon, or Hemmingway, or
Shakespeare. No, just kidding, I know you're sub-literate.
Stick with One Tree Hill and Boy Meets World . "At this
moment there are 6,470,818,671 people in the world. Some
are running scared. Some are coming home. Some tell lies to
make it through the day. Others are just not facing the
truth. Some are evil men at war with good. And some are
good struggling with evil. Six billion people in the world.
Six billion souls and sometimes all you need is one." God,
it just makes my heart soar all the way up to heaven where
Jesus lives, and ride on a unicorn, and become clogged with
pixie dust. It's so life affirming. I'm feeling affirmed.
Of course, I'm not just going to complain and leave any
blog-engorged kid with no help to improve. So here are some
tips to being a successful retarded teen blogger:
- Entries involving "I dint do a dam thing 2day" are not allowed. If you didn't do anything, don't talk about it.
- No one cares about your new boyfriend that you "<3 SOOO much!!!"
- There is nothing profound within anything that any band has ever said. This applies double if you can buy their shirt at Hot Topic.
- I know you hate your mom now, but by the time you turn twenty, you'll probably realize that you were just being a bitchy little cunt.
- The idea behind words is that people are supposed to read them. If your words are pink, on a pink background, you have defeated the point. Words have have been defeated.
- Despite what you have heard elsewhere, you are not an exciting individual. Nobody wants to hear it, so stop.
- In fact, just stop. Stop using the internet until you can speak the english fucking language and until your brain develops to such a level where you are no longer merely subhuman.
This is the brave new world of new media, and it is a world that needs to end, dinosaur-style. With meteors. We need to get back to old media, old media like punches in the face. I am going to fight tooth and nail for the reeducation, or barring that, eradication, of every American teenager.