“Idiocracy” was a documentary from the future.

Let this message be a call to arms.  Let these words be a call to action.  Let anyone who reads this post rise up and join the small minority of people who have been quietly and thanklessly struggling to keep the human race from a path of destruction.  This is not a call for weapons, violence, or mutiny over any structured institution.  Rather, it is a call to knowledge.  A call to educate, inform, and enlighten.  A beacon of hope we can shine throughout the U.S. and possibly the world so future generations will not live in a dark, cold, unfriendly place.  And together, we can change everything.

Okay, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people? How hard is it to learn basic spelling?  How hard is it to retain a simple piece of information like “your” and “you’re”? For the love of God!  If you can’t remember a simple thing like “there” and “their”, how the fuck do you remember where you live?  How do you remember what color your car is when you come out of the library–oops, I mean–when you come out of the strip club?  Yes, it is my intention to be slightly humorous in the way I present this, but I seriously want to know how all you people are still surviving.

How have you not accidentally walked in front of a train?  How have you not accidentally choked on the jagged edges of a tin can lid while trying to eat soup?  How have you not gotten into a horrible car wreck when your favorite song came on the radio?  How have you not walked into an empty elevator shaft because you were checking Facebook on your phone?

Admittedly, I’m also a pretty avid Facebook user.  And I’m not necessarily blaming any specific social media outlets for this decline in human intelligence.  Nor am I blaming social media in general, technically.  I do feel it has been a catalyst, in many ways, but we cannot remove the blame we, as a people, share in becoming one of the stupidest, uneducated, frail generations since cavemen first recoiled in horror at fire.  And to be fair, at least they knew how to hunt, cook and sew.

So, what am I talking about, you ask?  Aside from a general malevolence toward the poor grammar and spelling that has become the norm, obviously.  I made that pretty clear in the last few paragraphs.  This is what I’m talking about:

Oh really? What kind of “metals”? Copper? Lead? Zinc? And yes, the capitalization is annoying, but not necessarily at the heart of what I’m trying to convey.  Although, laziness is definitely part of the problem.  No, what bothers me here is the fact that this person genuinely thinks the word “metal” is a homonym.  After all, most medals are made out of metal, right?  Bullshit.  This is unacceptable.  Here’s another one:

This represents another part of the problem.  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Yes, “omg” is an acceptable acronym like “lol” or “wtf”.  And “dafuq” was not born out of a lack of intelligence or an inability to spell.  It came from someone trying to be funny, similar to “Ermahgerd” and that horrible “lolspeak” on those awful “lolcat” images.

The reason I see it as a problem is because while “Ermahgerd” and “lolspeak” are similar in intent, I have not seen them replace normal conversation on the internet (if you can call it that).  “Dafuq”, on the other hand, is becoming part of everyday speech, instead of being limited to funny memes.  I know this seems a bit trivial, but what it represents is a systematic degradation of intelligent thought and speech.

I do also have a problem with the fact that it’s becoming commonplace to shorten an entire sentence into a series of acronyms.  Let’s say someone is harassing you on Facebook.  How fucking busy can you be that you have to type “omg stfu & gtfo u jrk”?  How difficult is it to type “Oh my God!  Would you shut the fuck up and leave me alone? You’re a jerk!”?  It took me all of about two seconds to type it just now.  And wouldn’t it be easier to subdue your aggressor by giving the impression that you’re not a half-witted mongoloid, mashing the keyboard with your sausage fingers and hoping for the best?

I’m a big fan of post-apocalyptic movies, television shows, and video games.  Unfortunately, most of them are completely implausible.  And the reason they are implausible is not what you might think.  The truth of the matter is that we, as a people, could NEVER handle living in such a society.  The human race, as a whole, has become so entrenched with all of this unintelligent banter that our overall thinking has become dumbed down.  Our ability to utilize critical thinking and rational, logical decision making has gotten so cobwebbed that we wouldn’t know what to do once the grocery store was empty.  Except, of course, to scream out “omg!” and rock back and forth, cradling our now dead smart phone with tears in our eyes.

But I digress.  My intention is to highlight a serious deficiency with the people who inhabit the online universe, right here and now, and not in some mythical future.  This staggering lack of common sense, basic grammar, and grade school level spelling should be a serious concern.  Unfortunately, the general consensus is that people like me are being “too serious” or “too uptight” or a “grammar Nazi”.  How about you shut your barely literate mouth and learn how not to be an idiot?  At least I know how to read a face clock, you lump of manure with skin stretched over it.  I would have never thought that a bowl of moldy, rotten apples could be poured into a human skull, but here you are.

My final thought on all of this is that unless we are able to separate the things we say, write, and do as a joke, or as a way to make people laugh, from the actual uneducated, half-witted, lazy display of gibberish that takes two or three passes to understand, we are all doomed to become a society of the latter.

I’m actually not that old, but I can already see it happening in the youngest of us who use the internet and social media.  I see it in the celebrities we worship and idolize every time I take a browse on Twitter.  I see it in schools, where after 11 years of education, a senior turns in a paper for a “critical thinking” class that’s almost unintelligible, yet still gets a “C”.  And I see it out in everyday life, when some 19-year-old dead brain cell can’t comprehend the concept of a silent film and continually asks questions about the lack of dialogue.

Is that serious enough for you?  Or do you still think I’m uptight?  If you do, then stfu & gtfo, the rest of us have no interest in being sucked into the black hole created by your crippled brain.