Today's topic is..Fashionable stupidity.
Why is stupidity sometimes fashionable to people? It is kind of sad really. Whether its the middle class kid who seeks to imitate the grammar and sentence structure of someone who never went to school, the net user who constantly finds humor in the dumbest and most inane "memes", or the guy who thinks that his manhood is measured by how many beers he can drink as well as how idiotic he can act afterward, all seem to be cases where someone has the capacity to act more intelligent but purposely choose not to. So why is stupidity fashionable?
My theory is that is has something to do with an image. All of these people are chasing an image of "toughness" and "coolness". While each of them may have slightly different images of what it means to be tough and cool, the values that each image represent are similiar. For whatever reason, the individuals that tend to end up as role models for people chasing these images are not mainstream people. Maybe its because having no boundaries is such an important value to many. Being able to "take care of things" yourself instead of getting the police involved or needing help from anybody but your friends with anything seems to be the way many people wish they could live, so they idolize those who seem to be able to live in that fashion. They discover these images based on what they see on television, which may or not be based upon reality. And those who are portrayed as living in such a fashion tend to have low regard for rules other then their own, which perhaps is a quality those idolizing them pick up. The end result? A powerful counter culture which were it not for various incentives (not the least of which economic incentive) could easily overrun and take the place of main stream culture. In conclusion, I believe that people flock to counter cultures to fix various deficiencies and fill voids that the main stream culture does not address or solve for them.
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