The Energon Pub

Going to make this very brief so I don't lose interest.

They didn't name the Allspark, or any other Macguffin in the new movie 'The Matrix (of Leadership)' because they didn't want people to become confused or draw links with the Matrix trilogy.

There's a lot of things like this in media and such that are to "stop [chosen demographic, usually kids] from becoming confused.

Let's be cynical and say that kids appear to be getting dumber nowadays. Not all, but I do think there's a level of degeneracy rising here. Personally opinion of course, byt besides the point. The question I'm asking is: Are kids getting "dumber" (for lack of a better phrase) because of these actions (not solely, of course), or is it that these actions are taken because of the kids (as suggested)?

Personally I don't know, but it always grates me when cartoons and such dumb things down for the audience, which then, logically, results in them not getting to grips with more complex concepts.

Discuss.

In a word. Yes.

It's about half genetics, and half upbringing.

For example.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... as-barely/

and again

http://io9.com/5192678/texas-officially ... se-ageless

Senor Hugo wrote:In a word. Yes.

It's about half genetics, and half upbringing.

For example.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... as-barely/

and again

http://io9.com/5192678/texas-officially ... se-ageless

I hope you won't be too surprised when in 50 years time a country stars a war with you guys and defeats you.

Senor Hugo wrote:
It's about half genetics, and half upbringing.

Nature vs Nurture.

You know, I heard a while ago they wanted to dumb down Shakespeare...

Man I really hate to be that guy but in this thread it is way too easy. Hey guys when posting in a thread about stupid kids and crap like that. USE SPELL CHECK!

insanityzmaster wrote:Man I really hate to be that guy but in this thread it is way too easy. Hey guys when posting in a thread about stupid kids and crap like that. USE SPELL CHECK!

I just checked every post in this thread and non is spelled incorrectly, you might just confuse the "real" British way of spelling certain words as being incorrectly spelled.

I don't think it's a dumb thing: I think it's a lazy thing. Which of course eventually spirals into dumb so that it's hard to identify where one begins and the other ends.

Their world is this shiny delightful shallow bubble which gives them no desire or opportunity to look beyond surfaces, to question anything meaningful (except 'authority' and they only do that because a bumper sticker told them to), or think of other humans as actual beings. Our mass media (which is our world, in a sense) WANTS them dumb. Dumb consumers are easy to sell to. Don't make them think--gads no! And above all, don't make them do anything that will make them possibly feel bad, like they're not the special little wuggikins their mommy and their social-promotion high school transcript tells them they are.

Beyond that, they've isolated themselves in their own little cyberbubble of culture that includes their favorite music artists, a few 'cool' movies, and their facebook friends. None of my 8 am students had even heard of the _Aeneid_. Actually, they were a little fuzzy on what happened in the New Testament. (I even asked them if they were punking me).

So, if they never exert themselves, they could be as sharp as a box of tacks, but it would still add up to useless ignorance, which is awfully hard to tell apart from just plumb stupid.

HK, Optimus Prime say stay in school.

<--- Sits down and shuts up.

Dead Metal wrote:

Senor Hugo wrote:In a word. Yes.

It's about half genetics, and half upbringing.

For example.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... as-barely/

and again

http://io9.com/5192678/texas-officially ... se-ageless

I hope you won't be too surprised when in 50 years time a country stars a war with you guys and defeats you.

Oh I won't be. -coughChinacough-

Hopefully by that time I'll be the netherlands restarting/restarted the viking movement. Then we can just go globally and pillage. Ain't nobody dumb enough to @#$% with Vikings.

Scatterlung wrote:

Senor Hugo wrote:
It's about half genetics, and half upbringing.

Nature vs Nurture.

You know, I heard a while ago they wanted to dumb down Shakespeare...

Yup, there's even a word for it, "to bowdlerise."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler

Dead Metal wrote:

insanityzmaster wrote:Man I really hate to be that guy but in this thread it is way too easy. Hey guys when posting in a thread about stupid kids and crap like that. USE SPELL CHECK!

I just checked every post in this thread and non is spelled incorrectly, you might just confuse the "real" British way of spelling certain words as being incorrectly spelled.

Oh?

Scatterlung wrote:Let's be cynical and say that kids appear to be getting dumber nowadays. Not all, but I do think there's a level of degeneracy rising here. Personally opinion of course, byt besides the point.

Dead Metal wrote:I hope you won't be too surprised when in 50 years time a country starts a war with you guys and defeats you.

That's not going to happen, only because it conflicts with my view of North America by 2050.

ON TOPIC.

It does all come down to lazyness, I say this because of the following. It is no surprise to anyone that kids today get away with a hell of a lot more than they could 10 years ago, and they got away more than kids 10 years before them. The sad fact is that as the population of the so-called first world has risen, we have more kids that are being brought up by parents negecting to teach the basics of respect, proper public behavior, and (so certain degrees) morality. Why don't these parents teach these basics? Because they weren't taught them by their own parents.

I get simply amazed by some kids today and how they act/talk and such, because if I had acted like that, I'd be punished, instead many parents nowdays take stands of: (and these are all things I have personally seen)
-- I don't want to be the bad guy.
-- What will it take to get you to be quiet?
-- If I punish them, then I'll get in trouble myself?
-- I just don't know what to do.

Now maybe my thoughts ae hypocritical as don't have kids myself (yet) but I do help with my sister's kids (7 & 4) and I would like to think that I am more prepared for handling things because I was tought basics from my parents as was my GF. And the simple truth that of the people I know in my age bracket, the ones who had parents like mine, are raising kids with those same values, the ones who (at the time I envied a bit as they had more stuff, stayed up later, and got away with doing a hell of a lot more than I did) had a more lax childhood, are ones with familys that I hear the statements above from.

These things can be blamed of society, on political correctness, on changing times. However as far as i'm concerned, It all stems from at some point in many family trees, that due to people being lazy, or not wanting to handle the responcibility handed to them, that they failed their kids, and in many cases, that failure is being passed to each generation compounding the problem even more.

The kids coming up in these familys are more likely to be disinterested in school, and learn too much (if not raised) by messages in media. Who needs to learn math or science... It's more important to know who's got the #1 selling album, or which star has just been arrested for DUI.

It creates a society where personal responcibility is forgotten, and people forget how to think for themselves.

Stupid does breed stupid.
Lazy does breed lazy.
As far as Political Correctness goes, it is less political than social, and less correct, than not being "wrong". And it's only going to get worse.

As for spell check, if anyone ever sees errors in my posts, it due to this computer isn't set up for it.

Lorekeeper wrote:Nature vs Nurture.

You know, I heard a while ago they wanted to dumb down Shakespeare...

Yup, there's even a word for it, "to bowdlerise."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler[/quote]

Not quite: Bowdlerizing means more like pulling out the bits that a proper Victorian father would find too racy and inappropriate to read in front of his kids. So, no more 'fishmonger' or 'coney-catching' references. (Nowadays no one even gets those any more so they can't even figure out to be offended).

But yeah, every time I teach The Bard (tm) I invariably have to have the complaint 'why doesn't someone translate this into, like, English?'

It is English.

'No, I mean like modern English.'

It is modern English.

Blank stares.

Then they all go to sparknotes and leave me alone as obviously mentally dense.

HK, brains of steel.

hellkitty wrote:Not quite: Bowdlerizing means more like pulling out the bits that a proper Victorian father would find too racy and inappropriate to read in front of his kids. So, no more 'fishmonger' or 'coney-catching' references. (Nowadays no one even gets those any more so they can't even figure out to be offended).

But yeah, every time I teach The Bard (tm) I invariably have to have the complaint 'why doesn't someone translate this into, like, English?'

It is English.

'No, I mean like modern English.'

It is modern English.

Blank stares.

Then they all go to sparknotes and leave me alone as obviously mentally dense.

HK, brains of steel.

If only the schools still allowed the traditional punishment of lighting the dumber kids on fire.

HK, that is almost verbatim an exchange from my classroom once or twice a year.

I don't think people are any dumber than they've ever been.
Our modes of communication might be changing us, though they might also be making us privy to just how dumb we've always been.

Personally, I think stone-age man was just as smart/dumb as we are today. We just have the amassed knowledge so that we can go faster, communicate faster and further, and have enough security that we have time we can waste in all kinds of nifty ways. Unfortunately, not everyone takes advantage of that amassed knowledge, or has the ability to interpret it properly.

Are we getting proportionately dumber? Are there more of us in ignorance than enlightenment than in past ages? Again, I would argue "not." With the fracturing of our clan/families by suburbs and the "nuclear family" we simultaneously see more and less of people than we would have when everyone we interacted with was some level of uncle or cousin. The stupidity of strangers in obvious, where the stupidity of kin is tolerated/excused (to a degree.)

Do I base my view on research? No! I might be just as pigheadedly wrong in my "ca plus la changer, ca plus la meme" (pardon my slaughtered French) worldview as someone with a "the world is dumbening" perspective. And the internet lets me put it out there for you(se) to read.

Hmmmm.....

Senor Hugo wrote:

hellkitty wrote:Not quite: Bowdlerizing means more like pulling out the bits that a proper Victorian father would find too racy and inappropriate to read in front of his kids. So, no more 'fishmonger' or 'coney-catching' references. (Nowadays no one even gets those any more so they can't even figure out to be offended).

But yeah, every time I teach The Bard (tm) I invariably have to have the complaint 'why doesn't someone translate this into, like, English?'

It is English.

'No, I mean like modern English.'

It is modern English.

Blank stares.

Then they all go to sparknotes and leave me alone as obviously mentally dense.

HK, brains of steel.

If only the schools still allowed the traditional punishment of lighting the dumber kids on fire.

Hm? Burning stupid kids? They should do that.

And for the ones pointing out my spelling mistake in the initial post:

Byt me.

No.

But stupid people are just about the only group it's ok to specifically target and ridicule.

So, you know...whatever.

Counterpunch wrote:No.

But stupid people are just about the only group it's ok to specifically target and ridicule.

So, you know...whatever.

From my years of research watching MTV, I have to say I believe, by George, you're right. The entirety of _The Real World_ appears to be based on that premise. As is anything starring Bret Michaels, New York, Flava Flav, Tila Tequila....

I thought it was still okay to make fun of fat people and skanks. And people who think they can sing but don't have friends who care enough to stop them from making asses of themselves on _American Idol_. Thought we could still make fun of those, too. And anyone who thinks pro wrestling is real. And babygoth club kids (which I like to call 'whiffle-bats'). And emo kids ('sniffle-bats', if you were wondering).

HK, I was goth before Andrew Eldritch wasn't.

[quote="hellkittyI thought it was still okay to make fun of fat people and skanks. And people who think they can sing but don't have friends who care enough to stop them from making asses of themselves on _American Idol_. Thought we could still make fun of those, too. And anyone who thinks pro wrestling is real. And babygoth club kids (which I like to call 'whiffle-bats'). And emo kids ('sniffle-bats', if you were wondering).

HK, I was goth before Andrew Eldritch wasn't.[/quote]

LOL. I tend to call the mall kiddies Kindergoth and Prostitots. That was before I knew of emo. I like to pretend that emo doesn't exist.

From what I know of True Goth, even I'm too young to have been part of the original movement, and I'm 31.

Scatterlung wrote:And for the ones pointing out my spelling mistake in the initial post:

Byt me.

Don't forget your personally opinion.

Lorekeeper wrote:
LOL. I tend to call the mall kiddies Kindergoth and Prostitots. That was before I knew of emo. I like to pretend that emo doesn't exist.

From what I know of True Goth, even I'm too young to have been part of the original movement, and I'm 31.

HA! Babybat.

Emo is what made me realize I'm old. When I actually heard myself saying something about how *in my day* music was better.

Actually, ran across this to prove us wrong. 'Pparently people ARE getting stupider.


HK, carbon-dateable.

Senor Hugo wrote:

hellkitty wrote:Not quite: Bowdlerizing means more like pulling out the bits that a proper Victorian father would find too racy and inappropriate to read in front of his kids. So, no more 'fishmonger' or 'coney-catching' references. (Nowadays no one even gets those any more so they can't even figure out to be offended).

But yeah, every time I teach The Bard (tm) I invariably have to have the complaint 'why doesn't someone translate this into, like, English?'

It is English.

'No, I mean like modern English.'

It is modern English.

Blank stares.

Then they all go to sparknotes and leave me alone as obviously mentally dense.

HK, brains of steel.

If only the schools still allowed the traditional punishment of lighting the dumber kids on fire.

Scatterlung? but yeah i would agree todays kids are getting a little DEEDEEDEE

This is what's happening.

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=22041

I can confirm it, I actually live next door to those people.

First I want to say; Lazy does not always breed stupid and the same can be said for stupid not always breeding lazy. It's an unfortunate fact of my life that I am infact very much lazy...But, on the other hand I am not stupid.

The next thing I would like to say is this. People as a whole are lambs being lead to the slaughter by both mass media and the goverment. The media realizes this capitilizes on this by marketing items and services that are worthless. A good examplo of this almost happened to my father. He recieved a phone call from a marketer offering him a so called free trip to the bahamas. The truth of the matter was that they where going to have him pay full price on the tickets and pay any taxes on the ports they visit. Needless to say the trip would have been far from free. In terms of the goverment leading us to the slaughter take a look at the no child left behind act. The act forces good teachers to teach children how to score high on exams but, doesn't provide a way for students to learn about the real world and how to survive in it. As I stated above the media and government are leading us to the slaughter.

Problem is we are letting them do it.



Please forgive any spelling and grammactical errors.

I'd kind of categorize what Tristar's dad almost fell for as a 'con' and not quite the level *I* think of when I think of 'rock-f***ing stupid'. Cons are set up to take in the trusting who don't think because they trust authority. STILL an enormous social problem, but trusting authority isn't the same as being as dumb as, say....

The woman who called 911 because McDonald's ran out of Chicken McNuggets.

The woman who locker herself *inside* her car and called 911.

The cop who swiped a bag of marijuana as evidence, had his wife bake it into brownies, ate them, and then called 911 thinking he was dying.

The guy who called 911 for medical aid because he was having problems breathing. When the dispatcher asked what he was doing before he started wheezing, he replied he was running from the police.

See? Then there's Stupid And Devious Thinking They're Smart subset, such as my students who think I don't know how to check 'properties' to see when they started their paper, or won't check google for plagiarism, or the three students that one final exam who all insisted that their moms had gotten into car accidents and that's why they were late. And I wasn't supposed to notice that their final papers were still warm from the printer.

This latter category gets *incensed* if you confront them. "Are you calling me a liar?!"

HK, yes. Yes I am. An uncreative and unprincipled liar, too.