Liars. And the idiots who listen to them and go: oh yeah, this thing that you’ve just said contrary to common sense and all my own experience, that must be true because you have said it so authoritatively and because I want to believe it! For instance, here’s one.
So if you find yourself saying the “aches and pains” are just a natural part of getting old, time to stop and realize that it is NOT natural. There is nothing natural about increased inflammation and joint pain. There is nothing natural about someone’s memory going as they get old. There is nothing natural about sexual impotence in your 40s. These are all signs that the body isn’t working correctly and steps need to be taken. But first we need to stop thinking that getting older means we have to experience these problems. There are many people who are still sharp as a tack, energetic and have no need for pain killers in their later years. As an old saying goes “It’s ok to get older….just don’t age in the process”.
Now, obviously a lot of health problems are elective, and come back to diet. If you’re an idiot, you will go on to say that they are all elective. If you’re not an idiot, and you know anything about memory research (for instance) or brain physiology you’ll know that actually, there is something eminently natural about memory getting bad as you get old. Even the older “sharp as a tack” people you know have very obvious and measurable signs of cognitive decline. Does this mean we’re all destined to become doddering fools? Obviously not. Does it mean that a great deal of improvement is possible? Obviously so. But of course that doesn’t make such good copy.
For an even stupider and more obviously ridiculous example, see his point #3.
Different person, different topic, same stupidity.
But the problem of saying “I don’t have time to read that” applies to anything – it could be blogs but it could be those really long articles in the Atlantic that scream: “I know no one is reading this article! I only wrote it to get a book deal!”The reality is that you have time to read everything.
Here’s what to do if you feel like you can’t get a grip on your reading pile:
Stop talking about information overload. That term is for weaklings. Guess what? Generation Y never talks about information overload. That’s because they know how to process information better than anyone else. That’s actually what they were doing when their parents told them to turn off the TV and the music and log off of IM and do their homework.
If you think you have time to read everything worth reading, you’re not a savvy information consumer, you’re a fucking retard. A hundred years ago nobody could read everything worth reading, and now you can’t even read everything worth reading in your own field, whatever that might be. Pretending that you can use some badass “Generation Y” strategy to get around this means only that one of the defining traits of Gen Y must be brain damage. And don’t even get me started on this “multi-tasking” bollocks. Unless you define multi-tasking as “doing a variety of things at the same time except slower and worse than if I had done each of them individually one right after the other” then common sense, and all the research, points the other way.
I don’t mind so much people saying stupid shit; what gets to me, for some reason, is the legion of commenters who always pop up saying: “thanks for another great post!1!! this is exzactly what ive always known and im frowarding it to a thousand of my frendz!! u r an inspiration to everyone!” These people should be rounded up and sent to work camps, where their reality-denying could be put to better use.