You’re so vain I bet you think this post is about you

Becauseimmissy_ on YouTube made the video "The Illiterate Boyfriend Epidemic" and I have some thoughts…

Illiteracy is a problem because being able to read is a whole life skill. But it’s the kind of problem that someone can work at to solve.

There needs to be more adult literacy courses out there.

A type of "Sesame Street"-content for adults. Just commercials or little videos or whatever that provide fun content to teach people valuable knowledge.

We have a lot of instances in movies and TV shows where bad information is whole chestedly provided as though it’s true. Like "Everyone knows that if you ask someone if they’re a cop, they have to tell you. It’s the law." And that’s a total lie.

There’s a lot of misinformation that people just accept because they grew up with it being constantly regurgitated by movies and TV shows. Just straight up lies that became part of the culture because none of us knew better.

There’s a reason why for a while there people were dying from "helpful" people stabbing holes in their neck to help them breathe. Or why people will stab someone with epinephrine to help with an allergic reaction and then not take the person to the hospital. Because movies portray epinephrine as some kind of magic, when really it’s just a stopgap measure to make time enough to get the victim to the hospital.

In "Pulp Fiction," Mia Wallace goes straight home after nearly dying from an overdose.

Those drugs were still in her body. She probably died in bed later that night. And if she didn’t, it was a true miracle. At the very least, there’s a good chance she burned parts of her brain or damaged her organs. I mean, she was still full of drugs!

In the late 90s and early 2000s people died for the stupidest of reasons, likely tied into trusting things they learned from watching TV and movies.

There was a guy in my town that got permanent brain damage in high school because he truck surfed after watching "Teen Wolf" with Michael J. Fox. I never knew him before his accident, but meeting him as a permanently disabled adult? It’s sad. Like, who knows what course his life would have taken if he hadn’t decided to stand up in the back of a truck bed.

Teen alcohol and drugs were completely normalized by movies and TV to the point that alcohol and drugs are accepted as a part of normal teenage life. Never mind that those actors were playing roles, and that the actors were in their early to mid 20s–not teenagers at all.

There were so many stories in the early 2000s of teenagers dying from alcohol poisoning. And there’s so many cases of date rape related to the normalization of rape culture in movies and TV.

Like, there are so many Gen-Xers that recount stories of their lives, and you can visibly watch as the realization sets in that "That was fucked up."

That they were assaulted. That they were abused. That they were taken advantage of. That they could have been hurt or even died for something stupid.

All you need to do is listen to stories of people that were members of college fraternities in the 70s/80s/90s/early 2000s. Like, it wasn’t regarded as sexual assault because it was men doing it to other men, but yeah. That was sexual assault, dudes. You were assaulted.

Even someone holding you down to violently fart in your face… That’s sexual assault. That’s someone forcing their butt onto your face. They would go to prison if that was in the UK now.

So the idea that a large number of adults are functionally illiterate? I am not surprised, but I am horrified.

When schools stopped teaching phonics, that was a serious and noticeable failure on the part of the system. Whole generations of children were basically left to flail as they faked their way through elementary school and middle school and high school. The Bush era "No Child Left Behind Act" was basically an excuse to fail the children.

What do you mean they took money away from struggling schools because the kids were struggling to learn and gave more money to schools that were already successful? Did they really think that would result in schools with no money doing better? Or did they know that the struggling schools would simply pass kids on to the next level even if those kids hadn’t actually learned the basics?

Is it a surprise that there are adults today that are functionally illiterate? That they graduated from high school yet can barely read?

No. Because the system was damaged by malicious individuals in the name of party politics.

The proverbial "They" have been trying to dumb down the American public for a long time, because they know that dumb people will vote against their own interests because they don’t know it’s against their interests. The Orange Man was only unique because of his tendency to say the quiet part out loud.

They all want to see the public being dull and ignorant and stupid, because that makes it easier to manipulate people.

There’s a reason why people voted for tariffs without knowing what tariffs would mean.

Like, people know about the Boston Tea Party, but they don’t realize that it was about people protesting tariffs on tea. You mention the Boston Tea Party to some people, and all they picture is whatever cartoon they watched as a kid that featured the cast time traveling to old timey Boston.

"Why are they throwing tea into the water? Oh, it’s to fight British rule!" When actually it was people being pissed off about there being massive tariffs on the price of tea. Like, "Why do I have to pay $1 for tea when I only had to pay $0.50 LAST YEAR?!? Why am I giving money to the British government as an undeclared tax that doesn’t benefit me or anyone I know?!?"

People were happily advertising for tariffs and for Brexit without knowing what they even meant.

And I think a big part of it was functional illiteracy.

Our education system was tampered with and nearly destroyed by malfeasance. Because terrible people realized that the best way to "mind control" the public is to target the children.

And now people have grown up and they’re voting and they’re making lifelong decisions that effect themselves and others, and it’s surprising and horrifying to watch some of the things they’re doing.

Illiteracy is a problem that NEEDS to be addressed.

It needs to be destigmatized and people who can read and write need to help the people around them. Creators need to make edutainment content. There needs to be adult books that are intended for people without a strong reading ability. There needs to be easy to understand explanations of common and uncommon things.

It might make some people feel like "stupid" people are being pandered to, but that is simply a sense of entitlement. Ignorance is not a crime, it’s someone that simply hasn’t learned something yet. And we should all be helping them because helping others makes us all better people.

I think the videos of girlfriends getting their boyfriends to read a list of words out loud with the intent to mock their inability to read says a lot about the girlfriends.

Like, you can ask your boyfriend to read the list of words, and the two of you can laugh about the problems he’s having doing it. But why are you recording him and posting him on the Internet to be mocked by your friends and millions of strangers? Why are you showing off how much disdain you have for him? Your complete lack of care and affection? It’s gross.

You don’t need to be making that kind of content.

You’re not making the world a better place. You’re not making yourself look good in the public eye. And while people are going to laugh at and abuse your boyfriend in the comments, at the end of the day everyone is just going to think that you’re the asshole.

Your boyfriend is functionally illiterate. You have identified a problem he is having, and rather than helping him, you’re laughing at him and insulting him online. It’s a really bad look.

And it makes people who can’t read feel ashamed of themselves. They feel like they have to hide and cover up their inability rather than proactively learning how to read.

Sometimes I think that social media "trends" are paid for and promoted by nefarious groups of people with the intent to "mind control" the public. And ignorant people jump on board the trends without realizing they’re being manipulated and used.

It’s time to wake up, people. The assholes driving the car are in a death cult and they’re about to take us all off a cliff.

~Harper Kingsley

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