Beavis and Butthead rise again...

I don’t know how many of you remember MTV’s first animated show Beavis and Butthead but I’m willing to bet you’ve seen enough of it to realize that their mentality covers quite a span of several generations of ignorant American teens on the loose and wreaking havoc in unbelievable ways. Now, mind you, this type of silly adolescent behavior is not new and has been going on even before the 1950s but besides proliferating, exponentially (in many ways I won’t go into quite as yet) I have not seen the like so much as what we might see on America’s Funniest Home Videos or South Park- just this year. An imitator of the so-called ground-breaking Beavis and Butthead, South Park came after the Dumb Duo and was rather sophisticated by comparison!  

     Am I surprised that grown young adults are pulling the same antics, such as what Roman Atwood puts up on You Tube? This one gets paid for every 1,000 views of all these dangerous shenanigans he video records- mostly from his car- and is becoming rich for staying stupid. Yes, this deplorable state of the world’s sense of adulthood is making out big for getting hurt, pulling mean and evil pranks and then sitting back and laughing at it all as though it’s a positive and good act. Lunacy.

     This year I have seen more real-life copy cats on roadways, bike paths, steep stone staircases, etc. with anything from skateboards, makeshift go-carts, handsprings or just about anything that may not move. I wonder why safety and using your brain effectively has lost its appeal for normal human existence? Some of what I’ve seen involves adults my own age! As far back as High School I have wondered to myself if certain individuals I knew (or was only casually acquainted with- wink!) would ever make it past twenty years of age- for any number of reasons. I myself tested the boundaries of the laws, natural laws and supernatural laws but all that was pretty much over by the time I was fifteen and was an owner and driver of my own car.

    

     I know why this nonsense continues and no one seems to want to put an end to it. We’ve been laughing at all of it. Nothing eggs on a prankster more than wallowing in the nonsense and laughing. It’s time to sober up and stop laughing at people getting hurt, accidentally or purposefully hurting themselves. Reality doesn’t bite but a barbed-wire fence does! Stop giggling at people destroying things and other people. What is the humor in that, I ask?

     Tracing this back to the origins of this lunacy, I remember going to see the first Gremlins movie. If you haven’t seen it, check it out on Netflix or wherever you might get 80s classics. The film was pitched at kids but adults were telling me to go see it. As I watched these somewhat cute and cuddly beings begin to turn into evil killers and children laughing at all the mayhem they perpetrated I knew that I had hit a fork in the road with humanity. I remember telling every female client of mine not to take their kids or grandkids to this movie unless they were willing to set them aside afterward and tell them that it was reprehensible behavior and not a bit funny. Maybe only half of them took me seriously but I have noticed that people in my own age group are into some wacky type of tawdry culture. Laughing at idiotically dangerous acts and being the instigator of them is a brand new type of izzat which wouldn’t make a lick of sense to our parents or even someone much younger. Personally, I wish they’d all grow a brain and stop the nonsense. This world is violent enough without that garbage and these people are definitely old enough to know better. The best thing I could say is, “Grow up!” I have now said enough.

The Castle Lady