Tag: philosophy

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The Blaming Boomer Bane

Long gone are the days where we can envision a sweet, nurturing grandmotherly figure guiding the stumbling, carefree youth by hand to a better future. In sweet grandma’s place, we find a cantankerous old woman, each wrinkle of her forehead showing bitterness or entitlement in place of wisdom. The image of the grandfather, looking out into the distance, imparting his accrued wisdom over the years to the future generations in his children and grandchildren, has warped into that of an angry old man screaming at the youth, spit dangling from the corners of his thinning mouth, verbally berating them for every little mistake or character “flaw” he chooses to see in them.

The older generations have left a very bad impression on the youth these days. A sizable portion of the old generations of today, just like those of the previous older generations before them, have shriveled up into bitter old prunes, intent on patronizing the young and criticizing every aspect of their lifestyle and culture. And it’s getting quite old. Pun intended.

For one, older generations blaming the young for everything bad happening today is nothing new. For as long as life has been recorded and documented, this phenomenon has been going on.  It even has a term: Juvenoia. It’s better known by the proverbial saying “Back in my day…(insert something that was “better” back in the day here).” Yawn. I’m sure drinking hose water and riding on your grandpappy’s wagon was a blast, but circumstances change the world and therefore the ones born into such change. 

So why do the blaming Boomers blame everything on the [Gen X and] Millennial generation? The irony of it is quite baffling to me. After all, Boomers and Gen Xers raised Millennials.  So when they blame Millennials, they’re indirectly blaming themselves for their failures to raise them right (though they would never acknowledge this logical fallacy). 

Youtuber VSauce made an excellent in-depth video on Juvenoia that goes into much needed details about why Boomers (or older people in general) have a tendency to complain about the laziness and incompetence of the younger generations. It’s a really great analysis on why humans in general tend to behave this way as they age. I highly recommend anyone watch this for perspective:

Vsauce exhaustively researched psychological findings on the Juvenoia matter. He discussed the nostalgia effect, the endowment effect, the reminiscence bump, and overall poor memory of the past among many other factors contributing to Juvenoia.  I explored this issue on my own and came up with additional psychological aspects contributing to the blaming Boomer culture. If I were to shorthand it, it’d be something along the lines of: “The Greatest Generation unintentionally reared spoiled, entitled Boomer Brats, pioneering the “[All about] Me Generation.” Now, time for the longhand explanation.  

One day not too long ago, Google noticed I was searching for the word “Boomer” a lot, so the YouTube algorithm recommended a video about this gentleman, Steve Allen, recounting his reasons for spoiling his Boomer children and how he came to regret it. It’s a short video this time, about 5 minutes:

For those who still can’t bring themselves to watch the video in full: Steve Allen was a successful writer and TV host among a plethora of other things. Before all that, he was a poor sixteen-year-old who ran away from home during the Depression era in hopes of finding a way to eat and survive. In the video, he illustrates those dire times in heartbreaking detail (at one point he mentions how he had to resort to eating trash to survive and thoroughly enjoying his “dumpster finds”). He not only provided insight into the gravity of his times, but also the times that came after. What came after the Greatest Generation pulled us out of the Depression post-World War II? The Boomers, of course. And boy, were those the luckiest bastards to be born at that time…

As Steve Allen mentions in the video, the Greatest never wanted their children to suffer the same fate they did when they were young and poor and starving. So to compensate for their own suffering, in a way, they did what any normal, kind-hearted person would do for the betterment of their children and hustled for a big-paying job and set up a trust fund or bank account specifically for their children. 

By the time the children were college age, the Greatest had already saved enough money for them to go to college free and with a sizable amount in their savings account thereafter. With no exorbitant student loan debt, the Boomers seemingly had it all: money in the bank, little to no debt, a college education that granted them opportunities to work high-paying jobs, and cheap prices on everything from houses to cars to groceries and gas.  They grew up in affluent, suburban neighborhoods with little to no crime and no real troubles, and lived happily into most of their young adult lives, too (preceding the Reign of Reagan which cursed the whole damn nation to hell).

Despite all the privileges Boomer children enjoyed, they were never satiated. Never being satisfied with what was handed to them and always demanding more for themselves, they became known as the official ‘Me Generation.’ Enjoying the majority of America’s affluence as well as holding the most power at the voting polls in sheer numbers granted them almost totalitarian-like control over the political and economical scenes. This is articulated by Youtuber Economics Explained in this video.  Feel free to skim or watch in depth, but it’s another knowledgeable, albeit younger, gentleman analyzing the history of the Boomers seizing power for themselves at everyone else’s expense. 

So we have these privileged Boomers who grew up in idyllic conditions, earned a very affordable college education, landed good-paying jobs and bought a house and cars for their family while accumulating mass amounts of wealth on top of their trust funds and savings accounts with which their Greatest parents’ provided them. They also had practically full reign over politics through sheer voting power and could sway policies in their favor, everyone else be damned. So what? What does this have to do with why Boomers blame Millennials for every struggle of today? Trust me, I’m getting there! I need to build up this story more first. Which leads me to the wonderful psychological aspects of living a privileged life as the Boomers did.

The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin posted a research paper on the sociological and psychological effects one has from living in a higher socioeconomic setting. The researchers (Côté et. al) surveyed and statistically analyzed over 3,000 participants across four separate US studies to draw their conclusions. They hypothesized that those who grew up in a high socioeconomic standing (SES) and continued to live that way into adulthood had what they called “sustained privilege” that led them to feel and behave entitled to privileges not bestowed upon other generations.  

Turns out the “sustained privilege” hypothesis was in fact corroborated through the data… 

The meta-analysis of the studies “supports the sustained privilege hypothesis that higher income individuals with higher income parents feel the most entitled.” Boom. Here’s the first piece of  peer-reviewed, scholarly evidence supporting the idea that privileged individuals suffer the worst cases of entitlement and self-interest, to the brink of sheer narcissism. I’m guessing this is probably where the coining of the “Me Generation” originated. 

You can protest that this is but one study (actually, it was a meta-analysis of four combined studies in the US on the same issue) and therefore requires more replication to support this “sustained privilege” theory. You would have plenty of other data to choose from to confirm this finding in this Journal of Experimental Social Psychology paper or for the less academically-inclined, a NY Times article confirming the very same findings. If that still isn’t enough for you, I suggest you research “High SES entitlement” on Google Scholars for your own research, or just watch this YouTube video on a Professor’s analysis of the Boomers’ privilege in the 40s, 50s, and 60s:

(the first 7 minutes or so are the most informative on this particular issue). 

So we have a lot of proof now that those who grew up with high SES privileges and continue to live with high SES privileges are the most entitled brats of them all. We also have evidence that they became quite self-centered and narcissistic due to these privileges they took for granted (see video link directly above for reference). This narcissism led such high SES individuals to act in their own best interests, neglecting the needs of all others. And so Boomers who were oftentimes born, raised, and continued to live in such prime conditions throughout their adulthood voted for policies that would directly benefit them and no other group, simply because they felt entitled to those privileges above anyone else. Their counterculture movement of the 50s and 60s was soon forgotten and even reversed in the 1970s and 80s as the Reign of Reagan terrorized politics, all due to the Boomers voting such politicians into office in the first place. 

Reagan propagated the epic failure of the War on Drugs, stripped the people’s rights away one by one through the repeal of such policies as the Fairness Doctrine Act, and brainwashed the Boomers using very biased media that no longer required scrutiny on the accuracy of their data sources, thanks to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine Act.

Boomers, who were already living beyond comfortably, allowed themselves to be brainwashed by these horrific radio and TV news sources, convincing their entitled selves that they earned their money through sheer hard work, but not these ‘damn Millennials’ who want everything to be free without working for it. And this is where we’ve landed today.

The Boomers, being as privileged and influential as they were in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, reaped all the benefits at the expense of the well-being of their children and their children’s children (i.e., Gen Xers and Millennials). They continue to confirm their prejudice of the young through biased media sources like the notorious Fox News, which further divides the regular American people against each other, especially the Old vs the Young Americans.

Consider the fact that Fairleigh Dickinson University conducted a research survey a decade ago that found Fox News viewers were less knowledgeable about political matters than those who didn’t watch the news at all! I mean, YIKES. That’s really fucking tragic. How could you know less about political matters watching Fox News than people who didn’t even watch the news?  The answer is simple, really. Media sources are morally corrupt after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine Act, and therefore perfectly okay with brainwashing you. Now, to prevent some stupid Fox News loyalists from accusing me of being a biased “socialist” or whatever stupid label they want to post stamp on me, I will also highlight here that this Fairleigh Dickinson survey unveiled that MSNBC watchers were worse off than “no news watchers,” too. You see? Both red and blue news anchors are corrupt, brainwashing piles of shit!

So returning to the original point of this blog post: Historical documents, interviews, research, and surveys reveal to us here that 1) Boomers in general were quite privileged growing up compared to subsequent generations; 2) their “sustained privilege” basically transformed them into the self-centered, narcissistic “Me Generation”—a term specifically coined for the Boomers—that always prioritized themselves over anyone else, their Gen X children and Millennial children and grandchildren be damned; 3) their overwhelming numbers lent them immense voting power at the polls, which had them voting in policies that benefited them at the expense of everyone else and ultimately led to: 4) descendants of Boomers (Gen X and Millennials and now Zoomers) left with less opportunity, more debt from cruel, predatory loan practices (read 2003-2007 subprime mortgage loans and current student loans practices), and a heavy tax burden for younger generations to support this massive Boomer population of decrepit, patronizing old cranks into their retirements. You can imagine just how fucking delighted we are to be paying for these goobers’ lifelines.  I can guarantee you a good lot of these Bitter Boomers aren’t even remotely grateful for our taxes supporting their asses into their retirement, either. Such is the way of a narcissistic, “Me”-centered, entitled brat.

And now, to the final point: Incapable of empathy for others due to their “sustained privilege” which caused entitlement and narcissism, coupled with their willingness to be brainwashed by news sources like Fox News (and websites personally funded by business tycoons with huge stakes in the market) because exerting too much cognitive effort to do own scholarly research mAKe bRAin hUrT, and because they clearly suffer from cognitive dissonance and self-delusion on how hard-working they were compared to generations of today, Boomers feel the need to place all the blame on younger generations for any shortcomings of today. It’s the easiest scapegoat to blame the young for all of their secret self-loathing and deep-rooted sense of guilt for not earning everything they received and taking it all for themselves. Is this last point on cognitive dissonance, secret guilt, self-delusion, and self-loathing too far-fetched? I strongly beg to differ. 

Let’s start off with cognitive dissonance, since it’s a rather peculiar psychological concept. If you read the Wiki definition, you’ll see that it’s a psychological concept where one feels stress from the introduction of an uncomfortable fact or set of facts about oneself. To offset this sense of discomfort one feels when discovering a  not-so-nice-looking fact about oneself (in this case, “I was a privileged brat who had life easier than those living today do”), they act in contradictory ways to make themselves feel better and justify their reasoning for doing so. 

So in the case where it’s revealed that many Boomers led easier, more privileged lives than generations of today do, a Boomer suffering from cognitive dissonance would say something like, “When I was your age, I had to walk uphill to school both ways!” or “When I was your age, I had to work 70-80 hours every week!” This is obviously cognitive dissonance bullshit, considering that many Boomers didn’t have to work full-time or even part-time jobs to support their college education because pre-Reagan college was, in actuality, very cheap or very free :

Even if said Boomers did have to pay something for a college education, many times mommy and daddy money from their trust funds or personal savings accounts paid for tuition in full, or they rode on a full-paying scholarship, which almost never happens today. Or if you were like my entitled Boomer mother, your husband just paid them off. How convenient! (Needless to say, my entitled Boomer mother wasn’t the least bit grateful for this, as she swore she would ‘take everything she could get from him” when they inevitably divorced. Funny how my personal account of an ungrateful, entitled Boomer parent seeking more, more, more for themself perfectly lines up with the material discussed thus far in this post). But I digress. Just read this random forum asking Boomers how they afforded their college tuition and you’ll see what I mean. Many thanks to the contributing Boomers who are not suffering from cognitive dissonance for providing HONEST and very insightful answers in this forum by the way.

The “least fortunate” of the Boomers without mommy and daddy money or a scholarship had to work (gasp!) a part-time job to afford their tuition. This is laughable to me, because I had to work a part-time job in college just to feed myself, none of my underpaid work funds going towards my even heftier college tuition. But cognitive dissonance doesn’t like facts that make oneself look bad. So these Boomers who can’t handle or admit they had it easier in a lot of ways cook up all sorts of crazy fallacies to justify why they deserve what they have today: fat pensions and bank accounts, an unnecessarily oversized house among plenty of other luxuries they enjoy that we cannot today without paying an arm and a leg for it (I shudder to think what that privatized medical bill would cost…). 

We now see how cognitive dissonance makes one feel uncomfortable about one’s unearned fortunes. We can observe how that uncomfortable cognitive dissonance feeling leads one on the path of self-delusion about one’s personal achievements (“I had to walk uphill bOtH WaYs!”) as a means to justify one’s fortunes and absolve oneself of any guilt felt from being the lucky one who screwed over the succeeding generations for personal gain. But from where am I drawing the self-loathing conclusions? 

In all honesty, it’s purely instinct. I suspect there’s a lot of secret self-loathing going on underneath the privileged Boomer’s surface. When I watched the documentary Born Rich (2003) by Johnson & Johnson heir Jamie Johnson, I learned some very significant lessons pertaining to this matter. For one, when something is given to you rather than earned, a lot of the heirs and heiresses question whether or not they deserve such fortune (as they should). Jamie Johnson was one such rich guy. 

Noticeably perturbed by this, Jamie constantly asked himself why he of all people deserved to inherit such a fortune over others. One of Jamie’s ultra-wealthy friends from the documentary, Josiah Hornblower, of the Vanderbilt fortune, felt similarly. He recalled feeling very depressed about the whole inheritance thing, and finds true happiness and joy only when he’s working alongside the middle class citizens. (You can see how his empty eyes light up with life when recalling his two-year work experience with the regular folk in the documentary.) Of course, Jamie and Josiah are one of the only privileged ones from that documentary who dig deep enough inside themselves to search for merit not related to their inherited fortunes. The other rich privileged kids of the documentary, in one form or another, rely on the mechanisms of cognitive dissonance to temporarily reprieve them of any feelings of guilt or self-loathing. Prime example from this documentary: Ivanka Trump uses cognitive dissonance to express how “proud she is” of Daddy Trump for his many “achievements.” Considering I’m typing this in the year 2022, 2 years after Trump signed the OPEC+ deal that would cause oil prices to soar artificially so that shareholders could enjoy higher earnings in their stocks while we the regular people were the ones forced to pay for their scam through overinflated gas prices, and also considering how three of his elected Supreme Court goons reversed a landmark Supreme Court decision of 50 years standing, I’m trying really hard not to laugh in disgust as I type that out.

Aside from that documentary, others on YouTube have chimed in about this “instinct”: about how the privileged and entitled secretly loathe themselves because of their lack of true self-achievement. Check out the comments on this previously mentioned YouTube video (where TV host Steve Allen regrets spoiling his Boomer children). For convenience, I’ll share some of the top voted comments relating to this concept here:

Wow! I’m nowhere near the only person who feels the same way! Nearly 7,500 others agree with me from that first comment alone! The second comment there really woke me up to the idea that privilege + lack of self-achievement = self-loathing: “They [entitled Boomers] feel really jaded towards younger Generations despite the fact that they were the ones who raised the younger Generations.” Couldn’t have said that better myself.

So here we have personal anecdotes, scholarly and peer-reviewed research and surveys, documentaries, YouTube videos, and interviews from professionals on the Boomer subject all at hand (thank you, Internet) to explain why Boomers blame Millennials for everything. The long handed conclusions confirm my shorthanded one from the beginning of this post, with a little bonus: “The Greatest Generation unintentionally reared spoiled, entitled Boomer Brats, pioneering the “[All about] Me Generation…who screwed over everyone else, including their own children and grandchildren, so their entitled asses could reap more for themselves from the system, everyone else be damned. And because they’re narcissistic, they have the gall to place all the blame on their children and grandchildren.”

This spoiled group of Babies felt deep-rooted guilt and self-loathing for their privileged lives, which in turn led to employing the mechanisms of cognitive dissonance to make themselves feel better about the whole situation. This cognitive reprieve has Boomers denying their privileged positions, so they can continue undermining and screwing over the generations succeeding them for personal benefit without feeling the least bit guilty about it. Cognitive dissonance is a very ugly, nasty and rampant psychological phenomenon. In this specific situation, it has compelled a group of old people to delude themselves and deny the truth: that during their privileged youth, they had almost everything in their grasp. During their adulthood, they stole everything from the youth of today through predatory Wall Street loans, actively voting at the polls for policies that would strip our rights away one by one for their own personal gain (read privatized healthcare), and further bleeding us dry with our tax dollars supporting them into their ungrateful retirement.  

I never meant to generalize an entire group, but the Boomers left me no choice. Barrage after barrage of complaints about my “lazy” and “entitled,” generation spending all our money, somehow, on coffee, cellphones (which everybody uses) and avocado toast, from these fossil fuels for bloggers, has left me intolerant of any ignorant statements they make about Millennials.

In all honesty, I’m pissed off. Personally growing up with an entitled, narcissistic Boomer mother was enough for me. But enduring every other Millennials’ and Gen Xers’ equally entitled Boomer parents, too? Hell no. 

Now before you say it, I will. I know not all Baby Boomers were rich and spoiled and entitled. That’s not how the world works, thankfully, otherwise, we’d probably already be extinct by now.  But for all those privileged Blaming Boomers beating on the youth? A hearty fuck you to you. 🖕

I am sick and tired of the Blaming Boomer Bane. The toxic word vomit that spews from their entitled, out-of-the-loop, obsolete mouths has me fed up. I wake up every day now infuriated by the world they’ve created for us. A world that is overheated, over-polluted, overpopulated—no thanks to our current Boomer Supreme Court of 2022—and overpriced. A world where my rights are being privatized (read healthcare and education), stripped from me if I’m not rich enough to retrieve them. As I’m bled and hung to dry further through my taxes financially supporting this ungrateful bunch of Babies, resentment is the only feeling that remains. But the Babies take it even one step further than that, having the audacity to blame their byproducts, in the form of their offspring, for every crisis happening today. This is the worst time to be alive in America since 1929, and it is not the youth who are to blame.

Addendum Bonus:

George Carlin says it like it is about the Whining Baby Boomers 🍼
The Brainwashing of My Dad (documentary) explains how Boomers were brainwashed from radio and TV shows.
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How to Deal with Annoying People

Annoying people have that subtly prodding and poking nature to them that at first only slightly irritates—like that of a persistent fly or mosquito hovering around you on a hot day—but, compounded over time, can transform you, the unwilling recipient, into quite the impressive hothead or hermit.  It’s therefore important to learn how to deal with the most irritating types in the healthiest ways possible. To save your sanity from losing its grip and exploding (or imploding, depending on your personality type), it’s best to identify the types of people who irk you the most, and seek out the most effective ways to deal with each type of nuisance. 

In no specific order, here is a list of the Types of annoying people, why they are the way they are, and what we can do about them to better brace ourselves against their constant testing of our patience.  

The Complainer

We’ve all had to endure the person who seemingly can’t do anything but complain about the world and people around them. Day in and day out, there is something The Complainer must grumble, moan, or gripe about. It’s almost as if this type of annoying person finds catharsis in releasing their pent up frustrations in the form of complaints. Sometimes the complaints are warranted, most times they’re insignificant and irritating to everyone. As the complaints pile up, our patience and tolerance for them dwindle in an inverse correlation until we can no longer stand to even be around this type of person. 

Why: Why is a Complainer such a complainer? They learned growing up that all they needed to do was complain to others to get what they wanted. A worn out, tired and/or enabling type of parent, seeking a moment’s peace in the household, relents to The Complainer’s constant griping by providing them with that which relieves them of their barrage of complaints, inevitably reinforcing their behavior. The Complainer learns with time that they can simply complain about everything in order to get relief from it through others. This is a very self-destructive type of annoying person. Their learned behavior to complain as a means to get what they ultimately want inevitably affects their attitude, transforming them into habitually negative-minded individuals. Habitually negative attitudes lead to even more negative behavior—in this case, in the form of complaining—and the cycle continues in a positive feedback loop system . This self-perpetuating cycle cannot cease to exist until The Complainer learns to act and react differently to their environment and daily circumstances.

What We Can Do About The Complainer: To save your own sanity and prevent falling into The Complainer’s trap of being the recipient of their constant barrage of complaints, you must not positively reinforce their behavior. 

Positive reinforcement in Psychology is the act of supporting a specific type of action or behavior through rewards. Whenever you appease The Complainer by providing them with exactly what they want when they complain, you are reinforcing their bickering nature, subconsciously teaching them that if they complain, they will get what they want from you. You must deter their complaining nature instead through negative reinforcement, removing a positive reward from them—in this case, your listening and appeasement of their complaints—in order to stop them from continuing this highly irritating behavior. The next time you find yourself caught in the middle of The Complainer’s tirade of endless bickering, simply walk away and ignore them. This will teach them that if they want you to do something for them, they’ll need to approach you in a healthier, more productive—and far less annoying—way. You’re doing yourself, and them, a favor when you do. 

The Braggart

The pretentious nature of The Braggart subtly gnaws at our sanity with each unbearable conversation we have with them, centered solely around themselves. At first conversation, you may find The Braggart to be a source of inspiration as you listen to how ‘successful’ or ‘smart’ or ‘super talented’ they are about their endeavors. But with time, perhaps even in that initial conversation, you realize that the only prowess and intellect they possess is the one to have initially fooled you of all their wild achievements. Once you discover their true windbag nature—that their badges of honor and achievements they’ve prattled on and on about are nothing more than blowing wind—you grow resentful of the time squandered listening to a hopeless achiever who is incapable of separating their dreamed up self-image from their underachieving, real one.

Why: What leads a person on the futile path—futile, because no one stays to listen to them for too long—of The Braggart? Low self-esteem from lack of motivation and achievement is one reason. Another, according to renowned author of The Art of Seduction, Robert Greene, is selfishness:

“Words have a place, but too much talk will generally break the spell, heightening surface differences and weighing things down. People who talk a lot often talk about themselves. They have never acquired that inner voice that wonders, Am I boring you? To be a Windbag is to have a deep-rooted selfishness.”

Looked at from this perspective, it’s only rational to assume that people who can only talk about themselves are incapable of caring for anyone but themselves. And that is essentially a fact about the Braggart with which you must come to terms: In any given situation, their self-interests will always supersede yours. That doesn’t make for a good friend or individual, now does it?

 In a nutshell, The Braggart is nothing but bullshit fluff that has puffed itself into meaning—for a brief, passing time. Their self-centeredness and assuredly selfishness render them unsociable. Despite all the airy, self-enhancing words they pair themselves with when bragging to others in the desperate hope that one of them will actually stick, The Braggart is nothing more than a self-centered underachiever in denial. You’re simply wasting your time listening to and believing what they have to say about themselves.

What We Can Do About The Braggart: 

The Braggart has a lot of self-esteem and egocentric issues to work out with themself. That is not the responsibility of their begrudging listeners. Perhaps speaking with a professional therapist can relieve them of their deep-rooted issues.  If you are not a professional psychologist, there is nothing you can do about The Braggart’s incessant boasting except nod a few times in conversation and find an exit, lest you be stuck listening to their prideful drivel for hours on end. You could also call them out on their bullshit, every time they start a monologue about themselves, but I’ve seen where that goes in the long run: nowhere but the burrows of their subconscious, to be willfully forgotten. 

The Negative Nancy

A little rain in our lives every now and then is good and healthy. It keeps things in perspective. It prevents us from taking big risks with little reward due to an overly sunny perspective. Think of literal rain in driving conditions: speeding on highways during fresh rainfall is a huge life-threatening risk with very little reward: you may get to the store or back home ten to fifteen minutes earlier, but at what risk and at what cost? Is the high risk and cost of injuring and killing others and yourself on the freshly rained on road worth it to save ten to fifteen minutes of your commute time? 

Negative perspectives on high-risk low-reward matters like driving on a freshly rained on road is one thing. A constant, chronic negative outlook and mindset on every matter is a whole other situation.

The issue with a Negative Nancy is that he or she looks through rainy glasses on a daily basis. Literally everything is viewed in a negative light for the Negative Nancy. Nothing is worth doing out of one’s comfort zone when the outlook always looks bleak and pointless. That is why a Negative Nancy’s lifestyle is as disappointing and disillusioned as their own thought processes. Through a self-fulfilling prophecy backed by the “What’s the point? Everything sucks” mentality, Negative Nancies dig a deeper and deeper Hole of Discontent for themselves and anyone else nearby they can drag in with them. Misery likes company, after all.

If Negative Nancies resorted to negative thoughts only to themselves, that would be one thing. But they spread their negative thoughts onto others like an infectious disease. With enough exposure, others will start viewing the world similarly to that of a Negative Nancy, corroding their optimism into sheer hopelessness. As Joe Rogan put it, “Negative people are cancer.”

Forget Negative People – Joe Rogan

Managing risk is fruitful; avoiding risk, and therefore reward, entirely because of a chronic, negative outlook on life is a death sentence on your soul. 

Why: Why are chronically negative people so negative? My guess is that they grew up too fearful of risk-taking. Perhaps their Negative Nancy parents always focused on negative outcomes instead of positive ones, and taught their children the same. Perhaps they were always sheltered growing up, and so they never left their comfort zones, which ultimately led them to a no-risk no-reward lifestyle. This in turn led them to see the world as disappointing and non-rewarding, which further reinforced their already negative mindset. 

Negative Nancy mindsets can also be triggered due to depression from external factors and circumstances. In a bad economy or corrupted political climate, it can be too easy to see nothing but the bleakness of those current realities. Unless one takes risks, puts themselves out there in the open in uncomfortable situations to change the current situation into something better, there is seemingly no hope for correction and improvement. This is what keeps a Negative Nancy forever in a self-perpetuating feedback loop: there is seemingly no reward on the other side based on their corrupted outlook, so the Negative Nancy doesn’t even bother to act for positive change. Their refusal to act digs them deeper into their self-constructed Hole of Discontent. And the cycle continues forevermore. They will continue looking only at the dark half of the planet, when the other half is soaked in sunlight.

What to do About the Negative Nancy: I don’t want to illustrate all cases of annoying people as hopeless, but the Negative Nancy is one of the most difficult to change, simply because their pernicious mindset leads to inaction and impotence. To correct that mindset takes years of therapy for them to get to the root of their issues. 

An exceptional individual who can tolerate a Negative Nancy’s constant negativity could miraculously lead them on a more lighted path through demonstration and perseverance. But what’s more likely to happen is the infiltration and infection of their negativity onto you if you stay too close to them. That negativity is so insidious you won’t see it coming until it’s already gnawed away at you.

Confronting the Negative Nancy about their pessimism is a start (“You should learn to see things in a more positive light”), but providing them with a rewarding incentive for action is best (“Maybe you just need to talk about these negative thoughts with a professional. They could help get to the root cause and help you get back on track.  Here’s a therapist I recommend…”).  

The Naysayer

The best way to crush someone’s dreams and aspirations is to introduce them to a Naysayer. The Naysayer is my least favorite of all annoying types of people for this exact reason.  Rather than just rain on your parade like a Negative Nancy, or complain to the point of saturation by The Complainer, or make your ears bleed from the nauseating self-promotion of The Braggart, the Naysayer goes directly for your life goals and dreams. 

“You cannot” are the two most destructive words to one’s self-esteem and happiness. And Naysayers are far too happy to offer up these words to others without second thought of their insidious effects. How many people dreamed up an ideal version of themselves, only to be scoffed at and told that it was impossible for them to achieve? How many disheartened adults grew up to be that way, unknowingly, because they were reared to believe they couldn’t when they definitely could have? How many people do we know in this world today whose souls were crushed once they sold their souls to the stagnant office life, chained to their desks, damned to an unhealthy sedentary lifestyle, locked indoors away from sunshine and opportunity, when they personally craved the excitement of exploration or the exhilaration from taking a risk to pave their own way in life through their passions? We all know far too many people with this ensconced lifestyle.  Most were victims of The Naysayers.

Why: What leads a Naysayer to crush someone else’s dream? Believe it or not, the dream crushing isn’t The Naysayer incentive. Rather, the Naysayer simply believes things are more often impossible than possible. 

They never took any risk in their lives or worked diligently towards a goal they strove to achieve. Whenever they did strive towards something, they gave up too quickly on it. They never learned to never give up. They grew up learning that getting a job to afford things was the end goal. Work was work, not something pleasant to dive into and obsess over. They never had a passion for something, and they never deemed something too important to disregard for the sake of a monotonous, normie lifestyle. 

The Naysayer is a perpetual follower of the societal norms they willingly chain themselves to in the hopes of “fitting into society.” For them, it’s better to be a boring but secure follower than a standout albeit standalone leader. Even worse, they feel the need to express this narrow minded perspective as loudly as they can whenever someone they know expresses the slightest interest in pursuing an unorthodox career path or, gasp, aims to strive for their dreams.

What We Can Do About The Naysayer:

The solution to dealing with my most abhorred annoying person is also my absolute favorite one.  The best way to completely silence a Naysayer is to simply prove them wrong. 

The best way to prove to them that achieving something great is possible, is by going out and doing the seemingly  impossible. Make them eat their own words and relish in the aftermath it instills in them. 


This is obviously one of those examples of easier said than done. It is a simplified proposal for a matter that can, in reality, take years to accomplish. But the longer it takes to prove them wrong, the more flavorful the reward. Don’t let the Naysayer mentality become ingrained in your belief system. Let their mentality be the “push” you need to put all your chips on the table, act on the pursuit of your dreams, and never look back. You will be happiest when you do. 

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Voting Red or Blue Has NOTHING to Do with You

Whether you vote Red or Blue, “they” are colorblind to you.

It’s a nice sentiment to be part of a team playing for the same goals. That’s why we’re such fanatics for sports.  We root for our team the loudest and proudest we can be, in hopes of seeing our team come out on top to represent, in some way, who we are and what we’re about. 

That’s all well and good when we’re dealing with sports teams, junk food, and fans synchronously in a drunken stupor at a sports stadium, but it’s a whole other thing when we crusade and parade similarly along more dangerous avenues, specifically when dealing with the menacing essence of politics.  Politics is a dangerous game we’re all connected to in some way, and the stakes can be very high for those most affected and influenced by it. It’s a serious game for all of us who are forced to abide by the legislation decided by the few in power. 

Why, then, do so many people treat politics and political parties like a sports match between two different teams instead of the more serious matter that it is?  Why do the Republican supporters call the Democratic ones “sensitive snowflakes,” and the Democratic ones to the Republicans as “uneducated rednecks,” the same way we name-call different sports teams and their fans?  Why do Red voters scoff at “all those idiots who watch CNN,” and Blue voters do the same for those “who only watch FOX News?”  Why do Red and Blue voters both blame each individual player from the other side for any supposed injustices committed? While the psychology of human tribalism provides a partial answer, the true answer unravels a far more elaborately woven plan they have devised.

They have managed over the years to cunningly and calculatingly divide us into groups that passionately oppose each other over the most trivial matters that are—somehow—emotionally triggering for us. The perfect current example of this: Florida governor’s recent controversial law passed banning teachers kindergarten through third grade from teaching anything about gender. There are more troubling matters relating to education, such as the current predation on young “adults” pursuing college who begrudgingly inflate the already massive $2 trillion student loan bubble for a chance—not even a guarantee—at finding a job immediately post-graduation to repay the debt plus interest. Is this, gender studies and awareness, the most salient concern of ours worth prioritizing over everything else education-related?  This is just one example of how more pressing matters take a backseat to issues of much smaller portent.

 They not only distract us from more alarming issues by constantly barraging us with news of minor urgency (How about them aliens? UFO stories have been used to distract us from larger issues as early as the 1950s), but they also deceive us with false accusations of the other team (2020 election fraud, anyone?). This is done surreptitiously to avoid detection from us, and we take the bait every time. The American people who would otherwise hold the power to decide which legislation is most important and which is most irrelevant to the current times are too distracted bickering amongst themselves over comparatively lesser issues such as LGBTQ discussions in elementary school education. 

Divide and conquer, as it’s appropriately called, is not a new occurrence by any means. It has been used throughout the ages to keep the people in check while they retain the power to rule over everyone.  It’s actually pretty common knowledge if you open your eyes to your surroundings without any political bias  towards one party or the other. This Renaissance actor does the best job at summing it all up:

“They” are the wealthiest, most powerful figures at the top of the world presently. They have nearly full reign to decide what we, their sheeple, can and cannot do. Political matters affect everyone, but only these few members of society dictate the legislation and policies that everyone else must adhere to save themselves. And if you think they only belong to one party or the other, think again. They are not affiliated singularly with either the Democratic or Republican parties. 

They are their own underground—more appropriately “aboveground”— network of elitists, motivated by one goal only: to collect as much wealth as possible in order to remain at the top of the political power spectrum.  For why would they want to distribute any of their massive amounts of wealth and privileges when it bestows upon them the power to rule over everyone else like the gods they envision themselves to be? 

Look at our Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell. Boy this guy is HATED right now. The senator of one of the poorest states, Kentucky, since 1985, he has amassed a net worth of over $134 million since 2019.  Do you think he’d share some of that wealth to his poor residents of Kentucky when they needed it most, such as during the Covid crisis? Of course not! He relentlessly fought against providing Americans $2000 stimulus checks for Covid relief in 2020, infuriating not only his natives from Kentucky, but everyone across the country.  Just look at the comments from his most recent Facebook page posts (from 2020, mind you):

If you return to that list of US Congress members by wealth again, you’ll notice how it is equally comprised of both Democratic and Republican members.  Of the top 50 wealthiest Congress members listed in this table, 31 are Republicans and 29 are Democrats.  The wealthiest congressman, Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida, leads by nearly $50 million at a whopping net worth of $259.7 million, with Virginia “Democrat” Senator Mark Warner following behind at a net worth of approximately $214.1 million. Speaker of the House “Democrat” Nancy Pelosi is ranked #10 on that list, with a net worth over $114 million. She amassed tens of millions of dollars during the height of the pandemic with stock trades that had prominent figures like Joe Rogan and many others speculating insider trading dealings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8TRVp-7l3Q&t=336s (start at the 3-minute mark)

How can a woman worth over $110 million understand the typical struggles everyday Americans face each day?  The short answer is, she can’t.  Neither can Mitch McConnell or any of them for that matter.  My point here is—and this is assuredly a difficult pill to swallow—whether they are affiliated with the Republican or Democratic party, they’re all the same. They may appear to vehemently oppose each other, but in reality, they are of the same super wealthy, elitist group who are only concerned about accumulating more and more wealth for themselves and their kin until the day they die, and even then, beyond the scope of death by bypassing the IRS estate tax through this loophole. 

They are so filthy rich, they can’t even guess the prices of normal everyday items at the grocery store, probably because they haven’t stepped foot in a grocery store for years (Don’t you have maids and assistants at your beck and call running all your errands for you, too?).  If they are so far separated from our way of living, how can you expect them to understand anything about our livelihoods? How can they possibly relate to us on any scale? Their opulent lifestyles, lush with golden toilets, marble staircases, and expansive mansions, so contrast with our own that they can’t possibly understand what it’s like to live under the current economic circumstances—soaring house and rental prices nationwide, inflation, and stagnant income to name a few—that we struggle with each day.

Their legislation reflects their ignorance of the average American’s current circumstances.  Towards the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020, when the federal government was handing out federal unemployment compensation, they were so out of the loop about our lifestyles that they were handing out $600 per week in addition to state unemployment which, when summed together, outearned the real monthly working wages of the average American. They actually believed that average Americans were earning more than they actually do. I wonder how that could affect their policies over us? (Premium costs on healthcare, income tax (only for the middle class, mind you; the wealthy elitists dodge their annual taxes), rental and housing, gas, and everything else they can capitalize on at our expense?) Of course, once they learned of their miscalculated errors on the average American income, they immediately and consequently decreased the Federal Unemployment earnings. Shocking behavior.  

They have committed far too many atrocities and willfully neglected the proper care of the American people to expound upon here. Considering the suggestive data here alone, though, it’s astounding how anyone could support these supercilious fools in power. They look down on us and separate themselves from us, as if they serve some higher purpose, so that they can shamelessly prioritize their avarice over our basic necessities for a comfortable, modern lifestyle. They neglect our basic needs to survive for the sole purpose of filling their already steep pockets further with disturbing amounts of wealth. And yet we blindly support their baseless words and promises, choosing to bicker amongst ourselves like indignant fanatics witnessing a foul play at a soccer game. 

We indulge in social media debates amongst ourselves, accusing this party of such and such monstrosity. We protest, violently in many cases, against the “other” political party, but the “parties” are merely a distraction for their end goals. The old accuse the young and vice versa; the right and left disrespectfully shoot each other down; the melting pot of races that should bring all Americans together instead segregate themselves; and we argue ad nauseum over frivolous matters such as pronoun usage and job thievery by “aliens”—a very divisive word in itself.  This divides us further and further, consequently weakening us more and more, while they all too comfortably sit atop their gilded thrones of disproportionate luxuries and look down upon us, smiling, knowing full well that they will be the ones who ultimately win this battle without so much as lifting a professionally manicured, opulently jeweled finger.

This disturbs me greatly, each revelation shooting flaring warning signals through my nerves to my core. I see what they’re doing—through the manipulative media and their unproductive press conferences—and what their true intent is. I can’t help but notice how they have corrupted our minds with their countless lies. I’m in disbelief over how successfully they’ve deployed their obsequious supporters to do their bidding for them. Their supporters willingly oblige, defending them far too loyally, oftentimes without receiving a single penny in compensation for their efforts online and in personal debates, maddeningly enough. I cannot ignore how utterly torn and divided We the People truly are at this time, our power waning with each successive political agenda or intentionally misleading social media post thrown into the mix. Like a visionary glimpsing into the future, I fear the prophecy that is coming to fruition: that we shall always be at their mercy, powerless to do anything to save ourselves. Our heads are so buried in the sand on these matters of most alarming import that we are suffocating ourselves, yet we insist on drawing our last breath justifying their misdeeds.  And they are all the while having a laugh at our expense—no, at our very livelihood.    

“Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.” -Lord Henry, character from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)