As I have gotten older, I feel like I am getting dumber. Of course this is impossible because I am brilliant but my brain comes up short a lot more than it did when I was in my twenties. I have several theories for why this is.
- Google – Google is actually destroying my ability to retain information. We don’t need to remember things now because we can just google it and have the answer in 0.23 seconds. I remember a lot. I dare say I remember more things than most of the people I know. My brain just retains things, even unnecessary things. I remember random facts about movies, music and 16th century England. I know a little about a lot of things. Lately, I am finding it difficult to recall information I have known forever and as I struggle to remember I always hear, “Google it.” Fuck Google!
Cellphones – Same issue except now it is phone numbers.- Facebook – “ ” ” ” ” birthdays
- Memes – All those terrible, cliché’ memes. Okay, I love memes but what the fuck happened to finding our own inspiration… inspiring ourselves?
- Reality Television – Reality TV is terrible. It holds absolutely no value other than to illustrate that the more fake or ridiculous you are, the more famous you could be. Reality television is causing it’s audience to loss it’s perspective on life and how society actually functions. Interacting with these viewers makes me slightly dumber by association.
Men – I don’t really think men are making me dumber (well maybe some of the ones I have dated…) I don’t think as rationally as I did when I was living in a penis free world. I feel like I let (and that is the key word) some men manipulate me and that is pretty stupid.
What are some of things you find are contributing to the dumbing down of America?
benzeknees
/ November 15, 2012I definitely agree with cell phones. I can remember the phone number at my parents house when I was a young girl, but I can’t remember my daughter’s phone number anymore because it’s stored in my cell phone & I can just hit a speed dial. “They” say if you keep your mind active, it won’t fail you as quickly, but I’m not sure about that.
trjensen
/ November 16, 2012It is interesting because I don’t think it is my mind so much as I have (unintentionally) conditioned myself to rely on technology. I am too young to have my brain failing me.
The Writers Village
/ November 16, 2012-tea party candidates and Republican rants
-expressions like “whatever”
-people walking around constantly with cell phones to their ears
-texting and driving
-pople who constantly say, “At the end of the day.”
-children who refuse to read, think, or plan ahead (including adult children)
trjensen
/ November 16, 2012Agreed! I also hate when someone uses whenevr in place of when in a sentence. It drives me crazy. Also verb tense.
James Stafford
/ November 16, 2012- The willful disregard of facts.
- Larry the Cable Guy
- Bad novels
trjensen
/ November 16, 2012The list goes on and on. Most Americans read and write at an 8th or 9th grade reading level. American entertainment (books, film, music) has to dumb down with them to keep an audience. They should be trying to challenge them and help them expand their wealth of knowledge but it isn’t happening.
naughtynoralyn
/ November 16, 2012Read more, watch TV less and never, ever lose your smart phone!
trjensen
/ November 16, 2012I never watch tv, don’t have cable and live in BFE. I did produce and direct for a very long time. A movie occassionaly but no tv. I work in a library and read all the time. And I refer to my phone as “my baby.”
renxkyoko
/ November 16, 2012Fox News…. sorry about that, but seriously.
trjensen
/ November 17, 2012I totally though most other media outlets aren’t much better.
howtodatesober
/ November 16, 2012I was an instructor at a college, and what I saw as the most damaging part of America that REALLY contributed to the dumbing down of my students was this “I am the most important person in the world” selfish attitude that most of my students had. It made teaching sensitive topics, like the poor and lower-classes, so much harder because my students (mostly middle too upper-class white kids) had a thick skin of selfish naivete to break through. Thankfully, with some of them I did.
Alas, grading my students’ papers often made me dumber. If you read enough incorrect grammar, you’re own grammar begins to suffer!
trjensen
/ November 17, 2012That is very true! I tutored college writing and sometimes I felt like trying to help wasn’t really helping at all.
reocochran
/ November 17, 2012You have several that I have thought didn’t make me dumber but were helping me to become more senile!! Ha ha! Different age, I am forgetting how to retain information like phone numbers and birthdays!!
trjensen
/ November 17, 2012Senility may be the issue but my ability to retain info the way I do has always been associated (by my peers) with my intellect.
nancyelauzon
/ November 18, 2012As a writer, it shocks me that up here in the GWN – Great White North, i.e. Canada – cursive writing has been taken off the curriculum in elementary schools. Don’t know if it’s the same in the U.S. of A. But imagine a world where you don’t need to learn to write?? Soon everyone will be writing with a keyboard or touchpad. They won’t know how to use a pen. That’s scary.
trjensen
/ November 18, 2012I agree that children should be taught to write. That being said, I never write. My penmanship is horrible!!!
Lafemmeroar
/ November 19, 2012Yeah … I like to think that Google is my other brain that I can access online … the bad thing is that I’m not always online … so I’m actually working with half a noodle most of the time.
trjensen
/ November 19, 2012Exactly. Technology makes our brains lazy. It is a real sore point with me. I refuse to google stuff I know I know. It annoys people in conversations with me but I want to remember.
Lafemmeroar
/ November 19, 2012BTW tweeting this now crazy chick
trjensen
/ November 19, 2012Merci! You are awesome and amazingly supportive.
Lafemmeroar
/ November 19, 2012Always support the Crazy Chicks
SillyG
/ November 25, 2012your list is about perfect. i say my head is like a bowl and its overflowing with so much crap that i can’t remember the important stuff. i told my anti-tech date that i didn’t know his phone number and he couldn’t believe it.
trjensen
/ November 26, 2012See that’s me too! I have sooo much sloshing around up there that it is nearly impossible for some of it not roll out of the bowl. It just seemes I am losing the stuff I don’t want to.