Trite sayings that people think are profound.
 

OK, so as a netizen, a man about town of the world wide web, I encounter daily an absolute torrent of bull****. Much of it seems to come in the form of snippets, quotes, soundbites, excerpts from interviews and the like, usually attributed (often incorrectly, and never with a source), to some luminary figure or someone masquerading as a luminary figure.

This crap gets posted all over forums and Facebook as if its the greatest thing, and usually its either obvious bull**** worded strangely, or, as is more common, its some kind of bull**** personal bias formed into a piece of "life advice" so blatantly self serving that it borders on delusion.

Strangely enough, however, people never think about this at all.

I mean, when you take into account the context or practicality of most of these things they just fall apart. Take this for example: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au...monroe_3.html/

Marylin Monroe is one of the most common figures i see in this brand of fauxlosophy, but reading through those quotes not one of them really jumps out at me as profound or particularly worldly. They just seem to betray a set of strange personal tensions between desire, and personal stability (or seeming lack thereof).

Am I alone in this? Does anyone else cringe at the sight of yet another shoehorned in piece of cod philosophy being touted? For every one of these I see that makes a good point (Usually the ones attributed to actual academics or scholars) there are six more.(Usually attributed to actors and musicians) that could be torn apart by a reasonably academic twelve year old.

I have a strict policy against forwarding that sort of crap whenever it comes to my inbox. More often I will reply with a link to Snopes or whatever debunks the crap they have sent me and ask politely not to send me any more.

I'm pretty much the same in that respect. Especially because a lot of those things are like, fake resignation letters and whatnot.

I think that people who go around actively putting down other people as pseudo-philosophical or pseudo-intellectual are turds. If I see someone on Facebook quote Marilyn Monroe, I'm going to assume that they simply like the quote, not that they're trying to pass on some arcane bit of profound insight or wisdom.

LOL. Why do I feel like Bernard Marx at a love in?

I'm not going to shoot someone down on Facebook just for posting crap. That's pretty much what it's for. But if they send me the latest drivel in an email along with an obligation to forward it to ten other people then I'm going to politely ask them not to do it again.


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So are you any about the quote or the forwarding request?

That ****ing Bob Marley quote every **** has in their facebook info.

My reaction, dependent on whether the quote is intended as humourous or not, is usually to assume they're being preachy. If the quote is "herpaderpaderp" then obviously its not being psuedo-intellectual, but when its some sort of wierd "motivational statement" except full of logical holes and totally inapplicable to real life, I tend to just assume that they're trying to put it forth as a personal philosophy.

Which quote is that?

"Truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just have to find the ones worth suffering for"

Thats my guess. I see that *EVERYWHERE*.