This year's first entry is about what I'd like to call the "Stupidity Epidemic" that is sweeping North America in particular and my personal thoughts on the matter. Now though some of these challenges span far past North America and into some other countries, it seems it is predominantly in the US.
Now I'm not saying that we all haven't done something stupid in our youth. I mean I know people who as kids thought it would be fun to challenge and stick their tongue to a cold pole during winter or even sniff and eat glue. I knew some addicted to eating and sniffing glue. Not saying that we didn't have those bouts of stupidity. However, there seems to be a massive surge of this all over the country due to mass media. This is one of the many troubles of mass media, social media to be exact of youTube, Facebook etc. I admit these have their uses but for this? Are we all becoming lemmings? Monkey see, monkey do? I have been asked before when I was a child, "if your friend jumps off a cliff are you going to jump off too?", in which I always responded a hasty NO WAY!
We now though have a massive influx of "challenges" since the early 2000's such as snorting Epsom salts or bath salts. I leave you this link to read about the results and effects of such a challenge from a rehab center site. Then comes along the Cinnamon Challenge and this report here from CBS. So when did we stop teaching our children not to do whatever they see online or see on TV?
I've also further seen reports about this scalding hot water challenge as well. Where children at sleepovers will have someone drink or toss scalding hot water on someone while they're sleeping causing first ,second and third degree burns and having them rushed to hospital. As someone on my Facebook feed had asked, where are the days of good old sleepovers and the fun of just simply drawing on someone's face or a pillow fight? Harmless stuff? I mean some of it can be considered bullying and don't get me wrong here, I certainly don't support bullying but among friends if you are ok and it's in good fun and non life threatening then I don't think it's harmful.
We then come to the year 2017-2018 and now we have the Tide Pod Challenge, again another meme and video on social media began it all. Kids, no actually teenagers that should know better!!, are now EATING said tide pods! The fact that the reports by poison control have stated that they had more 911 calls about teenagers, young adults, rather than accidental by toddlers is astounding! For toddlers they can't get into them, presumably because they're locked away or in a safe place out of reach as they should be. However to see this in young adults? I question, how stupid are you!!?
I see all this stuff on Facebook about it. I don't promote it but if you're not stupid, do the real challenge as some say and do the laundry, like what tide pod laundry detergent is for!! Kids should be taught how to do chores and NOT do what the internet tells you just because you think it looks cool. I mean even when I was a kid, I knew not to jump off things, run into walls etc. because they were cartoons, TV shows and not real things. We knew better. Now we have to have ID to purchase, have things locked up and also have a disclaimer on things that we shouldn't need to!
I can honestly say that right now simply for this , at this moment, I'm disappointed in the human race, or at least this part of the world to be that dumb to do these things.
That's all for now folks!
