We live in amazing times.  People love to shit on our digs but at the end of the day, life is great in so many ways.  However, we are screwing the proverbial pooch on a lot of fronts and their is legitimacy to the fear that mankind will continue to deteriorate and never realize its potential.

So in the interest of protecting our future, I offer five easy ways to make mankind better equipped for the future.

5) If you meet a Nickelback fan, kill them… or give them In Utero by Nirvana

Nickelback are the musical equivalent of the HIV virus as they spread like wildfire across the globe with 30 million records sold and headlining concerts around the world.  Like HIV except that these toolbags come from Canada and Magic Johnson isn’t pleading to the public to not support their consistent auditory crimes against humanity.

It’s well established that they write the same damn songs over and over again and release them under new vaguely inspirational titles to the wonderful rock fans of rural America but what’s really shameful is that most of these people simply don’t know better.  Lets consider this notion for a second.  Middle America has made Nickelback one of the most popular bands in the world…. and they’re a Canadian band.  That’s really a testament to the consumers they are targeting and how stupid they must really be when the most staunch nationalists in America are drooling over a shitty CANADIAN band.

So, how can you save the world?  If you meet someone that genuinely believes that Nickelback is a good band, find a shallow ditch OR reach into your 90′s CD collection and take them to school.  I’m talking Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy, Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger.  Rock n’ roll with soul and innovation, not redundant choruses crooned to people that don’t know any better.  Shit, Candlebox or Bush would be a HUGE improvement.  You can also simply point to their lyrics which are littered with gems like “Look at this photograph.  Everytime I do it makes me laugh.”  Deep.

I think AllMusic puts it best,

“Nickelback are a gnarled, vulgar band reveling in their ignorance of the very notion of taste, lacking either the smarts or savvy to wallow in bad taste so they just get ugly, knocking out knuckle-dragging riffs that seem rarefied in comparison to their thick, boneheaded words.”

4) If you meet someone that has an obvious sense of entitlement.  Proceed to systematically destroy their worldviews.

Remember that kid from high school that would talk back to the teacher, obnoxiously laugh at contrary opinions, and generally just acted like a pretentious asshole?  Yeah, so do I and you were not alone in your unadulterated hatred towards them and their various manifestations and opinions.

Sadly, these people do not disappear post-adolescence and for better or for worse, we run into them on a daily basis.  This one’s an easy fix though, especially if you have an iPhone.  Doesn’t matter what form their obnoxious entitlement takes, just play devil’s advocate as if it’s your actual opinion.

Fundamentally religious?  Point to statistics that indicate non-religious peoples and countries tend to have less violence and crime.  Militant vegan?  Point to the massive amounts of field animals that would be killed while harvesting grain in the event of the world population converting to veganism.  OR how PETA puts down more animals annually than most vets and sometimes they just toss the dead animals in the trash.  Philosopher?  So easy.  It takes a special kind of pretension and obnoxiousness to try and explain the worlds complexities to someone, especially if they don’t give a shit what you have to say.  These people are insecure.  They don’t understand the world so they seek validation by preaching their own worldview to sheepish people so just pick apart any hole in their perception of “the self” and the world.

You don’t have to agree with any of it, just do it to give that person what’s coming to them.  Although this may seem like a contradiction, they’ll be better off because of it.

3) If a stranger starts a conversation with you, be awkwardly honest.

"Honestly? I'd rather rub barnacles on my testicles than speak to you."

I was on a subway in NYC once and a church group on some kind of preaching mission was on the train with me.  The group consisted of maybe 10-12 young girls and an adult chaperon carrying signs about finding salvation or surrendering to God and whatnot.  So one of the more forward girls in the group – who had just finished harassing this poor guy who just wanted to eat his sandwich – asked me if I liked to dance.  I said not particularly.  She started dancing awkwardly and seemed to be enjoying herself, she then asked what I do at concerts if I don’t dance.  So I answered.  “I get drunk”.  That caught all of them off guard and she briefly retreated before the adult asked me if I minded if they kept talking to me.  My response?  “Sure, as long as it has nothing to do with Jesus.”

You see, strangers that like to talk to you are either A) lonely, B) annoying, C) have an agenda, or some strange combination of the three.  They don’t really want to talk to you, they want to talk at you about whatever it is that they find infinitely interesting and chances are, you don’t share their enthusiasm.

So once again, this one is easy.  Whatever they ask you, give them abrupt honesty and teach them the lesson they carefully avoid by targeting shy and overly polite people: if you don’t want to hear what I actually have to say or am thinking, don’t. fucking. ask.

2) Do not talk during a movie.

I’ve covered this before in an earlier post but seriously, these people could prove to be the last little annoyance that causes a serious catastrophe.  We deal with tiny annoyances every day and we go to the movies to escape them and find meaning in 90 minutes or more.  When we can’t even enjoy something as basic as a feature film because someone thinks its necessary to narrate the action as it happens, the world feels a lot farther gone than we’d like to admit.

Woah, Harry is a wizard!? Curveball!

It doesn’t matter what kind of talker is at work in this example be it the talking to the screen type, the obnoxious critic, or the emotional yeller (I.E.- “Bitch got fucked up!”), they all are inconsiderate assholes.

Sometimes you have to be tactile about your responses to these people but I think the best thing that can be done is to either flatly tell them that their behavior is transparent attention-whoring or simply follow them around until you can ruin something that they paid for and typically enjoy.

1) Watch Jersey Shore on MTV…

Entertainment incarnate.

Bear with me on this.

Jersey Shore is the kind of programming that would have media theorist Marshall McLuhan crying in the grave.  The show follows a group of self-proclaimed “guidos” and “guidettes” – their words, not mine – as they live their shallow and soulless existences in a summer house on the Jersey shore.  They drink, tan, work out, club, and then repeat.  That’s it.  And yes, it’s as pathetic as it sounds.

But if you want to destroy an enduring cultural ideology, you must endlessly mock it into submission and hopefully, disappearance.  These people have no self-awareness because they are so endlessly arrogant and materialistic.  That’s what the court of public opinion is for.  We collectively agree on their stupidity and  laugh as they systematically destroy their own reputations and are forced to realize their own blatant shortcomings as humans.

So by watching this shameful program, you are exercising civic responsibility in the interest of vanquishing any shred of legitimacy people that hold such vapid and meaningless perceptions may have or at least claim to have. So don’t feel so bad for giving them viewership.  It’s not like they have any prospects outside of MTV in the near future.

And finally, here’s another great mockery of clowns of this sort.