We wear who we are in the things we surround ourselves with. Unabashedly I admit that I am a liberal, with the ability to compromise with others in the hopes of forwarding societal purpose. I believe in the goodness and dignity of humanity, but I am no Pollyanna for I have met and had to deal with true evil in my lifetime.
One of the things, as a liberal, I have been drawn into is the Apple universe. I write on a couple of years old MacBook Air. I have an iPhone with three lenses. My Apple watch wakes me when my heart is thinking about stopping all together. Oh yeah, there is an ancient iPad I use to watch Belgian crime dramas on.
On the iPhone, the iPad and the MacBook I receive a newsfeed that for the most part I have picked the inputs for. I get blurbs from the Washington Post, Macleans, Mojo, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, the Toronto Star and the Wall Street Journal (got to hear some contrarian viewpoints to my own). Somehow Buzzfeed and its endless series of lists also shows up on the regular.
Some of the time I find Buzzfeed’s lists mildly interesting. Stories that point out things like, “19 Anachronisms in Movies You Won’t Be Able to Unsee,” can be kind of fun. “17 Actors Who Went on to Other Careers With Much Greater Success,” also can be fun diversions to the day’s headline stories about NATO’s plans should Russia expand its war or how police have beaten another civilian without justification.
Some just piss me off. Today’s post for example, “19 Answers to What Happened to the Most Beautiful Girl in Your School.” I skimmed down to about number 9. Three became veritable Mother Theresas, four became hostesses at Applebee’s with a couple of kids and no husband after the voted most handsome boy left them for his male gym trainer, one became Cindy Crawford and one thanked the questioner and said she was doing very well now and was quite happy.
Who cares what happened to the most beautiful girl, boy, the smartest or the cutest anything and/or the class clown from the year you graduated? Life should not be a beauty contest. Life should not be a popularity contest. Life should not be a constant comparing of possessions, body part sizes, or accolades.
Life is having to find a way to survive and to grow in a world that is not inherently one that wants us to succeed. What matters is what we each do with the average 8,409,600 breaths a year we take. What matters are things like are we kind to family, friends and strangers? What matters is do we have enough but not too much to eat, wear and give us shelter? What matters is whether we have made the world better today, in the past week, in our lifetime. These questions are meaningful. What happened to the prettiest girl in school is vacuous. Hell, it is beyond that; it is ugly in its inherent sexism, classism and hidden scorn for those not so damn popular.
Hey Buzzfeed stick to stories about incongruities in movies, parents who misunderstood texting shorthand, and natural wonders visible in the middle of urban centers. Knock off the inherently cruel stuff like what happened to the hot girls you knew. Okay maybe I am just sensitive because I got voted class troll but I still think lists like this are tawdry and unneeded.
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