I thought I’d hit you with a little one/two punch of humanity this week. If you read the blog before this one you learned about the abilities of YouTube. If you clicked the link you cried at how great people, specifically the next generation, can be. Now I’m going to shatter all that with another story!

These punk ass kids with worse parents have been going around doing what they’re calling a Gallon Smashing prank. What they do is get two gallons of some kind of drink and pretend to slip while throwing the jugs as hard as they can. The “joke” is that people think they’ve actually slipped and try and help the kids. The real “comedy” comes when they pretend to be hurt. Now, for legal reasons I cannot threaten to make their wishes come true and hurt them. I can however say that we’re sinking lower and lower as a society. Either that or we’re separating further apart from the good we can do and the evil we do, and one side is either winning or has a better publicist. I honestly wouldn’t have that much of a problem with this if they paid for the groceries. If you’ve made several of these videos and are paying for the liquids with the money of your inattentive parents, fine. They’re just causing destruction and panic for no solid reason.

The reason we can’t charge these kids with vandalism is because lawyers see this as a slippery slope, if you charge a kid for destruction of some milk jugs then why not when the old lady drops and breaks some eggs? You have evidence he did it with “malice” you say? Well then doesn’t a 4 year old who throws things out of the kart have the same intent? Plus, more importantly, no grocery store wants to hire a lawyer for $6 worth of milk. It’s just not worth it. I’m going to attach another link to this blog post, watch the video and see how some of the youth of today gets “fame” from these stupid ass pranks. Several different kinds of asinine stunts all to destroy things because it’s “cool”. The most famous one I heard of and even almost participated in, is the “Fire in the hole!” videos. Someone I know wanted to pull this prank because “it’s funny, check it out, I saw it one YouTube!” I knew what they were going to do and shamed them. Why are you fucking with someone who you would never trade places with. You want to block in a guy racing down the freeway in a nice car, meh. You want to deny a guy cutting you in line because his “one thing” is a bottle of booze you can’t afford, ok. But destroying stuff? That’s just stupid.

I hesitate to call these kids jackasses. At least when Knoxville and the boys did it, they were only hurting themselves…for the most part. This stuff doesn’t even have anything clever about it. At the very LEAST “Fire in the hole!” had a line, this is just people looking stupid. Do I blame the kids? Not entirely, trust me these numb nuts will get some girl(s) pregnant and make more assholes. The parents, however, had a chance to stop this. Possibly MORE important, the viewers had a chance to stop this. If they didn’t get any views or their videos disappeared when the main kids took them down this kind of behavior would be met with the thought, “Well, that was stupid, what else can we come up with?” Instead of, “Dude! That was epic, what else can we come up with!?” Watch the news article if you feel like it, if you feel like you don’t hate humanity enough. But if you go onto YouTube and search this shit, you’re part of the problem!

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/gallon-smashing-prank-videos-hit-raise-legal-concerns-135706213–abc-news-topstories.html

YouTube is probably the most dangerous tool we’ve created in the past few years. I can finish reading the feed on my facebook and twitter and eventually need to recharge after porn, but YouTube…that’s a problem. It’s too easy to find absolutely anything ever broadcast worth seeing…well unless it’s recent and copywritten. You can watch old shows, theme songs, music videos, news broadcasts, and every cute cat video under the sun. However, if you noticed at the beginning of this blog post I called it a “tool”.

YouTube CAN be good. It’s just so easy to spend way too much time looking at news broadcasters screw up or epic fails or whatever the latest fad JESSE has told you about on this week’s show. There’s so much good content we hardly revisit anything. There’s a whole lot of “Have you seen ___!?!?” We immediately flock to our nearest YouTube viewing device and click the closest thing to what our brain can get from the conversation we had earlier and look up the video.

Watching people falling down is great, don’t get me wrong, but I think it’s much more rare to look up videos that are educational or inspiring. You’re much more likely to have seen Psy or the fat chick fall off the table than watch a video about what’s going on in the world.

So I decided to help you out. I figured you could use some goodness in your life. We talk a lot on the show about my struggle to respect the masses because, well, let’s face it…people are dumb. However, once in a while we can come across a video that makes us feel good, helps us not want to kill everyone we meet, and hopefully, be better people yourselves (I say YOURselves because, let’s face it, I’m awesome).

Now I know there are a few videos you can find on YouTube that show people being nice to special needs kids, but I saw this one today. The only thing that made me sad, was seeing how far down the recommended videos line was a video of someone being a terrible person to a special needs kid. So enjoy this video. Be happy and treat people a little better tomorrow…or don’t I don’t care, I probably won’t see you anyway.

(So apparently this video cannot be embedded. Don’t be lazy, copy and paste.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naRCfl8oCos

Despite how easy I make it look there is SOME art to what I do. I’m talking specifically about my honesty. I am too honest with a lot of people but fortunately for me, I don’t care. I don’t want to sound like one of those after-school specials we all watched where Cory tells Topanga the truth and everything works out for them. Sometimes you have to know who you can tell the truth to. The best truths are the ones where people get bruised but not cut. If you, for example, tell your girlfriend you love her cooking just to make her feel better, then guess who’s eating burnt brisket for life? However, most guys are trained by society to tell her she does everything perfectly to avoid a fight. So you can suffer through more meals with her, “Since you liked the last one SO much!” You can tell her the truth, the way we’re all taught with a few years of wisdom to do it where it’s more of a half truth, “Honey, I love that you TRY, we should sign up for a cooking class together.” Or you can try the dangerous waters I live in of being blunt, “Not your best effort darling, but it’s alright, it’s not like I need my woman to have dinner on the table every night.”

The most important thing to remember when being Blunt Like Me (If you get that joke #EJTalkBack for 10pts) is to ALWAYS be blunt. You can’t be blunt some of the time and worry about feelings the other times. It’s like fire, if you never get near it, touching it for a second can burn; but if you’re subjected to it in small doses over and over again, eventually you can do that trick where you don’t use tongs to turn the meat on the grill. Another important tip is you have to be blunt with EVERYONE. It’s just easier this way. Now of course things like the work and your parents will have different circumstances, but if you’re blunt with your friends and your significant other, everyone understands what you expect of them. The only way to get away with saying these kinds of things to your significant other and NOT your friends is to tell that one special someone, “I’m glad I can be completely honest with YOU.” I do not advise this route as 1) Your friends could probably use a few truthful words and 2) You look horrible to your better half if they realize you are basically just talking shit to only them.

Being honest has a whole lot of benefits. I have a girlfriend who knows who I am and even my possibly bad behavior has become acceptable because it’s in the introductory packet. I also have friends who constantly go to me for advice, they know I won’t tell them what they want to hear just because they want to hear it. It actually makes the compliments all the more meaningful because they know it’s genuine. Lastly, strangers. You may be thinking, “Why would YOU care about what people who don’t know you think?” Well it’s because though most of their opinions (how good a person you are, how intelligent you are, how wealthy you are) are not important, whether or not to fear/respect someone is an important thing people gauge in the first few seconds of meeting you. If your first encounter with them is you loudly saying excuse me to get you out of the way, they’ll know not to interact with you.

Being honest is great, but be aware: there are some drawbacks. If you, let’s say…are honest to fault with one of your friends while they’re with someone new, someone who isn’t “used to you” yet, you come off looking like a dick. Also, if your mate is telling stories about you, you come off looking like a dick. Lastly, if you say, “EXCUSE ME!” really loud to someone who doesn’t realize they’re blocking a grocery isle with their shopping kart, you…you get the idea. You have to be prepared to not be liked by everyone. You will get things your way all the time, but usually only from the people who choose to stay around you. I’ve made my decision to look like a dick. I can safely say that there are people who I’ve met who could have been good to have around , but I decided not putting up with them was worth more than they could give me. Now you know, and you can make the decision. Oh and if you think I’m a dick but read this whole article, seek psychiatric help, dick.