It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (hereafter referred to as Always Sunny) is a show on FX that has spawned many seasons.
Overview Of Setup & Characters
The show has been called “Seinfeld on crack.” They do draw on the idea of a show “about nothing.” Further, the characters are even more self-absorbed, self-destructive and bizarre than anything on Seinfeld. In fact, the characters actually track the Seinfeld characters.
The show is set in Philadelphia (surprise!) and is centered around five people called “The Gang.” Two of the members own a bar called Paddy’s Pub and most of the show is centered around this bar. It is poorly run, as the characters are all self-absorbed and constantly hatching crazy or ridiculous plans. They are ineffective, lazy and often cruel.
Dennis Reynolds: A clear-cut narcissist. He lives out most of his fantasies in his head. He does bed women, but they are usually repulsed by his rank self-absorption. He rarely displays empathy or compassion and is, in general, an asshole. He is the brother of Dee and the one of the co-owners of Paddy’s Pub. He went to UPenn and thinks he is far more intelligent than he really is. He pretends to the be the leader, and technically is, but is only interested in the worship and status.
Ronald “Mac” McDonald: The other co-owner of Paddy’s Pub. He came from a terrible broken home – his father was a drug dealer and his mother is apathetic towards him. He is a codependent & Dennis is the narcissist he needs. His catchphrase is “What’s up bitches?” He feels superior to the rest of the group. He feels he is the strongest of the group and the protector. He carried on a relationship with a pre-op transsexual and claiming to be “putting time in” before the surgery. Hilarious.
‘
Charlie Day: The omega of the group. He is the janitor of the bar, doing all the work nobody else wants to do. He lives in an apartment with Frank. He is nursing a serious crush on “The Waitress” at a café “The Gang” frequents. He probably is the most compassionate of the group, as he is the only one who will regularly display levels of compassion for others. That being said, he is an alcoholic and drug addict. He has poor personal hygiene and is completely unable to function in normal society. He clearly hates himself and suppresses his natural talents for songwriting and the piano. He might be the most interesting character on the show.
Dee Reynolds: A stereotypical inverted narcissist that will vacillate between compensatory narcissism and strong codependency depending on the situation. She is a caricature of the modern American female. In way, it is done brilliantly. She is supremely superficial and completely self-absorbed. Her internal view of herself will never match up with the way she sees herself in reality. She vainly tries to be seen as a member of “The Gang,” but the other three males sense her qualification and toy with her. She wants to be an actress and comedian but she never will accomplish either of those goals.
The Rank Narcissism Of “The Gang”
Let’s talk a bit about Seinfeld. It was a phenomenal show that featured genius-levels of writing and jokes. However, it was the precursor for this show. Recall the character of George. He is a classic codependent. George was continually labeled highly unattractive by women who watched the show – he was the classic inverted narcissist with little going on for him. The other characters – Seinfeld, Elaine, and Kramer all displayed levels of narcissism, but nothing of the clinical level. However, their issues bled into the Millennial Generation and created an even worse generation – exemplified by Always Sunny.
The characters on the show are all narcissists of some degree. I doubt any one of them could go to a psychologist and not get diagnosed with a strong case of narcissism. They are a group that desperately needs each other, but they only care about themselves. They need each other so they have victims to prey on psychologically.
They really are a group of shitty people. The more I think about it, the more I am reminding of how sick our society is and how sick my generation is.
However, consider the above picture. Charlie & Mac are leaning away – they are the only characters who have displayed the ability to change. Dennis and Dee know they are the key psychological members of the group. Charlie has his back completely turned, Mac just has a downward gaze. Charlie knows he is the omega – the low man on the totem pole. Mac knows he will always play second fiddle to Dennis – the role he doesn’t want to play, but the only role he can play in this relationship.
Charlie knows he could bounce and it would affect the group the least – that is why his back is to them. They call his garbage-man job “Charlie work,” their way of reinforcing his inferiority. As for Mac, Dennis needs him as much as Mac needs Dennis; that break won’t happen. His downward gaze reflects he gets no affection from Dennis – he needs to worship Dennis in order for their relationship to exist.
Nothing healthy here.
It’s Always Cloudy In America: The Inefficacy Of The Millennial Generation
Inefficacy is generally defined as lacking the power to achieve the targeted result. That is my generation in one word.
The Millennial Generation is a generation of narcissistic people who think they know more than they do. Read this sobering article from the The Last Pyschiatrist.
Consider Always Sunny through this article, in particular, this quote:
And, rather than the internet bringing diverse people together, it seems to foster tribes of the like-minded, who never closely examine anything different(ly).
Diversity is skin-deep in American society. Recall I took a Critical Race Theory class in law school, and during a presentation on the lack of diversity in the professors at the school they claimed there was only one LGBT professor on staff. I inquired into the political/philosophical views of said professor. They gave me a blank stare and said it was very important to increase the sexual orientation diversity on the staff.
I responded if you judge people on the content of their character, what matters most is the diversity of ideas. A group of four white males, one a communist, one a libertarian, one a conservative and one an anarchist will produce more intellectual content than a black male, lesbian, Asian transsexual and poor Hispanic who are all solid liberals. The blank stares I received were telling. Narcissistic diversity only considers immutable characteristics, real diversity values mutable characteristics over immutable ones – without ignoring the contributions race or class might bring.
I was going to quote more, but it really is pointless. My generation – the Millennial Generation – is the greatest bunch of self-absorbed narcissists this world have even seen. I wonder if every civilization ends this way – a bunch of entitled fools who think wealth and privilege are their birthright. Millennial’s get records amounts of worthless degrees, place incredible amounts of value on artificial goods and are followers of a supreme order. They worry themselves sick over social acceptance and have little ability and desire to change themselves.
Always Sunny shows this. They no ability to change who they are and are completely preoccupied with their self-image. All the characters clearly have been raised, as children, poorly and their narcissism is their way of compensating for that childhood. The school system enforces this, as children do best learning from their parents or other family figures. Children do not do well learning from strangers. If the school system was doing the most to help students, children would not bounce from teacher to teacher each grade level – they would have the same teacher from kindergarten through, at least, 8th grade.
Which brings up the next point. TLP notes that my parent’s generation – teachers – really is dumb, they just don’t know it. You see this in the teaching profession. Right now, with no training, I can assure you I can teach any cohort up until high school. I could easily riff on English, writing, history and social science with no training. Math might need some work, but that could be done quickly. That is the issue – the people who teach have no passion nor any desire for true intellectual betterment.
I have many female friends who are teachers. None, not one, has a passion for knowledge. They call their passion for raising children as the passion for teaching. It is all about them and their desire to be seen as people who truly care about the education of the next generation, only to go home at night, curled up with a bucket of ice cream and watching some inane reality TV show.
Which highlights the narcissism of my generation. They know how to put on a great show – or not (the flipside) – but have nothing to back up their bluster. You see this in Always Sunny, as the characters are often outed to be bullshitting. In one episode, Charlies claims to be an expert on “Bird Law” and the real attorney he was arguing with just gave him a look that says, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The art of bullshitting is a narcissistic trait, but one that doesn’t prove narcissism. Everybody who succeeds in life needs to be able to bullshit.
However, we see the insecurity bubble up in society as “Teacher Appreciation” days/weeks/months. As TLP observed in the article, on some level the teachers get their deficiencies. They need inordinate amounts of praise in order to shore up their flagging egos. The more students continue to fail, the more we will need more social praise for teachers. Unable to come to terms with their professional failure, they more they need social approval – although it doesn’t end there. Consider the vast majority of teachers are women. Maybe if they became wives and mothers they would not need to command small armies of children – they could just give birth to their own. A main contribution to teacher narcissism is the fact that teachers can just walk away or just pass on a troubled kid to another grade.
Bringing it back to Always Sunny and my generation, they are just products of a severely deficient system. They are products of not just a narcissistic society at large, but a school system steeped in narcissism. All of the characters display serious issues, most relating to narcissism. Many of them just live in worlds of their own creation with as little reference to the real world as they can handle. I remember watching a movie in which video games went full viral in the sense you could live whatever life you wanted inside your head with the game. That sort of game would absolutely destroy civilization.
The incredible psychological and mental deficiencies of the Millennial generation certainly aren’t their fault, but are their responsibility. The generation must come to grips with their self-absorption and face it head on, in order to save the fate of America. Odds are, that won’t happen. Just more status updates about how awesome they are – #YOLO! – as America slowly flushes out to sea.
Read Next: Brilliant Essay On What Capitalism Is Doing To Us
“My generation – the Millennial Generation – is the greatest bunch of self-absorbed narcissists this world have even seen.”
You clearly have not seen Generation Z.
Good article though. On the one hand you are absolutely correct about our generation. On the other hand though I think we struggle with some sort of identity crisis- like we WANT to get out of this system that turned us into these things, but are struggling with finding out how to. I’d imagine the Red Pill and MGTOW movements are mostly made up of Y’ers/Millennials (or at least enough to comprise a plurality) for instance .
Totally correct about teaching too. I always thought I couldn’t do math or physics for instance but I learned how on my own in recent years due to a silly little hobby I have. It was a total indictment of the teaching system that it couldn’t foster those skills in me through all my years in school, but also the fact that I’m probably qualified to teach a rudimentary physics course out of no other experience except essentially a couple of years of bullshitting in my spare time.
Love the shot at social media too. I talked more about this dynamic a bit on my own blog:
http://masculineepic.blogspot.com/2013/07/stop-being-slave-to-social-media.html
They make the Math Ed gals take things like DiffEq, Abstract Algebra, etc. They trivialize the curve people with genuine interest in the subject. I also suspect the class ends up being dumbed down just because the prof feels a need to go over certain concepts more thoroughly as it will be his experience that certain concepts provide trouble for 60% of the class when he grades the exam.
Most the math ed ladies felt taking these classes were a waste of time because they don’t teach past basic calculus in high school and I suspect most of them were headed for pre-algebra or whatever.
Libertas,
“like we WANT to get out of this system that turned us into these things, but are struggling with finding out how to. ”
Actually? I would challenge the veracity of that comment. I have shown tens of thousands of men who to get out of the system you are in and only a hand ful have done so. I see no evidence that young men wish to leave the system they are in and build the second economy and a society that they would want to live in. None at all.
Now, when young men ARE ready to do that in numbers? We will be waiting for you at the Mens Business Association. All honest men of honour and integrity are welcome. The liars and losers can stay in the first economy. We don’t want the liars and losers messing up what we are working on.
1. Am I the only person who hates this stupid fucking show? It is nowhere near as good as Seinfeld and really isn’t worth watching even when the alternative is staring at a wall.
2. Spot on about teachers, I remember teachers explicitly saying, without shame, that at the end of the year they wouldn’t have to deal with the problem students anymore.
3. I love the “diversity” on that sign for the Matt Damon teacher movie. People who look for superficial diversity will never succeed, and that’s why they spend all of their time shaming mentally-diverse, but non-superficially-diverse organizations.
1. the show is fucking hilarious. curb your enthusiasm is too, in that larry davids character always kind of gravitates to the un-pc answer everybodies thinking but no one has any stones too actually say. arrested dev is funny and does a lighthearted play of the same selfish narcissist angle
Arrested Development shines best as an example of the Beta/Omega Struggle. Michael really is the only decent adult on the show, and is the most disrespected. He is constantly made fun of for working or only having sex with 4 women. Watching that show from the perspective of Michael is an extremely close-to-home feeling.
http://mastercodeprofessional.com/library_files/Kruger-Dunning—Unskilled_and_Unaware_of_It_(2009).pdf
Won an Ignobel prize.Should have the Nobel.
Sadly, this scathing critique is most accurate. I graduated HS in the late 90s and I can tell you that I was nonplussed with my neck of the generational world.
We hated everything, we were self-absorbed, and we were terribly insecure feeding off each other. I called us vampires, and strangely it is prophetic, for we feed of the emotions of others we are lacking ourselves. Many of us have had children and passed this disease of emotional need to our offspring. It is absolute condemning shame, and yet our parents and grand parents may be worse? Not that any of the above will own their hand in the matter. Merely use it to point blame somewhere else.
Eventually, a black hole of morality collapses on itself when there is no more morals with which to feed on, and the whole ecosystem dies in a supernova of “karma.” I use to hate such pansies who wanted the end to come, and find myself a potential candidate for extreme hypocrisy. For I truly want the end, in the hopes things will be better if those left can rebuild in peace. It is the fear of there being no peace for the rebuilding process that forces me into introspection.
Interesting observation about teachers. Men have all but been forced out of the profession.
However, I find that the worst people to learn under are men with daughters. You can see how they play favorites in class. I wanted to comment on something:
“A group of four white males, one a communist, one a libertarian, one a conservative and one an anarchist will produce more intellectual content than a black male, lesbian, Asian transsexual and poor Hispanic who are all solid liberals.”
It’s possible, or you would simply have such a huge division of ideals that no intellectual content would be absorbed due to staunch political/ideological stances.
I noticed you separated liberals from the first example. I’m no lib, nor do I lean far towards any other title or affiliation, but it seems you intended to highlight political stances that are assumed to be complementary to each other?
You’re right in one aspect. “Men” are not largely present as teachers. Males are, but not men.
I worked with one True Man. I admired him very much for his principles, even though our politics tended to differ.
I had a student in my class whom I dismissed after he was particularly disruptive to other students. I told my male/manly colleague about it and he said “well, if you didn’t make him cry, you were doing it wrong.” He’d had this student two years running, and knew this kid was the type explained above: the only male child of a single mom who supplicated his every need, and who could not stand any challenge to his special snowflake status, period.
I’m not happy I made him cry; I’m rather surprised that he reacted with tears. It was then I saw the poison of the self-esteem peddlers in our public schools. The Self is paramount and anything that challenges it is to be condemned or disregarded or outright purged. Civilization cannot be run in such a fashion.
As adults, special snowflakes are insufferable. I’ve recently been tracking 90-day retention rates for new hires based on whether they’ve come from a college or from the work force. In my line of work, college means a maritime academy. Kids come out of those schools with a coast guard license and a little experience on ships. They come onto tugboats and small boats with minimal seamanship skills, so they’re hired as deckhands until they master basic skills and can transition into an officer’s job, usually in about 2 years. We also hire kids off of fishing boats and out of trade schools for the same entry level jobs at 55k/yr with benefits working 14 days on/14 off. Easy money… but since June, among a cohort of 8 academy grads and 5 HS grads, all 5 HS grads are working and marked for retention, as are the 2 college grads who haven’t been fired or quit outright. The special snowflake treatment becomes a glaring disservice once the victim enters the workforce.
You know what’s worse? That those will be parents one day. What kind of kids will those kids (yes, kids) raise?
All the millenial parents I know have absolutely no parenting skills. None. It began in 70s and it become worse with each generation.
Their 3 year olds scream abuse in their faces and all they can do is to ask them if they would please pretty please stop. They want stuff and if they don’t get it immediately they throw a tantrum so impossibly shrill that the parents (quite often THE parent, namely the single mom) cave in immediately because they literally know of no other options. It’s embarrassing to watch and I’m glad I’m not a parent.
But even if they did have those options, how you go about enforcing them? Society is arrayed against you. Your voice as a parent is just one of the many, one that can be easily ignored and falsified by the messages of the media and brainwashed establishment.
Diana West, in “The Death of the Grown-up,” chronicles this exact phenomenon: the inability of parents to tell their children, “no.” Narcissism is key, as it places the parents’ immediate interests and whim above the interests of the child and above the responsibility for rearing the next generation. The affect is compounded by moral relativism- the parents don’t even know why they should say “no,” since they cannot justify a hierarchy of values (the dreaded, “who am I to say…?”).
The most salable point in the book, the one that has stuck with me four-years hence, is her dissection of the all-too-frequent apology for bad parenting that goes: “things have always been this way, it’s no big deal; I did stuff like this when I was a child and so did my parents, and so did their parents.” West is apt to point out that children have always been wild, but previous generations always supplied a hearty “NO!”, and our generation is unique in this regard; we tend to actually encourage our children to become degenerates by enabling their impulsive and self-destructive behavior. The consequences, therefore, are likely to be different.
This inability to say ‘No’ is only part of the story though. The other part of it is the safety net that society provides that prevents people learning through experience. This perverts the ability to analyse risk in just about any situation you care to look at. Cue the nanny state and a plunge on cotton wool.
We are breeding a society that is full of self-indulgence to facilitate their desires as well as entitlement so that they don’t have to suffer the consequences of those desires.
rather than moral relativism, Ive always gotten the sense that most modern parents need their kids’ affection and approval so badly that theyre willing to put up with any abuse as long as they dont have to do anything that might make their kid dislike them.
watching grown men supplicate to women is bad, but watching grown men and women supplicate to their kids (especially their daughters) is much worse.
I think you’re right. Seeking approval through flattery and non-judgmentalism seems to be primary. Moral relativism as a tenant of faith comes afterwards as a rationalization for behavior that’s already established.
Bingo. Beware the parent who says that they want to be friends with their child. You’re meant to be the parent, not a peer who happens to be biologically linked to them. The framing of identity though the approval of the child, and the child’s peers, prevents them from acting in the best interests of society and by extension, themselves and the child.
A bit of old advice is that before you try being a parent, try being a dog owner. If you can’t handle a dog, you won’t be able to handle children.
Look at the dogs of young Millenials. If they are tiny yappy dogs they are most likely pampered and neurotic as hell.
If they are large dogs they are most likely borderline feral.
Even the best of them aren’t trained worth a damn, because their owners basically have two ways of dealing with the dog’s behavior: scream at it/”reason” with it.
The very idea that one might reasonably reason with a dog shows a disconnect from reality that I find hard to fathom.
The one thing that apparently never occurs to them to do is to firmly say “No!” and make it stick.
“You know whats worse? That those will be parents one day”.
Aside from the teen moms, Millennials won’t survive long enough to reproduce. How could they? How could anyone (other than we Mad Max types)? The world is overpopulated beyond reason, the climate is erratic, solar flares are getting more intense, new superpowers are being born, we are due for a pandemic, a supervolcano, a massive tsunami, and a comet strike any time now, and all people can do is eat their bread, watch the circus, and argue with each other over meaningless bullshit.
Maybe if men had kept a firm control over the government rather than allowing the unstable sex an equal voice (which is never equal enough) in governance, we could avoid some of these things…but now, the chickenheads just squawk over the quiet warnings of the wise.
I suppose competent teachers were forced out a long time ago; what caused us to come to this?
I am going to blame teachers unions and feminism. Feminism resulted in the intelligent women that used to go into teaching and nursing to go into whatever they wanted. Teachers unions pushed for tenure and a high structure environment that necessitated a top down approach. This allowed all the Marxist society building gobbly-gook coming out of intellectuals to permeate the system.
We could also add to it open borders and social welfare programs destroying community and families resulting in an individualist view of the world.
I guess there’s no one root cause of this, but rather a host.
Indeed there is. When I used to do the teaching thing part-time some years ago, I, in a short time, realized that:
1. What I was doing was mostly crowd control, making sure to pattern-interrupt the disruptive students from the get go and eject the serious troublemakers from the classroom swiftly and decisively.
2. Standardized testing was set up to punish and not promote. Teaching to the test was going to accomplish exactly what it set out to do: viz., to neuter effective teaching.
3. Teaching, as a profession, became so dumbed-down that there was no more intellectual rigor. I first realized this during my freshman year of college from my roommate who spent more of his time taking education classes than classes for chemistry, biology, math, etc. that would have bolstered his intellectual foundations.
4. Feminization of education was continuing apace. Men were demonized, while gelded males were tolerated at best. Cross certain female teaches, and your ass was grass. And, all teachers, both male and female, were demoralized and just putting in time. Especially in the inner city.
It is true that all the above are to blame but parents are the last line of defense so they ultimately shoulder the most blame.
Dennis’s idea of game is hilarious.
Ah yes the dennis system. you know it can and would work.
because of the implication.
That is the issue – the people who teach have no passion nor any desire for true intellectual betterment.
I’m GenX, and became a teacher after a decade in private industry (F&F development). I was interested in the intellectual betterment of my students…my superiors found my methods too cold and too realistic. Truth is not valued in the public school classroom, which is why you will not find too many teachers willing to teach dialectic argument (they skip to rhetoric and various appeals without the critical middle step), and “questioning authority” only means questioning the Three C’s: Christianity, Conservatism, and the Classics. Question Leftist dogma or facts, and you get booted right quick.
I’m highly skeptical of the Common Core, high stakes tests, and new literacy (a focus on reading blogs and using leet as a valid means of communication). Result: too old-fashioned/racist/insufficiently championing youth to be a teacher.
Shorter me: homeschool. I left teaching and industry to be a homeschooling mom. I don’t want my children to be so self-absorbed they hurt everyone with every little action. Nor do I want them to become a slave to everyone else, sacrificing all of their labor to the betterment of people who want nothing but material gain from them, regardless of the manner in which the pound of flesh is gained.
An aside but
dialectics is exactly what makes Russian students excel so damn much when they come over to the west. Had a lot of russian colleagues in my physics department at university and the background knowledge they had about the subject was so much more in depth than any of the UK students. by testing understand and problems in new situations they excelled whereas the brit students could only understand rote memorisation. if the problem didnt look similar to something they saw in examples they were stumped.
My Ukrainian husband would agree with you. He’s a welder, no college education but years beyond some of the engineers and PMs he serves.
Yes, wrote learning only works when you are regurgitating information. True understanding allows problem solving, refinement and innovation.
And that is something Asians and Indians cant and wont ever do.
If the millenials are any more narcissistic than older generations, its because the older generations failed them. But the older generations were the ones who allowed the jobs to be offshored, permitted the rise of the police state; and lived it up, whilst the future generations are saddled with debt, less resources, less opportunities and less freedoms. If you go out on the weekends in many UK cities, its the 40-80 age range who are out on the town spending their money on frivolous entertainment and drink, whilst the young cannot afford to do so.
Not entirely true.
As a Gen Xer, I could already see some of the rot forming in the foundations of the generation and society as a whole. But, the defining characteristic of Xers, so they say, is that we got shafted by the Boomers in terms of economic success, and failed miserably by the Boomers in terms of familial cohesion, since they were the ones who, en masse, starting focusing on themselves and not on societal institutions, like marriage and the well-being and resiliency of their children. Hence, Xers felt themselves adrift and took on the ironic stance in order to mask a deep sense of aimlessness and purposelessness.
Not being a Yer, I can’t speak totally for them. But, the one thing that seems to unite them is more of that deep sense of aimlessness and purposelessness that began with the Xers, right at the time when they should have had more stable ground to walk on.
I see a lot of idealism in the Ys than I ever did in the Xers (like me). Idealists were shit on. They were suspect. They were the kids who took things way too seriously. They clearly failed to appreciate the inherent absurdity and randomness of modern life. Xers seemed like world-weary adults, even as teenagers. The Y generation strikes me as overly earnest and self-important with all of their Change The World crap.
“If the millenials are any more narcissistic than older generations, its because the older generations failed them.”
Seth,
Absolutely. The older generations failed their sons and grand sons. I was one of the first to stand up in my own name and severely rebuke the older generations not only for failing young men but then ALSO refusing to fix the mess they created when asked.
I am now SCATHING to the men of my generation (I am 49) and my fathers generation, he is 75. Did you bother to read my second book The Truth Be Told where I said exactly that? You can get it for free here.
I must say. The quality of article and comments over here far outpaces The Spearhead. MRAs are such whiny bitches.
http://www.mensbusinessassociation.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=hNKVd0Hr7bU%3d&tabid=753&mid=1703
“MRAs are such whiny bitches.”
Honestly, I would pay good money to be able to castrate any faggot who refers to MRAs as “whiny”. Are they or are they not right about society being retared, especially when it comes to fucking men over? They are. So please shut the fuck up with your wannabe bullying.
Tommy,
you might like to find out who you are talking to before you try slanging off at them. I say MRAs are nothing but whiny bitches and that is because that is what they are.
There is not ONE MRA who has done anywhere NEAR what I have done. Since I have done more than ANY MRA ON THE PLANET? I have EARNED the right to call them the whiny snivelling bunch of she-bitches they really are.
And here are my two books to demonstrate what I have done. Now…AFTER some MRAs have DONE WHAT I HAVE DONE? Maybe THOSE MRAs will earn my respect.
Example? I refused to pay alimony and child support LAWFULLY. When a judge threatened to throw me in jail I told him if he three me in jail unlawfully I would KILL HIM. So he never threw me in jail. I am also the ONLY man to video record a family court matter and put it on YT.
So yeah. Those MRAs as whiny snivelling she-bitches because they have not got the guts to do what I did.
http://www.mensbusinessassociation.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=hNKVd0Hr7bU%3d&tabid=753&mid=1703
How the fuck did I “allow” it.I quit the Democratic party when pigs Clinton and Gore pushed NAFTA.How could I stop the rise of the police state?Vote for Kerry instead of Bush?Or vice versa?
Didn’t I already read this somewhere…
What does all this insight say about us? Anything good? At all?
Keep in mind that everything we are witnessing is only going to get worth with time. Make your Going Galt escape plans now.
As this narcissistic generation moves into “mainstream” society, I think the breakdown of economic and social systems that we are already witnessing will only accelerate.
The wise man sees this coming and makes plans accordingly. The politicians can only kick the stone down the road so many times. Why do you think they are militarizing the police and gutting the bill of rights? The Patriot Act was only the beginning of the tyranny that women and half-men will welcome with open arms.
The riots you saw in Greece are but an appetizer as to what’s coming in the rest of the West.
I don’t understand why Frank (Danny Devitio) isn’t part of the gang.
Well? One reason why men today could be called “the dumbest generation” is that in an age where information is freely available as never before? Most men ignore the most vital and critical information to learn like “What is Law” and instead what big brother or jersey shore or some such rubbish.
Men prefer to be entertained than educated today. And they deserve everything they get because the guvment WILL entertain you while indoctrinating you.
There is not 1 man in 1,000 in the west today who can answer the question correctly “what is law”? And that’s pretty dumb. Most get it wrong and say legislation is law.
We created a free education channel….but I guess it is just not “entertaining” enough, right? LOL!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/MensBusinessAsocEduc
I’d say that your opinion needs flushing out here. Massive information availability means that intellectual curiosity becomes merely a leisure time activity, and therefore must compete with the frigging cartoons and other asinine juvenile entertainments that are available and packaged into short, easily digested segments. In that environment, it should be no surprise that we see the results we all lament today.
I also believe that we, each of us, fail to remember the bell curve when we groan about today’s kids. Most of us here are here because of certain desires and preferences, and chief among them is intellectual curiosity. It’s worth remembering that we’re NOT talking about special snowflakes. To me, a person of average intelligence is often a trial to talk to when it comes to serious matters- think about examples of when you were mildly surprised when you hear a good friend who isn’t an intellectual come out with something deeply insightful; a moment when you say to yourself ‘I didn’t know he had it in him.” We’ve all got good friends like that- guys of just average intelligence. Now remember that half of the younger generation we’re talking about have less raw intelligence than that person we’re talking about. One of the problems we’re going to have is that we can’t put people of marginal intelligence into meaningful jobs that provide both satisfaction and decent income. The days of the assembly-line drone are done. All those kids can’t wander into a job through dad’s union connections like before. In that vein, I pity the Millenials.
“Massive information availability means that intellectual curiosity becomes merely a leisure time activity”
I would argue that the availability of information has nothing to do with intellectual curiosity of an individual. And if it does, that is a negative thing. I was always curious. I always wanted to know how things worked. There was a guy on TV when I was young called Julius Sumner Miller whose show was called “Why is it so?”.
I got the “Why is it so?” bug very early on. Intellectual curiosity and wanting to learn have been a driving force in my live since I was 5. Sometimes the results are actually negative rather than positive. But, in this world, learning things is overwhelmingly positive.
A young man without intellectual curiosity is going to face a difficult life more often than men with said intellectual curiosity.
I’m not sure I could agree here. I feel that intellectual curiosity is spurred, in part, by the search itself, which is part of the reward. Kids can run to wikipedia and answer their questions in a superficial manner, and in doing so that’s the end of the story most of the time. How many of us over 30 had to go to a library, pull a dozen books and get sent on tangential searches that ended up forming the bulk of our learning experience? We all know that encyclopedias don’t contain essential details. My own opinion is that the ease of pulling superficial answers today suppresses the natural curiosity that should be fostered. I suppose you could argue that this will also winnow out the pikers and really identify the rigorously curious kids who actually do have an insatiable curiosity, but that’s rare enough that I think we’re losing a generation of journeyman-level intellectuals.
As for your last sentence, I say Amen.
“My own opinion is that the ease of pulling superficial answers today suppresses the natural curiosity that should be fostered.”
Quoted for truth. The younger generation think they can get every answer they need instantly rather than learn things for the sake of learning themselves.
Always Sunny is hilarious. However, to attempt a critical reading of its contents is lunacy.
No one takes those people as role models. The entire point is to see how terrible they can be. I agree that Seinfeld is closer to reality–in that the situations in Seinfeld are at least plausible, and its characters are relatable.
But that doesn’t matter. The show is comedy; don’t try to convince us that it has anything to do with this ‘generation.’
IASiP is funny precisely because they are making fun of the narcissists of The Gang. We are laughing at them, not with them. Intent matters.
Whereas with Seinfeld, most people were laughing with Jerry, Kramer, Elaine, and even sometimes George. Of course, we laughed at them occasionally, but I would wager most people who watched regularly were laughing with, and subtly envious of, Jerry and Kramer’s lifestyle, antics, George’s job with the Yankees, and so on.
I am so happy, I found this website…I thought I was alone seeing this…
This article nails it.
Bravo!
A Frenchman…
Im 26 and this article is spot on. The egos of people my age are unreal. I grew up poor and in a broken family so I never really developed arrogance, but my god young people are on another level of self-aggrandizement. The entire school system rewards and builds their egos for accomplishing nothing of real value, and they enthusiastically voted for Obama only to find they are now in fucking dead-end jobs. Yet even now they still arrogantly vacation around on their credit cards.
They are now hitting a hard fucking reality when all the socialist bullshit and 20 trillion of debt is forced upon them and they must spend their lives paying higher taxes than any previous generation because they voted for a smooth talking socialist bullshitter. Once the majority of the workforce is millennials you can put a fork in the U.S.
The self-absorbed flower children of the 60s grew up and became the workaholic yuppies of the 80s when they found that the lifestyle they thought they were entitled to wouldn’t pay for itself. It’ll be the same with our generation, Steve. We’re beginning to wake up.
The problem is the vast majority of people in the 60s were not flower children. The flower children were just the loudest and therefore the most remembered.
“Recall I took a Critical Race Theory class in law school,
and during a presentation on the lack of diversity in the professors at
the school they claimed there was only one LGBT professor on staff. I
inquired into the political/philosophical views of said professor.” lol your mission in school is a diploma and high gpa. revealing red pill status will make you a target.
No summary of the role Frank plays in the gang as an older, burnt out enabler? His role is crucial to the gang and he is a “father figure” to them or at least that dirty uncle figure.
Did partial objects or the last psychiatrist find a new home?
ok.. first of all, we are talking about FICTIONAL CHARACTERS!!
characters whom i might add, are created to specifically point out the flaws that the author of this article is eluding to.
but more importantly, when one is talking about an entire generation, that person is making a judgement of BILLIONS of people. the vast majority of which, they will never have any opportunity to meet.
many of the observations are accurate. but they are only OPINIONS based on one’s PERSONAL EXPERIENCES.
Can we please stop with these pop articles based on fictional characters in whatever pop show you guys are watching? Some of us have outgrown the teenage obsession with televison.
couldn’t agree more.
They also need to stop trolling feminists’ blogs / tv shows and bore us to death with their “OMG! have you read/saw what xxx just said!!!???”.
Hahaha. Any of you work in the entertainment industry?
I agree in many aspects that our society tends towards personal desire / self righteousness / vanity etc., but you missed the whole point of It’s Sunny.
The show is classic comedic satire; the characters are hyperbolic examples of stereotypes, placed dramatically (read intentionally by writers) in situations that make
audience squirm. Why do you squirm? Because you are witnessing exaggerated instances of social situations we all fear. It’s a way of CONFRONTING social issues, using HUMOR as a tool for disarming the seriousness of the situation for all parties involved, thus allowing us all to experience them in a safe way. It is a means of RELIEVING fears and pressures. If you take this show (and yourself) too seriously, you will indeed find the show racist and offensive at best, but if you look a little deeper you will see the value.
In a recent book I read, quote by a psychiatrist- ” Ive known of may people who HAVE narcissism by never of any who HAD. “
Fuck 99.9% of all sitcoms in human history. It’s Never Funny In Philadelphia!
WHat is TLP? You should prob explain what an acronym stands for when writing an (otherwise great) article. Unless I missed the explanation, in which case, oops