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{the dodo crowd: fetishism of stupidity} jonathan bitz Part I: Never, Ever Date a DoDo Girl (or Boy) Here in Denver we have a district called "LoDo" (short for "lower downtown"). It is where the Queen City's clubs and new restaurants and pedestrian footbridges are. Our baseball stadium is in the heart of this quarter. LoDo is the old warehouse district of downtown scrubbed anew. And while these facts alone are not alarming, those that inhabit this district are. LoDo, like many other similar districts in other cities, is infested with fraternity boys and sorority girls from colleges across the land. Dance clubs and trendy bars line the streets. Walking down these streets on any given night and you are certain to hear some of the best asshat simpleton talk that you could imagine (or is otherwise ubiquitous on television). Either that or, you get to see a fight and somebody puking. To this end, I have dubbed this crowd: the DoDo crowd. For your sociological notebook, here are some of the general characteristics I have found in a DoDo girl/boy: They have some sort of a meaningless college degree and probably hold a watered-down "career" in the same field (i.e., public relations, marketing). If their name isn't Chad, their ex-boyfriend's name is. DoDo boys wear their hats backwards. Wear sports tee-shirts. Shout at televisions. Stand in the middle of aisles with no concept of traffic or really, other people in the world at all. DoDo creatures say things like, "delish" (in referencing the traditional English word "delicious", especially when used to describe their last sushi meal). They use hackneyed pick-up lines - the ones you thought were a joke. And if they don't use those pick-up lines, they either respond glowingly to them or mock them to demonstrate their cultivated intellectual aptitude in discernment. The DoDo crowd says things like, "he drives a sweet Escalade", or "retail therapy". They take lots of photos of themselves when out on the town for night. They bleach their teeth. Tan until they're orange. Likely, they're bound to have some breed of a stupid little dog or other that they walk around the park when it's oh-so-sunny outside. And, they like sports because they don't enjoy much else that doesn't involve a gym or an "activity", or how could you forget: the mall. A DoDo crowd boy/girl incessantly believes that they have something witty to say. Especially after several pitchers of baseball beer. But, the reality is, they have nothing that a grade school child couldn't contribute to any conversation. And maybe they know this much when all they can do to assert their domination over their fellow mental midgets is to sit in the VIP section and buy bottle service. Because in the end, nothing else matters apart from having a "good time". The DoDos need to be constantly stimulated. They need to be kept busy or their automaton parts will rust. They are constantly doing things like "playing volleyball" and getting together for Super Bowls and dumb Happy Hour. It is within this constant need for entertainment where the trouble truly lays, in what I call: the fetishism of stupidity. Part II: The Society of the Spectacle For decades now, there has been an idea floating around: the dumbing-down of America. And while I wouldn"t employ that phrase because it's a euphemism, I will say this: We are screwed. Or, more than that, we are screwing ourselves stupid with broken lightbulbs and hackneyed, empty ideas that have no meat to them like: what Brittney Spears is doing today. Or what Madonna's wearing this week. In the sixties, an important thinker named Guy DeBord proposed a batch of ideas in his seminal work, The Society of the Spectacle. Much of what DeBord wrote about holds true fifty years later and it bears grand relevance both to the DoDo crowd and to our collective consciousness. The main premise in DeBord's work is that, because of our economic system, everything in our society has become a commodity. Including you and me. Our hearts and love and lust included. What DeBord called "the spectacle" was the imbroglio of images that we are bombarded with through our media, and as an extension, through our mouths. These are the images of product and commodities and celebrity. What is important within this notion is not necessarily the images or "the spectacle", but that the spectacle has become a mediator for how people interact with one another. In other words, "the spectacle" has provided us with an inauthentic way of interacting with one another. A way to approach this is to say that our colloquialisms and manners of communicating with others is predicated by what we see on the television; what hip hop phrases are in vogue; what stupid hand signs (i.e., "the shocker") are prevailing. What is important here is the idea that, as DeBord wrote, "passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity". DeBord wrote that the problem is within the quality of life we lead. H said that, within the spectacle, life is impoverished with such lack of authenticity. He said that human perceptions are affected, and there's also a degradation of knowledge, with the hindering of critical thought. The importance here, is in the dearth of critical thought. Not only the act of critical thought but really, the inability to think critically at all. Part III: You are a Commodity (in the Meat Market) I admit it: I fell in love with a DoDo girl. And while this essay is not my direct reaction to this fact, it is a queer coincidence that I bought DeBord's book while I was with the DoDo girl one night. Furthermore, the fact that I was given a glimpse into mainstream culture proved to be a blessing wrapped in one gigantic curse. With regard to DeBord, I do not believe that Marxism, socialism or communism is a good thing. Far from it. However, I have read men like Marx and DeBord and found some prophetic insight into the world that we are currently living in. In the end, both Marx and DeBord, like other impactful thinkers, were concerned with how we live our lives. In continuing DeBord's thoughts, my primary concern is along the lines of critical thought. Or really, the lack of it. And while this is a grand premise that speaks to our educational systems, media and familial relations, and probably needs to be fleshed-out in more formal terms - in my glimpse into the DoDo crowd, I saw this strong deficiency in-play. The DoDo crowd is a generalization. Yes, get over it. In order to talk about our middle of the road culture, we have to make a sweeping generalization. Where Christianity once was the opiate of the masses, so too is activity the new opiate of the masses. More than that, a very strange word has become embedded into this idea of "activity": boredom. The DoDo crowd needs to constantly be in-motion. They, as we could guess by simply looking at the spectacle and its presentation, need to be doing much, sleeping little and of course, buying as much as they can along the way. The bigger, the better. At all times, they need to be hiking, swimming, running, doing yoga, going places, taking trips, going skiing, acting rich, looking rich and having no clue where their keys are. The word boredom seems to have found its way into the English language, in England around the time of 1750. After that, it found a more-widespread usage at the time of the Industrial Revolution. To this, I find no grand coincidence. At this point in time, things began to change: The 8-hour workday was invented. Your day was broken into three 8-hour periods. The crunch of time was on. Boredom is more widespread than almost any other word. In total, it's an expression of our grand laziness, as creatures and as linguists. I have always wondered how somebody could actually become "bored"? My belief now is that boredom is the bottom that triggers people back into action. But then the question becomes, why do I need to be in a state of "action"? My answer: Out of fear. Fear of spending time with your thoughts and striving toward a state of critical thought. God forbid - abstract thought, or philosophical musings. When I dated my DoDo girl, I believe that she enjoyed my musings on life. But she enjoyed them in the way that a silverback gorilla painting intrigues you: because it's novel. Then, when we came time to move further in our relationship, it was exactly my modes of metacognition that scared her away. She simply didn't understand how I could think so much, or really, think at all. And while this isn't the entire story, this is the large part of it. In the end, she was looking at me like she does a pair of shoes at the mall: as a commodity. And when you are assessing whether or not to purchase those shoes, you factor things like price and durability and comfort and aesthetic style. No, you don't feel-out the shoes. You don't think about it with your gut. And so goes our new and painful view on dating and love and lust. You, my friend, are like me: a commodity in the meat market of the new lower class: the DoDo crowd. Part IV: The Fetishism of Stupidity The thing is, is that the DoDo outnumbers the rest of society. The DoDo crowd is society. It is our prevailing culture. It is why other countries hate us. And the true problem is that: the stupidity will only increase in intensity and it will get worse. Afterall, we all know that the dumbest procreate at the highest frequency. With that in-mind it comes as no surprise that stupidity and ignorance is becoming fetishized. Afterall, when the bulk of society is always active, needing stimuli and terrified of thinking a complete thought - why would you want to mate with somebody that challenges that? Predictably, the DoDo crowd dates its own kind, thereby validating this growing fetishism of stupidity. So, what's the imperative? Where do we go? Certainly we can all fall down to the lowest common denominator. But beyond being easy, that is not the answer. Throughout history people have sought to raise the bar in whole societies and areas of the world. How did they manage that? We can all say: Conquest. This word has a historical appeal. Sometimes it can even be seen to be a nicety. But, what I want to ask is, in the spirit of raising the bar, instead of falling down to a lower denominator: Is anybody brave enough to say that one nasty word: Eugenics? |
