This One Was Inevitable

So I'm just going to rant a little bit.

Given the concentration of money and privileged, generationally insulated folks in this area, I have (no joke) been quietly trying very hard not to get irritated at some of the shit I am seeing. I am already tired from travel and working while trying to see this city, going nonstop. So I know that part of it is just my relatively short temper at the moment. But god damnit people, listen to your fucking selves for just five minutes.

Kim and I were at some cutesy little corner Italian sidewalk cafe tonight, and I could not get past the nexus of entitlement and self-absorption I sat in the middle of. On one side of us was a table of thirty-something folks who had two Italian guys (or at least Italian speakers) with them. They were certain every word that came out of their mouth was just glazed in the well-won wisdom of world travel and deep experience. Except they were saying retarded, unfunny and unoriginal shit with a smugness and gravity that the actual content simply did not have. But, of course, they were worldly people who had such lengthy opinions about anything, and of course they really knew about wine and food. They were condescendingly patient with the woman they had with them, as well as the waitress.

I don't mind that the waitress had to deal with their shit, more on that in a minute.

To the other side, about ten minutes after we sat down, a trio of privileged little yuppie kids sat down, loudly proclaiming that everything is (literally) just the best ever!!! or oh god that is the worst. Louis CK has a good riff on people devaluing the shit out of expressive words, where people slowly and boringly describe something mundane as "sooo hilarious". This was in the similar vein, except this little ginger chick was super fucking animated about everything - with her tone, anyway. Everything is the most whatever. The most, man!  The sneering tanned kid tried to trump her from time to time, and the token gay guy would just add in the occasional shriek and/or "omg yes, yes, yes I KNOW" or just a series of  "MmmHMMMM, yes, I knooooowww," shit that is simply the stock filler line of any Bravo reality show.

I cannot stand people like this. Listening to the vapid, useless shit these kids talked about in their prescribed catalog fashions while they tried really hard to be the most interesting and dramatic person at the table - nay, the whole city block within earshot - just made me frown pretty deeply. These are people who look at the little airy, cardboard people on the CW or in "fashion lifestyle" bullshit publications and dive in headfirst into thinking that is life. They don't have an identity, they're renting it until a newer one comes out in a season or two.

Hilariously - and I do mean hilarious in this context - a party bus full of drunken women passed the intersection, and one of them rolled down a window to scream "I LOOOOVEE ROCK AND ROLL". The girl of this trio that had spawned whole from the forehead of a Vodka commercial rolled her eyes and sighed out, "Vapid whores." Yes, absolutely. Vapid whores. How dare they interrupt her super fascinating dissertation on exactly why the Great Gatsby is the best ever or how this vintage Atari is the coolest thing ever. Why are these things the most X ever? Let me go ahead and truncate this for you, you trifecta of tittering twats - they are the best and coolest because someone just told you it was the new shit. Great Gatsby? It's a book, I guess, right? Some movie just came out, but it's a movie about old things and classy-looking shit, thus you are deep and classy cuz you like it. And Atari? Well, that's a nerd thing, and we all know how cool it is to like the nerd things now (it makes you part of a secret club!!!!).

I don't know these folks, but what kills me the most is that their view of everything was so simple, so superficial, and so quickly formed. They'll grow up with their parents money, never really understanding how the problems of the world happen. Poverty? Well, obviously that's either just a string of bad luck or due to people being lazy and not wanting to work. The idea that there are generational systems and biases in place across race, gender, location, and existing income is just one or twenty levels of play too deep for these guys.

Or, possibly worse, something terrible might happen to them. That's another facet of the overall tragedy. These folks were 20-something, way past the age where most people absorb new information and change their views or their behavior without catastrophic change. Something terrible will have to happen to them for them to examine how the world - and their corner of it - works. That's where we are as a society, we have to punish people into becoming better at a certain point.

It's, like, the worst. Ever.