Chapter 24: What are some of your pet peeves?

Originally written May 31, 2021

A very intelligent, very clever, very right-on meme I created myself

I spend way too much time on the internet, and way too much of that time is on social media, so these days most of my pet peeves are cyber adjacent.

Not every pet peeve, mind you.

Being as how I’m spending more and more time walking along the streets and trails of Santa Fe, fewer things piss me off more than drivers with loud obnoxious mufflers.

And speaking of my daily walks, I’m also quite peeved at those who dump trash along the trails and backroads I walk.

This is right off a trail near my house. I know I’ve complained about a lack of public toilets in Santa Fe, but this is ridiculous!

I almost always get peeved at automated phone answering systems of businesses or government agencies and how you have to go through so many hoops before reaching someone who might help with whatever problem I’m calling about. I especially get irked when an intermittent recording comes on, interrupting the cheesy music saying “Your call is very important to us.”

And, related to nothing, I’m always irked at how many people in the express line at grocery stores apparently don’t know how to count to 15.

And speaking of shopping, I’m constantly peeved at the fact that my shopping bags always flop over at the self-service checkouts of grocery stores. Can’t they invent stands that can accommodate different kinds of bags?

But back to the Internet, The goddamn Internet …

Until [late November 2019], I was a journalist, working as a newspaper reporter and columnist and appearing occasionally on public television to discuss current events. And I enjoyed that role.

But in the last decade or so, Facebook and Twitter made it possible for EVERYONE to be a pundit — no matter how much or how little you studied the issue you’re pontificating about, no matter how well or how poorly you can write, no matter how original or unoriginal your insights are.

And no matter what the facts are.

And even before the advent social media as we know it, back in the heyday of blogging, the rise of self-proclaimed “citizen journalists” and their accompanying smug implication of “don’t trust the mainstream media, only trust some random opinionated dude spouting off on the web used to drive me up the wall.

If such blowhards could pass themselves off as “journalists,” why not other professions? We don’t need these so-called “professional” dentists and their fancy college degrees. We need more CITIZEN dentists …

Facebook and Twitter made that even worse. So for the past few years every time you open up these platforms you’re hit in the face with a gusher of political idiocy.

To be clear, the sheer amount of outright misinformation, willful ignorance, prideful cruelty and astonishing racism you see coming from the Trumpist right goes far beyond being a “pet peeve.” It’s a national crisis ripping the country apart.

But, getting back down to the “peeve” level,  I find it unendingly annoying how unoriginal most people are when posting about politics.

Everyone posts the same stupid memes, many of which are designed for spreading misinformation. I’m always getting down on friends — liberal friends whose political perspectives are close to mine — who post false or misleading information from dumb-ass memes.

Aren’t we supposed to be better than the Trumpanzis?

‘nufff said…

Now here’s something very specific that bugs me, that might not even bother anyone else: Twitter has been responsible for an irritating aspect of online news stories in recent years. Several web publications, from The Hill to Buzzfeed to Slate have adopted a weird policy of embedding Tweets within news stories.

For example, when a politician tweets something provocative, the Tweet itself appears in the story — usually followed by text saying the exact thing the politician had tweeted.

And way too often this would be followed by tweets from supporters and distractors, again followed by text of what you just read in those tweets.

[Note from 2024: Is this still happening? I was looking for a recent example of Twitter chains being turned into “news” stories to do a screen shot to illustrate this pathetic practice, but I couldn’t find any. That would be a great development.]

And beyond politics, another aspect of social media that cheeses me off is the prevalence of smug Boomer nostalgia.

Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing weird old ads, TV theme songs, obsolete food products and other funny retro things that pop up on my social media feeds. Stuff like this:

But I must have seen a hundred stupid memes that basically say My Generation had the best music, implying that anything new is inherently inferior.

And the same mindset produces oft-shared posts about how kids these days ain’t got no respect (especially for their elders!), no morals, no common sense .. and they got shitty music that’s NOT music, just noise.

Anyone who really knows me realizes that I’ve been railing against Boomer nostalgia for decades — yes, fellow Boomers, we’ve been pining for the Golden Age of Flower Power since about 10 minutes after the ’60s ended.

In fact, back in the early ‘80s, one mighty visionary from right here in Santa Fe saw a future in which the peace-love-and-LSD crowd would grow up to be angry, intolerant, change-hostile Archie Bunkers yearning for the daze of our youth.

This man must have been a prophet!

(That’s my sister Mary doing the world’s greatest Edith Bunker imitation, with Tom Dillon doing the guitar intro and Bob Graybill — who actually once sold me a micro-bus — on piano).

My cousin Charlie once told me that when it comes to music, most people just like the type of music they listened to in high school. And, for better or worse (Spoiler Alert: Worse!), I believe Charlie was right.

But that’s definitely not true for me.

While I still love most of the music I loved in high school — Creedence! Steppenwolf! Buck Owens! — I’m certainly not limited by that.

One of my most-repeated quips is “Most the music I like I’m either too old for or too young for.” I guess that’s why I get peeved with people who are so incurious about music.

Or the other good things in life.

xxxxx

Here’s a song I’m too old for but love anyway:

And here’s one I’m too young for but love anyway:

(I’ve actually written about this tune a couple of times. You can find those HERE and HERE. )

Substack bonus!

I wrote this parody of a Boomer nostalgia post that always seems to pop up on Facebook. I’ve posted it there a couple of times. Sometimes people get it. Sometimes not.

Feel free to copy and post this manifesto yourself …

Talkin' about MY Generation:

Are you brave enough to read and repost on your own page?

When I was young, we didn't eat a lot of fast food, mom always had a home cooked meal. We drank Tang, Nestle Quik chocolate milk and the water from the hose while playing outside. We ate live bugs, without salt or pepper.

And we played outside until our moms called us in for dinner. And we always ate sitting around a table, saying Grace and singing the national anthem before every meal. There was no bottled water, no energy drinks, no fresh vegetables, no government-inspected meat, no restaurant on every corner. We didn’t’ have a choice, we ate what was served.

We went outside to play games. We’d ride bikes, skate board and build our own ramps. We played “William Tell” — with real arrows and real apples — with our little brothers and we played mumbly-peg, using razor-sharp knives with our little sisters. We swam at our city pool and played at the local park and in traffic. If we were lucky, our parents would give us change for the ice cream truck. There were no cell phones, computers, electronic games or heart transplants. And we actually had to win to get a trophy.

We watched cartoons on Saturday morning and televangelists on Sunday morning. We listened to Paul Harvey on the radio. We had one TV with 4 channels and no remote. Back in those days all the commercials were true, so we believed every word.

Nobody gave us a ride to school. But we didn’t walk. We had to crawl on our hands and knees over a trail of broken glass in the cold snow.

We LEARNED from our parents and grandparents instead of disrespecting them and treating them as if they knew nothing. What they said might as well have been the gospel, no matter how batty it was.

And if by chance we did disrespect them, Dad would whip us raw with his belt for at least 20 minutes. It wasn't called "abuse," it was discipline. And if we tried to call it abuse, we’d be beaten even harder. Our moms didn’t take us to psychologists. They were able to open our chakras, stabilize our karmas and clean our auras with one single slap.

We had GOD, we sang our National Anthem, saluted the flag and quoted the pledge of allegiance — and this was when it was still legal to say “under GOD”. You said “Merry Christmas” not “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy Kwanzaa.” We had pictures of sports heroes — not registered communists or sex offenders — on our cereal boxes.

We listened to our teachers. If we got in trouble at school, we were punished there and then again when we got home. We held doors open, carried groceries and gave up our seat without being asked to.

We didn’t rat out priests and youth ministers who touched our private parts.

We didn't hear curse words on the radio or TV, and IF we cursed, we did it away from the public because if we got caught, we got our mouth washed out with soap, the same bar of soap Dad used to wash his hind parts. “Please” and “Thank you” were part of our daily dialogue, as well as “Ma'am” and “Sir!”

Please like and repost if you agree.