Tattoos, Video Games, Sexting, Etc.

1. I've posted a new podcast -- "I Think About Eulogizing Craig." Once again Craig opens about some pretty heavy stuff.

2. I'm now a member of Facebook. Find me and and request my online friendship. It's likely that I will accept you as my friend. This means that you will be my friend -- except it will not change the dynamics of our current relationship in any way.

3. I'm not saying I won't join Twitter at some point, I'm just saying it's the dumbest goddamn thing in the history of dumb goddamn things.

4. What do video games and tattoos and sexting (or sex messaging) have in common? Well, I'll tell you...

Twenty years ago you could not get a "real job" with a visible tattoo -- you just couldn't. Simply: Society wasn't ready for it. It meant that you were some sort of degenerate or drug addict or rebel (or worse, all three) who would scare off clients and co-workers and at some point blow up the office with dynamite. But everyone has a tattoo now...they're socially acceptable.

How about video games twenty years ago? If you were an adult playing video games you were a pathetic bum who never came close to unhooking a brasserie Now? Let me tell you, as a man who doesn't play video games, I feel like the minority. Seriously, everyone's doing it. And you're no longer a pathetic loser if you spend your entire lunch break discussing Madden '09 with your work buddies.

Which brings me to sexting. There have been approximately 82,394 stories in the news recently about teenage girls sending naked pictures to their boyfriends via cellphone. And if you ever enter an adult conversation about sexting, inevitably the same topic always arises: Sexting is a career killer. The belief is that if a naked picture from your sophomore year of high school is hanging out there it will be an impossible hurdle to clear in your post-graduate life, regardless of your academic achievements. To that I say...just wait. Sure, I see how it looks now, but wait twenty years from now, when the folks doing the hiring experienced something similar when they were seventeen.

Young people are stupid, always will be. But if enough of them get tattoos and send naked pictures and continue playing video games well into their thirties, it will force the hand of every employer nationwide. Life still comes down to making dollars, and with a drastically smaller pool of "clean cut" candidates, the once frowned-upon crazies will have their day in the sun.

-Brad Spieser (Brad@TwinKilling.com)
3/23/09