You know what really grinds my gears? (Yep, I’m going with that for a starting sentence.)
There’s two main things I want to talk about in relation to this; the first is shared Facebook posts, the second is boy bands.
So, to start with. There’s websites you can go to such as Cute Quotez which allow you to scroll down through a list of romantic messages and poems and stuff which you can then send to your loved one. It even comes with a little footstamp “cutequotez.com” at the bottom of the image. And this is widely viewed as a romantic thing to do, being all gushy about feelings and stuff out of the blue.
Now call me cynical, but isn’t this just this website’s way to garner shares and likes? All they’re doing is writing arbitrary love letters that appeal to the most amount of people possible. There’s nothing specific in there, just “I love you this much” accompanied by an assortment of varying metaphors. That’s not personal. That’s just… well, lazy. And I see it like five times a day from various people. (This isn’t a dig against you people though, I’m just ranting at the websites. <3)
And then there’s boy bands.
Now, I’m not saying that all boy bands do this. But typically, a boy band will write a love song referring to “her” in an arbitrary and purposefully non-specific way in an attempt to appeal to the largest amount of people… well, teenagers, possible. You won’t often hear details about their hair colour or height or anything like that, and never, ever a name. By doing this they sell more copies of their music to hopeful swooning listeners. They are not singing about you. They are making money off of your crush on them.
And I’m not just talking about pop culture, believe it or not. The message may be a little different, but you even get it in rock or alternative or whatever, I don’t pay attention to music genres. But look at Young Guns. I like to believe that they are truly attempting to make people feel better about themselves. But the arbitrary pandering is still there! It’s not about a crush anymore but playing on people’s darkest emotions. Which would be fine, because they (hopefully) attempt to make people feel better. But they still make money out of it, don’t they? They still make it their motif? Just listen to the lyrics of “You Are Not” and tell me that isn’t pandering to people who are self-conscious about their appearance. If I’m wrong and Young Guns truly are the saints which they want you to believe they are, then I’m sorry, helping people is one of the noblest things to do. But to me, it all just feels… pretentious.
I could go on to rant about romantic novels and movies and the endless exploitation of romanticised tragedy for financial gain as opposed to healthy catharsis, but I think I’ve put enough cynical poison on my website for one day.
Perpetually Perturbed 