Scrolling through the “trending” section of the YouTube app on my phone one day, I came across something I now wish I’d never seen. Sandwiched between the newest popular prank video and Minecraft “Let’s Play” episode was what soon became the worst thing that my 17 year-old ears have ever had the displeasure of listening to. I never thought a song called “Panda” could be so bad, but boy was I wrong.
Now knowing what I was getting myself into, I let the song play in its entirety. After having sat through four minutes and nine seconds of what could only be described as full-on earlobe assault, I was left in a state of pure shock, and I wondered how something so terrible could have found its way into the mainstream like this. Not being one to let my opinion go unheard, I voiced my concerns over the future of our nation if people continue to listen to vocal garbage such as the song that I had just experienced.
Within seconds, I received a flood of responses to my comment. Arrogantly expecting some kind of civil discussion, I opened the video back up, scrolled down to my comment and settled down to read some of the replies. Let’s just say that people didn’t appreciate my thoughts on the song. I’ll spare you the details of most of the replies that I received, but I will tell you that all of them can be summed up quite nicely by one reply that I got from a user named Tumblrfrequenter11 that simply read “No.”
It is based on this personal experience and my vast knowledge of happenings similar to this occurrence all across the interwebs that I have decided that having an opinion in 2016 is wrong and should honestly just be illegal.
Think about all the trouble that opinions have caused over the years. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone just had the same beliefs about everything? It’d be great! Gone would be the days of uniqueness and contrast between people, and in would be the days of uniformity! For example, how sweet would it be if everyone on the planet expressed the same outspoken love for the ’90s band “Backstreet Boys” as you did, dear reader? Don’t lie to me. I know it’s true, and so do you. You have a problem if you have a playlist on your phone dedicated to playing “I Want it That Way” on a constant loop. If everyone loved them as much as you do, you wouldn’t have to defend yourself every time someone called you out because they’d be listening along with you instead!
That’s why I think that we should gather representatives from every country in the world together to a designated, I don’t know, TGI Fridays (on a Friday when they offer endless appetizers) to create a new uniform set of beliefs that everyone on the planet has to follow. What would be the new legally-binding things that everyone would have to believe? Heck, I don’t know. That’s not for me to decide. I just know that I’d rather live in a world where everybody is forced to agree with each other than one where everyone can have their own viewpoints on things. That’s terrible! If everyone doesn’t agree with me, then how am I supposed to sleep at night? How is my poor computer keyboard expected to withstand the hurricane-force speeds at which my fingers can type out a heart filled message to someone about how I think they’re totally wrong about which color of Snuggie they want to buy? Well, if everyone had to wear the same color of Snuggie, my keyboard would be spared.
If this were to happen, there’d be far fewer “triggered” people on the planet than there are today. No longer would I have to worry about sparking an intense rage inside of someone (I’m talking about the kind that can spawn a whole entire 12-part blog on Buzzfeed) because I wouldn’t be running the risk of offending anyone if we all had the same mindset about everything.
It honestly sounds like a utopian society, really, a kind of heaven where the ’80s rock Pandora station plays over a loudspeaker 24/7 with no sign of Justin Bieber and his army of Beliebers in sight. Sorry, I just let my own personal opinion pop up. I won’t let it happen again. I promise.