“LOL.”
Hank Moody talked about this seventeen years ago on “Californication”.
If you happen to watch it for the first time in 2024, you might think of Californication as a prophecy akin to The Simpsons. Except, it wasn’t set in 2024. It just hits harder now, and it’s only going to become more pertinent as time goes on. By the way, if you actually think the screenwriters of The Simpsons predict the future, that’s not really what goes on there.
Some of the conspiracy crowd will tell you it’s the CIA and Hollywood once again brainwashing and social-engineering the masses through TV and media. Same old tested playbook: gaslighting and programming the minds of sheep with propaganda via mainstream outlets, subliminal messaging in movies and cartoons. They used to deliver “breaking news” to your home via newspapers and television, now they send it directly to your phone.
As the format has become more convenient, you doubled down on consumption, and they doubled down on lies.
Was Hank Moody’s story written with intention to idolize promiscuity and hedonism? After decades of psyops, only the most oblivious will laugh at you for thinking so. Set in 2007, the show is a tale of love and dumb choices, brilliantly showcasing the decline of 21st century’s stupid, superficial society.
I enjoy a good conspiracy documentary - I also see how for Joe Shmoe those could be too intense on a cozy Sunday night. Californication portrays a deteriorating culture, but because it’s a comedy show, it’s much easier to digest - and the result is the same - some will get the message and process it in their head, while dummies will shrug it off and forget it in no time.
You might think, “I remember people weren’t that dumb fifteen years ago.” I also used to think that. I’m not so sure anymore. One thing I learned over the years: We are gradually getting dumber as our lives are becoming easier, while technology is helping us accelerate on our path toward the inevitable collapse.
And no one’s ready. Eveyone hopes for the best, yet only a few prepare for the worst. Seneca once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Preparation to take action at the right time is what separates winners from losers. Most people are spectators - they passively observe life without having any influence on how things are going to go. They respond to circumstances dictated by others. They don’t know how to seize the moment. Taking action is not their default setting. That’s why they always miss out on the greatest opportunities - they never get lucky - because they’re not prepared to take action when opportunities knock. They don’t know any better, and they have no interest in learning anything new. They’re more interested in wasting time on bullshit than they are in making progress. And their literacy skills reflect their ineptitude, narrow-mindedness, and arrogance.
Those in charge of the Matrix know that the plebs prefer entertainment over wisdom, and that’s how they maintain their power - by feeding them exactly what they crave. That’s why Bread and Circuses was invented - to keep the lazy peasants entertained and far away from decision-making. They have no interest in learning anything useful. Their cognitive development stopped at the point of consuming the TV programming. They blindly trust the authorities to set and enforce rules that impact their existence - because they never checked in a dictionary what the word “authority” means. Shepherds make sure the sheep stay complacent and never question the status quo.
Showtime once dominated the world of TV with shows like Dexter and Ray Donovan. It’s sobering to see how the industry and society plummeted in just two decades. Back then, people would go out for dinner and drinks, engage in real conversations, interact with one another, instead of staring at their phones like a bunch of dorks. As our lives are supposed to be gradually becoming easier thanks to continuous technological improvement, somehow as a society, we’re getting dumber by the day.
These days, teenagers have attention span of a goldfish on meth. They mindlessly scroll through social media all day. Their perception of the opposite sex is shaped by dating apps and the promiscuity pushed on them by the entertainment industry. Boys objectify girls on the basis of endless bikini pics on their Instagram feed. Girls see boys through the lens of Taylor Swift’s songs and Disney princess fairy tales. Once they learn that boys don’t care about mermaids or unicorns, hungry for attention and influenced by the music industry, girls present themselves as sexual objects. They choose their partner by swiping left or right on a dating app. Their idea of a successful life is based on social media posts of their favorite “online influencers”. They smoke weed way stronger than anything their grandparents used to smoke.
No one wants a real job anymore. Everyone wants to be an influencer, travel the world on private jets, drive Lambos, party with girls from OnlyFans, stay at expensive hotels. Except, someone still has to flip the burgers and clean the toilets at a fast food joint. Do you think those hipster weirdos at Starbucks dream of being there? Yeah, right… If only they had anything interesting to say, they wouldn’t spend another day there. They work there only because other than labor, they have nothing of value to offer. Same goes for all those deadbeat office jobs. How many of those people actually want a career that pays the average national wage ten years after university? Even the dummies are slowly realizing what an absolute scam the whole system is.
And the so-called “grown-ups” aren’t any better. Where do you think all those idiots around you come from? Dumb teenagers don’t get much wiser as they age - instead, many of them turn into even more detached, self-absorbed, clueless degenerates. So don’t act like it’s some unexplained mystery. Wake up, Sherlock.
Same goes for stupid people. They didn’t choose to be that way, though. They just are. And there’s little they can do about that. On the other hand, there’s still a lot of things they can do to improve quality of their lives. First of all, learn as much as possible. Even if you’re an absolute idiot, there’s always some information that your brain will absorb and process to some extent. It doesn’t have to be too complex or scientific. Most of the time, the more you simplify whatever you’re dealing with, the better. Why complicate things?
In an era where every story is compressed into a 30-second clip, everyone is running out of time. People struggle with motivation to do anything that requires consistency. Only a few know that motivation comes and goes - just as other feelings come and go. Smart people know that the key to success is consistency and discipline, and that it’s better to follow common sense than impulses and emotions. They don’t waste time dwelling on their feelings. They don’t overcomplicate things.
But then comes the language, in the form of words, both spoken and written. And that’s where a whole new ugly can of worms emerges from the darkness of filth. People across the board are equally lazy when it comes to writing, which suggests that literacy and proficient communication have more to do with personal standards than intelligence or aptitude. You can try harder, even if you’re a dummy.
I understand that you’re very busy and your time is precious to you. No doubt about it. Given how much time you spend on littering your mind with bullshit entertainment, obviously you don’t have time for grammar, let alone punctuation. Not only your illiteracy exposes your stupidity, you also don’t seem bothered at all. It never crossed your mind how juvenile your inability to write makes you look. Who has time to write anymore? What’s the point when no one has time to read? Less people than ever in history seem to stand for anything, anyway, so who cares? Those with dyslexia are not the issue here - it’s those who can write and decide not to. Instead of “omw”, you can write “on my way” - it takes two extra seconds and it shows you graduated from primary school. You won’t do it, though, because you’re lazy. And that laziness spreads out from writing to other aspects of your life. But since you don’t care, you’re unlikely to ever connect these dots.
In one of my favorite scenes, Henry Rollins interviews Hank on a live radio.
Transcript:
Henry Rollins: What’s your latest obsession?
Hank Moody: Just the fact that people seem to be getting dumber and dumber, you know… We have all this amazing technology, and yet, computers have turned into basically four-figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it’s really given us is Howard Dean’s aborted candidacy and 24-hour-a-day access to kiddie porn. People, they don’t write anymore. They blog. Instead of talking, they text. No punctuation, no grammar. “LOL this” and “LMFAO that”. You know, it just seems to me that it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.
HR: Yet you’re part of the problem. I mean, you’re out there blogging with the best of them.
HM: Hence my self-loathing, you know…
Why the fuck would you write “LOL” when we both know that not only you didn’t laugh out loud, you actually didn’t laugh at all, because there was nothing to laugh at? Now, I don’t want to sound like an asshole. I am not against emojis or slang words. I swear a lot. I say a lot of things nowadays considered inappropriate or obscene, things that less than two decades ago were completely fine to say. Sure, some people would feel insulted, but no one tried to get you fired and canceled just because you hurt their feelings. People understood the irrelevance of those. Nobody mentioned a word about “political correctness” or “cultural appropriation”. Fuck your feelings. Snap out of it. No one cares. And it’s fine.
Ignorant fools will tell you there’s nothing wrong with being an ignorant fool. Morbidly obese will call their condition “body positivity”. The depressed will tell you it’s okay to feel sorry for yourself, take prescription drugs, and cry to a therapist. Those struggling with substance abuse will call themselves “recreational enthusiasts”. Weak-minded hypocrites always have an excuse for every stupid thing they do.
Ignorance makes life harder - not just yours, but also the lives of those around you. It opens you up to all sorts of vulnerabilities that could otherwise be easily avoided. Depression is not some disease you can catch like a virus - it exists only in your head. Morbid obesity equals self-harm and laziness, neither of which should be glorified. Getting wasted on drugs and booze doesn’t make you cool, especially when you haven’t accomplished anything worth any accolade. It makes you look like a clown.
Hank Moody was loved by many and hated by many others, just like every other man who speaks his mind without worrying about hypocrisy of “political correctness” and all that infantile snowflake buffoonery. In a scenario where most people would refrain from speaking their mind in fear of getting ostracized by society or even getting fired, Hank would just call assholes out on their bullshit. He drove an old, dirty Porsche, drank a lot of booze, smoked a lot of weed, and slept around with many hot women. He succumbed to all sorts of temptations and vices. No one in their right mind would consider Hank a role model for their children, even though he was a father himself. Still, despite all his flaws, Hank Moody can teach most of us a serious life lesson.
We’re too distracted and totally uninterested in making things harder for ourselves. Technological advancement made us weaker and lazier instead of making us smarter. As we gradually become more and more dependent on technology, at the same time we deteriorate in terms of literacy, resourcefulness, eloquence, attention to detail - everything we had to develop through effort and consistency, we found a way to replace with convenience in order to stay entertained and disconnected from reality. And in this pursuit of comfort and material things, we forgot where we came from.
Everyone is caught up in their own shit. The more junk food we consume, the more cheap dopamine we chase, the more detached from true meaning we become. Some people believe we live in a simulation - it’s hard to tell with a VR headset on. Acquiring wealth and building a successful career has become so hard that most decide to opt-out of the rat race and settle for video games, movies, alcohol, drugs. Why go on a date when you can pay an OnlyFans girl? What’s the point trying to do anything difficult when you can escape into virtual reality and become an astronaut?
When it comes to writing, I make some typos, punctuation and grammar errors, too. But when I see someone write “Your welcome”, I want to forget about good manners for just a moment and tell that person exactly what I think. My favorite of all errors, though, is “should of” instead of “should have” - for example, “You should of said something” or “I should of been there”.
This error originates from should’ve, which is a shortcut of “should have”. When you say it fast, it can be confusing, especially to those who are here just for fun. No one should choose your interests for you. You know best what you’re into. If you have no interest in something, no amount of exposure will change that. What bothers me is the laziness. How much effort would it take to look it up? Given all the time you spend on scrolling through bullshit on the internet every day, would it really be so hard to learn the most basic grammar and spelling errors? You’d be surprised how easily those could be dealt with. Of course, in order to do that, you’d need to care in the first place. And of course, you don’t give a fuck. So by all means, talk and write like a moron if that’s your thing. That said, understand what your inability to use language you’ve been using your whole life says about you.
At the rock bottom, as culture sank into the sewer, literacy met its fate.
Was Californication a psyop? It sure wasn’t a prophecy. It’s just who we are.
