Across all realms of the internet, the phenomenon of what I like to call “The 7 Second Society” is prevalent.  What I mean by this is that people (and especially American sheeple) have an incredibly short attention span.  Our culture has been groomed into a society in which the dumbing down of information is sought after and demanded.  

Truly, this phenomenon affects ALL of us at some point or another.  Even I cannot claim that I am not a victim of it.  Why and to what degree it consumes us is a little different from one person to the next, but the end result is typically the same.  The thirst for quick information is driving us in to a dystopian society which is best illustrated in the film Idoiocracy.  Although the movie clip below has a hysterical (but sadly true) perspective and has been reposted by other blogs, they fail to show real life examples which I get in to below.

stupidity from No Kidding on Vimeo.

 It pains me when I see this…

As the sole writer for this website, I spend a great deal of time each day scouring the internet for current events (and educational articles) related to preparedness.  I do my best to interpret/digest the information, and write in a meaningful way such that the information is passed on to all of you.  Many other (and more popular reporters) do the exact same thing.  Regardless of the effort, the payoff is a couple thousand to <100,000 views.

Meet one of many “Viners” named Young Poppy.  He is one of many people on Vine that post quick videos at around 7 seconds long.  In 10 hours, this video has been viewed 300,000 times, 4,000 likes, and 300 comments.  I wonder how long it took him to come up with that masterpiece…  In total on his page, he has 1.8 Million followers, and over 1.4 million views on his videos.  Let me note that he is not one of the most popular…I just chose him sporadically because I can’t browse through vine to find a good one before losing my mind.

Click the speaker on the bottom right of the image to hear his genius advice.  You’ll want to hit it again to shut it off after you listen to him or he will forever burn his words into your mind.

WHY, WHY, WHY!

There are many reasons, here are some that I can think of….

The Busy Folk

There is only so much time in the day and the internet and life are in information overload.  We are forced to speed through information to try to extract top lines of topics we are interested in.  Shorter is better.

– In the corporate world, the same principle applies.  As you rank higher and higher in a company, they have less and less time to get into the technical details.  High up managers only want information that can be put on a “Wheaties box”.

The Lazy Folk

– Some people have way too much time on their hands and do not use it constructively.  I would the above fine fits this criteria nicely.

It is a sad state of affairs that we are so completely distracted with technology and information.  For many, it pains them to read a book.  Wouldn’t it be nice to remove the distraction, and spend quality time with family or researching something interesting?

If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post, you’ve survived about 7 minutes of reading/watching!   Thanks for your time :)