The World Is Lost

by Kris Hanson

I’m not usually one to consider the world ending–or for intelligence to be waning–when I hear about some stupid movie or music album succeeding. Teenagers drive those markets, and I remember being a teenager once. No, I was never as stupid as the teenagers these days (or during my day), but I was around enough them to know how tastes were. And I accepted it. They could go listen to their fancy Wreckx-n-Effect albums! I still had Tears For Fears going full blast!

Now while I can let those taste decisions go without complaint, disturbing news was released today that shakes me to my very core. And once my core finished jittering, I came to the conclusion that the world is doomed. We are screwed. So screwed.

You see, today was the day that Lauren Conrad, of “The Hills” fame, hit the top spot of the New York Times Best-Seller list with her debut novel, “L.A. Candy”. For two weeks. Apparently, we didn’t go to Defcon-2 after the first week. This troubles me greatly because teenagers don’t read books… not the ones who know who Lauren Conrad is, anyway. This means one of two scenarios has become reality: Either people like my mom are reading this dictated-not-read novel OR vapid teenagers are beginning to read.

Now which is worse? Our elders could get dumber from reading this nonsense, but they tend to read out of habit, not because of impression. So that’s probably a dodged bullet. The tragedy is teenagers reading her book and then deciding that they can make good life decisions because they know how to read books now. Do we want future adults taking lessons learned from a book called “L.A. Candy” and applying them to the real world?

Feel that? That’s billions of people around the world simultaneously shuddering at the thought. I have built a bunker 1000-feet below the Earth’s surface and I’m willing to take in four others, by way of lottery. There were five spots, but I already promised one to Carrot Top.