OK, so as a netizen, a man about town of the world wide web, I encounter daily an absolute torrent of bull****. Much of it seems to come in the form of snippets, quotes, soundbites, excerpts from interviews and the like, usually attributed (often incorrectly, and never with a source), to some luminary figure or someone masquerading as a luminary figure.
This crap gets posted all over forums and Facebook as if its the greatest thing, and usually its either obvious bull**** worded strangely, or, as is more common, its some kind of bull**** personal bias formed into a piece of "life advice" so blatantly self serving that it borders on delusion.
Strangely enough, however, people never think about this at all.
I mean, when you take into account the context or practicality of most of these things they just fall apart. Take this for example:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au...monroe_3.html/
Marylin Monroe is one of the most common figures i see in this brand of fauxlosophy, but reading through those quotes not one of them really jumps out at me as profound or particularly worldly. They just seem to betray a set of strange personal tensions between desire, and personal stability (or seeming lack thereof).
Am I alone in this? Does anyone else cringe at the sight of yet another shoehorned in piece of cod philosophy being touted? For every one of these I see that makes a good point (Usually the ones attributed to actual academics or scholars) there are six more.(Usually attributed to actors and musicians) that could be torn apart by a reasonably academic twelve year old.