YOLO is a four letter acronym that essentially means nothing and yet is tossed around as though it were carved in stone in an ancient sacred temple home to the idols that symbolize the ultimate good in all the universe. This, as you should realize, could not be further from the truth. If you don’t realize that, please strike yourself in the head with a dense object. Harsh? Good, that’s what I’m going for. I suppose the popularity of this pointless phrase has a bit to do with our generation’s addiction to things such as the following: Jersey Shore, 16 and Pregnant, Housewives of who gives a doodle or really any other reality show, Facebook, Twitter, Siri, Dubstep, anything about vampires falling in love, Justin Beiber or pop music in general, people who say “lol” or “omg,” planking, people who jump walls in Mario Kart, people who break other people’s things on a regular basis and can only say “my bad,” anything by Mumford and Sons, people who thought the Hangover 2 was even worth seeing, books by Nicholas Sparks and dogs that fit in purses. If you enjoy any of these things, don’t feel too terribly about yourself. We all take part in such activites, some of which can be beneficial. But if we’re being honest, how many of us actually use Facebook for networking? I would be lying to you if I told you I haven’t wasted exorbitant amounts of time on the internet, but I can also tell you that it is thanks to the web that I taught myself how to play the guitar and have been able to try crafting my own personal style of writing (which my Facebook friends can tell you is something that I am hopelessly pursuing.) You use Instagram to show off the pictures you take? Just get a camera. If you really enjoyed taking pictures you wouldn’t care if people saw it or not. And then there are hipsters. They would object to most of the things I listed above. The formula goes something like this, they liked things and those things became cool, so now they like other things that the average knucklehead doesn’t know about. Let’s get one thing straight: I am not a hipster, I’m just hip. Hipsters do things because they want to feel unique. People who are hip do things because they enjoy them, and how others feel about what they do has little to no effect on them. I’m now entering phase two of my column to prove my earlier claim of not being a hipster. I could very easily slip off into a whole political rant about how it is the corporate influence within our nation and world that sets up all of these borderline brainwashing traps of spending time, and more importantly money, on things that don’t progress the user in anyway. But that is not what I want to talk about now. We should start with a concept that is much simpler. There seems to be a lack of understanding about what we as human beings are capable of. I am speaking specifically to the college crowd, so if you are reading this and belong to an older generation, then forgive me but this doesn’t really concern you. If you look around, you can easily see that this lifestyle that we have now cannot be sustained forever. We as a species use and abuse most of our resources and fight with each other more than any other beast that lives on this planet. We can very easily pollute this planet to the point that it no longer can accommodate life, and you can rest assured we will if we don’t start doing something about it. It is no longer a luxury to think about what the future will be like, it is now a necessity. Why should we stand around and watch things happen on screens when we can make things happen in the physical world? If there is one thing that I want to do, it is to tell you that you should pursue whatever it is that brings you happiness with the small condition that it doesn’t really hurt other people. Just do me this favor, next time you watch something on TV, ask yourself why you are watching it. George Costanza is the only person who can get away with saying “because it’s on TV” and trust that you are no George Costanza. Dig deep and giddy up kids, we have a lot to do. If you disagree with all of the things that I’ve said here, you obviously lack originality. Cheers to the people who caught the joke in that last sentence.

To contact The Ionian’s Brian Sears, e-mail him at [email protected]