The Idiocy of the Collective.

So lets say you have been living under a sizeable rock for the  last 18-24 years. For some unknown reason you picked the beginning of last week to emerge from your mossy cocoon and, after getting to grips with the iPhone and shake in the bag chicken, you decide to check on the newsworthy items of the week. Imagine that last weeks headlines are the only perception of society you have. You would seriously think that today's so called 'young adults' were the biggest pack of fucking idiots to walk the face of the earth.
I am referring of course to Neknomination. The online drinking game where you down a pint of beer alcoholic beverage then nominate 2 of your friends to do likewise. It started off pretty innocently with people (from personal experience mainly men) downing a pint of beer/larger/ale in a pub. Obviously not the wisest of pastimes but relatively harmless. Then the morons got involved. The contents of the pints first became a higher percentage, then mixes of various spirits and finally began to incorporate various non alcoholic substances including but not limited to catfood, live fish and urine. Yes. I shit you not. Someone drank his own piss. On top of the concoctions the scenarios have also become more and more extreme in a bid to outdo the nominator. Over the last week I saw videos of people downing their concoctions while behind the wheel of a moving car, on a golf course, in the gym, standing on a car and more a more men doing them in silk thongs. Guys, please put your testicles away. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Of course anybody with half a brain could tell that this was a dangerous and needed to be discussed, of course the media weren't going to give a shit until they had something juicy to report. Unfortunately they didn't have to wait long. At time of writing there have been 4 recorded deaths thanks to the 'internet phenomenon'.
Now trust me, I've heard it all. 'it's fun', 'it's just a bit of craic', 'it's no big deal'. What people don't seem to realise is the fun aspect ended the second someone died. I've also come to notice that anyone who is against Neknomination tends to be branded as 'dry' or, my personal favourite 'the anti-bants', but you know if not risking alcohol poisoning/getting killed doing a ridiculous stunt makes me dry I think I'm OK with that.
I would truly love to know, out of the people who have completed a nomination, if I were to run up to them on the street hand them a pint of miscellaneous contents and ask them to down it how fast would the majority of them tell me to fuck off? I would hope (and am pretty confident it would be) the vast vast majority. So what made them do it in the first place? The collective stupidity. If everyone is doing something it has to be OK right? Nothing can go awry, right? It goes right back to '....but everyone is doing it' and noone is allowed to think for themselves if everyone is doing it.
I guess this is my rant. I'm not saying don't take part in Neknomination, I'm saying don't be a moron in general. It's not that hard. If you feel the need to do something that the internet is telling you to do then take part in something worthwhile. In the face of the Neknomination controversy things like Raknomination (random act of kindness) have taken off. Granted someone shouldn't need Facebook to tell them to not be an asshole, but unfortunately some people do. Again the collective are idiots, but if being idiots makes people do something nice for someone then it's not all bad.
In the meantime, I'm going to take my current perception of humanity and crawl under the newly vacated rock. Call me when the world improves.

-Claire