I’m so psyched. I love Mark Twain. Let’s get to it:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
― Mark Twain
tags: individuality, majority, minority, pause, reflect, wisdom 30581 likes

Ruh-roh. Am I supposed to pause and reflect about my admiration for him because I LIKE to think that I’m not alone? That I’m in some form of majority because he was so clever and his writing is so timelessly true?

I am also completely surprised that his quote is not as popular as that George Washington Maurice Switzer fella from Day 2.

While I believe that Twain is on to something, absolutely, I also will submit that I believe we are in a time of huge personal pride for individualism, personal civil rights, and greater awareness of our fellow man.

Orrrrrrr…. maybe it’s just within the very small pocket of people I prefer to hang out and converse with.

Yeah, I think that’s likely more the deal. The internet is rife with weirdos. Nevermind. Twain was right.

I was watching something over the weekend where a parent was watching a kiddo on a skateboard. Then the conversation turned to Twitter’s “Vine” video app which loops a 6-second clip of genius for all the world to see. It went something like this,

“Vine? What’s vine? YouTube this! It’s great!” said the crotchety and half-dead 40-year-old man.

“Vine is 6-seconds! YouTube!? It’s more like three minutes. Who has time for that?!” she said as she skipped away.

I want to say that moment was in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” but I can’t be sure, my cobwebbed brain is filled to the gills with pointless shit like wondering about whether the pH in our hot tub will ever stabilize.

It was her response, “…three minutes. Who has time for that?!” that just sucked all the wind out of my sails. I weep for the future where everyone will have the opportunity to take everything personally, out of context, on behalf of someone else and repeatedly so in an endless and vapid race for relevance and matter in a world where no one has time to look at anything beyond six-seconds long.

Everyone has an opinion. Everyone feels a need to shout it from the rooftops. Everyone has to get in everyone else’s shit and dissect it and tell them how they could have done something better, faster, stronger… more like mmmmmyeah: someone else.

Me? I’m all about independence, but the funny thing about that, is that it’s very popular. I wrote about this a while ago.

Miley Cyrus endeavors to be artful and freakin’ inde-freakin-pendent y’all with her tongue and twerking and wrecking ball screeching and devil horns and foam fingers. Little kids everywhere are going, “Where the where is Hanna Montana?” as their mothers careen feverishly about their homes to turn off the screens and wait for the seven horsemen because you KNOW they’re paying attention to Miley. (I want to be the first to predict that she will soon drop her surname. Just let me have this.) I know she’s sitting around thinking about me. “Hmmmm… How do I crush that Hater, Molly… She’s so hatin’ on me… She doesn’t respect my art…”

Miley’s crusade is nothing new. It makes me wonder though about whether she is a pawn or truly being her own gal. The unending peer bashes she gets from her fellow “artists” is equally confusing and also leaves me thinking it’s all part of a machine.

It’s the popular thing to do these days, have an opinion about Miley Cyrus. I don’t entirely blame people either. She’s like this combo lightning bolt / barometer / tornado / wrecking ball for American Pop Culture society. It’s a fence to be on the side of: pro-Miley or anti-Miley. Me? I can’t be bothered with it. The more gray matter I devote to her crusade the stupider I get.

Then I’m all alone again, with Twain, ironically and secretly hoping and begging that more people will join us in our “Who gives a poop about Miley” brigade. Which then begets its own form of isolation and foam finger-pointing.

It’s a tricky road. Just think for yourself.

Thank you.