Tag Archives: news

How to be Offended

In case you’ve been wondering how to be offended, here is my guide. If you don’t get offended easily, or at all, that’s a great thing. I don’t know why you would want to learn how to be offended, but here are some tips to guide your downgrade towards becoming easily offended.

1) Convince yourself that you’re very special and important. Convince yourself that most people on Earth already know how special you are, and know the important role you play on Earth.

Believe that the Earth revolves around you and that scientists simply haven’t figured it out yet. It’s okay, it’s only a matter of time before scientists figure it out.

2) Don’t have a strong purpose in life. Be a piece of paper floating around on a windy day. Let life’s current take you where it wants. This will help you become easily offended. If you get very upset when they mess up your Starbucks order, then you’re well on your way to achieving mastery in offendednessery.

3) Pay close attention to as many news outlets as possible. Understand, that they’re personally attacking you. Ignore the fact that they have no idea who you are, but instead focus on the few words that you identify with.

4) Get involved in every pointless cause that comes your way. Worry about it. Lose sleep over them. Pretend that your life depends on it. Fight for the pointless cause as if your survival depends on it.

5) Ignore the fact that nothing is ever black or white (there’s always a gray area). Find an extreme on every issue, and relentlessly argue/ fight for it. Ignore the other extreme. Don’t try to understand the other side. They’re probably wrong anyway.

Those are my 5 tips on How to be Offended.

*Yes, this is a joke. I don’t recommend doing any of the above tips. Getting offended is a waste of time.*

Beware of fear

Beware of the fear.

It seems like everywhere you turn fear and worry are being shoved in your face. The news is almost always negative. Reporting on all the bad things happening in your city and around the world. After you watch it you don’t feel motivated anymore. You feel sort of drained.

How are you supposed to stay positive and productive if you’re always being bombarded with negative news. Killings, shootings, illness, bombings, protesting and the bad economy. After hearing all that I don’t expect anyone to have any sort of motivation for the rest of the day or night. The bad part is that the general population hears the news everyday. So that means lots of people lose their motivation everyday. Not just once a week or once a month. We can’t easily change what the news talks about. What we can change is how much news we watch.

I haven’t paid much attention to the news for 4 months. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much. I still catch glimpses of things that are happening on Yahoo while logging into my email account. Last week, I tried to watch the news and immediately felt awkward. The anchor was about to go to commercial break. He then started going through the topics to be discussed after the commercial break and they were all negative and depressing. I thought to myself “Looks like I haven’t missed a thing.” I changed the channel, since I quickly lost interest. Why do I need to hear all that junk? I recommend going on a news diet.

While I can’t be certain, I would imagine that all that negativity is doing some subconscious harm to every person that watches. Day after day, it has to be doing some damage to our subconscious and attitude.

The same thing can be said about all the crazy conspiracy theories out there. Notice after you watch a documentary on one, or a friend explains the conspiracy theory they just heard, how you feel. You probably feel shocked. The main part I’ve noticed is that they all pretty much make you feel scared and helpless. They make you feel like you are not in control anymore. Some of them make you ask yourself “what’s the whole point in continuing to try?” I’m not a conspiracy theory expert but my opinion is who cares. I stopped listening to conspiracy theories years ago. What’s so great about feeling negative after hearing about them. I don’t have time for that. Neither should you. I rather continue to do my best at staying positive and productive. That’s something that actually matters.