If you read the Internet (and it seems you do) it’s easy to think the world is falling apart. Yesterday was National Come Out As A Dipshit day with Donald Trump announcing he’s still a waste of combs, people responding to Ann Coulter’s tweet (It’s so cute that she’s on Twitter; she thinks she’s people!), and yet another Republican running for office suggesting that God is a big fan of rape. Things feels dire, but these these flare-ups are notable precisely because the world is pretty good and getting better.

Even if it doesn’t feel like it, there are fewer douchebags in the world than there used to be. People who think God is pro-rape are disappearing like the dinosaurs we walked next to 9,000 years ago. Sure it’s awful to think of people like that being in congress, but congress is for old people and old people are crazy. At least today’s congressmen are admitting that women who get pregnant out of wedlock aren’t witches.

These little blips are just noise on a graph of the world that’s steadily getting more awesome.

Slavery In The United States
Witches Burned in the U.S.
Wars between lines of sword-wielding idiots.

The fun part of being socially progressive is we get to win. The world does progress. The people who use the word “retarded” now are the people who said swing music was the devils work in the 30s. There are always crazy old people, but don’t forget they’re always fighting losing battles, bringing up the rear of the human parade. The people who passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage were just plugging holes on the Titanic with homophobia. Spoiler alert: they lose in the end.

Each generation’s crazy old people are better than the previous generation’s. The only thing to really be worried about it is 50 years from now when we (today’s hip and happening youths) won’t let our daughters marry aliens and vote for laws requiring trans-robot-vagina-ultrasounds before they can adopt laser children. Then we’ll be the douche bags.

Alex is a moderately attractive comedian and Internet celebrity. He writes about philosophy, robots, travel, and himself.

8 replies on “Everybody Chill Out. The World Isn’t Only Douchebags.”

  3. The number of wildly optimistic Cheez Whiz eaters is sharply up since 1952, though. I’m not saying that you’re part of that group, Alex, but if you notice I’m not saying that you’re not.

  4. What exactly do you call the (often Christianity-conversion exacerbated) witch persecutions in Africa, and how do you differentiate the use of prison labor (yes, in the United States, which has the largest prison population in the world, much of it for victimless crimes) from slavery?

  6. Follow-up to xauen’s questions: how do you laugh at jokes? Like, what is it about them that compels one to laugh? In all of my research so far, I haven’t discovered a supposed joke that is funny enough to provoke my larynx to emit a laugh.

  7. I forgot to mention “nearly unavoidable consumer products made by child and slave labor abroad.”

    Alex Falcone, you can be earnest or you can be flippant but trying to combine them doesn’t add up to funny, and if this article was intended as satirical you didn’t succeed in that either. You just come across as some sheltered guy who doesn’t think real suffering in the world has anything to do with him.

    Progress is a simplistic myth. I’ll be happy about things that actually are positive in the world, not wear blinders.

  8. @xauen: You may not have missed this, but I didn’t say the world is perfect. Maybe your non-blinders kept you from seeing that. Please reread the post with that in mind.

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