Ramblings

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Major trains of thought
Philosophy

Trainwrecks

Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Tolerance
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption

Damn, so deep… 🥲

“

A place to talk about stupid 'deep and meaningful' philosophy found on blogs, tumblr, facebook, reddit, or anywhere else. Insights that people should have outgrown by the time they were 14. Jaden Smith is our patron saint, along with many deep twitter posts.

“

~The r/im14andthisisdeep subreddit.

I'm 14 and this is deep is a catchphrase describing content, primarily found on the internet, that is very pretentious in its display of intellectual value, to the point where it is best described as virtue signalling rather than insightful. This exists, to some extent, in most fields: DEFCON for those learning about nuclear war, the Trolley Problem for the aspiring philosopher, the Multiverse (it hurts just thinking about this), Kurzgesagt attracts this kind of demographic a lot ¹⁾ and many, many other intelligent insights that really shouldn't blow your mind. They present in mostly two forms: One is the steady influx of “thought-provoking” posts and inspirational calendar-style quotes, the other is a more sincere, direct engagement with other people IRL or on the internet where they tend to spread their wisdom frantically, thinking they were actually contributing something. Those usually tend to reuse wordings from the original video or article they watched/heard/read (which makes it very easy to find out just where they got their knowledge from) and, when further dissected, will always point you to the original source (like the YouTube video they watched) because they do not actually understand the “knowledge” they are regurgitating.²⁾

Some other incredible realizations that changed my life:³⁾

You could die at any second! There's always something that could end your life right now!
This could all be a simulation.
Nobody cares about anybody (and other nihilist sentiments; very popular).
Y'know, capitalism might actually be kind of bad.
Society is bad and dumb and I'm different.
Conformity is bad. Do not conform. (“When everyone tells you not to shit on your bed, do the opposite.”)
Society is being oppressed by very few very strong ones, and if we worked together we could beat them.
When I say “I'm fine” I don't actually mean it.
Looks don't matter
Looks matter
Money (doesn't) matter(s)
(Any kind of lonewolfing / “Love doesn't matter”)

The list is infinite in theory, but my time to write is not infinite in reality, so I will cut it short.
A very real connection between me and this stuff emerges every time I pick out a defining quote for an article. Many of these quotes are well known and overused (like the “At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.”) which puts them very close to im14andthisisdeep territory and makes me very uncomfortable to use them. It's when the quote is very good or I know of no other quotes that I will still use it, but the pain definitely is there.

¹⁾

And in general many other educational content YouTubers like CGP Grey, VSauce, exurb1a, Veritasium, Smarter Every Day, etc.

²⁾

I, in fact, lacking significant education in, well, everything, do not understand them either (and most of the time the videos just don't go beyond the absolute minimum depth required to make a point, just like this wiki), but at least I don't run around heralding these insights as major revelations or go on to preach about them as if I had actually understood them. It may seem simple on the surface, but most (if not all problems) are more complex than they are described in the im14andthisisdeep kind of content.

³⁾

Bonus points for every online post that contains or has a top comment that goes like “Unfortunately barely anyone will understand this” or “The day all of us understand this everything will change”, or where one these two literally is the content of the post.