Table of Contents
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.
- I am small and meaningless. We are all small and meaningless.
- 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”)
- Color could be different for everyone.4)
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.
Staircases
Keep in mind that criticising things like these as “not being very deep” may be interpreted as attempting to be deep itself. Claiming that inspirational calendar quotes are kind of stupid is not much smarter than actually liking them, everyone here will get attacked no matter where you stand. It's a never-ending staircase, where at level 1 you go “wow, this is changing my life”, at level 2 you go “jesus christ, these guys are so dumb for thinking of it as something amazing”, at level 3 you then go “whew, this guy really thinks he's better than everyone else because he has understood a pattern”, and at level 4 it is “I'm smarter because I have realized that level 3 is a pattern, too, that could escalate infinitely, but I refuse to do so” until you are at level 5 where you decide that none of this has any meaning and that, no matter where in this staircase you are, there are people who think they're smarter than you OR people that have stopped giving any thought to it because it's pointless to give thought to.
A shorter, easier staircase might be the “looks matter” and “looks don't matter” examples. Level 1: “looks don't matter”, then you mature a bit and realize that looks do matter on level 2 (and that everyone who hasn't realized this yet is dumb), and then keep going in circles from there until you're done thinking of it as a revolutionary insight.
In general, though, these levels are actually kind of interesting as they show how critical thinking and conclusions/positions of people develop over the time, in many cases in patterns that are widely observed. Most people will run through these levels in that order (with some of them taking wrong turns at some levels, that's a statistical inevitability) and I find it interesting to find out where people are these developments. It's particularly interesting because these “levels” exist for most baseline insights that a person will gain throughout their lifetime.