Who is this Justin Bieber and does his mommy know that he's on the internet?

Sometime back in the early 1980's, I believe it was written by Gary Panter, and it was an essay in which Panter regects the notion of the "artist" as a bohemian, but instead encourages the artist to work within capitalism in order to reach a wider market. This piece was entitled, The Rozz Talk Manifesto, and it's really an important and interesting piece of literature. There was a quote I remember from it, that said something like, ignorance of your culture is not considered cool. It's something that I've tried to always keep in mind, but lately, I think I really would be a lot happier if I was 100 percent ignorant about some things, particularly regarding popular music.

I've always stood by that and I believe that nobody should be proud of ignorance; like when someone says to me, "I've never read a book cover-to-cover," "I've never watched the news," and "I don't vote," just to me is like a dumb brag, and I don't think people should brag about ignorance. So, whenever I have said to someone, "I don't watch television," or, "I've never seen a live play," I don't try to put any pride into my voice.

The reason I bring all of this up is that, for the last two or so weeks, whenever I go into YouTewb, I would occaisonally see a link to think music video by Justin Whatshisface and for the most part, I would ignore it. I signed into Facebook tonight and on the right side, where you see that little update feed, I saw a post saying, Justin Bieber - 4 friends are fans. So, me being curious, I click on it to find out more about this Justin character. There was a link posted somewhere to his music video, so obviously having nothing better to do with myself, I clicked it and not only was I amazed that this child can magically play Ex-bawks with his controller off, but I was astounded because he looks and sounds like a twelve year old.

So it made it to about a minute and a half, not counting the painful blitherings between him and Usher, and I began to kind of disagree a little bit with The Rozz Talk Manifesto, and I think it would be considered okay to be ignorant of some things in contemporary culture if they sound like a twelve year old who needs to drop nuts already. I think it's okay to not know about something that isn't even going to last for a year. And I really don't think preteens should be having house parties with nineteen year old girls. =/


PUBERTY POWER!!!- Linden

PS: *coughreadmystorycough*