嘘とワンダーランド

No, seriously. I mean it. I am the Manifestation of Indifference. The Avatar of Doesn’t-Give-A-Shit. Wherever I go, all motivation ceases to be. Hopelessness follows me. My future will not be a bright one.

You want proof? I have proof.

1. Karlsruhe

I started noticing it here, about one year ago. I’m studying computer science in Karlsruhe since 2007 and my year is, by far, the laziest, as far as students are concerned. The year[0] of 2004 has[1] an internet forum, www.unika04.de/forum, with:

35,222 posts. When I’m looking for information, that’s where I go. The year of 2005 has one, too -  www.info.sptotal.de. They have:

15,270 posts. Still alright. The next one, year of 2006, of course has another forum. It’s at info.php-4.info. They have:

15,866 posts. My year, year of 2007, well… it was at www.uka07.de, but right now, it:

.

It had maybe a hundred posts, top, before it closed down. But this is not a case of general dumbing-down. The next year, 2008, has a forum again - info08.de. They already have:

3,605 posts, and the hard courses, the ones in need of discussion, are only just beginning for them.

2. Berlin

Before going to Karlsruhe, I lived and studied in Berlin for a year, namely religious studies and quite a bit of archaeology. The whole field is pretty well represented there, having its own buildings all over the place and quite a bit of money to spend, considering how little attention it generally gets. When I moved there, religious studies and several branches of archaeology had just gotten their own degrees and were not considered something you only minor in. However, students of my year were so disinterested that it was canceled just a year later and got demoted to a minor course again. But only religious study. Egyptian archaeology, for example, is still doing fine.[2]

There was never any organization and nothing got done. Ever.

3. School

But it even goes back to school. My family moved quite a bit and I went to a total of 5 different schools, but my curse becomes most evident at my last school, the OHG in Landau. (Don’t google it.) I got there in grade 8 and basically, what happened is, the teachers had the brilliant! idea of taking all the problematic kids and putting them in the same class. My class. It became quite a bit of a legend, though, and we drove at least two teachers out of school and into therapy[3]. This class was the anti-thesis of learning. To demonstrate this, we decided to tape every test a student had failed with a 6, i.e. the worst possible grade, to a wall. After 3 days, the wall was entirely covered in tests. A week later, we took it down again so that the teachers wouldn’t get too demotivated. Yeah, it was pretty bad, but at least no-one annoyed you and you could just talk or read all day and not get interrupted by those stupid things called “classes”. And the ability to focus and try to write down lyrics from memory while people around you are playing soccer during history class is pretty useful, I have to admit. Nobody can possibly distract you after this.

4. Further Proof

If you’re still not convinced that I’m Procrastination Personified, let me list a few other facts. The first national election I was allowed to vote in got the lowest level of participation since the state got founded. As did the second. I wonder if anyone is even bothering to show up in 4 years. Maybe I shouldn’t so that the Pirate Party can actually win this time [shameless political plug].

My year of birth is mostly remembered for Chernobyl, an act of extreme negligence and the explosion of Challenger. Probably the only good thing to happen in 1986 is the release of Watchmen, a story about powerless and disillusioned superheroes.

The one forum of which I was a regular member, one of the largest in Germany actually, got raided by the police and was never rebooted out of laziness of everyone involved.[4]

Oh, and remember the 5 schools I mentioned earlier? 3 of those closed down because they couldn’t get find enough new students. 1 of them was just completely redone right before I went there and everyone was very optimistic that it would have a bright future. It didn’t last another 2 years.
It gets worse. Two of the towns I lived in don’t exist anymore because nobody cared about living there. Both of them were industrial centers before I was born and played important historical roles. The most awesome coat-of-arms, featuring a bear wielding a pair of axes, didn’t help in the end. Detroit, I feel your pain.
In fact, the whole nation I was born in,  the German Democratic Republic, doesn’t exist anymore because, well, you know why.

Any questions?

Notes

[0] This is first year, not year of graduation.
[1] Everything as of this writing, of course.
[2] No, I’m not bitter.
[3] Seriously.
[4] No names. It’s better this way.

New Scientist just put an article out listing 13 mysterious problems that baffle scientists today. Linky.

Let me do a quick summary:

1. The universe is tilted, probably by something big.
2. Something really big pulls away a bunch of galaxies.
3. The earth was way hotter a while ago than we thought.
4. Something big is pulling away our satellites.
5. Life fuses in ways thought impossible.
6. An imaginary disease is spreading.
7. Unknown, really loud sounds in the ocean. [0]
8. Something fucked with the universe to make it asymmetric.
9. Stuff’s missing in the stars.
10. Light doesn’t work as we expected.
11. Magnets don’t make any sense.
12. The universe is noisy and maybe has a shape that is way weirder than what we experience.
13. The power of delusions is getting stronger.

Now, it might not be obvious to everyone, but I see a clear pattern here. There are basically three groups of observations:

1. There are many really big things we do not see.
2. Our perception of the universe is completely at odds with its real shape.
3. Madness is spreading.

Do you see it now? The Awakening is near! Praise the Great Old Ones! They will return and eat us all! Cthulhu fhtagn!

[0] Incidentally, not that far away from R’lyeh…