via – Zelda InformerMy coworker came up to me, and mind you she’s young, clocking at 19 years of age, and exclaimed, “You should get a video game pin up girl tattoo. You know, like of Zelda. I just found out she was a girl! I always thought Zelda was the guy!” I can excuse that, because she’s young and not into video games. But it fascinates me that there are people out there who don’t know what other people take for granted. Now, I’m not saying I know everything, and I think it’s fine if learning about something outside of what’s right in front of you isn’t your thing, but I do find it amazing the kinds of things we as human beings just take for granted. Hell, Zelda could be a guy’s name, right?
I have no room to whine about it though, as I really don’t know that much. I try to learn something new everyday, and honestly, I retain so little, that I might as well not waste the time trying to learn. But most of the time, in that avalanche of information, I get a nugget of knowledge and I keep it. I retain that one thing I didn’t know before, and I know a little bit more than I did yesterday. I mean, we have so much knowledge and information right in front of us, at our finger tips, and yet we don’t bother trying to learn anything about it. Again, there’s a ton of stuff, which may be a little intimidating, but really, why are people so ready to just take things at face value?
Okay, that’s not fair, because news outlets and pretty much every source of information on what’s going on in the world or even in the world of the web is skewed and littered with opinion and rhetoric, that the facts are forgotten. So how do you sift through the crap? If I knew that, I’d probably care to retain more. Otherwise, I guess I have no basis to be annoyed by the ignorant. I totally didn’t see that this was where my post was going to go. I was ready to complain and say how sad it is that people aren’t willing to be trapped inside their box of ideas, and never grow, but maybe I’m wrong…
via – SMOSHOkay, I know I’m not wrong, and I know that Zelda is often mistaken for the guy, but I thought it’s been around long enough for people not to make that mistake. And sure, cosplayers confuse the whole matter as girls like to dress up as the Hyrulian hero, which I am not opposed to. I guess in the end, I just think that it saddens me that people will hear something that someone else said and take it as fact. People aren’t willing to do the research themselves, and I’m guilty of this as well, but I usually don’t state those things as fact. I’ll say, “apparently,” or “I’ve heard,” instead of, “This is fact.” I’ll admit when I’m wrong if there’s proof to the contrary.
But maybe I have this all wrong. I think that maybe being informed isn’t all that great, because who can be trusted? It’s a lot of work to keep up with EVERY subject, even the couple you’re genuinely interested in. Let’s just say all you’re into right now are The Avengers. There are decades of back story and hundreds of characters to learn about and that’s a lot. Of course, it’s kind of second nature for nerds to pretty much know everything about something they’re obssessed in, but what about the non-nerd? Learning outside of school just doesn’t fly, I don’t think. Plus the news is boring and depressing…and of course, as they say, “ignorance is bliss”.
I think people are fine being ignorant to the world, because people don’t have the time to learn outside of school. In addition, a lot of people had a horrible time of learning when they attended high school and college. They have such a bad memory of school that when they think they need to study outside of it, it just brings back all those horrible feelings of grades, teachers, and tests. If we could turn information into a drug, then people would eat it up. I know there are people out there that love absorbing information, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but those are few and far between and often geeks and nerds.
Okay, enough of this confusing post. I just had to state my strange state of mind. I know few people who aren’t knowledgeable, because like begets like. I hang out with people who stay informed, for the most part. But when I meet that person who doesn’t know anything past the latest Kardiashian gossip, then it just rubs me the wrong way. Of course, maybe that’s not ignorance, maybe it’s just stupidity.
