You’re a hypocrite, and people can’t stand you. They say it all the time. To be a hypocrite in this generation is a sentence to emotional exile, as everyone makes apparent their disdain and low opinion of you and your beliefs. What does it say about people that at the top of the very long list of things millennial can’t stand, sits a person who says one thing and does another? It isn’t hard to reasonably conclude that this could imply an emphasis on honesty, character, and integrity which are all wonderful things. A repulsion from the hypocrite shows that we value walking the walk, not just talking the talk, and that’s a good thing, right?
What if though, everyone is a hypocrite? Then what happens to this dichotomy? Well, then technically the dichotomy no longer exists. If everyone is a hypocrite, then there is no one that can be upset with hypocrites without also being one, which proves the initial step in the scenario; that everyone is a hypocrite. Paradox.
What is humorous is that there is only one man on earth who was never hypocritical, and therefore, never a hypocrite. Nonetheless people continue on with their lives believing that there are, ‘hypocrites’, and, ‘non-hypocrites’, while in reality everyone is a hypocrite, which makes the people who have an impassioned dislike for the hypocrite, well, hypocrites. Saying that they are not one, while they act as one. Such a fun paradox, right?
No one is perfect, and therefore, we cannot all follow our ideologies perfectly, making us hypocrites. However, the real point that I would like to discuss is this; people actually like hypocrites. Yeah. Another twist added to this delicious soft-serve paradox. Think with me for a moment here about social media. Oh wait, you already were? You’re on Facebook right now? Wait I posted this there? Odd. Anyway, think about social media, and use this as your lens. How many people post a meme or status like this:
Let’s be practical here, how often do you honestly think that this happens? That someone is smoking a cigarette while degrading you for using protein powder. Really? Like, is this guy sitting outside of the gym waiting for people to come out so that he can sit there and bad mouth them for drinking protein? No Whey! That simply does not happen, yet the Internet is loaded with things like this, and why? Because we love to feel justified in the midst of a perspective or accusation that we know is absolutely preposterous.
We love seeing in black and white, knowing that someone is wrong, and then being “persecuted” for acting in the right. No smoker is actually telling weightlifters that protein is bad for them and they should quit, being the ultimate hypocrite as they stand there and turn their lungs to ash. No, but we love to think that this happens, or in the rare case that it does, we love to blow up the scenario, acting like it happens all the time.
People love hypocrites, because then we get to call them out and act indignant. “Can you believe a smoker told ME that I’m taking something unhealthy, while he stood there smoking? The nerve.” I think that perhaps one of the reasons we love this so much is that millennials are dying for something black and white in this gray world. Crying out for things to be clear-cut for once, to know what is right. The hypocrite gives us this opportunity. Likewise, we love the common ground it brings. The smoking hypocrite is so preposterous we know everyone will side with us, and so for once we have a mutual perspective. We have something we can all agree is wrong, and then talk together in our petty outrage about it.
We love when people are hypocrites because then we have a common enemy to unite against, something we can all agree is wrong in this world of 195 perspectives. We finally have an easy call for our taxed minds, overburdened with the weight of a morally ambiguous world; and our brains like easy. So before we finish, I’d like to remind you of Starbucks’ red cups. They killed Christmas those heathens! I’m a Christian, and I am severely offended by these red cups of liquid that I will still buy. Go on now, be outraged at the fact that I, a Christian, am upset about something so preposterous, and post about your outrage at my hypocrisy on Facebook so that everyone will agree with you.
Oh, you don’t believe that I am actually upset? You’re saying there were very few cases, few and far-between where Christians were genuinely upset, and that people could not possibly have posted in outrage about something that never really even occurred in any surmountable fashion, so why are we upset?
Now you’re catching on.
