Transcriber: Diana de Vega de Ceniga Reviewer: David DeRuwe
So, before we begin,
I'd like to tell you all a little story about a very famous animal.
Now, this animal was a zoo animal.
He was born and raised in captivity,
and thus, the only people that he'd ever known
were his trainer and the people that would go to visit the enclosure
when he was doing his daily activities.
Now, one fateful day in May,
a little boy decided to climb over the wall of this animal's enclosure
and fall into his habitat.
The animal, not really knowing what to do,
picked up the little boy, started dragging him around.
Perhaps he was trying to play with the boy,
perhaps he was trying to protect him - no one really knows.
But either way, it looked like the little boy was being put in danger,
and so the zoo officials made the call to kill the animal.
The animal I'm referring to is, of course, Harambe.
Now, after Harambe's death, there was a great deal of backlash:
The mother of the little boy was cyberbullied,
the zoo official who shot him was called 'hasty',
there was a whole movement against the captivity of gorillas in zoos,
and, of course, PETA flipped out over everything.
But, as you all know,
the dark side of the Internet got wind of this,
and upon hearing the events surrounding this animal's death,
its eyes widened, its hands came together ...
There we go.
(Laughter)
And it was sent into the Earth.
This is going to be good.
And so Harambe became one of the most viral memes
of 2016 and possibly ever.
Now, to me, the events following Harambe's death
mirror a greater societal movement that I'm going to call:
'The Denial of Sincerity'.
And what this movement is, is, basically, as it says on the tin:
It's a denial of sincerity.
People of our generation, or, as they call it, Generation Z,
are less likely to take things seriously
and more likely to refer to something like humour.
For examples of this, you don't really have to look very far.
Take Mountain Dew, who created a new flavour of their popular soft drink
and wanted to find a name for it.
So they polled the Internet.
And the name the Internet came up with was:
'Hitler did nothing wrong'.
(Laughter)
Now, the British government also tried this with this boat,
which is a research vessel that they built,
and they wanted to find a name for it.
Again, they polled the Internet.
And again, the Internet came up with:
'Boaty McBoatface'.
(Laughter)
Now, this was ignored immediately because, frankly, it's stupid.
And the British government named it the 'Sir David Attenborough'.
But, as you can see here,
the Internet couldn't take 'no' for an answer
and made a full petition to rename the boat Boaty McBoatface
in, and I quote, 'the interest of democracy and humour'.
And then you look at something like your school life
because this applies to school life, too.
Take an issue like pollution,
which you talk about a lot in school because it's an important issue.
But the thing is,
as soon as you have your deep discussion about it
in an environmental science class,
you don't talk about it ever again.
You never discuss pollution with your friends
unless it's in a humorous context.
Take this:
When you look at this picture and you see trash,
you don't see a problem.
You don't think to yourself,
'This is trash in a place where there should not be trash;
you need to fix this.'
You think to yourself,
'This is a post box that's not supposed to have rubbish,
but it has rubbish in it.'
It's ironic.
And in this way, the Internet in school differed greatly in the values.
School-school is to be sincere, to make you sincere,
and to thus prepare you for the real world.
Everything in school is sort of directed at this
because they do want you to succeed.
Unfortunately, the real world is apparently super-depressing.
Take your English class.
Because your English class wants to expose you to the true nature of humanity.
And yes, you do read some happy books in English class,
like 'The Gift of the Magi.'
But for every one book that you read in class that's happy,
there are at least five books that make you feel horrible about life.
Take 'Romeo and Juliet',
a heartwarming tale about star-crossed lovers
whose love is terminated by society and who both kill themselves needlessly.
Or 'The Scarlet Letter,'
which is about how humanity is naturally inclined to sin.
Or ...
(No audio)
And this is where the Internet gets in because the Internet doesn't really care.
The Internet school is to make you insincere and to make you have fun.
Again, take Harambe.
Harambe is an issue that the schools would love
because the mother of the boy who was put in Harambe's cage,
she was actually told that she should go to jail
because she let her son disobey her.
That is a weird reaction,
and that is a good topic to talk about because: Should she?
And then, also, there was this fact that an animal was killed.
Should the animal have been killed?
Could they have avoided it? Sedated him?
You can talk about this; you can solve problems.
Maybe make it so that someday in the future,
another gorilla would not be killed.
But the Internet decided that no,
we should make fun of the fact that an animal was killed.
And the weird part about Harambe,
and the worst part, actually,
is that, the more sincere our tribute to Harambe is -
because, for those of you not familiar, a Harambe meme is saying something like:
'God bless Harambe', and then everybody laughs -
the more sincere our tribute to Harambe is,
the less sincerely it is taken.
And it's a perfect recipe for denying sincerity
because if you try to be sincere,
if you try to care about the fact that Harambe was killed,
everybody just laughs at you.
And you can see this in other things like -
this thing is my worst enemy -
the 'B-movie'.
(Laughter)
Because the B-movie is a bad movie. I'm not afraid to admit that.
And yet, the Internet has fallen in love with this
because if you go on YouTube and type 'the B-movie'
you get like 50 compilations of different cuts of the B-movie:
'The B-movie Without Bs.'
'The B-movie but every time "B" is said, it gets worse.'
(Laughter)
And I don't understand this, and it's not a good thing
because the B-movie doesn't have anything useful to offer.
It doesn't have something like ...
'Zootopia'
which is a good movie with messages about racism
and how to get along with the rest of your peers.
Or, if they want something humorous,
'Idiocracy,'
which is a movie about how humanity will evolve to be stupid
and kill itself by trying to get rid of plants.
Both of those movies are much higher rated than B-movies.
They are better movies, and yet, on the Internet, they are less revered.
And again, in B-movies you see the same pattern
because the more it appears that someone loves the B-movie
enough to like change it to fit their whims, the funnier it seems.
And so, in that way, you deny yourself.
But by denying sincerity that comes with something like 'Zootopia'
and opting for something like B-movies,
you deny yourself the sincerity that comes with something like 'Zootopia',
you deny yourself the honesty
and the discussion that we can have about solving problems.
Because we do need to solve problems.
And the world is depressing.
There is racism. There is pollution. There is gender inequality.
And a lot of pressure has been put on us to fix that.
Think about it.
From birth, you have been told that your generation
is going to be the one that finally stops discrimination,
that finally closes the gender wage gap.
But how can we solve that problem if we don't pay attention to it?
How can we solve that problem if all we talk about is the B-movies
or about how funny it is that Harambe got killed?
We need to have those conversations.
And that's where you come in.
Because by being here, you've been actively disproving my point.
Bad for sake of argument, but good for the sake of humanity.
Because by coming here, you are saying that you care.
You are saying that you would rather spend your night
listening to your peers talk about things that they care about
instead of watching viral videos or cuts of B-movies.
(Laughter)
You are saying that you want to make a difference.
And that is a very good thing.
And so, despite the argument that I've had that we all deny sincerity,
I want to tell you to keep doing what you're doing by coming here.
I want you to keep caring, to keep doing things.
There's so many other options that you can have to entertain yourself
besides the B-movies.
You can, like, go online and watch more TED talks
because, hopefully, they've made you laugh so far.
Or you can go check out 'The Wingspan', which is our school's local magazine
that has more articles written by people
about more things that they care about and that are important.
You can go join clubs like Horizon Club or Red Cross or Salvation Army,
who do things that actually matter in the world
and can actually change things,
because that's all I really want us to do.
And I'm not saying that memes are bad.
I'm just saying that if you become so caught up in memes
that you can't talk about something like gender inequality without laughing,
that's bad.
So keep doing what you're doing.
Thank you.
(Applause)