7-second, shallow cat video gets 3.8 million hits. The world is becoming lazy and frivolous.

7-second, shallow cat video gets 3.8 million hits. The world is becoming lazy and frivolous.

I know that I am a grumpy old man and nobody wants to listen to me. I know that nobody will read this. But I will say it anyway. This is a seven second video which has received 3.8 million hits on TikTok. It surely reminds us that the world has become lazy and frivolous. Covid-19 made the world lazy. The Millennium or Gen X generation are lazier than we were when I was a kid.

It is just that the kids are lazier - and I'm talking here of comprehensive school kids - they are becoming rowdier, more apathetic and more aggressive in the classroom. They are becoming more disrespectful of their teachers. They walk out of classes. There is an increase in bad behaviour in comprehensive schools in the UK and it is causing teachers to seriously consider leaving the profession.

A total of 78% of secondary teachers said that they would leave teaching if they were offered a job in a different sector which offered a better work-life balance.

The head teacher of a girls' secondary school in Barnet, north London, said that "We never had that level of defiance from students, for example, walking out of classrooms, and the level of apathy that we are facing now. We didn't have that before Covid, and I think other school leaders are saying the same."

Self-discipline is missing at school children level. I'm generalising. Clearly there are many schoolkids who are self-discipline and to our achievers. But there are far too many who are apathetic and don't give a damn. 

One reason is because the adults of this world, the grown-ups, have created and continue to create a world that children find unpalatable. This is a reference to, for example, global warming. Children just don't see a future. And couples are no longer deciding to have a family because I believe the same problem. The future looks too uncomfortable to bring a child into it.

There is also a gradual dying of that old-fashioned idea of self-discipline. Self-indulgence is on the increase. I believe that self-discipline is being replaced by self-indulgence and I think we can thank the Internet for that. Particularly social media which is populated by navel gazing young people.

YouTube is also populated by young people making rude and stupid comments. TikTok is pretty much the same. Just tons and tons of frivolous fluffy nonsensical videos which don't, for me, move forward the world. It doesn't progress anything. It is just idle entertainment. Not all of it of course but if you just surf through TikTok, in general, you see this fluffy nonsense.

I think that it is a symptom of the world gradually going off the rails. We are not moving in the right direction. And I do not see a lot of hope in today's youth. I don't think that they are going to change the world for the better. Quite the contrary: it's going to get worse. Sorry to be so disillusioned by today's young people but that's how I see it.

How can this 7-second video attract so many viewers? It's a nothing video.