A Response To Onion Article #1819568055
By Eric TangThe article in question.
Dear The Onion,
I understand that, as a professional news agency, it is your job to cover relevant, necessary topics and bring to light things which may be uncomfortable or unpopular. However, your article “Guy In Philosophy Class Needs To Shut The Fuck Up” is just going too far.
First of all, what’s wrong with trying to enlighten the class with your knowledge? Just because it isn’t relevant to you doesn’t mean that I can’t think that it should be. In fact, I think it would be a bigger injustice to not talk about Heraclitus’s aphorisms or Peter Singer’s view on famine relief. Maybe, if you really thought about it, you would see Plato’s cave shadows does represent the ideal foundation for Western philosophy. There’s no reason to mock someone who’s just trying to educate the class on these important matters. Clearly, none of the other students have anything interesting to say.
Second, what about the way he only half raises his hand? You make fun of him for being too eager, but when he tries to intrude a little less obviously you do it too? These personal attacks are plain unreasonable; Aristotle would not have approved. I especially don’t see any reason why you need to bring up the fact that “he could really use a girlfriend.” Maybe he could easily get one but just doesn’t want to date someone who talks about nothing all the time and has 10 IQ points less than he does. Maybe he would rather have 0 friends, never talk to anyone, and be lonely and desperate than be as dumb as everyone else.
You may not realize it, but being smart and passionate about things is not easy in this society. In fact, being dumb and boring is probably the most privileged position you can take. When was the last time you were told to shut your cakehole because you talked too long about your deep, enlightened philosophy? When was the last time someone told you that listening to you discuss your beliefs made life seem long and cruel? When was the last time someone wrote a poopy article making fun of you for actually being passionate about something? Maybe, the next time you hear someone smart say something, you should check your privilege and try to learn something instead.
Freedom of speech and press is one of the fundamental principles on which this country was founded; it is up to news organizations especially to uphold that freedom. However, in this case, that is offensive to me. I demand you immediately retract your article and issue an apology to the smartistic community. Otherwise, me and the other smartistic will use our dangerous brain powers to shut down Onion LLC and vaporize all its assets with a giant solar beam.
Eric Tang