We here at stopreproducing have said from the outset that our main goal is to make life on Earth more livable. Well, idiots who want to drill for oil everywhere and anywhere seem to be working towards the antithesis of that idea, and for that, they have made our list. So “Drill Baby Drill”-ers (DBDs), when it comes to making babies we must urge you “Don’t, Baby, Don’t.”
The DBD mentality is one that is diametrically opposed to ours here at stopreproducing. We want to lower the population to lessen the strain on our natural resources and ensure that a high quality of life will be attainable for all societies across the globe now, and in the future. DBDs on the other hand want to exploit our natural resources now to satiate the ever growing demands of society. DBDs feel it would be downright “un’merican” to change our lifestyles even slightly to alleviate our dependence on oil. Instead DBDs say let’s just rape that bitch Mother Earth till she screams bloody murder.
This approach is unsustainable. The Earth has limited natural resources and they will run out. We need to change our ways now, or we are screwed*. The idea that more drilling will somehow help us to rid our dependence on oil is so mind-boggling stupid I gave myself a headache just writing that sentence.
This approach is unfair. The United States consumes more oil than the entire European Union, we consume more oil than China, we consume more oil than anyone. DBDs seem to think that we somehow have the God given right to all of the oil the Earth has to offer. Whether we have to drill for it, buy it, or pretend there are WMD’s in a country that has it so we can invade it and generally fuck up an entire region, we are gonna get that oil. After we get that oil, we are going to put it in our giant, gas guzzling cars, and enjoy the high quality of life that an affluent nation has while we ignore the rest of the world’s poverty. We not only are screwing over the rest of the world now, we are screwing over future generations all over the globe, as they will be the ones who have to fix this mess we are putting ourselves into.
This approach is unsafe. If anyone had any remaining doubts that offshore drilling was dangerous to the Earth, the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico should remind us just what can happen. Ecosystems are being destroyed and the whole Louisiana fishing industry is in danger of going under**. Oil consumption also leads to pollution. So oil drilling is an environmental double whammy: we cause mass damage in the short term while drilling, and manage to perpetuate a system that is slowly poisoning our planet and potentially could have catastrophic consequences down the line. Awesome.
Guess what? We can see how stupid this is from space.
So, DBDs, when we add together your selfish/egotistical/ethnocentric behavior with the inability to see how absurd/illogical/dangerous your position is, we come to a simple conclusion: stop reproducing (and maybe go down to Louisiana to volunteer with that whole oil cleanup thing).
*Actually we should have changed our ways about 30 years ago. This is probably not a sentence that gets typed very often but: We should have listened to Jimmy Carter.
**I was listening to a right wing talk radio host who claimed that the oil spill was all the “environmental extremists” fault, that if they had let companies drill on land, this would not have happened. I’m sorry, what? I am pretty sure that an oil rig blowing up on land is going to be as dangerous to the surrounding ecosystem as an oil rig blowing up offshore. It just highlights the complete lack of logic on the part of some of these people.
With a fertility rate 50 percent higher than Russia, Germany, or Japan, and well above that of China, Italy, Singapore, South Korea, and virtually all of Eastern Europe, the United States has become an outlier among its traditional competitors, all of whose populations are stagnant and seem destined to eventually decline.
Evidently if there are more of US than THEM, it must be a fantastic outlook for us. Now that we have moved beyond an arms race with the former USSR, it seems we have filled the void with — a baby race. This new drive to out-populate our global frienemies is not comforting.
While over-populated countries like India and China are finally curbing their unsustainable growth in an effort to clean up their polluted, carcinogenic environments, here we come with a solution that does little more than delay bankruptcy to that All-American ponzi scheme Social Security:
Between 2000 and 2050 the U.S. population aged 15 to 64—the key working and school-age group—will grow 42 percent, while the same group will decline by 10 percent in China, nearly 25 percent in Europe, and 44 percent in Japan. Unlike its rivals, America’s economic imperative will lie not in meeting the needs of the aging, but in providing job and income growth for our expanding workforce.
Oh, right, we currently have nearly 10% unemployment. The job climate is the worst for graduating seniors in decades. Aging infrastructure in major cities is crumbling as population growth in urban centers outpaces the ability to adapt. And Kotkin’s solution is MORE BABIES!
Long ago, a group of settlers had many offspring to help them tend to their land and maximize their crop. Eventually the settlement reached a critical mass. All the arable land was sewn, maximum crop yields were realized, and natural resources were abundant. Everyone worked. Everyone ate. Statues were even built in gratitude to the gods. Life was good. But then the settlement growth continued unchecked. More land and resources were unavailable, so competition for resources became fierce. The over-exploited land stopped providing, children starved, and the population plummeted until hardly anyone was left. All that remained were barren grasslands and giant stone heads.
Hopefully our country and the planet will avoid the same fate as Easter Island.
Through the 18th century, women donned decorative fans. In the 19th century men had their fanciful time pieces. And by the mid-late 20th century, men were augmenting their trophy women with gravity-defying silicone chest pillows. But few status symbols carry the same invasive, self-absorbed symbolism as the increasingly prevalent Bluetooth headset.
"Ever been pleasured by a man wearing his Bluetooth?"
There’s nothing like standing in line at the grocery store, when some gesticulating philistine pulls his cart up behind you, exclaiming, “I couldn’t find a soft avocado in the whole bin, what do you think I should do!?” while maintaining eye contact with you. After you give an incredulous double-take, and start to muster an awkward response, the stranger abruptly jars his head sideways revealing a shiny black parasite with a glowing blue eye latched to his ear. Cyborg? No, just some self-flagellating dork who has no consideration for those around him.
To be fair, one might think this behavior justified. How else does one pick fruit, push the cart, and consult the wife? But similar situations occur on main street, at the movie theater, and in the adjacent bathroom stall at the office. Is it really necessary to have 24/7 access to your cell via an earworm? Doubtful.
There is no justifiable reason for a person to have that plastic mass attached to his face while having his teeth drilled in the dentist chair. Most likely, folks like this just like the perceived adoration received from peers for their technological savvy, wherewithal and popularity. Realistically, these clip-on accessories look completely ridiculous and superfluous symbolizing self-absorption and obnoxiousness.
The same misguided people who constantly don Bluetooth headsets are the ones who would consider having children just for the “status symbol” effect. Instead of getting off the phone to read to their children, they’re more likely to tune-in the Bluetooth for some hands-free action while just flipping through Cat in the Hat. Until these individuals remove the light-emitting ear prostheses, rejoin society, and give some real consideration to the responsibilities and consequences that come with children – these jackasses need to stop reproducing.
Let me say upfront: I like nerds. It is common knowledge that this world is run by nerds. For example, Microsoft has the market capitalization of 182 billion dollars which exceeds the GDP of all but 43 countries. Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates, is the world’s richest man, valued at 40 billion dollars. He could at any point buy Latvia, as well as the towing service company that currently employs the bullies that used to torment him during his youth. I imagine that, sometimes, when Bill thinks on those sad days of his adolescence, he sheds a tear, because even money cannot heal the painful memories of the past. After this moment of weakness, he probably wipes away the tears with 100-hundred bills, and takes a ride in his Bugatti or some other car that is worth more than you will ever be.
There are a million other examples. Google’s co-founders, Sergei Brin and Larry Page, run one the “coolest” companies in the world, while Mark Zuckerberg went from not being able to get a date to being one constitutional amendment away from having a harem with a little thing called Facebook.
My point is this long and windy introduction is that I love and respect nerds. However, we commonly make the routine mistake of bestowing intelligence on people just because they have acne, glasses with the focus of the Hubble telescope, and the social skills of an underdeveloped lemur. This social profiling naturally assumes that people of nerdy disposition make up for the astounding lack of athletic ability with an uncanny proficiency in math and computer science.
What you may be surprised to discover is that there are plenty of nerds who are no smarter than your average Joe Six-Pack. I discovered this while I was in college. While there were plenty of people who followed the well-known path of binge-drinking and partying their way out of school, there were just as many kids who accomplished the same result in a completely opposite and much less glorious manner. As their peers socialized, napped, and occasionally went to class, these ultra-nerds stayed glued to their computer screens day and night, alternating between Counterstrike, hacker chat rooms, and Russian porn sites. They inevitably congregated in one corner of the hall forming a dark, dreary sub-world that smelled of dirty socks and was entirely devoid of any female presence. As these fringe creatures failed exam after exam, their numbers quietly dwindled, each ghoulish presence disappearing into oblivion (the smell of socks lingered for several months).
One may ask why I am picking on these poor souls who already have a minimal chance of procreating. The reason is simple: they happen to be American citizens. This stroke of luck makes the uber-nerds an attractive option for less-fortunate, yet stunningly gorgeous foreign women, at least until these women can get green cards and move to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune. The advent of the Internet facilitates the consummation of this romantic partnership, thus ensuring that more useless genes are propagated into our already diluted genetic pool.
Dreadful social skills paired with a hard-on for chicks with Princess Leah hair buns do not predispose intelligence and potential. We know these simple-minded dweebs are not as knowledgeable as your average pocket-protected, pleated khaki wearing, duct-taped horn-rim bespectacled nerd, but hopefully they have the common sense required to apply a jimmy hat.
Like so many of you out there, we here at stopreproducing.com spent last Thursday with our loved ones celebrating Thanksgiving. For our non-American readers, Thanksgiving is a holiday where you gather with friends and family to sit around table completely covered in food and give thanks for all of your blessings*. Most Americans give thanks for all of their blessings by eating too much food and spending the rest of the night talking about how stuffed they are. Granted, eating massive amounts of food for the sheer sake of gluttony is not something we support here at stopreproducing.com, but that is not what really hit us about that day.
Inspiration for this post struck while we were helping to clean up. While placing all of the leftover turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes in Tupperware containers and in the fridge to eat over the next couple of days, we realized that saving all of this food was an anomaly for most people. The other 364 days of the year most leftovers in the United States go right in the trash. This is something that we have noticed in the past, and whenever we asked someone throwing away perfectly good food after a meal why they did not just keep it for later the response was invariably Well… I just don’t really eat leftovers. Well… we just don’t think you should have any kids.
It is bad enough that we already eat enough food to make us the fattest nation on Earth, but we have to add insult to injury by wasting even more food, because we don’t feel like eating it after it’s been re-heated. Imagine the awkwardness of some over-weight couple trying to explain to a starving African family their decision to throw out the rest of their Chicken Carbonara and Fettucini Alfredo at the Cheesecake Factory because they needed to save room for the Chocolate Tower Truffle Cake and do not really enjoy pasta when it has to be nuked. That family would stare at that couple like they had two heads each (for a grand total of eight chins). The idea of “leftovers” themselves would probably be hard enough to grasp, let alone the decision to willfully throw them away.
According to a 1995 survey conducted by the Economic Research Service/U.S. Department of Agriculture, over 90 million pounds of edible food were wasted in foodservice and consumer food loss, which was 26% of the total edible food supply. Food losses at restaurants are exacerbated by the trend towards “upsizing” the portions that customers are served. As restaurants put more and more food on our plate we not only eat more and get even fatter, but we end up wasting more food as well.
This sort of willful wasting is not in the best interest of the species. The level of selfishness needed that would allow you to throw away perfectly good food because you “do not like leftovers” while there are millions of starving people, not only in the world but in our own streets, is not a trait that we wish to see passed down to future generations. We understand that eating your leftovers is not going to completely solve the world’s food crises, but it at least shows that you are conscious of the problem, that you realize that there are those that are starving. Until you can show this bare minimum of consideration for the rest of your species we must ask that you please stop reproducing, there are already plenty of mouths to feed.
*Unless of course you are a Native American, in which case I am sure it is a bitter reminder of how a group of foreigners took advantage of the fact that you did not understand the concept of property law and stole your land and decimated your population.
As it is flu season, we here at stopreproducing.com thought we would take the time to discuss a trend that we find somewhat disturbing, people absolutely flipping shit about swine flu. Granted, you might be wondering isn’t the instinct for self-preservation a positive genetic trait? one that should be passed on to future generations? The short answer is yes, but only up to a point. The problem comes when people are no longer able to differentiate real threats to survival from fake threats to survival.
Once the line between real and un-real threats to survival gets blurred for people, they tend to get in a tizzy every time they are in a crowd and start feeling the need to wear a surgical mask to work every time their cubicle neighbor gets a case of the sniffles. As a species, we were only allowed to survive due to our strong group instincts. The natural inclination to come together into communities saved us from being individual animal snacks, like pudding cups for saber-tooth tigers. So this sort of anti-communal, anti-social is not beneficial for the race and should be snuffed out.
The other issue for us here at stopreproducing.com is that if you freaked out about swine flu, then you clearly have no capacity to think for yourself. The dangers of swine flu were completely blown out of proportion by the media. If you had actually looked at the facts and made an independent decision, you would have noticed that the only people in real danger were people in rural areas with no hospital access, infants and the elderly. In other words, THE SAME EXACT PEOPLE SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE REGULAR FLU. We would not blame you for worrying about your infants or elderly in this situation, but the majority of people avoiding human contact and treating Purell like liquid gold were healthy people in their 30’s and 40’s. We agree, getting the swine flu would be pretty miserable, but the media had all of you thinking that it was an automatic death sentence.
Also, people should have recognized that this “global pandemic that was going to kill us all” thing was familiar. Has everyone forgotten avian flu already? Remember how that was going to wipe us all out? And before that it was SARS, and MRSA, and Ebola, and flesh eating bacteria. Since the inception of 24 hour news networks we have be barraged with everything that is going to kill us and/or end society as we know it. We managed to get through Y2K just fine, and we will get through swine flu just the same.
There is also some altruism in stopreproducing.com’s advice in this matter. Think about it, if you get this worked up just worried about yourself and any of your brood that have already emerged from the birth canal, imagine how much more stressed you would be if you added any more to your litter. Honestly, just save yourself that trouble. For your sanity and those who have to be around you…please, stop reproducing.
