F*@k The Black Eyed Peas

If you were born in America between 1981 and 1986, and your parents make more than $100,000 a year, chances are that you are shallow and materialistic. You probably listen to terrible music and buy into ridiculous fads (think about that trucker hat in the back of your closet before you start arguing), and you are probably borderline illiterate even though your parents are paying for that interdisciplinary studies degree from someplace you barely attend class.

At this point, you might be wondering when I'm going to stop insulting you and start on my title subject, your new favorite artist. You might also be wondering what all those funny squiggles are that your smart friend is reading to you off the computer screen.

To be honest, this isn't really about The Black Eyed Peas. It's about one particular song: "My Humps". If you haven't heard this song, you must not be in college, or you must be enrolled in a small school in rural North Dakota, in which case you should consider yourself lucky for the very first time. Congratulations, Minot State University. "My Humps" is the worst song to become popular in the U.S. since the Macarena, which was marginally better because most Americans only speak English and couldn't understand the lyrics. I'll spare you the entire thing, but here's a sample to help illustrate my point:

What you gonna do with all that junk
all that junk inside that trunk?
I'ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
My hump, 8x
My lovely little
lumps,

Check it out
I drive these brothers crazy,
I do it on the daily,
They treat me really nicely,
They buy me all these iceies.
Dolce & Gabbana,
Fendi and then Donna
Karan, got me sharin'
All their money got me wearin' fly, whether I ain't askin,
They say they love my ass in
Seven Jeans, True Religion,
I say no, but they keep givin'
So I keep on takin'

This is garbage. Pure, triple platinum garbage. According to Rolling Stone, though, this trash is "irresistible", and it has become ubiquitous on college campuses, playing on millions of iPods, car stereos, and home sound systems. Although no one could possibly like this song, everyone apparently does, and the reason is simple: college students are sheep. No one knows anything about anything, and we all get our ideas from TV commercials and People Magazine. Our generation's best and brightest are not even bright enough to make basic decisions about what they do and don't like, and would prefer instead to have the smallest details of their life determined for them by MTV (or, for those independent-minded rebels out there, MTV 2).

That's right, I'm talking about you, my trendy friend, with your $300 designer sunglasses, your strong preference for whichever lite beer had the best ad campaign when you started drinking, and that Jimi Hendrix t-shirt you bought even though you can't name one of his songs. You like "My Humps" because it has a simple beat that you can drunk dance to without thinking about the insipid lyrics, but mostly you like it for the same reason you like Grey Goose Vodka, Paris Hilton, and $600 blue jeans: because everyone else does too.

I hope that you will read all this without feeling insulted, decide that I must go to a shallow school, and go back to listening to Frank Zappa and solar paneling your roof to cut down on your energy costs. More likely, though, you will never read this blog again because you think I'm some kind of pretentious jerk who just doesn't like to have a good time. Well, you know what? I may be a pretentious jerk, but I never payed $30 for a trucker hat. And f*@k The Black Eyed Peas.