Wrapped Up Like A Douche

Think About the Children!
Last week a "blog" I read fairly regularly went on vacation and left his readers a link to a web page which randomly displays the most recent images posted to an image hosting site popular amongst our nation's youth. Anyone browsing the page for any length of time will come to certain immediate realizations, the first being that teenagers are disgusting. Really, they're just awful, vulgar, tacky, and actually everything crotchety grown-ups accuse them of being.

The second realization is that young people don't smile anymore; smiling has been replaced by a new expression, which every American under the age of 20 is required to use when being photographed, and which I refer to as the "LiveJournal Face."

The LiveJournal Face consists of pursing one's lips, raising the eyebrows and opening the eyes as wide as possible, preferably while looking to one side. I don't know who originated this trend, but it has become, if I may whip out a big word, ubiquitous.



I would like to take this opportunity to directly address the unfortunate souls who, perhaps through no fault of their own, have gotten the idea that using this facial expression will somehow make them "cooler," or part of the "in-crowd," or a "hepcat," as I believe the kids call each other nowadays:

Hey kids, don't make this face! It looks stupid!

Thank you.