Community Service

The young person doesn't dislike community service. That's just straight up heartless. No autotune involved.

It is more the act of community service that the young person pretends to like, as it is often extremely unnecessary and contrary to the beliefs perpetuated by that staples button. When performing community service, all young people are required to tell everyone they know about this "truly inspiring" initiative of theirs. This is done primarily for three reasons:

1. To let other young or old people people know how much they care about helping others. This is huge.

2. To make the other young or old person feel bad for not caring about others as much as them. This strategy is often tremendously effective, as an impending sense of guilt and worthlessness forces other young or old person to donate food or money. If they don't, they are just another one of those heartless republicans who once said something positive about George W. Bush while killing puppies.

3. Potential employer: "Wow, you organized a marathon that raised $40,000 to build homes and provide clean water for a desolate area in a village that must be really poor because of its exotic spelling? Gosh, we need a humanitarian like you so that it we can put that on our website. Then people will think our employees are well-rounded."

There is an elite group of young people who actually are heavily invested in community service projects, and they should be lauded and appreciated for all their hard work. The majority of young people however, do not fall into this category even though they have convinced themselves that they do.

A good example of this false interest in action is your typical high school or collegiate food or clothing drive, an event which the majority of young people have participated on approximately 1-4 occasions. At such an event, there will often be a group of 6 or more individuals milling around to promote the cause. There cannot be less than this, as it dramatically reduces the urgent need to build parks and schools in a place no young person at the drive has actually been to out of sheer fear and/or logistical impossibility.

At such food or clothing drive, the leader of the group will likely be handing out stacks of flyers in 8 different colors, will be enthusiastically telling people about the cause in detail, and will exhibit a number qualities of being a good person. As the outlier of the group, this young person genuinely cares about the cause they have worked hard to promote.

If you are this breed of young person, you must be careful to pretend like you don't care every once in awhile. It is crucial to insert a "ugh, I'm so tired" here and there, as this will prevent your peers from unconditionally hating you for making them look bad and/or being superhuman. You get extra points here for being snide or dissing an authority figure that you both know.

Overall, most young people at this food or clothing drive will generally just sit there and text their friends that aren't there while occasionally veering off from their friends that are there to hand out flyers. Out of the three times per hour the young person does this, two of them will likely be half-heartedly. This sometimes due to hangover.

While these young people understand and appreciate their favorable place in society and thus do not outwardly resent their presence at the event, they would gladly give $20 to the cause instead. This way, the young person doesn't have to feel guilty for talking to their friends for three hours instead of handing out flyers. Besides, it's cold outside.

Going To Blockbuster

Going to Blockbuster, one of the more hip and happening pastimes of the previous generation of young people, is undoubtedly a false interest of all contemporary young people. The disingenuous nature of this interest explains why Blockbuster is going out of business faster than the rate at which boys are blowin' up Ke$ha's phones, phones.

Young people pretend to like going to blockbuster because it makes them feel like they knew what life was like before technology, a false belief crucial to the happiness of any young person. This enables the young person to tell their future kids, grandkids, and the kid a few years younger than them tall tales of having to trek all the way into town and go to the local video store, a trek usually completed via a car with automatic transmission and air-conditioning. At some point during this story it is crucial for the young person to mention the VCR, as it adds an unbridled element of "back in the day."

This concept of "going to the store" has appeal for all young people, as it helps them remember the times where they used to go to Toys R Us, a place where the young person would often buy something that was popular for about 15 minutes, such as Furbies and/or the V-Link Phone.

Going to blockbuster is a false interest because like, come on dude. 8 Mile's on Netflix. And yo, I just illegally downloaded Die Hard if you wanna watch that instead. Shit's ridiculous

Getting Soooo Blacked Out Last Night

Despite acquiring the hangover that's akin to having one of those cymbal clashing monkeys follow you around for an entire morning, the young person is a huge fan of pretending to enjoy "being soooo blacked out last night." (insert "dude,""man," or "bro" to conclude this sentence.)

If you are familiar with the ways of young people, you will know that the false interest of "being soooo blacked out last night" is appealing because:

1. If expressed via text, this false interest allows the young person to use anywhere between 3-8 o's to emphasize their level of blackout-ness.

2. Whereas the person who simply got "shit-hammered" or "schwasty" can only really tack on 1-2 beers when lying about how much they drank last night, the young person who was sooo blacked out is allowed to add an unlimited number of extra drinks to their total. Because all young people who got sooo blacked out last night also claim to have higher tolerances than all their friends, they usually consume anywhere from 17 shots to 22 beers per blackout.

3. Whatever this young person did the night before is instantly more insane bro, even though there is a decent chance this young person simply left the bar and threw up in some alleyway. In extreme cases, being soo blacked out enables the young person to make up sensationalist stories with the hope of becoming immortalized as a collegiate legend. It is important to pick your spots when doing this, due to its inherent riskiness. Once the young person gets called out, his or her credibility is ruined forever. When it comes to fratting hard, no one will ever take this young person seriously again, effectively ruining a level of street cred that often takes thousands of natty lights to build up.

4. The young person gets to complain about how much they drank last night, which incidentally happens to be the most popular extra-cirricular activity on all college campuses in the world that aren't named BYU.

When really feeling it, the young person is known to throw in a "I'm never drinking again." It is proper form to mock this young person in a casual manner, but also to make sure that you show the appropriate level of concern so that the young person thinks that you are sympathizing with them, a primary need for all young people.

Getting sooooo blacked out becomes a false interest when the young person wakes up to find that they no longer are in possession of their wallet and/or phone.

It is often a better strategy for the young person who got soooo blacked out last night to never find their phone again, as this prevents the young person from seeing that they sent 17 creepy text messages to their ex, their friend that they haven't talked to in at least six months, and the person they were working on hooking up with for the better part of the semester. After months of patience, diligence, and mad game spitting, getting sooo blacked out last night effectively destroys any shot the young person may have had with this person, crushing their hopes, dreams, sexual fantasies, and bragging rights in the process.

That is, until the other person does the same exact thing two weeks later. 

LinkedIn

The young person and LinkedIn are kind of like suspenders and the 2000's. You could try to put them on, but it's not really going to work.

The appeal of LinkedIn is that its the dressed up version of Facebook. While people on facebook wear things from overly preppy stores from the local mall, LinkedIn enables the young person to wear a three piece suit with a tie that they got from Mens Warehouse for discount price, except nobody is supposed to know that it was discounted because that means the young person is not as rich as other people think they are, a mortal fear of many young people. Young people on LinkedIn are required to feel like they are dressed up whenever logging onto the site (which occurs once every seven months), and are not allowed to wear clip-on ties. Nor are they allowed to wear bowties, because that is too chauvinistic. I think the Texas version of LinkedIn allows for bowties, but the line probably ends there.

The young person's false interest of LinkedIn stems from it being a social media site, which makes it progressive and trendy, which makes it cool despite being all about business. Business is cool, but only under two exceptions:

1.  when it can be used to pick up ridiculously expensive tabs at bars like its nothing. For young guys, this is a primary strategy for getting girls.
2. thats it.

The young person pretends to like LinkedIn because it features many appealing qualities to young people, such as the ability to feel like they are being professional, the ability to make it seem like they are much more impressive than they actually are, and the ability to make it seem like they are being productive without actually doing anything.

LinkedIn is an inherently useless social networking site for young people, because many young people, especially the young person that is still in college, are not professionals. Young people are mostly amateurs, and no young people are named Christian Bale.

Thus, the majority of LinkedIn contacts for the young person are fellow students from school. This is again inherently useless, but having more contacts makes the young person seem like they are a big deal. This is not too far removed from the young person's hobby of having facebook friends that they would never be able to identify in person.

There have been approximately 4.7 reports of young people getting hired through LinkedIn, which is why all young people are flocking to the site. Clearly the odds are not in their favor. Young people hate when the odds are in their favor, because that's boring bro. 

The 80's

Many a young person has declared their unconditional love for the 80's. In fact, if it weren't for a little thing called 90's Nickelodeon, the 80's would likely be the young persons favorite decade of all-time. Which is saying something, especially considering the life-span of the typical young person.

The young person's false interest of the 1980s stems from their obsession with feeling nostalgiac for things they cannot actually remember, but are convinced that they do. Other things that fall into this category include Kurt Cobain, Ronald Reagan, and hanging out at video arcades.

Young people will share this false interest with other young people by quoting lines from the Breakfast Club, taking shots while listening to Come On Eileen, and having 80's themed parties. During these 80's themed parties, every girl in attendance will wear a bandana and a strange looking top that looks more like a bedsheet. However, they will refuse to change their hair in any way, shape, or form, because an 80's hairstyle looks very unsightly in facebook tags, the primary vehicle used to judge the beauty of a young person.

If you wish to become popular within the most elite young person social circles (the young person's favorite type of social circle), make sure to watch all three Star Wars movies at least 10 times, grow a mustache, and have at least two one-hit wonders at your disposal. Under no circumstances use A-ha's Take On Me, because that is unorginal, and unoriginality is one of the foremost false hatreds of all young people.

It is also important to know the basic premise of Miami Vice, and why the CSI franchise is merely a far inferior offshoot.

Guest Lectures

While the concept of the guest lecture is not exactly a quintessential aspect of the college experience (the young persons equivalent of getting chucked out in the woods by Spartans and having to survive an entire winter half naked killing creatures that no longer exist) the mere existence of guest lecturing confirms that it is one of the premier false interests of young people all over the globe.

This "all over the globe" notion is really important when talking about guest lecturers, because many of them hail from and/or talk about an experience a country you will likely never go to.

Guest lecturers are rampant in the University or College. It is vital to make this distinction between colleges and universities when talking to the young person who attends college, as universities are often evil and infested with people who listen to hit music, watch sports, and have never heard of Robert Lanham.

Many schools have lecture funds, which pay exorbitant amounts of money to have famous people speak for about 90 minutes, although many of these famous people are only known by about 2% of the entire campus. Usually these people have some sort of scholarly thing which they have published, likely about world peace, self-discovery through seeing things that are so bad they have to tell you how bad they are at least 58 times during the course of the lecture, or a philosophical topic that you could have probably come up with but was talked about using big words.

Young people at the university or college attend guest lectures mostly because they know it is very important that other people think they are "really passionate" about their studies. This is especially true if the young person is majoring in something un-useful, more commonly known as the liberal arts.

Attending guest lectures will make it seem like the young person's decision to major in germanic tribal studies with a minor in dance sociology was a good use of the $200,000 dollars their parents spent for them to attend the university or college, because attending guest lectures means that they are going "above and beyond" expectations by having academic interests outside the classroom.

While this liberal arts major may attend guest lectures, it is classified as a false interest because it is more likely than not that this kind of young person will not actually attend the lecture, citing "wanting to, but being too busy."

This strategy is highly advantageous, as it enables the young person to appear like they are very interested in guest lectures and their academic fields without actually having to sit through 90 minutes of some guy with an unbearable monotone talk about things nobody actually understands or reads about but pretend to know about because it is embarrassing not to know such things when attending this person's guest lecture.

Furthermore, the young person who was "being too busy" must have been doing something really important, otherwise they never would have missed the guest lecture in the first place. This in turn, makes that particular young person really important, which is one of the foremost ways to be accepted in to young person society.

For the young person majoring something un-useful, talking about the 12 guest lectures they wish they attended in the past four months but didn't have the time to is especially useful when dealing with non-young people, who believe that caring about school and academic related things will automatically lead to future success, even though this type of young person is significantly less likely to get a job that pays over $30,000 than the finance major who has a 2.6 GPA, zero desire to ever attend a guest lecture, and liver cirrhosis.

If you have never previously liked guest lectures but wish to pursue this false interest, please consult those e-mails your school sends you that you've never read. If you are no longer in school, google "leading foreign policy experts," and find one who you have never heard of, but has published something recently. When talking about this person, make sure to mention Wikileaks.

Listening To Cat Stevens

Pretending to like Cat Stevens is a crucial component in the development of any young person's pretend interests. Not only does his music offer a sophisticated, refreshing contrast to the uniform beat that seems to be dominating the itunes charts these days, but his lyrics also have meaning. The concept of meaningful lyrics, generally unbeknownst to the current generation of us young people, is an interesting concept that we all like to embrace because it means that we're cultured.

Cat Stevens' music isn't necessarily related to the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, or any other older musical group beginning with "the" that you pretend to know much more about than you actually do. In that sense, he's kind of like the indie equivalent of old people's music. Indie music, one of the pillars of false young people interests, was thus inadvertently founded by Cat Stevens.

More importantly, Cat Stevens has an very interesting story, one which we could all look up on Wikipedia for about 30 seconds and all become experts on, which will enable us to feel smarter to our peers in comparison when we tell said story at a pregame. The story will likely be a big hit due to everyone else's pretend like of Cat Stevens, even though there's a good chance that like you, everyone else only knows two of his songs, Cat's in the Cradle and Wild World. 

This knowledge of Cat Stevens music is important for two reasons. One, because it coincides with young people's pastime of only actually knowing 2-4 songs per artist but pretending to like the entire album anyway. Two, because the young person's original affinity for Cat Steven's may have derived from the Season 1 finale of Skins, during which Wild World was played.

Despite that version not actually being by Cat Stevens, we sometimes pretend it is by Cat Stevens because it is a name we have once heard of, and gives the song significantly more meaning because Cat Stevens sounds like an artist that intellectuals used to listen to, which thus makes the show Skins intellectual, despite what all the critics say. Then again, the critics represent the man, the perpetual Voldemort to the young person's Harry Potter, so whatever they say is never to be taken seriously anyway.

We sympathize with Cat Steven's because his narrative of abandoning his self-identity, changing his name to Yusuf Islam, and being denied entrance into the United States after being (mistakenly) put on the terrorist watch list (we conveniently tend to forget that part because it makes for a better story) has strong parallels with "being disillusioned with society, man", an all-time favorite story for young people to tell.

Although Cat Steven's music is the type that can grow on you, especially when reminded of hit teen dramas, a young persons affinity for Cat Steven's is always exaggerated. Given the chance, the young person will likely respond that they "love Cat Stevens," as opposed to saying "I only know a few of his songs, but I like listening to them when I'm in a certain mood." This is again important to note because it is comparable to the young person's pastime of prematurely falling in love and/or saying they love someone without really meaning it even though they think they do.

Oh yea. It doesn't hurt that his name sounds cool.