#adolescene

LIKE- SO WHAT if you just learn something new? So what if you finally took time and effort to study or know something?

TELL US ABOUT IT. TELL US WHAT YOU LEARNED. TELL US WHAT YOU THINK. TELL US HOW EXCITING THAT IS. TELL US HOW WILL YOU ADVOCATE FOR IT.

This is ESPECIALLY happening to school age teens (12-17 years old) that experience this.

TL;DR Maybe they are not "experiencing The Dunning Kruger Effect", you just want to bring others down by weaponizing and misusing the concept of a social phenomenon.

While teens are known to know less about life and all, shutting down or dismissing other people's, especially teen's growth and progress to gain knowledge by making them believe that they are "experiencing the Dunning Kruger Effect", can absolutely be twisted to bring others down and make them feel inferior in the name of a psychological phenomenon you yourself have very little knowledge about.

I literally could just go on and on and on about how this supposed psychological phenomenon is being weaponized to bring down other people who just learned/discovered/studied something knew. You just want an excuse to sound smart by using a word you yourself may know nothing about. Neither do I. That's why I don't tell people that they are "experiencing the Dunning Kruger effect".

Cringe culture: “Ew, you care too much.”

Dunning-Kruger misuse: “Ew, you think you know too much.”

Memories of adolescence taste so sweet, when you look at them through a rose colored wine glass. My youth is the white lace dress, stained by clumsy berry juiced fingers. When I look back on these memories, shining brightly like church glass, it comes off more Coppola-esque than it did to live it. Back there our lips were always wet from licking them, mouth agape with fleeting laughter. There’s a giddy urgency to it all; as if time couldn’t be going slow enough. And there is so much we are not allowed to do, but it is these things we do anyway. Run with the older boys when we’d get the chance, twisting our fingers between the blades of grass when we lie down on the football field. It plays out like a moment in a wordless music video, praying that if you defy the rules you may encounter some new magic. The thing we feared most as teenagers was that there was no mysticism in our ways, but it now occurs to me that in the moments where we searched for magic most our nature would turn otherworldly. Hauntingly gazing out of windows and bobbing a pencil on the knee, completely transfixed; under a spell cast by something unknown and distant. I remember the first time a boy touched me, his fingers put themselves to rest on my waist. They felt so light on me that I keep shaking at his touch, as if a ghost had been sweeping over my most sensitive spots. It was one of my favorite terrors to have ever experienced, good terror. Like a reminder I was treading an unknown passage, but was still alive. I felt like angel, touched by the world. I was beginning to like horror movies at this time as well, after being terrified of them for most of my elementary years. When I think of the second time a boy put his hands on me, I think of Victor Frankenstein. This man wanted to become a doctor and his fascination and craving to create life brought him closer to death. That’s what it was like, getting my first real taste of teenage lust; brought me closer to my own mortality. Like when Frankenstein’s monster strangles the doctor’s wife in their wedding bed, moments after they’ve exchanged vows. Leaving her body splayed out on the mattress with barely a scratch left on her body.

But oh, through all the horror lays a bouquet of posies. A fistful hot butter mixed with melting slabs of honey dripping from your fist as you run through the fields. All I can see when I think of those days are papercuts sprouting with drops of blood; but all I can hear is laughter, bountiful amazing laughter. Clumsy spillage on evening dresses and beach shorts from laughing to hard. The clothes you weren’t allowed to get dirty, but you did it anyway. Because it tastes so good. These memories are now sweet cravings on my mind. Those candied days, when nothing could expire because there was so much more food still beyond our reach.

pajera por lo pervertida y morbosa

“The moment you know how, you die a little.”

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”

—Agnes de Mille

I am a planner.  I haven’t always been a planner, at least not in the way I am now, but even in the nascent years of adulthood (ah, my early to mid 20’s!), I often had…

Rayanne Graff is my soul sister.