Why I Dislike the 'Life is Good' Motto

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There are a lot of things I appreciate and I am thankful for in this modern age, and my iPhone is one of them.  I've heard complaint that the new instagram pictures popping up on Facebook are "depressing" or "too hipster" or "grainy"~ read: just not clear and clean enough for the well-trained eye.  Honestly, though, when I see perfect pictures of seemingly perfect people, it stresses me out. The "Keep it Real" motto that I held onto when feeling threatened by the beast of perfectionism was like a dolphin swimming at me in a sea full of sharks. I'll instagram to that. ;)

It makes me think about the late nineties. Sometime in the late nineties, I started seeing brightly colored bumper stickers with the logo “Life is Good.”  Nothing against the makers of these fine logos, but I remember thinking that in comparison with most of the world's suffering, and even my own small teenage version of strife, the way they struck me was glib: vacuous, empty, neon colored “happiness,” more likely than not, as a reactionary methodology against the dark/emo trends that, I would argue, were simultaneously making hipsters "happy," or at least conditioned for trial in a deeper and more satisfying way. 

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