You've probably seen them. The YouTube videos with a title along the lines of "You Are Special", "You Are Beautiful", or "You Are Worth It". They usually consist of shots of sad, insecure girls crying, and then suddenly looking in the mirror and realizing they're worth. The whole time there is instrumental music and a cheesy voiceover telling all about how life is hard but you are beautiful and amazing and special.
Yeah, well, they're wrong.
You are not beautiful. Beauty is subjective. What one person sees as gorgeous another sees as plain. Sure, someone might think you are beautiful, but you can't definitively be something that is inherently subjective.
You are not special. Special implies that you are better or greater than most people. What you are is unique. You are a unique combination of things -- a combination that nobody else has. However, none of the things in your combination are unique. You are a unique combination, but none of the ingredients to that combination are themselves unique. If you break it down far enough, at least one other person has one of the ingredients that make you you.
Now, "you are worth it" is just vague. What does it even mean? What is the it you are worth? Life? Love? These things happen to us whether we are worthy of them or not. Every human life begins with equal value. You are no more worth it than anybody else.
I'll tell you what you are. You are what you make yourself.
You wanna be successful? Better work your ass off. You wanna be attractive? Better work your ass off. You want anything in this life you gotta work.
Nothing worth having in this life comes without someone working for it.
What Girls & Guys Said
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2Opinion
Savage, I approve! That type of media you describe disgusts me.
The main reason it disgusts me is that I don't think it's effective at all. I don't think it has much of an effect at actually boosting confidence, telling people "you're so amazing!" over and over.
Self-acceptance is the key to confidence as I see it, not putting someone on a pedestal. I think this style of approach only builds a fake style of confidence at best.
Besides, what type of gullible person falls for a video of someone telling us we're so amazing when the person commenting doesn't even know who we are? It's such a strange attempt at remote therapy as I see it. I might as well be blindfolded and telling random girls they're beautiful. Isn't it obvious I'm being insincere?
Anyway, I approve of the whole message and especially the last part about working for it.
I am a Firework and you can't change that with your hate speech.