For Those Who Prefer Not to Clap Their Hands

A Lot of Moronic People Like to Clap Their Hands, as If They Were Children In Preschool

Many stupid, idiotic, moronic habits inform my abject misanthropy. With the exception of applause, clapping hands is one of the most childish things imaginable, and yet a lot of grown adults do it.  Anyone who goes to a baseball game will have been subjected to the animation over the scoreboard goading the crowd with the prompt,“Everybody clap their hands.”  This should not be the least bit amusing to anyone over the age of four. Indeed, the refrain is taken from a children’s song. A musician who goads the crowd “everybody clap their hands now” is just as bad. Play the damn song, and leave the preschool antics to children in daycare.

If grown adults respond to such abject stupidity, why not just play “If You Are Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands?” Indeed, that refrain, too, is played at baseball games. That ethos of so many inane kiddie songs typifies much of the popular music that so many lemmings lap up.  “Happy” by Pharrell Williams is basically “If You are Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands” with slightly different wording:

(Because I'm happy)
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
(Because I'm happy)
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
(Because I'm happy)
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
(Because I'm happy)
Clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do.

Clap along now, like an idiot, or a slow and not altogether attractive child. Start clipping and clapping, now, because you’re HAPPY! Clippety-clappety! Clap, clap, clap!

No. It is childish and inane. We are not in preschool. Consider that some do not want to be happy when circumstances do not warrant happiness for any person who abides by any baseline standards. Some people, of likely a more enlightened, demanding persuasion, do not flinch away from life’s ugliness when confronted with it. And we certainly will not clap our hands with a half-ass smile on our faces, as if we were preschool children.

Readers might spot this author wearing this shirt, with the sleeves cut off, of course.

Curiously, it seems to be a theme in a lot of black music. Consider the disco ditty “Everybody Dance” by chic. The refrain really is not much different than that dumb preschool song, simply repeating “Everybody dance, do-do-do / Clap your hands, clap your hands” over and over. I always hated disco, and my case goes well beyond that song.

Adults clapping their hands together, as if they were in preschool: just another sign of the increasing infantilization of society. Absolute, unwavering misanthropy is the way.