I wish he spoke at my graduation.

Interesting speech. Lot of good points.

Great speech.

Honestly, sounds like a pretty typical commencement speech. It's all the vogue to say "you are not special -- so go make yourself special." In other words, "Seize the Day" is rather cliche, and we all know that.

Who doesn't agree that "if everyone is special, no one is special"? There's nothing radical in that. We all know that "accolades over achievement" is contemptible.

If any of this is surprising or challenging to these kids, they aren't really connected to reality at all, are they?

How much time do you spend with folks in their early 20s? The loud ones certainly seem to disagree with you.

For some of us, it is refreshing to hear. Most of the commencements told everyone how great they were and how they could change the world no matter what.

Eh... The whole 'If everyone is special, nobody is, so nobody is.' is a rather lame cop out.

I like how Captain Hammer addressed this.



We are who we are.

Did you watch the whole thing, or just the first half?

The "Everyone's a hero" thing is exactly the sort of thing I disagree with when people take it seriously. Too many people think they deserve to be treated like a princess for no reason.

To be fair, it *is* 12+ minutes long. That being said, I watched the whole thing and found it both refreshing and inspirational.

I abhor commencement ceremonies, and these speeches are a good part of the reason. (Sitting around in a queue waiting for someone to shake your hand and hand you a paper while dealing with all the pomp and circumstance when all you really want is some time off and possibly a beer is the other reason. I'd rather just skip to the time off and a beer.)

I gotta agree with sbonner's general notion that this isn't that new or innovative.

Yes, the beginning is wrapped in a seemingly different package: you are not special.

But the thesis of the speech -- go forth and do what you love, not for reward but for your own enjoyment, for the sake of excellence itself (if you can manage to be excellent), and for the benefit of humanity at large, is nothing new.

If a graduation speaker really wants to astound me with an innovative speech, he/she would have to give a speech that provides tips and wisdom about how the the sizable portion of the graduating class who will *not* be exceptional can survive the next 50 or 60yrs without putting a gun in their mouths and pulling the trigger. I might be a cynic, but I think that for the most part, the people who are going to be exceptional largely have those character traits in place by the time graduation rolls around. He did a great job using basic math and statistics to show the sheer number of people starting their adult lives this year and to make the case that most of them won't be amazing by default. But I've never seen a graduation speaker talk about how to still have a happy, fulfilling life if you're one of the many who can't rise above Wage Slave status. How can the values and ways of thinking we've taught you keep you sane and happy while you're barely making ends meet?

And as far as the loud 20-something crowd goes: I think they're like the excellent and the mediocre. They're going to do what they're going to do regardless of what a commencement speaker says. I laughed my ass off at his joke about getting a "YOLO" tattoo, but I seriously doubt that anything he said in the entire address prevented a single YOLO from being inked on a person who had wanted one before he started talking.

All of that probably sounds like I didn't like this address. But actually, I loved it. It's one of the better commencement addresses I've ever heard, and I would have gladly sat through that than the "You are amazing"-filled, Class of 2000 bullshit that got force fed to me at my high school graduation. Or the 20 minutes of "You can and will be a mover and shaker regardless of what degree you got from our tiny-ass state school" that I experienced when I went to the ceremony for a friend who graduated the year before me in college. Attending that ceremony was a large part of what influenced my decision not to sit through it again when my own time came the next year.

tl;dr: That was a hilarious, entertaining, well put-together commencement address. If I had to be at a graduation, I would want that guy to deliver that address to my class. I've watched that video twice, and would gladly watch it again or show it to my kids when they're old enough. But like the students graduating, it wasn't anything special. Same basic message wrapped in a slightly more pragmatic casing.

Yes.

I think it is a joke, and I think it is true. Everyone has things they must face and who are we to put value on it? There should be acknowledgement for merit, but the whole idolizing the winner is ridiculous.