#YOLO

If you are not familiar with what the acronym above stands for, I envy you. You probably live in a much more sensible place than the world of high school. For these blissfully ignorant readers who do not know what has replaced ‘swag’ as the most ridiculous and overused word of teenagers’ vocabulary, I am here to fill you in.

YOLO stands for You Only Live Once, and is often, though not exclusively, used on social media websites. If you are looking for a rule of thumb on how to properly use YOLO in a sentence, I will help you out. YOLO only has two uses: to try and convince a friend (and/or yourself) to do something stupid, or to justify the aforementioned stupid thing after it has been done.

Some examples of how YOLO has been used:

–       Come on, man, let’s jump into a freezing cold pool in the middle of winter. YOLO

–       My friends and I stayed up all night and now I have to go take a physics test on two hours of sleep. Oh well, YOLO

–       I say YOLO all the time, because YOLO!!!

The list goes on and on. Either way, what seems to have escaped the notice of the thousands of teenagers who use this abbreviation is that YOLO not only justifies stupid decisions, but the wording in itself does not make sense.

If you only live once, why would you justify making idiotic decisions that could harm your future (which you only have one of, as this handy acronym reminds you)? If you only live once, don’t you want to make smart decisions so that you don’t screw up the only life you have?

YOLO began as a harmless justification for lightening up and throwing caution to the wind, but it quickly became an excuse for teenagers that make poor decisions and don’t want to feel guilty. And herein lies my problem with YOLO: no matter how catchy and fun it is, it basically encourages people to do dumb things for the sake of “living life to the fullest.”

Confession: I have said YOLO. It was one time, during a particularly crazy adventure, and I said it out of irony at my dumb peers who say it, but still– I said it. I immediately cringed afterwards, but it was too late. I couldn’t take it back. And in that moment, I realized something: I will never say YOLO again, because I only live once and I don’t want to waste the only words I get on something that unintelligent.

Do you have any funny YOLO stories? Tell us in a comment below!