As an atypical American teenage girl I avidly asses a spectrum of different outlets, social and news-based, specifically on the internet. As someone who frequents the website Tumblr.com, I have noticed a certain trend among adolescents and young adults ages 13-25: communism. Now, I’m not exactly sure where this trend started (or by whom) but it’s definitely had me thinking as of late. By thinking, I mean wondering, specifically as to how such a startlingly large population of young people (many American) could be so blatantly, for lack of a better word, stupid.

Reluctant to carry out a conversation with most of whom I have observed, I’m left in a constant state of awe. Why? I really just wonder why, mostly. I can only assume that most of these people have yet to experience even a seventh grade history course (and I am giving them seventh grade out of pity, I surely knew better far before that) because out of the many biases we’re taught as American school-kids there is one that holds true. That is that communism does not work under any circumstance.

In one instance, or should I say argument, I was told by a user on this website that communism was an idea that included no governing body, living off the land, and community support. Upon asking this individual, who is remaining purposely unnamed, if they had ever read The Communist Manifesto, or in that case anything by Marx, the response was (amazingly) ” no.” I would like to think that just because we’re experiencing slight economic turmoil that we will not blindly follow a dead, problematic idea. I would also like to think that before anyone would commit to an idea that they would know what the idea was firstly. It is obviously unlikely that it’ll be that way though. I can only hope that this sudden and noticeable surge of ignorance is just, as many teenager behaviors tend to be, a phase.