You probably heard someone say that they were tired today. Or maybe you told someone you were tired today. The reason this is so easy to predict is because people are constantly letting everyone know how tired they are. This is what I call Tiredness Culture. And (not to blame teens for everything) young people are even more prone to this than adults.

Tiredness culture is based on five principles:

1. I am tired.
2. I need to let others know I am tired.
3. Everyone else is tired. (justification)
4. They need to let me know they’re tired.
5. The cure is not sleep, the cure is coffee.

This is one of the three things in our society that annoys me the most (the others being liberalism and NASCAR which are pretty much the same thing because they both go around in circles making a lot of noise). It annoys me because it becomes so redundant over time, and it’s never a surprise to hear someone say “I’m tired” as soon as you begin conversing or even as soon as they enter the room. Don’t misunderstand; I know that sometimes it’s hard to fall asleep and sometimes you have too much work to get done, so you inevitably wake up tired. But the level of redundancy is rising so quickly that the only thing more predictable for you to say is “um.”

Another evidence of the plague of tiredness is the rabid thirst for coffee. People of every background and economic status share their coffee conversion stories. Sadly, many of these stories begin with “I hated coffee, but in my freshman year in college…”

How to End Tiredness Culture

If you want to join me in the exhausting work of ending tiredness culture, here is what you can do.

Don’t drink coffee, or just drink decaf.

A little coffee may be good for you, but most people drinking bucketloads of it are damaging their tiredness receptors and making themselves feel even more tired when they aren’t loading themselves up with the drug of caffeine. In order to stop this, we must end the drinking of coffee for solely energetic (or lack thereof) reasons and promote the use of decaf ground and water-strained dirt for those who pretend they actually like coffee.

Don’t tell people you’re tired.

Don’t go around announcing your own tiredness. Everyone already knows you are tired because you are breathing and look generally like a human. Contribute to an actual conversation by talking about what you are reading or watching or thinking about. Don’t be redundant.

Don’t acknowledge others when they say they are tired.

If you do acknowledge them, do it solely to let them know how redundant their common refrain is. Be sure to sound very judgmental and make them feel ashamed of admitting they feel the way everyone else does.

Get sleep.

Please, people. Get your rest! Don’t stay up until 3 am! Not everyone must be a morning person, but every person must get out of bed in the morning. I’m not the best example of sleeping habits (I tend to get around seven hours), but seven is better than six and eight is better than seven and nine is slothful; don’t sleep nine hours.

Conclusion & Disclaimer

If you decide to take up the tiring work of combatting tiredness culture, email me so I can send you a Starbucks BOGO you’ll need for all the people you’ll be correcting!

Disclaimer: This post was written tongue-in-cheek, but I am only half joking. Tiredness culture is a real thing that annoys me to my core. Much of the advice and thoughts above are truly heartfelt.