When all signs of our civilization have been wiped out by a nuclear winter, our buildings buried under millions of weathered copies of People and piles of discarded crop tops, a lone, post-apocalyptic adventurer and his trusty dog will happen upon an etching. Scratched desperately on the side of what was once a combination Pizza Hut-Taco Bell, the ragged survivor will slowly press his fingers against four, unexplained letters: “Y O L O.” History books will commemorate the phrase, enveloping it in a shroud of mystery as the last clue to a culture lost.
The phrase, so pervasive in the modern subconscious, came to a Texas high schooler who realized the futility of a standardized test he was in the middle of taking. Kyron Birdine, a junior at Arlington High School, paused in the middle of his STAAR test, one that wouldn’t affect his status in college admissions, had no bearing on his high school performance, and was ultimately meaningless in greater society. “Why must I be subjected to such trivial forms of quantifying my knowledge?” Birdine thought, probably.
And so, as any disaffected youth of our time wished they had the guts to do, Birdine took out his number two pencil and slowly wrote those powerful four letters across his test booklet: YOLO. Followed by a smiley face emoticon.
He then tweeted a photo of his masterpiece with an iPad, because duh that kind of shit makes the front page of Reddit. But this was just the beginning of the Birdine vs. The Man. Crotchety school officials were all, like, “This tweet be an act of abomination!” and suspended Birdine for four days. And here we are. The way we live now.
Follow the story of Birdine and his YOLO with the #FreeKyron hashtag. Fight the power and may the YOLO be with you.