When I was a kid I used to help my younger sister prepare for her debates. Yeah my dear sister was a sharp one and part of the literary and debating society. Our strategy was preparing by thinking of every possible angle the opposing debater was going to come from and take each argument apart with firm rebuttals and counter-arguments. 

Needless to say my baby sis was able to demolish and win so many debates. So today in this blog entry I am going to try to introduce something new into my blogging. This is a new thing I will be dropping every now and again called "for and against"

Today the topic is "Hype vs substance" This topic was sparked up by a tweet posted by Sarah O on twitter. OK Let's start with Hype.

Hype: OK so we all know that Public Enemy released a song called "Don't Believe the hype" but I think hype might be catching a rap (pun intended) Is the idea of hype really bad in itself? I don't think so. What IS hype? Well it is defined as "creating interest in by flamboyant or dramatic methods. To stimulate and to excite" From looking at that definition hype can't be THAT bad can it? We all love feeling excited don't we?

So hype in itself isn't a bad thing, it is actually necessary. Without hype things of substance might never be known. Without the spread of exciting, stimulating information and ideas how would you have discovered a lot of things of substance that you cherish right now? Think about that.

Substance: Yes, substance. Everyone talks about substance. It is the holy grail that everyone claims to seek for. So what exactly is substance? It is defined as "solid or meaningful in quality" So when it comes to down to it, people want substance because it is solid, it is meaningful, it has value and it lasts.

If people believe things of substance are important, why don't more people seek them out then? Maybe hype and substance instead of being opposed to each other actually NEED each other. 

Conclusion: Hype in itself is not a bad thing, the problem is hype shouldn't be an end in itself. It should be a means to an end. Stimulating interest and getting excited isn't a bad thing but for what though? What are you getting excited about? It is so possible to just be caught up in the buzz because it feels good to be gassed up and in that state of excitement. 

In an ideal world, something of substance deserves hype, it should get people excited, it should stimulate interest but this isn't a perfect world and most times it doesn't happen that way. Things that don't necessarily deserve hype (in a lot of people's opinion) gets hyped and even if something of substance does get hype people sometimes enjoy the moment of the hype and just move on to the next "happening" thing when the moment is over. People have really short attention spans and are all about instant gratification. It's so easy to get addicted to hype. Another thing is who decides what is of substance? There are some things that are down to personal taste that play into this whole conversation. 

We've all gotten caught up in one hype or another at one time and it fades eventually, we've all faced that let down of when the hype clears and the buzz of something is over and you're left thinking "what happened?" or "Why am I not so interested in so and so as much as I used to be anymore?" At that time you treasure things of substance more but that is a process of maturity and growing up that we all go through. It takes time.