If you ask Steve Carell, kids these days don't have enough opportunities for good old fashioned face-to-face humiliation.
During his 15-minute address to Princeton's Class of 2012 Monday (via The Star-Ledger), the former Office star joked that, thanks to text messages, email, and social media, young people just aren't given the same chances to grow and develop as they were in the old days.
In Carell's day, he said, dumpers had to cut ties in person or over the phone, rather than in email or a tweet, thereby giving a young man "the humiliation and self-loathing [he] needs for his growth."
"My point is," the comedian, 49, told the crowd, "I suffered and you should have to suffer too."
All that face-time with his exes worked out for Carell in the end — the actor has been happily wed to Saturday Night Live alum Nancy Carell since 1995, with whom he has two kids (Annie, 11, and Johnny, 8).
Another reason the past has the present beat, according to the actor?
"If we didn't know something, we didn't Google it. We just made an educated guess, or we made it up," Carrell explained. "We pretended that we knew and that was good enough . . . And if you weren't right, you could leave before anyone had time to check your facts."
In sum, Carrell told his crowd, "You are young. And because of that, you are wrong."
