Defining Adventure Down

I think I'm finally narrowing down my strong antipathy to "must love adventure" crowd on dating sites and, uh, almost everywhere else (I know this is a weird thing to obsess over, but here I am).  It comes down to a couple things for me.

First, it seems like a completely mindless capitulation to the current advertising push in all sectors. It's an adventure to buy a coke, it's an adventure to buy a car, it's an adventure to choose your brand, etc. Every ad now is that ubiquitous stadium anthem music dreck and free spirits waving their arms about while they buy shit they don't need. I understand our bland, consumer-driven lives might need some punch, this does not mean going to the mall is now an epic of homerian proportions. We don't have to accept "participating in the economy" as the definition of "adventure" just because the soulless and sad Don Draper wannabes tell us to.  For god's sake have some pride.

Second, it defines adventure away to mean everything and nothing.  Much like the Louis C.K.'s bit on "everything's amazing and nobody's happy.", once you use adventure to describe going to the mall with your friends, or going on an easy hike 30 min out of town, what' s left to describe reporting in a war zone?  Hacking your way through the amazonian jungle in search of new species?  Going to space in a rocket? If adventure is a glorified "leaving the house" then adventure is the definition of normalcy and tedium.

Third, has it really come to this?  Has modern life beaten us down so much that having the bravery to leave the house is now adventure-level status?  Do we need it to be such an epic to even summon the motivation? I'd like to think we can make it a norm again, and not the extraordinary act of extraordinary people. Like maybe it's possible to perform the basic responsibilities of adult life without creating a grossly inflated and narcissistic mythology around how wonderful and meaningful everything we do is simply by virtue of it being us that's doing it, you know? It's delusional, and it's the kind of delusion that only benefits advertisers who want everyone to share in the delusion that brand engagement and an obscene focus on brand preference is an important and meaningful part of life.  It isn't.  It never will be.

It's an adventure for a toddler to leave the house.  It's an adventure for an adult to leave the country, or in a few notable cases, the planet.  You don't like adventure, you just like leaving the house.