Thursday, June 25, 2015

The Kids Today

I think it's true that The Kids Today grew up/are growing up in a world which is radically different than the one I grew up in or the one that my parents grew up in. The automobile, telephone, indoor plumbing and electricity, household appliances, industrialized food production, the automobile, and the TeeVee all were pretty much in place by the 40s. Transatlantic flights showed up a bit later, and Skynet computers were slowly and steadily taking over various business practices in the background, but it really wasn't until the internets and related technologies that we really had a big paradigm change. The big exception to my general argument is The Pill which was of course revolutionary but contraception generally wasn't entirely new.

Maybe it explains why there's so much sneering about the youngs by the olds today. That of course isn't entirely new either. Every new generation is a bunch of lazy slackers with the wrong values. But I see something nasty in the getoffmylawnism that we get today that I don't really remember previously. I remember the eye rolling. I don't remember the anger. Maybe that's just because I get to read assholes on the internet now, a blessing I was previously denied, but I still think it's a bit different. I see a lot of hatred of the youngs. It's troubling and weird.