The Content Generation

"Looking towards the future, we were begging for the past
Well, we knew we had the good things, but those never seemed to last
Oh please just last

Everyone's unhappy, everyone's ashamed
Well we all just got caught looking at somebody else's page"

 

Modest Mouse - Missed the Boat

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"The truth the lies all fabrications
Only you control your destination
You!
You are what you do!

Sturm und Drang
Dir gehören"

 

KMFDM - Sturm & Drang

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"the bodymods took so long to install and heal up that, by the time they were done, I didn’t feel like they represented me any more. I had learned new things, I was a new person."

 

Forward #450

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A couple of years ago I discovered to no little consternation that the cutoff point between official generations had at some prior point been rolled back to the year before my birth* labeling me officially a millennial. I deny the spurious accusation by every hair standing up on my neck at hearing it! Also, it came as news to me. I could and can vividly remember being ten years old when Bart Simpson the ten-year-old was widely discussed as emblematic of GenXers' nihilism. I also recall walking out of a mall with my mother when I was in my late teens wondering what cultural trend** will define the coming generation. If anyone moved the goal posts, it was done after the fact.

 

Who decides these things anyway?

 

Apparently, after decreeing that GenZ hath ended, their successors were already appointed and obsoleted before I could blink. Quoth Wikipedia: 

"Generation Alpha, often shortened to Gen Alpha, is the demographic cohort succeeding Generation Z and preceding the proposed Generation Beta. While researchers and popular media loosely identify the early 2010s as the starting birth years and the 2020s as the ending birth years, these ranges are not precisely defined"

Yeah no shit they're not precisely defined! I don't even know where to start.

First off, such timespans too often fall literally shorter than the accepted rough human generation estimate of twenty years. If there is such a distinction to be made, it's between parents and children, not you and your kid brother. Especially so-called "generation alpha" seems trimmed down to ten years. What are we, chimps? Don't answer that.

Second, one advantage of calling a generation "Z" was hinting that this generational labeling is reaching the end of its meaningful utility.

Third, these designations were meant to be descriptive, based on some real-world characteristic. Baby boomers, the lost/silent/greatest generation, yes even millennials expressed a linking phenomenon. Granted, GenX being defined as gen nothing, gen, like, whatever, gen nemo nobody, by lack of definition, by anomie, disinterest, broken homes and alienation, that was a bit insulting, but hey, we made it our own. What idea is symbolized by labeling decades alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, epsilons and so forth? The complete death of human self-awareness and imagination at the same time? You may as well call everyone '20ers, '30ers, '40ers, etc.

Fourth and most importantly, you're already assigning a denomination for humans yet to be born in the following decades. Based on what, the noble science of asspullistry? What cuckoo's nest conceit does it take to label and schedule the shared experience of today's newborns and those of ten years hence?

 

The answer entails a bit of retrospection. While the generational labels may go back over a century, they didn't seem to get much attention until after WWII when adolescence grew more widely recognized as discrete demographic and youth culture as potential consumer bloc with teenyboppers spearheading the commercialization of ear canals.*** From then on, generations were increasingly defined by music fads and other pop culture. Tie-dye shirts, pancake makeup, nose rings, bolt-on tits, a "generation" is whatever the kids are buying.

 

Ah-hah!

Profit.

 

In that light, it makes perfect sense for social "scientists" to act as engineers, no longer observing trends, no longer describing reality but fabricating categories, selling prepackaged cohorts for the use of marketers. No need to wait for world events to transpire, for artistic trends to flourish. We can get ahead of that shit and just tell the little bastards what will define them and who their peers and heroes will be. What advertiser doesn't salivate at "if you are X you like Y" and suchlike matched fencing? I'm sure we can time the next baby boom to coincide with Apple's release schedule; wouldn't want to inconvenience the most relevant constituency. Wait for it... wait for it... aaaand -- hump-hump-hump!

 

But, oh, hold on now! If I don't like my current bin I might be magnanimously permitted to clamber on over to seek sanctuary in that of "xennials" which apparently means I like... ninja turtles and feminism?!?

Uhhh, yeah, no, fuck that. See, this is why I'm a Wer-Wolfe. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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* And now it's apparently been rolled back yet another year. 

** I seem to remember I predicted millennials would be defined by personal artistic expression. Given the widespread flamboyance and attention-whoring of the previous decades, I may not have been too far off...?

*** Open the Strait of Ear-muze! (Wow, that joke ain't gonna age well.)