Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts

Friday, January 22, 2010

Will me and my piers be writing on eachothers facebook walls at 54 and 78?

I've been wondering since early on the post-Facebook era what will become of the orginal facebook generation (my generation). I mean, will we stay on facebook forever or will we slowly deactivate our facebook accounts like responcible adults around our mid-to-late 30's when we start getting married and/or having kids?

Must would probably say the later but i am very dubious about how easily my piers will be able to give up their facebook profiles just because of something as seemingly arbitrary as age. And the connection between young people and their facebook profiles is generally quite under-estimated. Consider how much time young people spend on facebook not just per-week but per-day. Our facebook profiles our our memberships cards, if you will, our surrogrates, our proxys in a digital commune where we all have become used to interacting on the average Wenseday night at 8 pm. We like writing status and getting instant comments and all the rest. Plus, consider photos on facebook. Now some men but almost all girls have a ton of facebook photos of themselves surrounded by friends. As me and my piers have gotten on in life having all mostly joined facebook (after saying we wouldn't) around Sophomore year of High School girls now have a pretty long history in there facebook photos. They can scroll back and see what they were doing, what color hair they had, how fat or thin they were, who they where hanging out a lot with Freshman year, Sophmore year, Junior year and so fourth and so on. By the time the girls i know are in there late 20's their facebook photo collections will be a priceless part of their collections of stuff (like a scarp-book or a year book X 10). To give up all those photos, would be like burying all those cherished memories of the good ole' days, it would be like erasing their past with the click of a button. Then think of the value added by facebook chat which allows friends from high school dispersed around the nation at colleges, jobs, etc. never be really more than a mouse click away. It wouldn't be to easy to get rid of that kind of conveince, would it? And what would you do instead? Go back to calling friends to ask them "How's Boulder?"? 1. The phone is so much effort 2. it costs money 3. it would be weird to call just to ask "hows boulder?" with some people your friends with but not that close with but wouldn't be weird on facebook. Finally, one of the eternal appeals of staying on facebook, even in a nominile way is that people can contact you that probably wouldn't call you or write you (for whatever reason) the same thing if you didn't have facebook. For instance, with girls i like but aren't close friends with, facebook chat allows for me to talk to them in a non akward way to strike up conversation with them (and possibly kindle something more) by asking them stuff like "Hey, Maddy, i heard you got in a car crash? did you?". And, atleast for me, it would be tough deactivactinng my account because if i did i'm afraid i'd be contsantly be wondering about all the possible out of the blue suprising/at times life changing facebook messages i could have been sent from some girl i like but never thought liked me writing,

"Hey long time, no see. I know we hardly talked at ETHS but I always thought you where really intresting and funny and cool and I always wanted to chill with you. Anyway, i heard your in town right now and i just moved back home too and I was wondering what your up to. I hope you don't think this is weird of me. If you want to ever hang out my numbers 1-847-477-2389. bye Daniel."


I've actually gotten a few of those in the past. There the kind of things you read that make you feel like a million bucks and give a rush of adrelaine and excitement and ancipation, ya' know? Well, for some reason, I haven't checked my facebook messages in 3-4 months (i now have 291 messages to read) and I'm hoping to find some messages like the one above the day i devote to opening all those letters/messages. My fear is that they'll all be facebook-group or event mass messages like

"SUMMERCAMP 2010, line up announced today! merchandice available too!"



p.s.

A FINAL THOUGHT:

Like i said by the time my generation is 30 or 40 years old our facebook accounts will be so valuable to us with all those photos, that huge archive of old status' and wall posts and videos and messages, etc. that we can look to look back on our lives. This raises to unappealing possibilities:

1. That facebook will start to charge people who have had facebook accounts for over 10 or 15 years knowing that we will pay to keep our 83,000 photos and wall posts &

2. That all this constantly looking back at facebook photos of us at 18 and 24 when where 37 or 40 will make us the most depressed and nostlagic generation ever.

The Facebook Face



Anyone under atleast 20 years of age (in America) knows the above faces very well. They've seen it a thousand times before: 1 or 2 or more girls hanging around one of there cribs, one girl talks about this guy she hooked up with from the next town over last weekend and she shows them his picture on facebook, one thing leads to another and boom! They've found there way to the photo booth application on there Mac's and are photo-boothin' away doing what girls love to do look at themselves in the mirror and in pictures, making goofy faces and giggling (chicken soup for a young ladies' soul). And what is produced after this spree of self-absortion/slumber party antics/school girly fun is a digital teenage wasteland of millions of facebook photo albums full of picture after picture of usually 2 or more girls, there faces blue with the glare of there computer screen, making the exact type of goofy, moderatly annpying, zany- in a girly way facial exspressions (as seen above).

I mean I could and perhaps will someday soon go and spend 2 minuetes rounding up a batch of nearly identical pictures from girl's i know's facebook photo album's with girls making, literally, the exact same facial exspressions as these 2 girls.

I decree the above face: THE FACEBOOK GIRL FACE.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Two Liberal Archetypes

I'd like to discuss two archetypes, two distincly new charcters now so common to life in the modern world (atleast familiar to modern American life). They belong to the yuppie sector of the left wing. There are two kinds of Democrats: there are people who vote Democratic but don't embrace the full liberal world view (of being a part time diversity enthusaist, a racist whistleblower, gay rights defender, all around activist, etc.) and then are true liberals who don't just vote liberal but live liberal 24/7. They can be described, as the Democrats who acatually are into poltics. There the more annoying the more informed Democrat. They are almost always white, yuppies, who drive Volkswagons and want to move to Berlin and could be mistaken for GAP manaquins at any given moment. you know the type, they all have useless sociology/english/women's studies degrees and work in fields like marketing, the media, and academia.

I'd like to discuss 2 odd aspects of this modern liberal archetype i have always found fascinating.

1. Of the two this is the most important and ultimately ironic liberal yuppie sub-type. This is the white male yuppie-bookish, timid, well-mannered, intellectually intrested, likes poltics and debate and reading and revels in high culture and high art. Yet he is completly devoid of any trace, as a good liberal, of the most basic and obvious self-intrest. Namely in the regard of immigration and demographic change. They are not indifferent, no, rather they are passionately, often hysterically, in defence of contuning mass 3rd world immigration. They don't, as all good liberals, think about immigration and certainly not demographic change (only when forced) for such subjects are for warped, xenuphones to car about. But if you bring up the subject of say how many predict 2050 to be the year whites become a minority in America they will recoil and/or grow hysterical at the fact that you even care about such change as if they are offended or disgusted that such things would even grab your attention. Let alone, come and out and say that we need a moratirium on immigration so that we can remain a majority European nation and then they start labeling you a sick "racist".
But you start to wonder, don't they even think about demographic change at all? Don't they see that they are crusading so belligerently on the part of policys that besides hurting the nation (which is not compelling to them anyways) is so clearly detrimental to them? Why is America become less white and more Mexican and black bad for the white "overeducated", "intellectual", yuppie liberals i speak of? Well because latino and black culture, which is largely hip hop culture, despite sharing the liberal yuppies love for Obama and welfarism, is the cultural antithesis of meek and mild, ultra-femnist, sensitive, anti-consumerist, liberal yuppie culture. White Starbucks yuppie-liberalism culture is all about sipping ethipian bean free-trade lattes and speaking about the new upcoming Wes Anderson film quitely and politely while chicano and black hip hop culture is about free style rapping "homophobic", "mysogonistic", "consumerist" rythms and making fun of each other very louidly while drinking 40's and rolling blunts and speaking broken english. The white yuppie thinks of himself as "with it" when it comes to everything third-world and non-white and non-traditional. He thinks he can connect if given the chance with the victimized and oppressed "proleteriate" cause he is there defender. The white liberal yuppie glorifies hip hop culture. The white yuppie teaches black teenage mothers slam poetry at goverment funded "poetry centers", they are the community organizer, the young idealist teacher in the ghetto classroom. But despite their efforts, and the white yuppie has tried very very hard to "connect" and "uplift" the black and latino ghetto youth culture, the two groups are simply far two different. But the white yuppie liberal doesn't critize anything non-white.While the black gantas and chicano teenage thugs laugh at the yuppie liberals and the hipsters as nerdy, the white yuppie restrains, monk -like, from any critqiue of latino and black hip hop culture, to do so would be to go conservative and to admit that racism isn't holding them down but there own culture.
But you still would think, doesn't the white yuppie ever realize that the society they want to live, a NPR-Terry Gross-Starbucks-Sava Darfur-Ani DiFranco-beat poetry-society is totally at odds with the society they are bringing about by arguing on behalf of mss immigration and open borders, which is an increasingly black and latino slum society, a Bitchz n' hoes-bling-bling-hyper-masculine-ultra-consumerist-low-culture-bad-TV-no-books-"whats NPR?"-society. But ofcourse to even ackowledge this conflict would be to be saying something bad about non-white culture and something implicitly good about white culture which is a no-no. And as one can tell reading liberal colmunist, what is a central source of liberal self esteem is there feeling that they are the white people marching with MLK, that they are in essence, "the good white people", they seem to have guilt problems, and they need to seperate themselves from other whites, to make clear to the world that they are the "enlightened white people", the "white people who know that white people are evil and holding you guys down". They're intertional soldiarity fetish gives them a fantasy self image as being united with the migrant worker, the black criminal (victim of white oppresion), the native american, the buddist, and not being just another "white guy or gal". There liberalism and there idiotic diversity fetish is not about poltics as much as it is about status. There left wing "i'm-more-proggesive-than-you!" poltics is a way of marking there status above other whites in a new age of globalization inwhich status heirachy is all a-jumble. Thats why i'm convisced that they don't even think about immigration, they just know that "good white people", people on the side of "progress" would be on the side of the illegal immigrant, thus they are, no thinking nesscary, they're stance on amnesty like so many other issues is set by default. When they adopted there all-encompassing white yuppie liberal identity as "good, proggesive, enlighned, compassionate white people" they adopted with it a social idenity and a whole bunch of default positions required of "good white people": which means, for instance, in order to keep your status as a good white person, you simply can't be concerned about immigration, because illegal immigration is just oppressed peoples getting revenge for years of repression, instead of caring about say a vile hip hop culture which embodies the "misogyny" and "consumerism" that they claim to disdain, they endorse hip hop and focus there faked scorn on Christianity and patriotism and calling people who care about Rev. Wright racist.
But can't they see what i and all sane people can see so clearly for just a milisecond, which is that the policy they support, with there donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center and CAIR and Media Matters will have them living in a 3rd world slum by the time there middle age and despite what they say, they would hate that more than anything. Just look at the white yuppies personal lives and the core hypocrisy of there bogus idenitity reveals itself: that being that they live and will always live as long as they can live in all-white/asian/jewish neigborhoods. They make damn sure to send there kids to schools with minimal numbers of latino and black kids. They secretly raise there disaprove and/or worry about there children having mostly black and/or latino friends (granted its not at a early age). Ofcourse they never would say a word admitting aprhension in this regard. (By the way, another less prounced hypocrictal aspect of these white yuppie types is the fact that they so often owe there livilehood and there lavish living conditions to the major corporations they work for in some capacity, the same corporations, they almost as an act of atonement, defame and slander through there poltical views.)
Part of me, can't wait for the copious amount of "i told you so" moment that await me and my white liberal yuppie friends and loved ones as we grow older and i am proven right and they grudgingly fall silent in admission of there foolishness. I warn the liberals who surround me in love and family and friendship that the policys they support in the area of immigration will have us both living under the thumb of a president Al Sharpton or House Speaker Louis Farrakhan soon enough and they skoff the suggestion of like science fiction (the way i, rightly, scoff of there predictions of San Frasico below the sea in 60 years).

2. The epcine "social justice" liberal yuppie male who gets teary-eyed passionate about gay rights and/or femnism. I find something so fundmentally gay or at the very least essentially effeminate about watch a male (presumably hetro) liberal gettin all verkilmept and girlishly passionate-irrational about "male shovenism" and "sexism" and "repressive gender roles" or "gay marriage as a human right!".