Our Generation Is A Joke

WARNING: I'M ABOUT TO SOUND LIKE AN OLD COOT.

How did we go from "The Greatest Generation" to "The Do-It-For-Me Generation" in less than 60 years?

I think it's because our generation has single-handedly redefined the definition of "success".

In 1940, success was "putting food on the table and keeping your family warm". Now, success is something intangible; a vague inkling of a concept. Something frequently hypothetical.

Let's start with a very simple statement: things are easier today. Maybe it's just because I live in Los Angeles, but it seems like parents have made money for their kids; parental support at 20-something seems less like an exception and more like the rule.

What do kids spend that money on? Things like iPhones that tell them where to buy the food, how to cook it and who to serve it to (both metaphorically and literally). The act of doing something for yourself is no longer an act: it is information stored away in a tiny little microchip, easily accessible by a slight stroke of your index finger.

Learning a trade is now a laughably futile exercise. Perhaps the famous phrase will now be "Jack Of All Internet Search Engines". When things are this easy, we take them for granted. We expect them rather than work for them. Our entire lives revolve around discovering faster, lazier ways to do the things we should probably get off our asses and do ourselves.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as wiki-friendly as the next bloke, but there's a difference between "looking stuff up" and "using the technology as a crutch". My grandmother was the world's greatest cake baker, and she definitely didn't have allrecipies.com. She did a little thing called "trial and error" which, if I'm correct, will be an obsolete term by 2020.

I am constantly amazed at how easy it is for our generation to simply accept something for nothing (and your chicks for free). We sit around; fat and lethargic, picking dry the bones of yesterday's innovations. Regurgitating Googled insight instead of gaining insight. Technology has created a CliffsNotes civilization of impatient, narcissistic busybodies who have nothing better to do than to sit staring at a metallic box, figuring out faster ways to get nothing done .


Maybe our parents were too forgiving. Maybe they spent too much time in the shadow of "The Greatest Generation" : knowing that living up to unrealistic expectations causes pain and stress; so they told us that success lies in the ability to "do whatever we want". To figure it out...to be yourself.

Well, it turns out that we had to Google "how to be ourselves".

Maybe success has been redefined by our generation as "doing whatever we want, as long as you do it for us". Just a group of disaffected kids limping aimlessly through life, searching for a purpose. The problem is that search cannot be done on Google. Our grandparents found purpose in work and our parents found purpose in family. Now our purpose seems to be finding a purpose.

It's this notion of the hypothetical that is so distasteful for me. If you can't define what success is, you'll never be successful. If our grandparents could see us now, they'd tell us to shut the fuck up and get to work. Then again, maybe they'd be downloading the new "I'll do all the work for you" app for your iPhone. It does all your work for you AND gives you a handjob, cookies and a meanlingless sense of self-satistfaction.

Welcome to 2010.