Generation Y We Suck

There’s really a lot of factors to go into when examining a group, but youth culture can essentially be broken up into facets of pop culture. Because let’s face it, pop culture pretty much is youth culture.

However, for simplicity’s sake we’ll be looking at 3 factors in this post that exhibit what effects youth culture: Fashion, Music, and Ideology. Since most Generation Y’ers came of age in the 00s, that’s the decade I will be comparing to the 90s and the 80s.

The argument that Generation Y is just not as good as Generation X is one that I’ve debated for a good amount of time. Gen X has drawbacks, notably among a percentage of the 40-somethings that share the Boomers’ utter disregard for political sanity, but the Me Generation had something nearly approaching originality. Generation Y is by comparison a bland, reheated leftover, the difference between eating paste and chowing down on a brownie.

• Fashion

If I said I thought the styles of the1980s and the 1990s were tasteless compared to today, I would only be partly lying. Sure, I owned the platform sneakers--everyone did--and you pretty much had no choice but to wear mom-jeans because that was what they sold most of the time. The pocket chains remain en vogue today; also, I’m pretty sure the beanie hat ain’t going anywhere. And girl, you know I had jelly shoes.
The 00’s brought us a slew of WTF-ery with basically the philosophy that defines Generation Y: the less taste, the better. The scatter-brained, more-is-better attitude was marketed like so many ridiculously expensive sweatsuits (why would you buy a sweatsuit that you can’t really sweat in?) and Generation Y lapped it right up. Why? Because it was there. Because it was soooo edgy. How do we know it’s edgy? Because we were told it was!
Generation Y is pretty notable for blindly following trends (though every generation can say this). In addition, Generation Y closely associates the purchase of a trendy (and probably expensive) look with, or in many cases replacing, organic satisfaction. In essence, the message that if you just get the perfect pair of shoes, make yourself up just right, lose the right amount of weight, wear all the right clothes, get perfect cosmetic surgery, or wear the precise perfume/cologne advertised, everything in your life will suddenly fall together like a perfect game of Tetris©...well, that message is blaring loud and clear. Buy all the right things and you’ll become a fey, marvelous creature, envied by all, romantically tragic, and therefore marvelously appealing.
As stated on Love Your Style.com:

One escape for a sick soul is materialism, in buying nice clothes and houses and so on, in becoming enviable in your loneliness. [source]

Sure, the message of “Love yourself the way you are” is loud and proud, but often gets misconstrued. The person eating their way to obesity will shout down their detractors with the justifying battle cry of “I love myself the way I am! Don’t judge me,” while the person who spends spends spends on hair dye, a monumental amount of piercings, funky clothing and god knows what else will also shout down their detractors with the same battle cry, yet neither of these examples are openly facing the world as themselves. That is, one is hiding behind massive amounts of food, and the other is also remaking themselves in a new form. In either case, it could be argued that neither new shape is the “real person,” ergo neither of these examples are genuinely accepting of themselves.
This is not to say that all people of a generous build are self-medicating with food. Some are merely endomorphs no matter what. Nor are all people who coat themselves with dye and lacquer attempting to chisel a new persona out of an original that they are unhappy with.

Another side of the “remake yourself in this ideal” is the pro-ana and pro-mia subcultures, composed of young women (and an increasing number of young men) who have forums, LJ communities, etc, to network and enable each other. They also use the “Don’t judge me” battle cry, though in this case it might be the wail of the suicidal. The lure of proclaiming that one loves themselves “just the way they are” runs contrary to nearly everything that’s trendy in Generation Y. Why? Because it’s fashionable.

Eating disorders are by no means new, but they’ve skyrocketed in this generation. Appearance is considered important to the point of obsession. More important is the pursuit of “perfection.” And what is perfection? Why, whatever they tell us it is.

In the fashion world of Generation Y, the follower instinct is strongly at work. Fashion has ingrained itself into what I can only describe as a philosophy, stressing the importance of looking sleek and perfect at all times (according to the approved trends, of course). Essentially, Generation Y places more weight on packaging than content.

• Music

In the 80s, hair bands ruled almost all that was before them--and quite frankly, I worship at that altar. And yeah, Luke Goss drummed in a band with his brother, apparently hell-bent on setting a new standard for being part of the movement of MJ-style pop bands with singers that sound eerily like women. Fortunately, Goss has mostly seen the error of his ways and proceeded to give us a rather sexy Frankenstein Monster.

In the 90s, straight up dark rock held their own in the scene, with renowned and still-revered bands like moody, soul-baringly poignant, witty and highly-skilled Type O Negative, love-them-or-hate-them Nirvana, and grunge-soaked Soundgarden delivering a pure and glorious antidote to the sugary-sweet pop of both the current decade and the too-cute-for-words pop of the 80s. These groups, especially the first two, had an impressively large impact and occasionally overlooked influence in the music scene and pop culture from the very day they came to light.

Today, however...we have Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber, and a plethora of rap musicians who are mostly notable for their ability to sound like each other. And the key word in most of their music is not talent, but auto-tuning.
Enjoy Your Style.com notes:

Jihan Forbes, a contributor at Starpulse.com, stated that "Lady Gaga is in some ways a reincarnation of Elvis Presley: She takes cues from other truly forward-thinking and innovative artists of color, and repackages it so that white America can comfortably digest it." At Racialicious, a website on "the intersection of race and pop culture," one reader commented:

“To combat the lack of message in her music is really Gaga’s ultimate weapon: the way she panders to her fans, her “little monsters”. She includes them in on [sic] her charade in a way that no one does, overly praising them on Twitter while penning vague platitudes about living life to the fullest and never giving up. However strong and subversive she may appear in public, she plays coy and victimized to her fans who then feel it is their duty to love and defend her. It’s basic and people fall for it like hotcakes.” [source]

Lady Gaga beautifully exemplifies the Generation Y attitude in music: nothing new, nothing original, but extremely faddish. Essentially, it’s a stylized caricature of itself, a sort of black hole that compels the viewer with a strange fascination with how unbelievably dull and self-destructive it is. Why is this kind of music popular? It features synthesizer hooks and dull, throbbing beats that stick in the mind. The lyrics are pretty much empty shlock, with almost nothing penned to mean something personal. Britney Spears asks in her trademark little-girl nasal purr “If I said I want your body now, Would you hold it against me,” essentially taking a ridiculous pickup line that was sad and tired at first use and making it worse by putting it to music. Rihanna’s “S&M” fares no better, repeating what has been plastered on messenger icons and forum signatures for years: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, But chains and whips excite me.”

These are examples of songs and artists that are given radio play almost to the point of inducing madness, overlooking more talented artists that produce better quality songs. But the talented artists are often much less popular. Lady Gaga is showy and a palatable amount of outrageous; Sinead O’Connor lacks the willingness to make a (large) spectacle of herself and rarely flaunts her sexuality to market her music. Again, Generation Y is far more eager to plunk down cash on packaging than content.

• Ideology

Whether it’s protesting fur with the calculatedly hip PETA2 crowd, jeering conservatives based on (badly or un-researched) rumors, or trying to save the polar bears with the global warming groups, Generation Y launches itself at the always-on-sale self-righteousness inherent in all the rabid, frenzied buzzwords of the day that give the consumer a feeling of really knowing what’s going on in the world. The Generation Y’er who finds themselves sucked into yet another black hole of devout faith in pretty much anything, often blindly following their chosen leaders with the kind of devotion approaching or straight up fanatical. I would include links for this section, but it’s so damned depressing. Do your own googling.
Point is, Generation Y cares more for buzzwords and the sense that they’re “really doing something” than actually doing something. It’s easier to rant and rave about whomever the leaders have chosen as the enemy of the day than to do one’s own research. It’s easier to rant about the evils of capitalism while wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt that cost you $10 to $20. Again, packaging is preferred over content. Generation Y cares more about the appearance than anything else.

In short, you can tell a lot about any given group of people by what they produce. And the main thing my generation has produced is what looks like a compelling argument in favor of eugenics.

Murder By Bully: The Hot New Trend

Sladjana Vidovic.
If you don’t recognize the name, don’t wrack your brain too hard; she isn’t a spray-tanned bimbo toting a 2 ounce dog and she isn’t singing about burning a picture. Nonetheless, it turns out that it’s pretty important that you know her name. You see, she was a perfectly normal girl, one of thousands of nameless and faceless bullying victims, but her story is making headlines.
For now.

Sladjana Vidovic was 16-years-old in 2008 when she hung herself by tying one end of a rope to her bed, the other around her neck and then jumped out her bedroom window. This came after she endured a fatally full day of bullying at Mentor High School. Students reportedly mocked her Croatian accent, and called her names like 'Slutty Jana' or 'Slut-Jana-Vagina'. One boy reportedly pushed her down the stairs and another girl hit her in the face with a water bottle.

Now, I admit that sometimes I dismiss accounts of high school bullying with the words, “That’s life.” In this case, and quite a few more like it, it just pisses me off. Because in these cases, it’s the exact opposite of just life. And it’s not just that this poor girl felt that suicide was her only option. It was her murderers’ reactions:

Even at her funeral her family said they saw the girls who had tormented her, walk up to Sladjana's casket and laugh at her dead body.

In another version of this article, it revealed that not only was her little sister the one to have found her body, but can you imagine the entire grieving family having to endure their child’s tormentors walk up to the casket and laugh at her?
I make plenty of jokes here and there about violence, but I also only mean them maybe 8% of the time. This is one of those times. I can say with all honesty that if I had been that kid sister, I would have taken those arrogant, smug, worthless self-absorbed little bitches apart. With a hairbrush and my teeth. And people, it would entirely be worth being locked up for life--or possibly taken out by a SWAT team. Whichever.
Granted, I have a mildly psychotic reaction to people I care about being hurt. And by “mildly psychotic,” I mean my face turns red and I start looking around for all manner of objects to lodge in their spleen. Also perhaps something to set them afire with, just to break up the tedium of my attempts to wrench their head from their body and break all the major bones. So because I am a little sister myself (extended family counts), this story grinds on a nerve for me.

I don’t consider there to be any excuse for driving someone to suicide. For one thing, high school is rough. Bullies are everywhere. But the fact that it has come to this point, where the schools can not handle the situations, and repeated instances of parents not seeming to care, that points a spotlight on these tragedies. It has come to the point where advocacy groups are calling attention to these situations more than the parents--who, by the way, are the people who are supposed have the best interests of the kids at heart--and the kicker is that the advocacy groups are seeming to get more done and make a bigger impact. Parents, please. Stop fiddling while Rome burns.

Now, it's not really far-fetched to say that the bully-girls ought to be prosecuted. Protective parents extolling what limited virtues their little monsters have be damned--these little sociopaths killed someone and then displayed an alarming amount of glee about it.

So, what is the definition of Involuntary Manslaughter? Read on:

There are two types of involuntary manslaughter statutes: criminally negligent manslaughter and unlawful act manslaughter. Criminally negligent manslaughter occurs when death results from a high degree of negligence or recklessness. Modern criminal codes generally require a consciousness of risk and under some codes the absence of this element makes the offense a less serious Homicide.

And:

Unlawful act manslaughter occurs when someone causes a death while committing or attempting to commit an unlawful act, usually a misdemeanor. Some states distinguish between conduct that is malum in se (bad in itself) and conduct that is malum prohibitum (bad because it is prohibited by law). Conduct that is malum in se is based on common-law definitions of crime; for example, an Assault and Battery could be classified as malum in se.

While Wikipedia is not the best source, I include this quote for the argument:

Constructive manslaughter is also referred to as ‘unlawful act’ manslaughter. It is based on the doctrine of constructive malice, whereby the malicious intent inherent in the commission of a crime is considered to apply to the consequences of that crime. It occurs when someone kills, without intent, in the course of committing an unlawful act. The malice involved in the crime is transferred to the killing, resulting in a charge of manslaughter.

Rachel (the future law student who can make sense of all this) remarks that the unlawful act was emotional torture, which resulted in this poor girl's death.

In addition, Criminally negligent manslaughter is another option:

Criminally Negligent manslaughter is variously referred to as criminally negligent homicide in the United States, gross negligence manslaughter in England and Wales. In Scotland and some Commonwealth of Nations jurisdictions the offense of culpable homicide might apply.
It occurs where death results from serious negligence, or, in some jurisdictions, serious recklessness. A high degree of negligence is required to warrant criminal liability. A related concept is that of willful blindness, which is where a defendant intentionally puts himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts which would render him liable.

Rachel remarks that Criminally Negligent Manslaughter appears to fit because mental, verbal and sometimes physical abuse should be classed as reckless. She goes on to say that if they can find corroboration for any physical abuse, that is assault, which is of course another unlawful act.

NOTE: Neither of us are legal experts or hold legal degrees. We are, however, concerned citizens that are more than a little pissed of that justice is being ignored. Rachel also points out that we found these two legal opportunities researching on the web for maybe 30 minutes, and it is probable that a legal professional could find other opportunities.

It’s not a secret that teens generally begin to consider their parents to be some kind of strange, totally lame oddments right around 13. They don’t tell them about their problems for a variety of reasons. They deal with peer pressure about everything under the sun--and I hate to be the one to tell you this, especially if you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade (welcome to the Internet, by the way): Mean Girls are trendy.
I could ramble on about how much I think Lindsay Lohan is a worthless twat, but I’m trying to stick to the point here. Mean Girls was shocking...to the parents. I’m pretty sure every teenage girl out there has had to deal with their own version of The Plastics at some point, which is probably part of what made the movie so popular.
And now we have a new TV series called Pretty Little Liars.
Interestingly, it’s based around the concept of a small group of girls and one dead mutual friend. The kicker? Her death may have been their fault. Somehow, it’s a hit.

For every bullied girl, it’s great to have a media escape where you can imagine being airbrushed perfection in itty bitty clothes. You get the guy, you ruin the Bitch Girl’s life...all in great fun set to a fabulous soundtrack. Self-esteem rises, you refuse to believe the trash people talk about you, blah blah blah, roll credits.

Here’s how it is in real life. The bullied girl probably won’t ever achieve airbrushed perfection because, hello, she’s human. The guy will end up being gay or a jerk. Or a gay jerk, you can never tell. The Bitch Girl will contract herpes and will either end up in a trailer park or in an upper middle class home with an upper middle class husband. It’s a pretty good bet that she won’t remember the bullied girl in 20 years. If she does, it’s because she showed up at the reunion with money, a tiny ass, and a raving desire to prove to everyone who could care less that she’s still wicked awesome.

And if you’re the Bitch Girl in real life, that high self-esteem is more like an over-inflated ego. Refusing to believe the “trash” people talk about you is denial about reality. Dismissing them as “haters” is so much easier than pausing and trying to objectively decide whether, say, driving another girl to suicide for the fun of it makes you a bad person or not.
Oh, and you’re probably not a size 00. And if you are, have fun with your eating disorder.* I’m sure that eroding your teeth with stomach acid definitely sets you aside from all the total losers who aren’t too lazy to actually work out...or just allow themselves to eat more than 300 calories a day so that they don’t collapse.

My point is, Mean Girls have been glorified. Sure, the Plastic Queen Bee is eventually derailed--but dang, didn’t Regina look cool the whole time? Oh, and the power she wielded! And she had lackeys! And in Pretty Little Liars, aren’t the Queen Bees so pretty! Much like how The Simpsons makes having little money and much stupidity seem charming, glorifying Mean Girls and their ilk makes bullying seem like a fun lark, filled with trendy clothes and totally awesome comebacks.

Every teenage girl’s dream: accolades, attention and minions.

And you know what makes the bullied girls watch these things in the media? Because in Scripted-Life Land, revenge is sweet--and justifiable, because the Bitch Girls always lose.
In real life, they just step it up.

Unfortunately, Sladjana paid a very big price for her tormentors’ ego-maniacal shenanigans. Her memory and the memories of all the others that share her story, including every gay student who has committed suicide because of being harassed endlessly, ought to be remembered by taking more of a stand against this kind of BS.

Because there is no excuse. So get up, do something. You might save a life.
And if you know of someone who is or may be a victim of bullying, please pass this on to them:

HopeLine

1-800 SUICIDE

SAFE (Self Abuse Finally Ends)

1-800 DONT CUT

PFLAG (Parents Families Friends of Lesbians and Gays)

RAINN (Rape Abuse & Incest National Network)

1-800-656-HOPE

And finally, if you are a victim of bullying, please do not harm yourself or take your life in response to the actions of petty morons. They are not worth it and there is help out there from people who have either been in your situation or will do their best to move heaven and earth for you.

♥♥And last but not least, please remember you are loved.♥♥

*I am aware that some people are naturally skinny. I am not referring to them in this post. I am referring to the girls who starve themselves or vomit in order to maintain a stick-thin little figure.

O'Donnell isn't a witch, but apparently people don't care

Bill Maher is someone I don't give a crap about usually, and I'll tell you why. Because until recently, I didn't really place him as being unique among the plethora of weasel-faced little idiots that reign over the airwaves. Once you've been revolted by one, you've been revolted by 'em all.

Now, our own lovely Malkin raises a good point: the blogs losing their minds over Christine O'Donnell's "witchcraft" comments neglect to take into account the actual context, which Michelle so helpfully provides.
Malkin further clarifies for anyone who can't make out exactly what's going on in the video, since apparently "having a discussion" in the world of TV involves talking over the other person as much as possible:

At 1:03 in the video, one of the panelists on the show criticizes O’Donnell for criticizing Halloween — “Wait a minute, I love this, you’re a witch, you go ‘Halloween is bad,’ I’m not the witch, I mean wait a minute.” She responds by explaining that she opposes witchcraft because she has had first-hand experience with what they do.

So, she tried it. She rejected it. And she learned from it.

So, once and for all: NO DAMMIT, O'DONNELL IS NOT A WITCH.

Maher making a big deal about her supposed witchitude is pretty hilarious considering that the left generally claims that they are the ones who are all about religious freedom. I have news for you: Neo-Paganism is accepted as a valid religion now--certainly not by everyone, but it is by no means persecuted on the level that most people, including many Neo-Pagans themselves, believe. No one gets burned at the stake or put to death for being Pagan, Satanic, or even a Scientologist. You can actually declare yourself to be a Jedi in the good ol' US of A and it gets friggin' recognized.

I'm certainly not a fan of O'Donnell saying she opposes Halloween because of what "they" do. You know what, she's allowed her opinion. And I'm allowed to think that she's unfairly lumping the non-crazy people in with the regular old crazy people. For one thing, you always get that one "Satanist" coven or whatever that actually uses some kind of blood. You know why? Because in every group, there is a douchebag. And usually, he's got friends.

The honest truth is that most Pagans and Wiccans nowadays celebrate Halloween with a bit of wine, maybe a little prayer, and some loving meditation focused on the memories and spirits of loved ones that have passed over. No blood is involved unless that's just how your menstrual cycle works this year.

What does she have to do to convince less-than-observant morons that she's not a witch? Maybe she should prove herself to be lighter than a duck.

Just sayin'.

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Listening to: Practical Magic - Alan Silvestri