What is authentic about YOUR teen subcluture? Does your generation have anything that it can call it's own? If there is nothing authentic about your culture, discuss how you feel about that. Does this even matter to you?
Personally, I don’t think my generation really has much that it can call its own. The things we do call our own are manufactured products that remind us of our generation. For example, just about everyone my age remembers Crazy Bones, Pogs, and other marketed products that were all the rage in elementary school. I’m sure the girls remember wearing butterfly hairclips in 5th grade and using gelly-roll pens, and I’m sure most of the guys were obsessed with finger skateboards around the same time. Our culture and the thing we enjoyed were (and still are) manufactured; packaged and sold to us with the intent of making us want to collect and buy more, or just to make other people buy into the product. So agreeing with part of the question, I don’t think our culture has much authenticity. We’re spoon-fed different trends, and as soon as something sticks, EVERYONE wants it (example: Ugg boots). We’re not given a whole lot of room to think for ourselves. And as soon as we do come up with something original, its taken and marketed. Even though its obnoxious from my point of view, that the media has to exploit literally everything we might be interested in, its not something I mourn over on a daily basis. Living in America, that’s what we do: We sell things to make money.
I’m not a terribly eclectic person… I generally go with the flow of our culture. Now that more alternative/”indie” music is being marketed, yes, I’m buying into it. Is it annoying that the market seems to seek and destroy just about anything teens like? Yes. Extremely annoying. BUT, at the same time, it doesn’t really matter that much. If the media is going to get to it anyway, what’s the point in complaining about it? I completely agree that its pathetic that the media has marketed us our culture (from manufactured goods to our attitudes), but at the same time, that’s life in our country. Personally it doesn’t matter that much to me, since I still feel like I can be myself, and I don’t feel like the products I buy define me as a person. But to sum everything up, its true: Our generation doesn’t have much of an authentic culture.
1 comment:
Holy cow Taylor your totally right! I remember crazy bones, and tech decks, and fireball yo-yo's being the "rage." I laughed at every second i was reading your post, just because it was so funny to recall all the stupid stuff we used to do as young ones. But anyway I agree that there was nothing/ is nothing for our generation to really hold onto as our own, and it kinda sucks to have to come to that realization, but thats how it is...unfortunately.
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