Talkin' About My Generation

When you're hearing two published authors bag on your generation, it can be a bummer. It can also be illuminating and produce a kind of "ah-ha" moment in which you realize that the irritating and superficial behaviors you've witnessed your fellow Generation Y'ers engage in aren't just insignificant trends--they are part of a larger historical mechanism.

For example, check out this chart:

Who here is being labeled as "Narcissistic"? Who is being heralded as "the 'me' generation"? Despite what Raina Kelley and Judith Warner report about you and your peers, these terms are actually being applied to the Baby Boomers, a group that predates you by almost forty years!

And even though I land on the cusp of Gen X & Y, I relate more closely with Gen X; most of my formative, early memories and family life align with those "defining experiences." Look at how my generation is being labeled: "skeptical," "alienated and confrontational," and "not considered capable of rallying together to improve the state of the world." Doesn't paint a pretty picture. It makes us out to be anti-social a-holes who believe in nothing and can't work with others. If you want a pretty accurate depiction of my generation, here you go. Yet, there are exceptions, just as you all pointed out in your responses to these articles: true sometimes, but not all the time and not for everybody.

So, why do I want you to think about your generation? Part of it is that I want you to consider what it means to be part of something larger--a group, a community, a "time." But, I also want you to feel the freedom to think about and communicate the ways you are different than the stereotype. Ask yourself, "How do I want to be known? To be remembered?"

And just for the record, I never thought in a million years that the 90's styles would become popular again. It all just seemed so atrocious to begin with. I do love it when people make fun of it though, kind of like they do on Portlandia. Like this:

Teacher Rant: Stupid Mistakes

I live the majority of my life in the presence of writing. I almost always have a foot-tall stack of student papers staring at me from across the room; I have a teetering tower of books at my bedside; I belong to two writing groups; I love words. I love that my job puts me in direct contact with the expression of people's ideas and imagination. I generally give my students many chances to draft parts of their paper before the big grade comes. I am patient and I want people to do well. That's why I get really pissed when I am reading a final draft of someone's paper and I find stupid, mindless mistakes. I'm not talking about a misplaced comma or a misspelled word. I'm talking about someone who ends their paper in the middle of a sentence. I'm talking about the person who writes in 20-pt font or tries to quadruple space their paper because they didn't meet the length requirement. Do you think I'm blind? Do you think I can't look at your paper and compare them to the other eighty papers that are spaced properly? Not to mention the person who turned in a paper with three of the pages repeated, or the one who cut and pasted an entire article into the assignment. Last semester, a student thought a two minute video from Fox News would count as scholarly research and when quoting a Congresswoman, kept calling her "that girl." When I pointed out that this might be construed as being condescending, he stormed out and slammed the door. Come on. Common sense and the fact that I have functioning eyes tip me off to most people's lazy mistakes, but the fact that some think they'll sneak it by me is more than disappointing--it's insulting. My business is Words. You can assume I am paying attention.

Civility in "The Other World"

In our discussions about the articles, "Why I Like Vicious, Anonymous Online Comments," by Matt Seitz and "Make Our Ugly Discourse Better: Join the Civilogue," by Jeffrey Weiss, the idea of personal accountability played along the margins. While we centered around the ideas of how people are currently being mitigated by online discussion sites (linking to profiles, flagging abusive users, reporting systems) we never really got to the harder question of why people are choosing to communicate in these ways. I don't claim to know the answer either, but find that to be the more intriguing line of questioning, as we see this level of toxicity seep through the seams of the internet into our interactions with those we come face-to-face with in life. Maybe it comes back to the Golden Rule we all learn in Kindergarten, "Do unto others as you'd have done to you."

As an English teacher, my job is to guide you back to the place that connects all of this to writing. Here are a few thoughts I had over the course of our various conversations:

• All of this takes place in the realm of written communication. The online life is growing and expanding, as this report illustrates, we spend a quarter of our online life immersed in social networking, which necessitates both reading and writing to participate.
• Much of what we read and contribute to these online discussion or blogs is anchored in argument and personal opinion. To respond to or create an argument, we must be savvy to the rhetoric that surrounds the issue, as well as create an articulate and educated response in order to be taken seriously.
• Part of being a successful writer is being able to recognize and adjust to the shifting audience, purpose and context of a given text or writing task. This is similar in some ways to the idea that Seitz forwards about "the mask." That we all have different "faces" for different groups is assumed; being able to hold an awareness about when the context shifts and what that means about your choices as a writer, is what matters in the development of your "writerly" identity.

As well, I said I would share the link to the NY Times article about internet trolls. If anything, it reiterates the message, "Don't feed the trolls," in that it illustrates the varying levels of ill intent that this subgroup holds. And here is the article that correlates trolling and drunkenness.

Recently, I read this article about Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who committed suicide after being unknowingly videoed via web cam by his dorm roommate. Throughout the article, the journalist is able to track the communication between these two college students in stunning detail. Yet, even with all of this minute information, in the end I felt like there was still something deeply unknowable about these people. It challenges Seitz when he says the online self is the true self.

I keep having this reoccurring thought about how the internet is the closest thing we have to a literal parallel universe--one that holds everything this world does: images and videos of landscapes and street views, families, romance, conversation, libraries, universities, theft, commerce, entertainment, etc. Yet, as a society we haven't really caught up with the magnitude of this universe in all of it's potential good and imminent bad. Just like you lock your doors at night; check your passwords for good measure. If someone tries to provoke you online, walk away/log off. Use your words well, whether you're in this world or the Other.