A stereotyped, highly opinionated and true view of my own generation.

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I was born into the early 1980s when music pretty much sucked. It was hurt by electronic synthesizers and pre-programmed drumbeats that destroyed the underlying musicality. New sounds were possible, but the possibilities were misused.

It was the dawn of MTV, but they hadn’t yet worked out how to make great music videos and I didn’t even have access to the channel. Margaret Thatcher was in charge; telling us how to be greedy, but not what to do with the money. The Soviet Union was about to collapse and the computer was slowly creeping its way into our homes.

My generation grew up with a whole load of crap. New ideas, new ways of parenting, new technology, new sounds and, worst of all, new haircuts. Almost everything in the 80s was in bad taste, but it was experimental. We were the receivers of an unrefined new world. I don’t think anybody really knew what to do with it all. Everyone was inexperienced because everything was new.

As young children, I believe we knew it was rubbish. We knew we were surrounded by an empty and crude new plastic-playground, but we didn’t yet understand how much better it could be. We are the channel-flipper generation not because we have a low attention span, but because we have a low tolerance for the rubbish we have been fed. Our boredom threshold is low, but give us something engaging and we will surprise you with our ability to concentrate.

As hollow as the 80s felt, we were witnessing a gradual refinement and understanding of how to use this emerging technology with skill and taste. We have constantly been looking for improvements. Always questioning anything that is old and trying to make it better. We reject the traditions that have no purpose. Nothing is sacred. We will reinvent our language if a good word doesn’t already exist. We will invent a new word just because we like to create. But we don’t mince words. We don’t use the ‘f word’, nor the ‘f**k’ word. We use the actual ‘fuck’ word and won’t warn you in advance.

As we came of age and started to produce music of our own, the marketers stole a piece of us and baked us into the world of fake reality TV and the manufactured band. But this is just how the generation above have tried to mould us. We are susceptible to marketing but we are not the ones who created this empty culture. We reject it when we create. Our music isn’t pop. It is rock, indie, metal, post-grunge, hip hop, R&B, but most of all we create music that can’t be easily categorised; we are the refined experimenters. We all have different tastes. We are influenced by the 60s and 70s and reactive of the 80s. Our music is trailblazing, skilful, playful, and experimental. It is very important to some of us, but not to all. We mix it all up and we sell out and don’t have a problem with that, because we believe art cannot be destroyed by money.

When we started asking questions, our parents listened but didn’t have good answers. As we enter the workforce we have begun to question the bosses, our colleagues, the politicians, each other and even the customers. We want to rise in our careers, earn more than average, but we won’t do it by becoming ‘yes men’; not in small part because half of the career blazers are women. We are loyal but not to the companies we work for; mostly we are loyal to ourselves. We are casual at work and call everybody by their first name. We don’t want to wear suits. We think ‘Dress-down Friday’ is dumb; everyday should be smart/casual. We believe in looking good and acting professional, but that doesn’t mean we will tie ourselves up for the Man.

We have all tried the softer illegal drugs (except for me apparently) and many were encouraged to do so by our parents. Most have smoked but many have given it up. Many go to the gym, but we could eat better. Few have given up drinking and we are often rude and obnoxious when drunk. But we are more likely to try to come onto you than try to fight you. Though this is certainly not true of all of us. Some of us are jerks (and we have female jerks too). The rest of us don’t understand why our elders still let them get away with it.

We grew up as computers grew up. We remember when they didn’t do anything and were out-of-date hours after our parents bought them. We remember how much of a pain it was to load software from a cassette, or to find the right driver for a printer that was spewing random characters. We engaged as computers developed hard-drives, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, monitors with more than 16 colours and then we saw it all become obsolete; replaced by something just a little bit better. We always hated beige boxes, and didn’t understand why someone didn’t design a beautiful machine. We are extremely tech-savvy. We are the first generation that grew up with perpetual change. We are the protean generation. Some of us freak out for new gadgetry, but many more find it about as exciting as the invention of a new sandwich filling. We consume, understand its importance, learn to use it, but treat technology as the tool it is.

We watched the internet arrive. Slowly at first (28.8 kbit/s). We entered chat rooms on AOL, set up home pages in the Geocites. We were the generation that stole music using Napster and called it ’sharing’. When broadband finally arrived, the net became more central to our lives. We now consume video, socialise and find more music… which we have started to pay for… but only if it is worthy of our payment.

We hit puberty just a little too early for the pornographic internet to be ready. But by our mid-teens it did arrive and we were still interested. So we are open about it with each other. We have seen just about every fetish you can think of and many more you couldn’t. Recently some of us even started producing, starring in and sharing it… not for money but because we like to create. If we seem more immoral than previously generations, it’s because we don’t repress and hide it. We believe that makes us more moral. We are honest and transparent about our less than perfect selves. We have been entertained by extreme violence, in film and more actively in video games, but almost all of us despise it in reality. We are friendly and caring although first impressions sometimes contradict this.

We produce as much as we consume. We are about as far from passive as is possible. We don’t watch; we play. We write blogs (some of us) and tell everyone what we think (most of us), we create videos and art, and now we are beginning to start new businesses. We are opinionated and will make sure we are listened to. We don’t think you are good enough. We don’t think we are good enough. We will embarrass ourselves and publish it online. We don’t heed warnings that future employers will google us. Let them find us. There is far more good for them to discover than bad.

We are the global generation. Many of us have travelled the world. Many nationalities have mixed with us at university and more so on the web. We have found they are, in all important ways, just like us. We understand the global world through the friends we make.

We don’t view enemies in black and white. We dislike the actions of our own politicians almost as much as those who attack us. We don’t believe in war, we will fight poverty, we hate racism, sexism and homophobia. We look out for ourselves but we are not selfish.

The Cold War ended before we could understand it. War has been far away from us and we have never had to fear conscription. We are not naive. We realise we are lucky and are thankful for it. When we hear that others do not have what we have, we have a great desire to change this inequality. We have the ideas and the experience of the previous generation to help us.

We don’t do what we are told; we do what we are inspired to do. But we will be lead, if we could ever find a worthy leader. In its absence we are happy to lead ourselves. Nobody gets our respect because of their job, title, age, gender or background. You have to earn it and if you are being stupid we will tell you that you’re an idiot.

We are highly educated, but perhaps in pointless things. We have been students for so long, that we can’t be changed into normal workers now. But we understand we are needed. The world is changing fast, and we are the generation that is accustomed to moving fast with it.

And as much as we move with a fast changing world, we ourselves, grew up slowly. We are the spoilt generation that has been reluctant to leave our nests. So we’ve taken a little longer to arrive than you’d expect. But we are here now.

We are going to be difficult to deal with I’m afraid. But we are confident that you will love us as we start to rock the world.

We love you too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 22:59 UTC and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.