So You Think You Can Do Everything

Standing in the queue at Spotlight recently, I overheard a fascinatingly uninteresting conversation between two teenage girls that went something like this:

Girl 1: I want to learn how to knit.
Girl 2: What do you want to knit?
Girl 1: I just want to knit shit.
Girl 2: hahahaha. Awesome!*
Girl 1: Can you knit?
Girl 2: Yeah, but I can’t start it. My mum tried to teach me but I got bored.
Girl 1: OMG! Same! Let’s YouTube it. Something will be on there about starting a jumper.
Girl 2: Awesome!*

I take issue with every part of this teen conversation.  It seems the internet is Gen Y’s answer to everything. I suppose if you can steer yourself away from the irritating animated cartoons featuring wisecracking anthropomorphised animals, you may find what you are looking for on YouTube. But it’s just a bit too simple. I guess I can’t expect anything more from a generation that apparently cannot live without devices that must be checked every fifteen damn seconds.

Aren’t your teen years supposed to be about learning how to figure out the world all by yourself? And aren’t you supposed to endure feelings of angst in the process? Teens these days are full of angst, but rather than trying to find their feet, their angst comes from being cocky, young, impressionable and hopelessly naïve enough to think that they are going to be the one to change the world.

Like activists, they will care about the fate of the world until they reach approximately 23 years of age, when they will go work for the public service or a big business organisation that is dedicated to grinding one’s dreams into the dirt. Once there, they will spend their days with other supremely uninteresting people whose sole purpose is to gather together and make sure that nothing of note is ever accomplished. Someone should put that on YouTube.

* I am not at all weary of the misuse of the word awesome. Nope, not at ALL. A word most properly used to denote something truly breathtaking or unbelievably magnificent; it is now used to describe everything from a half-decent meal to a show of support for someone who just landed an entry-level job at McDonalds.