The Absurd Generation

March 14th, 2007

I was born in the wrong decade. It’s been a per­sonal joke for as long as I can remem­ber. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a ninja, which would have only been a viable career choice in feu­dal Japan. As a teenager with long, unruly hair, ripped jeans, and peace­ful spirit, I was a throw­back to the six­ties. In fact, have I ever left the six­ties? The hair’s shorter and the clothes are more cur­rent — but what of the fas­ci­na­tion with zen, the exper­i­men­ta­tion, the lib­er­tar­ian lean­ings, say­ing “man” all the time, and the dis­dain for The Establishment?

Among other things, my gen­er­a­tion has been called the MTV Gen­er­a­tion — what­ever that’s sup­posed to mean. Being of the MTV Gen­er­a­tion, I’m not a fan of the label. In fact, my gen­er­a­tion doesn’t like being put in a box — unless you define your own box, that is. And right there is some­thing that’s actu­ally sort of inter­est­ing about us.

How does it feel to be in your twen­ties in the new mil­len­nium? Well, sort of like you were born in the wrong decade. You see, I don’t think I’m alone in my alien­ation. Alien­ation is a key aspect of being young right now.

We are a gen­er­a­tion of bor­row­ers. The rave scene’s just an elec­tronic rehash of the six­ties. The drugs aren’t even all that new — at least, not the good ones. The goths? Well, you’ll find the most char­ac­ter­is­tic roots some­where back in Vic­to­rian era lit­er­a­ture. How about emo? One part fifties inno­cence and cloth­ing, two parts nineties self-loathing, and a pinch of six­ties psy­chol­ogy. It may look new, ladies and gen­tle­men, but you can bet your bot­tom dol­lar it’s a remix of times gone by.

Do we have any­thing of our own? Even the feel­ing that we will live to see the end of the world is just a Hol­ly­wood remake of Cold War fear. We don’t even have that. And we know it. And the fact that we know we can never really do any­thing orig­i­nal really sucks. Some­times I just want to for­get about it, go to the mall, and play video games. And right there is some­thing that’s actu­ally sort of inter­est­ing about us.

To all my fel­low shame­less bor­row­ers, I’d like to sug­gest some­thing that we can call our own: We are the first gen­er­a­tion to be truly aware of its own absur­dity.

In fact, I’m so aware of my own absur­dity that I’m almost afraid to be writ­ing this. After all, it had to have already been claimed by some other gen­er­a­tion or some other author. This can’t be a new dis­cov­ery. And even if it was, would it not just be a shame­less attempt to be a “voice of my gen­er­a­tion”, which, after all, has been done before ad nauseam?

You see, even as I form these thoughts, I’m crit­i­ciz­ing them. How ridicu­lous! This is, like, so post-modern it’s not even funny.

Hey, old timers! You won­der why we’re so scat­ter­brained some­times? You try ana­lyz­ing every­thing you do and see how well you can concentrate.

My gen­er­a­tion won’t need the next to open up our year­books and snicker at how fool­ish we all were. We already know. We know that every style and every trend will fade. In every new thing, we see its demise and its sub­se­quent resurrection.

Fuck. I think I’m get­ting a headache.

Look at that. Drop­ping the “F” bomb to show a bit of edge. I know I won’t get away with it, so I thought I’d point it out, you know, to make sure you know that I know.

The more I look at it (and, to be hon­est, the more I look at all of this), the more it all both­ers me. It’s like I’m sim­ply par­o­dy­ing some­one who’s already been down this road and under­stood it bet­ter. Because, instead of Jiminy Cricket sit­ting on my shoul­der as a child, I had Siskel and Ebert. And they taught me to dig deep.

So why did I even start writ­ing this, then? What pos­sessed me to do it? Who did I think I was fool­ing? What was I thinking!?!

I guess all I can really say in my defense is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.