As I sit on my stoop during the summer, I often like to observe the punk kids walking the streets that would be considered part of my cousins generation. Just about to start high school, still curious about discovering the world around them etc etc. We see a bit of ourselves. We were young once. We’d like to think we influenced these kids to some degree but all of these positive notions end when I look over at a group of giggling kids and suddenly find myself wondering
Wait…what is he doing to her over there?
Kids these days are misguided individuals. They arent quite sure who they should be so they collectively choose to be “each other”. For some reason that idea of “each other” is so horrendous thats it’s no wonder that at 10 the aforementioned cousin was already telling me he was sexually active. Dont ask…because I didnt.
Its simply because children these days, mostly males, lack the specific guidance we had during the younger ages. They lack TMNT.
They lack the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, unknown to the viewing public, provided a certain level of guidance for my generation. The personalities, habits, likes and dislikes of these characters were so well defined from the get go that they were easy to “become”. Im not claiming that we all strived to be a particular Ninja Turtle* but it happened whether we knew it/wanted it or not.
We were either the bad ass, the lovable fuck up, the nerd, or the leader. It was so clean cut that you can easily look back at many of your childhood friends and put them in any of these categories with little or no effort. We were subconsciously influenced by these characters because they were more or less all we had to go with. Power Rangers, X-men, and even salute your shorts** all shared the same qualities even if it wasn’t their true intentions. Though most kids who focused on the teachings of X-men strived to be Wolverine (the bad ass) and loathed Cyclops (the nerd) which had a very huge influence on how little nerds were respected in school.
But the kids of today lack all of this clear cut guidance. They lack the quality cartoons that embodied the ideals that would show us the true, sane, non-fingering-in-public path through life. All they had were a bunch of cartoons that told them it was ok for them to capture and enslave small animals then make them beat each other senseless for their own personal entertainment.
I’ll never understand why a cartoon version of cockfighting is actually considered “OK”
Id say the one way to describe this generation would be “samey”. Like I said earlier, this generation seems to be satisfied with being “each other”. There is very little individuality. Yes, they are young and still trying to find themselves but when you look at a group of teenagers and find yourself not being able to tell the difference between the guy who’s gonna do your homework and they guy you’ll forever be weary of when/if he’s going to double-cross you, then something is terribly wrong.
There has been a shift. Confused versions of the personalities that once were. The nerds have become scheming little shits who are so afraid of their own brains that they pretend to be the lovable fuck ups…so they steal all the women***. The lovable fuck ups dont want everyone thinking they are fuck ups so they try to be leaders but theyre fuck ups so they blow it. The bad asses dont know how to be bad asses so they come off artificial and are constantly being accused of trying too hard so they pretend to be nerds so everyone will think them a monster with a brain. And the leaders are all gay.
…not that there’s anything wrong with that that.
* I did
** best show ever
*** see Thats enough Owen Wilson
