Boomers, Swingers, et al. (pt. 3)
Welcome back to this “wrestling with the notion that I may be a boomer” series. By the end of last episode, things were looking up. With our discovery of “convergent evolution,” we’d established that it was possible - at least in theory - for me to be off the hook: both the Boomers and I could well have arrived at our “Phones=bad” conclusions purely by coincidence. It wasn’t necessarily a smoking gun. Phew!
Here are our two previous entries, by the way:
After the wave of euphoria/relief subsided, however, it hit me that I wasn’t totally in the clear. There were a couple more subgroups that needed to be ruled out.
Namely, general contrarians/antagonists, i.e. the people who make their opposition to mainstream trends/behaviors - clothing, music, etc. - clear to anyone who’ll listen. (Closely related to “devil’s advocates.”) It’s the guy standing next to the drinks table at a party and telling everyone who comes up to grab themselves a refill, “Oh, nothing for me, thanks. I don’t drink, you see. Not even a drop. I don’t know - I guess I’m one of those people who can have fun without it. No judgement, though. To each his own.”
(For whatever reason, he never mentions the bit about how he only stopped drinking because his family had to stage a rock-bottom intervention after he’d fallen into the unseemly habit of blacking out on White Claw and shitting himself at family events; Grandma’s birthday party, little cousin’s high-school graduation, sister’s baby shower, etc.)
Was I that guy!? Not Two-White-Claws-and-He-Shits-Himself (what a cool Native American name that would be!) guy, exactly, but “Oooh, look at me. I don’t have social media; I’m so authentic and genuine. Psst! And don’t tell anyone, but I actually hate technology so much that I still use a flip phone. I prefer T-9 texting, if you can believe it! Teehee! Oh - do other people not feel the same way!? I had no idea! Hey, where are you going? Come back!” guy. Please, god. Say it ain’t so. Maybe that’s all my disdain for iPad kids/parents was, in the end: a pathetic cry for attention.
At face value, we couldn’t quite rule this category out. After all, “Facebook (et al.) = bad” is technically a “counter-cultural”/non-conformist movement given the widespread influence of big tech. And, as far as my side of the deal went, I’ve been known to enjoy attention, and also to dabble in antagonism on occasion. …Shit. But we’ll put a pin in that for now.
You then had your more boomer-adjacent groups: the hangers-on; the bootlickers; the sycophants. Summed up by this sort of thing:
We get it: you’re quirky, fun, and you resent - or want to appeal to anyone who resents - people that weren’t yet alive in 1993. It’s the same kind of person as those kids who voluntarily stayed inside during recess to hang out with the teacher instead: “I just prefer adult conversation, I don’t know why. My mother says I’ve always been very mature for my age.” You get the idea; teacher’s pets/brown noses/sucklers at the Boomer teat. (Again, the lines do blur here between these folks and the aforementioned; most of these folks wear more than one hat.) If I were a betting man, I’d say that very few - if any - of these places aren’t deciding to not offer wifi because of any “community-first” principle; they’re more likely just trying to save money while appealing to the Minion Meme crowd (who, on average, have tons more savings/disposable income burning a hole in their cargo pockets). Here’s another example of something they might enjoy:
On the balance of things, I’d like to distance myself from this little circlejerk. (Not something I’d usually say; I know.) I can make my peace with being a contrarian, but I can’t abide the second group.
Thankfully, though, I’m pretty sure it’s moot: to be a card-carrying member of either party, I think there has to be some element of smugness; self-righteousness; of moralizing (or, at least, if there isn’t, you’re not doing it right). The whole point is that you get to tell young people off, to make yourself look better and to make them look worse.
But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here (…I hope); while it sure would be nice to pretend that I’m somehow immune to the pull/negative effects of these products, unfortunately I’m just as compromised as anyone else. (And probably more so). As such, my disappointment for iPad kid is just a projection - on my own behalf, but on his, too, and his parents, and of all of us, really: we’ve been let down… and that’s putting it mildly. It’s closer to “thrown under the bus” or “bent over a barrel.” (Dealer’s choice.) Any “smugness,” then, was more just a defense mechanism: I’m getting screwed, too, but at least I’m aware of it. (So take that, I guess…?)
I was seeing and experiencing things that I could intuit were bad, but I didn’t quite know anything else just yet. (Things like: what to do with this feeling, or what any of it meant; why any of this was happening.) I had no idea just how intentional these products/companies were - not that they’ve stopped - when it comes to stripping us of our agency, our privacy, and all the rest. For a good while, I was still under the impression that it was mostly down to individual choice to be so addicted to this stuff; to accept it all without even a semblance of self-consciousness or skepticism.
In fairness to the general public, there was no evidence that anything was wrong. None of our teachers ever talked about it, and it wasn’t really on the news. It was the same as “Oh, kids/people watch too much TV instead of playing outside.” Booooring. I guess people were far more worried about other stuff: Iraq or the financial collapse or housing bubble or whatever. Meta analysis of big tech hadn’t really begun. I remember going to see The Social Network at the cinema back when it came out in 2010. (It’s absolutely insane to me that Facebook felt so ubiquitous at the time; like it’d been around forever. And it’s now been around for like three times as long as it had been then.) The only “controversy” around it at that point was that Zuckerberg may or may not have stolen the site’s premise from the Winklevoss twins. It was an IP question; nothing to do with the nuts and bolts. They didn’t mention anything to do with users’ data being sold or targeted algorithms or global misinformation campaigns or anything else. Nobody even knew what any of that was, nor did we suspect; it was just cool to see a behind-the-scenes/“Making Of”movie about a product on which we were all spending most of our waking hours. The prevailing sentiment was still “Facebook/social media” have good intentions, but Zuckerberg’s a bit of a selfish, nerdy guy. That’s it, show’s over; move along everybody. My sense is that this sentiment is still the prevailing one - especially among our less tech savvy demographics (as discussed last time. Like the ones who still try and use it as a search engine.)
(p.s. those Winklevoss twins now have a rock band. They are about as good as you’d expect a couple of multi-millionaire crypto bros [likely surrounded by people who are scared to be critical of them] would be.)
There was also the smokescreen for a few years which took the form of the fact that these devices were still novel. Each upgrade was, whether you liked it or not, an objectively “cool” thing; there were marked, noticeable upgrades with each iteration. Your phone going from not having a camera to having a camera was a big deal. This suppressed a lot of any misgivings that might otherwise have begun to foment. With each increasingly less tangible upgrade, though, the usual “Christmas morning” excitement fades and it’s easier to think critically.
More on this phenomenon next time!
p.s. I found some CCTV footage from a local casino. It’s as heartbreaking as you’d expect. As feared, young people are getting increasingly hopeless and desperate. With their opportunities to become financially secure disappearing, they’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they’re in Grandpa’s will. (It almost makes you sympathize with the brown noses/teacher’s pets. Almost.) Take a look:
Here’s the next post:
Boomers, pt. 4
At the end of part 3, we were talking about how successful big tech (specifically social media) has been at cornering the global market - and noting how this was allowed to happen without much resistance: for at least a decade (more than enough of a head start, it turned out) these companies were able to operate under the pretense of benevolence, and we…