Swingers Club (...but first, a crisis of confidence)

pt. 1

A few weeks ago, I was at the pub with a couple of friends (you wouldn’t know them/different school, etc.), one of whom had - or has, I guess - a toddler. This became relevant thanks to the family that was having dinner across the room. Two parents had a son of about 6 or 7 who hadn’t looked up from the game on his iPad (the volume of which was turned up to the maximum) for at least the last half hour. The parents didn’t seem to notice, chatting away over their food. (For the record, these were not the titular characters. If they happen to dabble in swinging in their free time, that’s purely coincidental.)

They left shortly afterwards, but their cameo spurred on the other friend and I to ask the first one his thoughts on how he managed/planned-to-manage his son’s exposure to the untold horrors of the internet/the now-infinite array of addictive smart-devices. What’s the right age for a cell phone? For social media? etc. etc.

I don’t envy anyone facing these questions today. There’s a million things to worry about, it seems like, and there aren’t many concrete answers yet. My parents happened to hold out for a good while longer than most of my friends’ - I didn’t have a proper cell phone/iPod until high school. Naturally, when I was the iPad Kid’s age, I hated not having the latest Gameboy or iPod or Nintendo DS or PSP, but in retrospect I’m pretty grateful. I’m too reliant on the internet as it stands - to think that it could be even worse!

I see iPad Kids like the one in the pub all the time. There’s loads of variants: kids in strollers who aren’t even able to walk yet, holding a 10 inch screen 5 inches from their face, their eyes practically glazed over, barely able to focus (while their parent trudges along in more or less the same state just behind them.) It’s never not depressing - I can’t help but pity them (the kids, mainly, but the adults, too.)

It’s conflicting, though, not only because I also use these devices, but because griping about “kids these days” is the chosen pass-time of millions of crotchety old Boomers, and we - or at least just I - definitely don’t want to be one of them quite yet. We’re talking about the same people who enjoy/share Minion Memes (unironically!) for christ’s sake. I thought I had a few years left before I began my transition. This is a real crisis of confidence here. Remember, nowadays you are either on the Good (Progressive) or the Bad (Not Progressive) team. No fraternizing with the enemy.

So true!!!!! Share this page with five people if you agree!!!!!

Does happening to agree with the Bad Team on a given issue mean your Good Team card is instantly revoked? Or, wait… maybe I was just on the Bad Team all along…

No, no, no. I won’t go down without a fight. This was just a freak coincidence. I’m not one of them just yet. I refuse. Not all anti-iPad kid sentiment is created equal, and it’s a distinction worth making, if for nothing more than personal pride.

The bulk of their complaints, I’m almost positive, stem from garden-variety grouchiness, and can more or less be written off. There’s always going to be the thing where older people don’t understand younger people and are resistant to technological/social change. People were saying the same sort of things back when TV’s became culturally ubiquitous, or when radios or microwaves did.

What this gives us is these sort of non-specific, ham-fisted critiques, all of which fall under the broad umbrella of “Young people = bad, and [as we can see,] young people = technology, THEREFORE technology = bad.”

You know the sort:

Admittedly, I can’t help but be drawn to boomer cartoons. Something about unashamed, chronic tone-deafness is captivating; it’s so cringeworthy you can’t help it. It reminds me of Hillary’s “you better Pokemon Go to the polls!” joke that I linked to in an earlier post:

[almost president] [though not as "almost" as longtime friend of the Jackuzzi, Al Gore] Hillary Clinton gives us some timely, thoughtful advice

That is, of course, unless the comic is not attempting a cynical critique of today’s youth, and it’s just an earnest depiction of a man taking a brain-damaged child out for a walk. Heart-warming, I guess…? But a little strange, if so.

Ohhh…. wait…. maybe that’s the point: Young people have become so stupid/stunted that they don’t know which objects are computers and which ones aren’t; we’re lost in the matrix.

But I don’t think that point is made effectively either, if it’s what he’s going for. If it’s intentionally inaccurate ad absurdum (and therefore done in bad faith just to paint young people in a bad light) then it just proves that it’s just more “old people resenting young people solely on principle,” making the specific complaint moot anyway.

Invariably, these sorts of cartoons expose the older [and therefore “wiser”] generations’ complete lack of tech fluency just as much as, if not more than, the younger generations’ tech-reliance.

This genre of criticism is also reminiscent, now that I think about it, to Dall E’s “dubious” relationship with humor, and his (often endearing) failure to really identify - let alone have a sufficient understanding of - what exactly it is he’s trying to skewer.

The other societal issues “tackled” by these cartoons give us some insight into whether any of the anti-tech ones are offered in good faith. (We technically shouldn’t extrapolate, I know, but I feel like it’s a pretty safe bet.) I’m talking about incisive stuff like this:

Hahaha!!! Get it???

I think I’ve figured it out: from what I can tell, it’s making fun of how we’ve become addicted to highly-processed junk, to cheap novelty instead of boring old simplicity.

Oh, and - I think - it’s a bit of self-congratulation, too; a pat on the back for the mega-corporations (the same ones, funnily enough, that’re in bed with the media companies that distribute comics like this) responsible for designing, manufacturing, and marketing these products, have no interest in whether their customers have an understanding of (or a connection to) where/how their food is made. The [smooth-brained] consumer has been successfully alienated from this process, and that’s something worth celebrating, especially as more and more people become dependent.

Similarly, we also see that the minimum wage employees hired to sell these products don’t know much about them either (why would they?); since they’re usually young people, it’s a crowd-pleaser to portray them as clueless and/or lazy.

(If you’re not following the logic here: We expect them to accept minimum wage but to give more than minimum effort, you see. This is because they are easily replaceable, and must therefore go above and beyond if they want to stay employed.)

Finally, let us not forget the poor fellow in the checkered shirt (depicted in cargo shorts to signal to us that he of from an era when practicality mattered more than fluff) who’s simply fed up with all this new-age, hippy bullshit. What happened to a world where things were simple? There was a time when you could walk in and grab a pipin’-hot cuppa joe without needing to know fluent Italian (or have a gender studies degree!). He’s trying, it seems, to catch the eye of the worker on the right, who looks equally world-weary; an emotional state for which we can’t really blame him, by the way - we’d feel the same if we had to put up with that ditsy, four-eyed, floozy asking dumb questions all day. That more or less covers it for now, I think.

Anyway, the fact that I’m not quite seal clapping at this and the minion memes quite yet gives me hope…. TBC.

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So true, again!!!! (I didn’t make this, I swear. Although I wish I had.)

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