RE:ALIZATION: Honey, the kids are gonna blow up

MANILA, Philippines - The author discovers a cure to Millenials’ self-involvement and artificial intelligence: getting stupid.

What’s wrong with kids today is that there seems to be nothing wrong with them. Everyone is so goddamn smart. Generation Y Not--privy to the sense of bigness the Internet embodies and empowered by the access it extends--looks to have everything figured out for it.

To scrutinize a generation, you merely have to survey its most exalted. These would be the people who’ve practically reached stone-statue Greek god status, monuments constructed for them in culture. Off the top of my head and, likely, of yours, there’s Justin Bieber and Mark Zuckerberg. Interestingly enough, they represent the Internet’s two pillars of possibility: creation and exploitation--what separates the gods from the mortals.

Zuckerberg, whose smug rise from social retardation to social eminence provided enough dramatic torque for David Fincher to make a feature film out of, became the face of World Wide Web-Is-My-Oysterdom. Canonized as he is in the hearts of geeks everywhere, there has to be an unwritten commandment out there that states, “If no one seems to like you, create a ‘Like’ button. Duh.” Bieber, on the other hand, did the equivalent of accompanying his mom to a house party and taking advantage of the situation. It was as if he got up on the living room couch and performed for all the grown-ups, much to their delight, of course. Especially for the one dude among the revelers who saw a future of sold-out stadium concerts more than party favors. The living room was the Internet, the dude was Bieber’s YouTube-perusing manager, Scooter Braun. 

In previous columns, I’ve acted as a sort of end-is-nigh-sayer, urging our repentance for so much self-entitlement and self-promotion. As I stated in those columns, the social networking platforms have, more or less, leveled the celebrity playing field. As a result, everybody can be somebody. Which may support the theory I now have that the self-esteem teens once lacked can today be downloaded, lives aggrandized or recreated with a zingy blog description and a click. Friends (who aren’t really one’s friends) are added, followers are collected, and fans are made, whether accomplished in the Bieberian or Zuckerbergian manner.

GENERATION NOW

Recently, I came across a report that such over-confidence had accelerated, extending even to the pre-pubescent. A term had been coined by the Internet trend site Urlesque: “The Obnoxious Media-Trained Kid”, which classifies the sort of overly precocious child who’s all-too ready for their close-up. These are kids who, because of their premature and excessive conditioning to all the media floating out in cyberspace (thereby becoming worldly via E-enculturation), have become too well-informed, well-adjusted, and, well, just plain smartasses.

Kids like 11-year-old Jackson Murphy, for example. Through clips on YouTube rendering quip-ridden movie reviews with such Ari Gold-icized inflection, Murphy now gets the occasional guest spot on The Early Show as a “professional movie critic.” There’s also Cecilia Cassini, who, at 11, is the “youngest fashion designer in America.” While Cassini can actually sew, turning out trainer celebutante ensembles that know not subtlety when it comes to embellishment fit for daddy’s little princesses, it’s her overabundant affectation that’s alarming. Where is the child amid the Rachel Zoe drawl and lingo? And how can kids this young have so much ambition and speak with so much authority?

All this confirmed the conclusion my 30-year-old friend and I had arrived at not too far back. Over beers, we expressed our fears of the future, children being it, as the Whitney Houston song goes. What had formed was a grim picture of teens conversing as if Diablo Cody had written the script of their lives. If today’s emerging adults and adolescents lived by references and not reality--that is, little meaningful experience to speak of but boundless in their dropping of downloaded information in conversation--then we are truly nearing humanity’s end. Not so much an end of the world as we’ve grown accustomed to through CGI but the decline of our being human.

I should know. I had entered my teens when “surfing the net” was still considered recreation. Unlike a decade later, when it would become both routine and requirement. You devoted your life to the download, trying to literally fill a void, virtual and limitless as it is, with files; all in an attempt to keep up with the fast times. I needed to be exposed before everyone else, an urgency that would carry over to more tangible aspects in my life. I had practically started working years before I’d graduated from college, from a stint as a graphic tee entrepreneur to a good run as a rabid magazine contributor; jobs were accumulated like show episodes and mp3 files. It was exhausting.

All that ambition has today led to a new concession I’ve made: “Be stupid.” It’s the slogan for the latest Diesel ad campaign; one I finally understand and have come to appreciate. For a generation that’s too smart for its own good and takes itself too seriously, it looks to be the best advice. You need to learn to relax, Generation Now. Help yourselves to that all-nighter; step out from behind your social networking podiums and go out of our way to meet strangers (don’t tweet about it!); even do nothing and talk about nothing for a while. Otherwise, at the rate you’re going, you’ll find yourselves over-wrought and under-satisfied by the time you reach your mid-20s.  

A smidge past my quarter-life, I’m considering real experience more than online identity. Amid our being permanently logged-on, I’m trading urgency for a period of letting loose and letting go. It’s a welcome break from the obsessive accumulation of information, from the constant self-branding and strategic self-marketing. A re-emerging childhood of sorts. Because God knows when you were a kid, you didn’t think much, but man did you learn a lot.