So reads part of a NYT headline, although the rest -- "as World Watches Online" -- is just a rationalization of the dorky tendencies of young people today. The story is about Spring Breakers being more wary of acting wild when so many camera-equipped phones could be pointed at them.
The capability and prevalence of technologies that can capture an embarrassing moment while someone is out carousing has only gone upward since the invention of the camera. Yet young people behaving like young people goes in cycles, so technological changes don't explain much of those differences across the decades. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to cheap, widespread cameras during the heyday of streaking, for example. Or that someone might find an embarrassing box of nude Polaroids from your college days.
The main picture and slideshow gives a pretty accurate view of how segregated the sexes have become by now among Millennials, with smaller or larger groups of girls avoiding the yucky boys, and the boys forming bro-circles to take their mind off of how boring the girls are being. And of course plenty of hover-hands and leaning-away on the rare occasion where a boy and girl do get close.
Interesting to read that wet t-shirt contests are nearly extinct, even in southern Florida during Spring Break. If that's only due to an unwillingness among the girls, you'd expect the bar and club owners, or whoever, to provide the next best thing, like hiring some girls to stage a contest, or at least project the video for "Girls on Film". It didn't sound like anything along those lines was making up for it, though, so we conclude that there is also falling demand among the male spectators. I know it sounds crazy to suggest that young dudes on Spring Break don't have sex on the brain, but they really are more asexual and afraid of the natural female body these days.
On a generational note, it's a 28 year-old bartender chick who describes today's Spring Breakers as "very prudish," while the ones freaking out about being well behaved during a what should be a carnival are 26 and under. That's more tentative evidence for my hunch that people born in 1984 were the last to mature into recognizable human beings, with '85 and '86 births being a hazy limbo area that mostly tilts toward the Millennials, who clearly show up with '87 births and after.
Today's 18 year-olds have lived entirely within falling-crime times, and probably were conceived then as well, so they're growing up to be even weirder than the older Millennials, who at least had some exposure to the good old days, even if that environment only had an influence on their developing brains as toddlers.
Reagan deregulated the economy right around the 85-86 period. According to Strauss and Howe, parents began to shelter their children in response to this deregulation - parents perceived that it was now "every man for himself" and that they couldn't rely on society to look after their children anymore.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds counterintuitive, but it seems that social cohesion and goodwill are actually higher in rising crime and high crime times than they are during falling-crime times.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like your right about the '84 cohort. I was born at the tail end of '83, and I would be too shy to go to a wet t-shirt contest(not to mention, they offend my sensibilities). But I also don't relate to many of those born after '85.
ReplyDelete"It sounds counterintuitive, but it seems that social cohesion and goodwill are actually higher in rising crime and high crime times than they are during falling-crime times."
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the points I've touched on almost since the beginning of my discovery of this rising vs. falling-crime stuff. Can't remember all of it off the top of my head, but you can search for the obvious phrases and find some old posts.
I'm putting up one soon on trust levels, which I've only done roughly before. Pretty neat findings.
"But I also don't relate to many of those born after '85."
My brothers were born in '82, and they get the same feeling, although I haven't asked them about a cut-off year.
Isn't it strange how close we can be to them in calendar years but across a chasm as people? That really does make it seem like there's some "sensitive learning period," and if you don't get exposed to real life enough then, it can't be made up for later.
Can't remember all of it off the top of my head, but you can search for the obvious phrases and find some old posts.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm remembering your description correctly, it seemd more like a combination of greater fear and mistrust of strangers and allies (who might stab you in the back) together with a desire to meet new people and form stronger bonds with your friends for potential alliance building safety reasons (and vigilence about constantly testing bonds of trust - spin the bottle and so on). And this combined with a increased rate of future discounting encouraging a carpe diem attitude.
Isn't it strange how close we can be to them in calendar years but across a chasm as people? That really does make it seem like there's some "sensitive learning period," and if you don't get exposed to real life enough then, it can't be made up for later.
I was thinking about this in relation to the culture of the 60s and early 70s and how all the cultural movers and shakers there were born in the 30s-50s or at least experienced their early period then (because otherwise they'd be too young).
The 60s and early 70s seem to me to be, at least in the popular consciousness, more countercultural and artistic compared to the late 70s and 80s (in popular culture) which tend to be viewed as more conformist and practical in orientation.
(Of course, the fact that you've documented that late 70s and 80s people were passionate and exploratory and social, which gets left out of the media treatment and popular consciousness a lot.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Generation: "Silent or not?" - " William Strauss and Neil Howe define this generation as an Artist/Adaptive generation". "Most counterculture figures were Silent Generation, including rock singers and individuals such as Ken Kesey, George Carlin, Allen Ginsberg, and Abbie Hoffman. "
Might this difference be because the early 60s and 70s people were raised in a time of anonymity and individualism with loose social bonds, and crucially were not raised in a time when rising violence was the norm?
This would seem to me to plausibly lead up to a response to rising crime which would be more individualistic (because strong and intense social bonds don't come as naturally to them) and more messed up (because they weren't raised with rising violence, they feel more alienated and troubled by it) and less mutually trusting.
"This would seem to me to plausibly lead up to a response to rising crime which would be more individualistic (because strong and intense social bonds don't come as naturally to them) and more messed up (because they weren't raised with rising violence, they feel more alienated and troubled by it) and less mutually trusting."
ReplyDeleteThat sounds right. It wasn't the Boomers who came close to ruining society in the '60s and early '70s -- most were toddlers through adolescents -- but the Silents.
The wooly-headed ideologies of the mid-century never faced a real test because it was a falling-crime period. Once they faced a real test, they failed pathetically.
It's so weird how the '60s and early '70s have come to be seen as a radical or liberalizing period due to Boomers. It was a period of bursting the mid-century liberal bubble that had been inflated by the Silents.
Most of the Silent artists aren't very impressive either. They're the ones you flip through when you're a teenager to pretend to be cool, then ditch them even by the end of 10th grade. The Beats are a perfect example.
Their main artistic defect is hyper self-consciousness. "Art should conceal art," which means the best art will be the least pretentious, the least likely to issue manifestos, and the least driven by a celebrity culture. Like Art Deco or New Wave music.
That heightened self-consciousness comes from growing up mostly during socially avoidant or cocooning times, i.e. falling-crime.
It's not to say there aren't awesome cultural figures among the Silents, like Philip K. Dick, Jack Nicholson, or Mick Jagger. But because their distribution was shifted toward the more conformist direction, they are 4 standard-deviation examples, whereas their counterparts from Boomers or Gen X would be more like 2 or 3 s.d. examples.
I'd guess the early Boomers themselves have a little of that "Raised in a falling crime environment" themselves, since their cohort runs 1944/1945 to 1962/1964, but I can see them still being a lot stronger and more plastic in their response to rising violence than the older Silent Generation.
ReplyDeleteA later Boomer like Steve Sailer who sits on the later half of the baby boom (born in December 1958) and had only their toddler years in a falling crime environment (sort of the reverse of someone born in '85) is probably the pre-Generation X grouping that had the most of their formative (early) years in a rising crime environment, before we get to X.
I guess that the first half of the Boomers (1946-55, generally) are a "falling-crimes" generation and associate more with the Silent Generation. The second half - 1955-1965 - are a rising-crimes generation.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the '55-65 cohort are often referred to as "Generation Jones". These are people who were children during all the shit in the 60s and 70s. The have a reputation for being real badasses. Growing up in a time of rapidly rising crime must have turned them bad.
Its one thing to join a sex commune as a 16 year old boy. Its another thing to get dragged into one by your mom...