Couldn't have said it better myself (here). There are now ongoing Tumblr pages for Selfies at Funerals and Selfies At Serious Places.
Notice how Millennials are incapable of even half-way normal facial expressions when taking their picture. I touched on this theme awhile ago, but I've noticed a turn for the worse recently. The current crop of high school and college kids were born around 1992 or later -- and have spent their entire lives in the repugnant Millennial era.
The early Millennials are all pretty much fucked too, but they must have inhaled at least some trace particles of the zeitgeist from their infant days during the late '80s and very early '90s -- before American culture grabbed at its chest and dropped dead, rotting on the ground for 20 years now. But this new crop is absolutely hopeless and irredeemably autistic. I do notice a jump between Millennials born up through 1990 and those born in '92 and after (not sure where the '91 births go).
Can it come as any surprise, then, that they don't have the slightest intuition for what is inappropriate, what is disrespectful, what is blasphemous? Their paranoid helicopter parents, especially their smothering mothers, have kept them from ever coming into contact with the real world and its moral codes, especially social interactions outside of the nuclear family. Fuck, these funeral selfies prove they don't even know how to show their families any respect, and that's all the social world they've ever known!
"Awesome job," helicopter parents -- you've produced an entire generation that act like ingrates to their own family and like obnoxious brats to society at large. Spewing so much pollution into the social atmosphere requires us to do the honorable thing and make you pay for it, one way or another. If they only fouled up your own nuclear household, then sucks to you. But releasing them into the wider social environment where folks outside your nuclear family will become burdened by the costs of interacting with entitled, self-centered spergs -- that's shameful and disrespectful.
It's easy enough to take pot shots at the little dorks and put them in their place, but how do we redirect the costs back to their parents for cleaning up after these snot-noses? If they wanted to quarantine their children from all external contact, and thereby stunted their kids' psychological growth, then their mentally misshapen spawn can go right back to their quarantine bubble and pester their parents for the rest of their lives.
You showed no trust or faith in the rest of us while your kids were (quasi-)developing, and now you want us to shower them with praise, welcome them onto the team, and go to bat for them so they can get ahead? Do it yourselves -- we're not your unpaid servants.
So American culture has been rotting on the ground for 20 years, but parents should allow more contact with that culture to get normal children? I don't understand. As a homeschooling parent, I think my kids have much less of a chance of growing up to make duck faces at funerals than they wouldif they attended school. Do you think I'm wrong?
ReplyDeleteHonestly seeking opinion, not arguing, BTW.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think the future of the Millenials is?
ReplyDelete-Curtis
Parents should allow more contact with their children's peers. When kids have their own life, they don't pay as much attention to toxic culture or depend on it for some kind of grounding for their identity or meaning in their lives.
ReplyDeleteThey're going to come into contact with mass culture at some point, and a weak sense of social and communal belonging is the main "risk factor" for getting sucked into the duckface-selfie culture.
And that toxic culture is an effect of all this anti-social, distrustful behavior. Cocooning began in the late '80s and early '90s, but you don't see hostile caricatured culture until later.
More simply: social isolation leads to self-absorption.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to the Silent Generation, anyway? I know a lot of them ended up becoming musicians and artists, but they seem to have been shut out from political power.
ReplyDelete-Curtis
I'd say self-absorption is the infant's natural state, and that the maturation process is learning to put off self-absorption. Exposure to large numbers of people who aren't maturing teaches there's no need to mature. How does immersion in a group of 12-year-olds teach a 12-year-old to think and behave like an adult? If our problem is a continuation of youth culture beyond youth, isn't a possible solution the prevention of youth culture in the first place?
ReplyDeleteSelf-absorption is the default state, and social isolation keeps them stunted in that state.
ReplyDeleteChildren respond dynamically (mature) in each other's presence, they don't just continue on in their initial bratty ways. Why? Because the other kids will refuse to play with them, tease them for acting like a baby, ostracize them, or even beat them up if they're self-advancing enough.
They fail to change their bratty ways when their primary / only interactions are with genetic relatives. Blood is thicker than water, so kin will never give children the wake-up call that they need to sense that their behavior isn't going to fly.
Like ostracism -- are the parents going to throw the kid out of the house just for acting selfish? His peers will cast him out, but his parents won't.
Creating a youth culture is the basis for every cohesive community and institution, such as Sunday school, Bible camp, and so on. The kids aren't just answering questions like an authority-driven classroom; they're socializing with one another.
I wouldn't say we have much of a youth culture these days. It's more of a brat culture persisting beyond toddlerhood. What we normally call a youth culture is the undoing and overcoming of brattiness -- wanting to fit into a peer group and being accepted by them for your good behavior and your contribution to making things fun / coming to their aid.
Kids can also mature by interacting with adults rather than / in addition to peers, provided the grown-ups are not family.
ReplyDeleteHowever, those relationships tend to be fleeting because people tend to associate mainly with folks their own age. Kids won't care as much about their reputation in the eyes of their teacher, adult members of their church, etc., as much as how their peers treat them.
Hanging around the age group just above them would do the trick better, since they care more about what the "cool older kids" are like. There's no greater pride than being accepted, however distantly, by a teenager when you're still just a runt.
But cocooning the kids in the nuclear household deprives them of this beneficial contact with unrelated adults, as well as with their peers.
do the Millenialls have any peer groups? they seem to go to clubs so often.
ReplyDelete-Curtis
They have occasional activity co-participants, but I wouldn't even call them activity "partners" since they're so disconnected from one another at the event. And they don't build and maintain affective ties with each other outside of those temporary activities.
ReplyDeleteTheir social organization is more like a small hive, like Asians.
Then that too may be part of the kick of going on Jason Feifer’s tumblr page, selfies at funerals, as one is forced to reckon with the (il)legitimacy of self, of others, of death and of course society’s very own legitimacy in an age where one’s sense of self is open and instant fodder for the world to instantly see and sham at the narcissist’s own risk.
ReplyDeletehttp://scallywagandvagabond.com/2013/11/selfies-at-funerals-are-now-the-new-trend/
Holy cow! Are these for real?
ReplyDeleteMillenials hang out.
ReplyDeleteThey don't date. Says a lot about our commitment values. We're afraid of definite labels, so skitter around the line. Hang out, make out, kiss, oh, we're dating now, I guess.
Fucking pathetic, the bunch of us.