A GENERATIONAL SHIFT: CROP TOPS, TIKTOK, AND THE END OF E-MAIL?

It is an unsettling feeling, to become conscious that I am no longer a member of the newest generation to come of age. According to popular consensus, those who are in the 18-24 year old age bracket as of 2021 are labeled Generation Z. I am a Millennial.

Why should I care if I am no longer part of the college age crowd? I had loads of fun in my 20s, but I don’t have any desire to trade the steadfast contentment of my 30s for the emotional highs and lows of my earlier years. I value the wisdom that accompanies aging. I would never want to lose insight that I’ve gained. Yet, the youth have their own form of intuitive wisdom: they have a better understanding of some of the realities of the contemporary world because it is all that they know. Experience provides context, but it can also trick us into a false sense of understanding our society and where it is headed. The habits we develop often make us resistant to change, lead us to take cultural practices for granted, and to miscalculate how the future will be different. It’s easy to criticize the youth (Kids these days!), but difficult to recognize which trends are fundamentally shifting our society, and whether we should be on board or risk flailing in their wake. Thus, I fear losing touch with my youthful identity because I fear losing my awareness of how the world is changing.

In my everyday life it’s easiest to notice generational differences as they relate to trends in clothing and entertainment. As a pop culture fan, I’m aware of the newest fashion, music, and celebrities. I wear crop tops and wide leg pants in the summer of 2021 because the reimagined 90s trends appeal to my aesthetic tastes, and I like being motivated to keep my torso toned and to have my legs freed from skinny jeans. I fluctuate between rejecting and embracing trends, but what is important to me is that I am aware of trends. I’m not afraid of being called lame if I wear skinny jeans (well, maybe a little, and, oh no, what is the current word for lame?), but rather of not even being conscious that skinny jeans are passé. So, while I love Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X, watch YouTube videos, and scroll through Storm Reid and Zendaya’s Instagram posts admiring their style, it is a reality check to acknowledge that I don’t love TikTok, nor do I have much insight into why people have interest in the most followed TikTok accounts.

My inability to comprehend why Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae are TikTok celebrities is one of the reasons I feel estranged from Gen Z. I’m confused about the content (what content? they don’t do anything! what am I missing?!), and also concerned about the delivery mode. While video is a very creative medium, video apps require longer engagement time than photo apps and it doesn’t seem healthy to be sucked further into the world of social media. Why does a generation with a supposedly short attention span embrace social media that prolongs scrolling? My lack of understanding TikTok’s full allure paired with my slight anger towards the younger generation’s increased and detrimental involvement with their phones signals that I have lost touch.

Entertainment preferences do not shift in isolation. So, while TikTok eludes me, there are more jarring cultural incongruities that make me take stock of my age as it relates to my reality. For example, as a college teacher, I lament that many students don’t know how to write a respectful and effective professional email. I am aware the students and now young professionals would prefer to communicate through social media apps. While it is somewhat shocking to have to examine my assumptions about the value of professionalism, I am more concerned about blurring lines between our personal and professional lives. It may be more convenient and less intimidating to send a social media or GroupMe message, but I don’t think it’s making us any happier. It turns out that my TikTok ignorance may not just point to my antiquated entertainment preferences, it may be an indication that social media is leading me to rethink my entire conception of communication and the value and meaning of privacy.

It will forever be difficult for each generation to envision the techno-cultural reality of other generations. I strongly believe that we cannot stop cultural evolution. Just as we cannot stop technological innovation, we cannot return to previous cultural moments and the values and lifestyles that once existed. As far as we know, time only moves forward.

However, this does not mean that we should blindly accept new modes of communication delivery. The dominance of social media is a classic case of technology outpacing our effort to think through our values and morality. On one hand, I’m heartened that there seems to be popular consensus (at least in my internet bubble) that workers should draw work-hour boundaries so that work communication does not enter every hour or our lives. Our culture has never been more aware of mental health. A positive consequence of our capitalist wealth inequality is that since more Americans are recognizing that becoming wealthy is a fantasy, they are actually reexamining notions of the good life and concluding that a balanced life may be preferable to achieving uber success through worshiping work. On the other hand, social media has already unquestionably infiltrated our lives and it is probably pleasurable pursuits that have doomed our private lives and made us perpetually accountable to the public eye.

SELF COMMODIFICATION

Social media enhances our social connections, but the cost is our private lives. I’m not talking about how acquaintances know when we have a surprising break up, what our dinner looked like yesterday, or even what color our bedroom sheets are. Instead, I’m pointing to the fact that every post on social media is a choice and with those choices, consciously or not, we are deciding what version of ourselves to present to the world. Social media causes us to perpetually curate moments of our lives and to produce them for public consumption. When we post a story to Instagram, we may be watching Hulu in our loungewear, relaxing with zit cream on, but we are also producing the version of our lives that we want others to see. This is exhausting because it means that we are always performing. Of course, it can be genuinely satisfying to create and share imagery from our lives. Yet it means that the space for living in the moment without worrying about how our lives will appear to others is shrinking. Furthermore, free social media apps are free because, as the Netflix film The Social Dilemma highlights, if you are not paying for a commodity, you are the commodity.

A commodity is something that can be bought and sold. It is something that is useful. It is something that is a means to an end, not an end in itself, as all humans should be. The use of personal social media becomes problematic, I think, when we produce content that, on balance, aims more at pleasing others than at sharing genuine self-expression. Of course, as humans, we crave social approval. I don’t think it’s possible for humans to understand ourselves without reference to others. We need love and recognition of our worth. However, it is easy to equate that innate desire for connection with “likes” and “views” and “comments” and “shares.” And we often get these virtual accolades based on how relevant we are, based on trends and popularity, not on thoughtful assessments of the value of our posts or on the value of the genuine connections we have to others. So, it is hard to resist that desire to be liked, that motivation to shape our lives to the tastes of others. Sometimes, then, we shape our lives to likes. We may choose where we dine, where we vacation, and what we wear based upon how it will look in front of an iPhone camera. Therefore, we are incentivized to focus on ourselves, to let narcissism creep in. We are encouraged to commodify our lives and ourselves.

BLOGGING

A blog, a website that is updated to stay relevant, that is calculated to be casual and to be formatted in short snippets so as to be accessible to contemporary readers with narrow attention spans, seems to play right into this desire to be liked, to be known. It’s true. I created this blog for public consumption, and so I want it to be relevant, I want it to be read, I want it to be liked. I want to be part of our living and evolving society, and if that involves embracing current modes of communication like blogs and social media, so be it.

This bog could be a narcissistic project. It could be pure self-promotion. It could be a tribute to my best photographic angles, and to the belief that my passions, my lifestyle, my way of seeing the world are somehow exemplary so that you should all look at me and admire me, and want to be me. In turn, I could commodify myself and turn my life into a production for the virtual world.

Thankfully, I was motivated to create this blog because I love the outdoors and also have a desire to understand and to better our society. I am also aware that self-promotion without substance and worth is just a meaningless flex. Though I am admittedly sharing my own experiences, my own perspective, and my own images, I aim to do this as an act of self-expression and exploration. I hope to produce creative content, not just creatively market myself. “Authentic” and “genuine” can have loaded meanings, but I simply want to create from a place where I can share my true interests in a way that is beneficial to others.

THE UPSIDE OF SELF-DISCLOSURE: WRITING, CREATIVE THINKING, AND SELF-REFLECTION

Fortunately, blogging requires writing and the beauty of good or decent writing is that it forces one to think – to actually think. Writing requires me to slow down, to reflect, to connect ideas, to deliberately express myself and my view of the world. The magic of writing about things like TikTok is that when we consciously reflect upon them, we are able to describe them and to understand them. Once we understand a thing, we can chose what to do with it, chose how to live with it, and chose how to move beyond it. Writing tends to lead to accountability, to ourselves and to others, and this is an important step in personal and social evolution.

In fact, as I wrote about my disdain for Charli D’Amelio, it simultaneously dawned on me that though watching someone dancing and lip synching from home seems boring to me, it might be comforting to contemporary kids. I had a secure 90s childhood when the economy was healthy and the only climate destruction I worried about was the rainforest. I was fascinated with the world out there because I mistakenly thought that it was inevitable that my life would be longer, healthier, and more fulfilling than my parents. Perhaps kids and teenagers and twenty-somethings these days focus on dance challenges and make-up because those are things they can control. Maybe it’s endearing that the most popular content creator is focused on the mundane.

I don’t know if my TikTok theory is correct. Yet, the young also may not be able to articulate how their entertainment and social media preferences are connected to wider societal trends. 

It turns out that to arrive at a juncture where I am suddenly uncertain of how much I understand the contemporary world – with its engaging and repulsive trends – is to arrive an opportunity. I could fully disengage and long for a world that no longer exists, but that is not how to contribute to a healthy society. So, instead I’m choosing to write a blog and post pictures of myself doing some things I love to do. I am offering up part of my private life to be part of the public discussion.

Ironically, if we want to regain more of our private lives and private time, we must decide that this is an important goal, together. We must have visible public lives and popular consensus to return to ourselves, to our true needs, our true desires. Mirror-selfies may seem vapid, but in the end, it’s only the vain who never look at themselves.