The Way We Heart Now

Cultural observer Richard Rushfield has some thoughts on how the bountiful level of expression in The Current Conversation has failed to result in a multiplicity of critical perspective, and he blames it on the kids:

[T]oday’s abundance of information and voices doesn’t just end up cutting off the breadth of that conversation, but its depth as well. That is to say, not only are fewer opinions heard, but the ones that are are dumber than ever before. The problem goes back to another of my running complaints about Generation Yay: their a-historicism and the roots thereof… It has previously been proven that no member of today’s up and coming horde has any knowledge of — or any interest in — anything that happened culturally prior to “Boy Meets World” and politically prior to 9–11. (Source material provided upon request). Without any sense of history, we are of course just a collection of likes and turn-offs. The generation just prior to Generation Yay was at least glib about it, producing a bunch of very bright well spoken bloggers who even if their souls were made of tin foil, they were able to articulate their moods terrifyingly well. Today’s new crop of bloggers don’t even do that (with a few exceptions- you know who you are) and are just content to post pictures of stuff they liked when they were 7 with some baby talk scribbled above it.

The angry ranting of an aging critic furiously lashing out upon confronting the realization that his opinion is increasingly less relevant to the pop culture discussion of the age, or a searing indictment of a vapid and empty everyone-gets-a-trophy cohort whose innate celebratory instincts and lack of interest in depth and dissent are but another example of how frivolity and superficiality are now considered assets rather than something to be rightly derided? I mean, probably both, but you be the judge. [Related]