Being from the Millennial Generation myself, it was really hard to identify the traits and characteristics of my own generation. Beyond anything I could think of to properly epitomize a connection between a pop culture and the Millennial Generation like Chuck Klosterman Generation Y Star Wars' analogy. I believe that the Dotcom boom of the nineties and subsequently social medial particularly Facebook and Instagram are the biggest pop trends that characterize the Millennial Generation.
In fact, the vulgarization of social media gave a voice to millions of people who sought after the freedom to be themselves. More than ever, people from my generations became independent, activists and confident free-thinkers. Social media led to uprising "Arab spring" in the Middle East. In the Sub-Saharan region in Africa musicians teamed up to inspire youngster to oust out of power Blaise Compaoré who was a dictator running Burkina-Faso for over 27 years. The drawback of social media is that it has made people less sociable and selfish. Family time has been replaced by time in front of one's computer. I recall some of my dates where instead of enjoying a delicious meal and a great wine, we were enjoying posts on Facebook and liking pictures on Instagram instead. Social media as a pop culture has introduced a new form of bullying. In this era bullies are some teenagers who may hurt more than they heal without even being physically present with their victims.
I didn't think it was very hard to characterize our generation, since we have been submerged in it. I like how you talk about Facebook and Instagram, as I did in mine too. I also think that Snapchat and Twitter are very big in our generation, but definitely social network sites. It is a bad thing that family time has been replaced for time on the computer. Do you have a good trait for our generation?
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more with you when you bring up the point about dates revolving around social media. I hadn't realized that even in my own experiences I have been at a restaurant or at a dinner table and the other person was more concerned with twitter than they were with me! I also ran into the same problem of finding traits to describe this generation seeing as I am a part of it too. I think it is the whole idea that to fully understand something you have to take a step back and see the "big picture" but growing up and currently living in it, its hard to tag this generations clichés.
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