Making Fun Of Robert Lanham’s “Generation Slap”
Now that the bots have totally eaten my @roflcon address, I’ve been receiving these canned press release e-mails from some PR firm trying to get their clients interviews. I figure it’s a funny misunderstanding and they didn’t get that we were just a conference (because I think it’s a safe assumption that it’s not their intention to get on the Tiana Hwangball Show).
I think the best request lately considering the (amazing) brightbulb gee-whiz ultra-young fantasyland of ROFLCon was one e-mail that came in last week, subject line: “Interview: They’re naive, self-important, and perpetually plugged in. Radar Issues a Call to Arms Against Millennials” (“Gen Y” — people born in the 1977-1997). Naturally, this was an A+++ would buy again situation.
Turns out this e-mail points to a request for interview with Rob Lanham, author of the recent outraged cry against Gen Y, Radar’s article “Generation Slap.” As he would have it, we’re a bunch of “naive, self-important crybabies.” He urges Generation Xers to rise up and “call bullshit” on us. Where I come from (Jersey), ‘dems fightin words! So, give me a brief moment to mock him.
True to his Gen X stripes, Lanham’s on whiny rampage mode throughout the article, making big broad cultural generalizations to counter the equally out of touch attacks of crusty old Time magazine commentators (read: total straw man) from almost 20 years ago. You’d think he would’ve been over it by now.
But that’s his choice for targeting. Why he turns around to level a bunch of equally moralizing, equally self-righteous pooh-poohs on the Millenial Generation is beyond me (and only shows how like Time, the staff of Radar is already on the road to dating itself) I guess on a certain level, his stance is understandable. He’s an out of touch culture commentator at his Waterloo — unable to comprehend how the crazy kids of today might actually have something valuable to say. I guess you can’t begrudge a guy for being nervous and lashing out. For now, it looks like he’s taken the compromise of just saying that his jibes against the Gen Yers are mostly (yukyuk) “just tradition,” but then why so much rage on the whiny pronoucements of the Boomer generation?
There’s two things that seem to really bug Lanham about us Gen Yers.
First, that we’re perpetually technologically active. He dismisses, writing, “They think updating a spreadsheet while simultaneously posting to a Twitter account about the latest gossip on perezhilton.com is an essential corporate skill” and later “logging on to Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace 15 times per hour to see how many friends you’ve accumulated is clearly nothing short of obsessive compulsive.”
And second, that we’re overly materialistic and willing to embrace corporate branding. He writes proudly of the Gen Xers “We were the no-logo generation, famously skeptical of marketers who tried to pigeonhole us. We created independent rock and ostracized artists who “sold out” for capital gain.” In contrast, Generation Yers are “worshiping with bended knee at Steve Jobs’ immaculately designed Apple-shaped cathedral.”
On both of these counts, the key difference is engagement. Where Gen X avoids a constant connection with technology and an enjoyment of the popular, Gen Y flocks. The Millenials have embraced technology and have gotten ever better at manipulating brands and imagery for their own purposes. In doing that, Gen Y ended up doing something that the Generation Xers could only have dreamed of. They’ve mastered a media and technology enviroment that’s pulling control out of the hands of the brands and content controllers who created everything in the first place. You can’t look at the crippled traditional media industry, the vibrance of internet culture, and the decentralization of knowledge production, without admitting that those “naive, self-important crybabies” are doing a hell of alot more than the couple of good movies and albums that seem to be Gen X’s real lasting cultural legacy. In some sense, by immersing themselves in technology and mainstream culture — rather than just rejecting in grunge disgust — Millenials have kind of got the Man beaten at his own game. The embrace of mainstream culture and the demand that it conform to what we want to see has allowed the Millenials to negotiate itself with the media at large. It’s true, as Lanham writes, that “We [Gen X] were the first bloggers. We created rap music. Silicon Valley. McSweeney’s. Indie rock.” But it took the Millenials to make it something that everyone stood up and took notice of.
Lanham agrees, however, that the two generations share something in common: a tremendously short attention span and an unwillingness to accept the traditional workplace (He complains that “when applied to the Millennials, who are similarly affected by the Internet, possessing a short attention span becomes an accolade. They just call it multitasking.”) So what’s different now? The answer seems partly structural: our active engagement with information technology has been able to leverage the fact that businesses have become increasingly dependent on it to run their operations. The fact that a generation gap exists in the extent to which younger workers are more able to manipulate the internet and collaborative, social technologies creates a more even playing field in allowing Gen Yers to negotiate (and outmaneuver their bosses!) in their relationship with the workplace both since they create more value and are more able to just pick up and leave for a new job. But it’s more than that: Millenials are more willing to use this advantage to alter the resource-rich world of established institutions with greater effect, rather than just rejecting this world outright.And maybe this power difference is the reason why some shishi business trends mag like Advertising Age are finally buckling, saying “[A]gencies need to find a new employment model that better caters to Gen Y’s 21st-century skill set, enviable ambition and vibrant desire for recognition … Our job is to find new ways to motivate, inspire and reward them.” Perhaps the fact that Lanham can only issue a pissed “Maybe they can set up pony rides and free face-painters in the break room, right next to the Big Buck Hunter machine” is just because he’s jealous that his generation never was able to achieve the same.
Ultimately, I think the message works in the opposite way. It’s time for Gen Yers to rise up and call the Generation Xers out on their bullshit. They took a rejectionist formula that was unable to create change and now hold it against a new generation that has been far and away more effective at shaping the mainstream to their ends with an opposite method.
In any case, I’m Twittering, Facebooking, and Tumblring this. EAT IT.
