GENERATION FU

GENERATION FU

Remember Christian Slater?  Most of you kids haven’t even heard of him.  Did you know Charlie Sheen was a huge Hollywood film star before Two & A Half Men? What about Rob Lowe? Molly Ringwald? Michael J Fox? 

If you were a teen in the 90’s, then these were the film stars you wanted to be like.  These were our heroes along with the rock stars and rappers who influenced our lives.  Pop culture was just that; a culture. A way of life.  An identity. Ripped jeans, wallet chains, hair gel and an anti-establishment attitude.  This is what we were taught to aspire to by the pop icons we looked up to. 

Jay-z, Linkin Park and Kurt Cobain told us to fuck authority, and Green Day told us to be the minority. Christian Slater told us it was ok to be a burnout skater and Judd Nelson said we should quit burying our noses in school books and go out there and grab life by the balls.

We were the celebrated underdogs; the Rocky’s, the Karate Kids, The Breakfast Club. They sold us the dream.  A dream that we could be whatever we wanted to be.  An entire generation with the dreamer’s disease.

So what happened to that generation?  I’ll tell you what happened.  They’re all in their late 20’s – late 30’s now, stuck doing jobs that they hate and are bitter and angry but too afraid to complain.

Well I’m here to tell you that it’s ok to complain.  We’re not generation X or Y or whatever other box the marketing text books have put us in.  We’re Generation FU...because we were pretty much fucked from the get-go.  Society had a look at us, put one of those fingers on each hand up and said FU!  Is it any wonder that all our 90’s heroes were so angry?  Doesn’t matter if they were actors, rappers, punk rockers, grunge rockers or whatever those emo’s were going for, they were pissed off and rightfully so. 

We were told by our teachers that computers were going to be huge and we’d need a basic knowledge of it if we were to really do anything with our lives.  What they didn’t tell us was how quickly this was going to happen.  By the time we graduated, we were applying for jobs that never even existed when we were choosing our subjects in high school, competing against pimply faced brats who were running their own online stores and mentioning “digital” as one of their skills.  We were ill prepared.  Worst of all is that we’re still dreamers.  Bitter, disillusioned dreamers who, if we were to be able to find a flux capacitor and power the Delorean, we’d be too embarrassed to go back to our teenage selves and tell them what they have to look forward to in their 30’s.  Sorry buddy, you’re not a pilot, or a rockstar, or a rapper, or a film star, or a game designer or comic book artist or author.  Shit, you’re not even one of the orphaned kids from Party Of Five.  You’re just working for the man.

We had heroes who told us to “Stick It To The Man”, not heroes like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg who told us to “move faster than the man, go up against him and then become the man”.

I know, I know.  Excuses, excuses.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we had no choice.  I’m just saying that the only theory I could come up with for the disappointment I see every day is this; that we were sold the idea of being a dreamer but never prepared for what will happen while we had our eyes on those dreams.  We’re proud to be dreamers.  We’re proud to be the ones who can remember every word of the Gummi Bears theme song.  We just feel a little jilted that we were caught off guard by a wave of change so huge and fast, the likes of which have not been seen since the industrial revolution.

Now I’m not blaming Christian Slater, John Hughes or Dawson & Joey.  I’m not blaming Eminem, Snoop, Green Day, Nirvana or Rage Against The Machine. 

Those 90’s heroes of ours, from Superman to Robert Downey Jr, the ones who were responsible for us becoming dreamers, the ones who were huge back then but seemed to fade into the background later; they’ve taught us an important lesson – “It’s never too late to make a comeback.”

And that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to make a comeback...and we’re coming back stronger than ever.

 ...oh and this is where we wanted to work

 

That is all...