Michael Maiello's picture

    Generation Wuss

    I have to admit that this sentiment has been on the tip of my tongue for a long while.  Brett Easton Ellis just comes out and says to Vice that:

    "You have to understand that I’m coming to these things as a member of the most pessimistic and ironic generation that has ever roamed the earth. When I hear Millennials getting hurt by "cyber bullying," or it being a gateway to suicide, it’s difficult for me to process. A little less so for my boyfriend, who happens to be a millennial of that age, but even he somewhat agrees with the sensitivity of Generation Wuss."

    This is dangerous territory. Criticizing the young for physical or moral weakness is an old man's game and one I've largely avoided.  I've been tempted, for example, to point out that artists like Prince have for years been saying things more outre than anything I've seen from the Ke$has and Miley Cyrii of the world but I am not sure if that indicts the current culture or my knowledge of it.  I would assume that somebody ten or fifteen years younger than me would scoff, "Ke$ha, old man?  You really have no idea what's going on, do you?"

    But this cyber-bullying concept has never quite sit right with me, as it doesn't for Ellis.  If I knew somebody who, say, had their nude selfies exposed online by an ex I would advise them to not let it get to them and to answer any questions, if asked, with a blanket statement of pride in their body.

    That is easier said than done, of course.  I certainly don't envy people going through their teens and twenties under the constant voluntary surveillance of camera phones and social networks.  I think it's difficult for people who grew up without that to really understand how the games of youth have changed.

    That said, there was also one very bad thing from my youth, the suicide of somebody very close to me, that could have been prevented if I had carried a cell phone, particularly a smart phone.  You used to be able to prevent somebody from calling the police by disconnecting a phone from the wall.  That no longer works.  So, there are advantages and disadvantages to the modern culture. 

    Ellis has always been at odds with the culture around him, functioning as a provocateur.  Lately, it seems, society has become too polite and rules based for him, which is something I have also complained about.  I believe that even as we move towards more freedom we are also moving towards more normative rules of behavior and I think this is was Ellis is picking up as "wussiness."

    In a tolerant society there are certain things you cannot say, even in art.  Every now and then, people chafe against the new rules.  It's easy to dismiss the new ways as weakness.  But the new ways are often better than the old ways or not less arbitrary.

    Ellis is calling our "Generation Wuss" for its hang ups but it's almost like he forgets that Less Than Zero, American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction called out his own generation for its hang ups.  Not that much has changed. 

    I think Ellis is saying something important -- being hypersensitive can allow other people to get one over on you.  The sexual humiliations of Internet bullying could be best countered not by jailing purveyors of revenge porn but by developing a culture that does not shame people, particularly women, for having active sexual lives.  When society makes negative judgments about the way people live we should encourage individuals to reject those judgments.  That is hard to do but it has its rewards.

    Ellis is wrong about "the kids," but he is talking about the right things, somehow.

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    "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt

    I'm not sure any generation ever had their phobias catered to like Generation Wuss. "American Pie", "Bad Girls", "Heathers" and a variety of other growing-up movies since lay out all those problems of puberty and fitting in, and even then, it's somehow not enough. I try to explain to my kids that most kids just grit their teeth and survive through 12th grade and then kiss that world goodbye forever, that their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents weren't any happier, and getting used to the suckiness is one part of dealing with it. Doesn't help. More and more hours/days tackling problems that would have been ignored in the "old days" of "suck it up, kid", and still doesn't seem to resolve things.

    The level of cruelty now in some ways is much less - as you note, someting like Prince's "Dirty Minds" was far more shocking than current fare - but then the sexual language and personal attacks as early as say 4th grade level or lower are probably much harsher than what we had. And sex is likely much more a part of their world than ours.

    Not shame people? Well of course we shame people - that's one of our basic modes. Grow thick skins and gills, or "get a real life" are 2 of my reactions, but that takes as well as my folks' "cut your hair". But I think the "hypersensitive" tag is most germane - and much of youth is now very introverted it seems to me - oddly in an age of tons of information, it seems the circle of actually sphere of real interest is just as far as a few friends & classmates. And I see an aversion to risk taking - though I don't know how universal that is.


    I see them as not having the money to actively socialize like I had as a kid.  So they stick with a small circle of friends locally and a very large circle internationally on the web. I see risk taking going on with my grand kids.  They care deeply about things.  I see that as a plus because they are the ones who will make this a better place to live. Courage comes in all forms. 


    Hmmm, they all seem to have iPhones, designer clothes, expensive vacations and money for the movies & expensive drinks. Not that I recall hurting for money or finding it an issue around socializing as a kid.


    That is only a portion of them.  40% are below poverty level.  Prepaid androids are not that expensive anymore. What designer cloths?  I have helped refurbished several old sewing machines this past year that was given to young girls and women so they could use them.   Movies?  It is pirated movies using bit torrent. There is a economic depression going on in this country and they are hurt the most by it. 

     

     


    You're off by a generation...

    Heathers: 1988

    American Pie: 1999

    Mean Girls: 2004

    Facebook: 2004


    Heathers just introduced the style - American Pie was where the form took off mainstream.


    Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) introduced the style, followed by Sixteen Candles (1984), Breakfast Club (1985), and host of lesser imitators. All mainstream, including Heathers.

    I'm not sure what any of this has to do with internet bullying, though.


    Social networks add three dimensions to bullying that we never had to deal with.

    1) It's public. Humiliation is not confined to a few other kids in the locker room. The whole school can see it, including friends, parents, and most painfully, the boy or girl you have a crush on.

    2) People are less restrained online. I think we're all pretty familiar with that.

    3) There's no escape. Unless you attended boarding school, you got to leave the ugliness at the end of the school day. With social networks and texting, the bullying follows you home.

    Now it's all very nice to say "stick & stones." People used to say that when I was a kid too. But I've seen plenty of adults lose their shit when an anonymous avatar they've never met writes something mildly insulting online. Now imagine it's on facebook among a circle of your best friends, and they're writing, "You're so ugly, you should kill yourself." And keep in mind that these are insecure children who place a much higher priority on social status and who lack the maturity to keep things in perspective.

    Generation Wuss? Fuck. That. These kids have to be tougher and have thicker skin than we ever had growing up. And if there's anything we adults can do to make their lives a little easier and a little happier, I'm all for it.


    Sadly, you're exactly right.  They do have it much harder now.


    I dunno, here's an excerpt from an "I was a fat kid" piece in The Guardian that I just glanced at and it reminded me of how really brutal it could get it back in the good old days when there was no internet, meatspace style:

    At school my nickname was Danepak Bacon (actually, it was less a nickname, more a routine. The boys would go "can anyone smell Danepak bacon?", then oink really loudly as I walked past). I was, of course, devastated by this. Though I counted myself lucky because there was also a "Miss Piggy" and the shit she got was so relentless that no one even called her by her real name anymore. At least I got to keep my own name, most of the time.

    Psychic pain is psychic pain, not as easy to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 as physical pain. Isn't this just sorta doing another version of "Oppression Olympics"? If that's the case, then I'd go with the Jewish boy in 1939 Berlin for the win. He even wins over my mentally disabled brother's berating, name calling and some minor beating on school bus when he was 10 for being "retarded"; he sobbed for many hours, don' t really know if he ever got over it, I know my mother never did.


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