/Big Mouth/ Kids’ stuff
24/06/2010 | Filed under Discover > Big Mouth
When it’s time to put away childish things, does that include cutting-edge tech? Gary Marshall is suddenly feeling his age
Have you ever wondered how your parents became your parents? I don’t mean in the “mummy and daddy had a special hug” sense, or in the “what did he/she ever see in her/ him?” sense. I mean how they went from being like us to being, well, our parents.
There’s more to it than every generation’s firmly held belief that they’re so much cooler than their folks. Ageing does change you. One minute you’re a surly teenager convinced the world is black and white; the next, you’re wearing tartan slippers without irony and shopping for a grey cardigan.
So is it a sudden change, a mental meteorite strike that means you wake up one morning with your interest in popular music erased, a sudden desire to change every radio preset to Radio 4 and a strong urge to buy – and believe – the Daily Mail? Or is it a gradual process like coastal erosion, your teenage self disappearing in endless tiny increments until you realise that there’s more hair in your nose than on the top of your head?
I think it’s the latter, because it’s happening to me. And alarmingly, it’s not just happening with popular music, radio stations and nasal hair. It’s happening with tech.
It’s little things. I’m playing with a Twitter client that shows nearby people’s tweets on a map, and I can zoom in and switch to street view and call up the person’s profile and see who their friends are and what they’ve been saying. And instead of filling me with enthusiasm I find it a little bit scary and a little bit sinister.
I read that teenagers don’t wear watches because they have clocks on their mobile phones, and I realise I’m shaking my head at the silly sods’ lack of good taste in wrist accessories. I download a few game trailers and find the dialogue risible, the stories incomprehensible and the visuals headache-inducing, but instead of chuckling in ironic amusement I just feel a bit confused and overwhelmed by it all.
And do you know what? I think that’s okay. Technology isn’t really about the tech these days, if it ever was. It’s fashion.
It’s about being on the latest cool website before the plebs and the papers discover it. It’s about having the thinnest laptop in business class. It’s like being seen to like the latest cool band, or having this season’s killer heels. And that’s a young person’s game.
You don’t stop loving music as you age, but you certainly stop thinking that musicians have anything sensible to say or that the charts matter.
You don’t stop wearing clothes, but you don’t dress like an explosion in an idiot factory and you often wear last season’s socks.
And you don’t stop using technology either – but you no longer go OTT, let alone OMG, about it. Of course you don’t. It’s undignified, like putting a ponytail on a thinly thatched head or vertiginous heels next to varicose veins.
Some people do it, but they’re old enough to know better.
Gary Marshall has been writing for .net since the stone age. www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com
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Comments
chief / 25/06/2010 / 15:47 / http://www.welovechief.com
EXCELLENT...I have to say, at 38 i can't remember the turning 'station' point, from radio one, to local FM to radio 2, and now radio 4!!! but I think it was the general dissapointment in the YOOFS taste..and especially the ability to release unbelievable turd and then almost gang up and create thier own hype...I think it is a lot to do with fashion and a lot to do with bizzare uniqueness,
EXAMPLE: 'i'm gonna wear a hoodie, with the hood UP, even in summer, yeah, and THEN, right...i'm gonna put ma baseball hat on TOP of the hood...YAGETME ! me don't CARE how stupid it looks, it's me innit and am uneek!
hence a bizzare trend is born, this applys to most of the yoofs taste, music, food EVERYTHING. But who am i, i'm just some 'grandaddy innit' with my finger on the pulse (literally, checking the BPM) at the end the day the YOOF are very powerful when it comes to 'sellling' products and if they don't 'get you' then it won't work...YAGETME.
