Disrespect among the generations
July 9th 2008 05:54
Because I am amazingly behind the times, I will be blogging about something that I saw about 2 weeks ago.
In Australia's 2008 season of the reality TV show Big Brother, two of the contestants were over 50. The typical 20-something year olds constantly made comments about them being 'old' and often sited this as a reason for disagreements. I was struck by how 'old' was used as a derogatory term- a feature that makes one undesirable and how the young ones frowned upon aging. I then began thinking about marketing campaigns and found it hard to think of any advertisement for pop culture items that use anyone that appears over 20 something. Biscuits are shown being devoured by a young girl who has just moved out of her parent’s house. Youngsters on trains dance while listening to MP3 players and it seems only Generation Y is interested in home phone and internet packages. Well, in Marketing Land that may be all well and good, but where I live -planet Earth- a variety of inhabitants of a variety of ages all use these same goods and services and I fail to see why they are not depicted as co-existing with my generation.
I seem to be going off on a tangent so I'll leave the marketing rant for now; the point of that paragraph was to show that there seems to be an age when one apparently slips off the face of the earth and lives a miserable existence in a hole that they’ve crawled into while waiting for death. Melodramatic? Maybe, but I'm trying to emphasize how acceptable it seems to have become to brush off 'old' people and view their age as a disease you don't want to catch.
I'm not sure if this is a new Gen Y phenomenon or if this has been going on for eons, all I know is that I've noted it among by peers and I'm not amused. If someone is indeed in a somewhat frail state due to their years of existence, why go out of your way to make life difficult for them? Are you a sadist? Why does respect not extend to the older generations purely because they are older? I feel another rant coming on...
Meh. I'm off to do something else. What are you doing?
In Australia's 2008 season of the reality TV show Big Brother, two of the contestants were over 50. The typical 20-something year olds constantly made comments about them being 'old' and often sited this as a reason for disagreements. I was struck by how 'old' was used as a derogatory term- a feature that makes one undesirable and how the young ones frowned upon aging. I then began thinking about marketing campaigns and found it hard to think of any advertisement for pop culture items that use anyone that appears over 20 something. Biscuits are shown being devoured by a young girl who has just moved out of her parent’s house. Youngsters on trains dance while listening to MP3 players and it seems only Generation Y is interested in home phone and internet packages. Well, in Marketing Land that may be all well and good, but where I live -planet Earth- a variety of inhabitants of a variety of ages all use these same goods and services and I fail to see why they are not depicted as co-existing with my generation.
I seem to be going off on a tangent so I'll leave the marketing rant for now; the point of that paragraph was to show that there seems to be an age when one apparently slips off the face of the earth and lives a miserable existence in a hole that they’ve crawled into while waiting for death. Melodramatic? Maybe, but I'm trying to emphasize how acceptable it seems to have become to brush off 'old' people and view their age as a disease you don't want to catch.
I'm not sure if this is a new Gen Y phenomenon or if this has been going on for eons, all I know is that I've noted it among by peers and I'm not amused. If someone is indeed in a somewhat frail state due to their years of existence, why go out of your way to make life difficult for them? Are you a sadist? Why does respect not extend to the older generations purely because they are older? I feel another rant coming on...
Meh. I'm off to do something else. What are you doing?
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