Very interesting comment on the last post about whether or not Obama qualifies as a Gen Xer. We are certainly agreed in that Obama is the first post-Boomer president, which was the crux of my argument. I had never heard of the Generation Jones concept and I will admit that it does make sense in that using twenty years for generations does create issues when looking at things from a cultural standpoint. I still say that Obama shows Gen X tendencies especially in his embracing of the internet and the understanding of the importance of the medium. Also, Henry Rollins was also born in 1961 and I would like to think that we are of the same generation so take that for what it is worth.
Ok, on to the final five.
9/11: I almost didn’t include this one. Maybe it is because it is so obvious or maybe it is because it is a rather challenging subject to write about. Even though it has almost been eight years the wound is still fresh enough that examining it in a detached manner is difficult but I’ll try.
Obviously this is the biggest historical moment of my lifetime and the one where I can discuss where I was in great detail. I was lying in bed listening to sports talk radio when I heard that the first plane had hit. I ran over to my living room to turn on the news in time to watch the second plane hit live. It still bugs me that when I heard the news I jumped out of bed but Bush decided to keep on reading the children’s book.
What interests me more is how we have changed as a nation as a result. The hope was that we would become a less cynical, more helpful and understanding to our fellow man as a result. Instead I think we have become darker. We lost our boundless optimism and replaced it with a self defeating view of the world. What I find even more telling is that the greatest damage caused by that attack wasn’t by the terrorists: it was by ourselves. The attack was horrible and tragic and we all still feel for the thousands of innocent people who lost their lives that day. But the events that followed: the misguided war, the loss of civil liberties, the crashing of the financial system, none of those were caused by the terrorists. We did that to ourselves out of fear and poor leadership. In fifty years that is how historians will view the events of that day.
My family gets cable: Ok, I guess from a generational viewpoint this would be the mainstream introduction of cable but I will write this solely from my experience. Getting cable meant access to a whole new world of options. Imagine growing up in a world of maybe six or seven channels, several of which came in either fuzzy or in Spanish. Then imagine having forty channels including ones dedicated to music and sports (mainly Australian Rules Football) and children’s programming. It was a completely mind altering experience. The options seemed to be limitless and it has led to my having hundreds of channels of which I watch, well, six or seven.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the other main benefit of cable: boobs. Yes, the wonders of premium cable in which you could see naughty bits and hear swear words all in the comfort of your own home. This is another reason why I can’t even comprehend what it must be like to be a 13 year old boy today. In my day it was a huge deal to try to sneak down to the living room late at night to watch something that was forbidden. Now I expect kids just sit in their rooms and download the most vile things imaginable. I never thought that I would refer to my youth as a simpler time.
Launch of the Atari 2600: A major event on so many levels that it can’t even begin to be understood. First off, it was one of the first times in which a new thing became commonplace in a home. People had a television and a stereo. Now they also needed an Atari. This was the first true gaming system for the home and I can’t even begin to estimate just how many hours of my life were spent playing every game imaginable. From the incredibly basic sports games (one on one basketball! Four on four football!) to the epic Activision games of River Raid and Keystone Kapers. And let us not forget Decathalon; the game that taught us the importance of the javelin toss while also giving carpal tunnel syndrome to every man my age.
But really Atari marked the beginning of the home gaming craze. What had started in the arcades (and Pac-Man in the arcades really deserves an honorable mention here) entered the home and has never left. Nintendo took up the banner and now we have Playstation and Xbox and immense online games played on computers. It is considered commonplace to all sit down in front of a screen with a controller in hand and play. Except that in reality that experience is only thirty years old.
Run DMC Releases “Walk This Way”: Rap existed before this song hit the airwaves but no one knew about it. Correction: white suburban kids did not know about it because MTV would not air the videos. But with this song the hip hop revolution was launched and has not stopped since.
It really is amazing to look at just to what extent hip hop has taken over the musical landscape. Back when I studied the sale of ringtones (I’ve had some strange jobs in my life) the top of the sales charts consisted almost entirely of hip hop. It wasn’t even close. You would have to scroll through pages of songs before you came across the first traditional rock band. The same is true in many aspects with album sales. Look at any billboard chart for the past ten years. Hip hop has replaced two guitars, bass and drums as the musical standard.
At its best, rap and hip hop are the first new art form produced by American culture since jazz. At its worst, it can be really, really bad, which doesn’t separate it from any other art form. But everything from music to fashion to language has been influenced by hip hop and it all started with this one song.
I join the internet: Everyone remember when they first got online? For me it was 1993 with a Prodigy account. Technically I was online earlier with an email account through Illinois’ mainframe system but I consider 1993 as the year I entered the internet age. My AOL account was started in 1995 and I will have had the same email address for fourteen years this summer, which is just amazing.
Simply put, the internet changed everything. It gave a reason for people to have a home computer for something other than playing video games. It led you to find people of similar interests from around the world instantaneously. The entire world shrunk. No store was too far away or a conversation to difficult to have. The idea of writing a letter became ludicrous. Even now, I can scarcely remember how I lived before Mapquest. How in the world did people find where they were going? (On a similar note, the launch of the cell phone gets an honorable mention as well due to the fact that without it meeting people in a crowd was essentially impossible.) Thanks to my phone I am essentially online 24 hours a day and run a website that is visited by people on every continent. Pretty amazing event if you ask me.
So there are my fifteen. Let me know if you think there is anything that I missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment