Tuesday, April 24, 2007

speeeeedy

so i've had two glasses of wine and a red bull and just finished a long convo with my roommate about the internet and our generation, what have you. i've been in the process of starting my own blog (blog format but want to make it into some sort of comprehensive project) and i'm thinking of doing some sort of cultural study on what our generation, or what anthropologists/marketers are calling "the millennials." I started making a list of what is culturally unique to people our age(ish). so far i have:

myspace, friendster, livejournal, aol chatrooms (before social networks), makeoutclub, blogs, flickr, photobucket, youtube, music downloading (napster, audiogalaxy, soulseek, kazaa, bittorrent), last fm, pandora, itunes, ipods, macs vs. pcs, google, dj culture and indie dance nights, cobrasnake, lastnights party etc., flavorpill, jack-fm, pop nonfiction (chuck klosterman-esque), pitchfork, photoshop, vice mag, misshapes/dimmak, bathingape/kidrobot/obey, digicams, cameraphones, ringtones, netflix, texts (funny observations/plan making etc.), global warming (vs. generation x's AIDS and coldwar), going green, organic food, reality tv (especially american idol), Lost (multimedia input, intelligent viewers), fashion recycling (the acceleration of it), alternative comedy (patton oswald, human giant, reno 911ish), music genres (freak folk, nu rave, emo, i guess), columbine, 9/11, iraq, virginia tech, the daily show, colbert report, aqua teen, anna nicole, brittney, tomkat, bradangelina, indie music going mainstream, urbanoutfitter tshirts, wikipedia, spongebob, hot topic, online newsfeeds, target, personality quizzes, lo-brow art (junko mizuno, mark ryden, gary baseman), memoirs (sedaris, burroughs), growing up on oregon trail and carmen sandiego, amazon.com, girls gone wild

what else can you guys think of?
i'm thinking of doing a post for each topic.

but i'm also thinking of, instead of doing a general thing, taking some of these topics and adding others, and instead focusing more on the changing underground culture. like how digital media has shaped subcultures...something like that. fashion, music, nostalgia, information access, voyuerism, etc.

i'm asking you guys before anyone. lemme know what you think. i also apologize in advance if this post is all crazy sounding. honestly i'll probably get lazy and forget about it in a week. but i kinda dont want to.

1 comment:

danielle said...

i just skimmed this at work it sounds awesome. i didnt read it too closely yet so i'll save specifics for latez but i've been thinking about doing something like this too.. when me and jay were high on shrooms in amsterdam we had this exact talk and obvs bugged the fuck out. and then the other day i was at my house and my brother had friends over who were a couple years younger than him so like.. 16? 17? and i was telling this story about how me and my friend dan walked 2 miles to ask this guy who worked at 711 who sang "dream on" - aerosmith or led zeppelin? and they were like, why didn't you just google it? and i was like "oh this was before the internet" and they were like, huh?? i realized that we are pretty unique in when we were born because we have conscious memories of life before the internet but then we could also say we grew up with it too.
ps i knew it was aerosmith, dan was wrong