But I'm mostly seeing a single school, so it may just be that that school operates in some kind of techphobic bubble, not that the better-off are generally exposing their kids to cell phones and the Internet way less than the middle-class and lower.
... then again, maybe what I'm seeing isn't a heavily biased sample, and that's exactly what's going on, and this article is a manifestation of a real tendency of the upper classes to curtail tech exposure for their kids, compared with the general population.
This is not a story of consequence but it does speak to an important issue of our day. It's not as though this is the only kind of reporting NY Times does.
That's not at all what happened. There were rumors that tech reporting should be critical[1], instead of gushing and repeating claims from press releases without actually investigating. Real journalism is critical, and critical doesn't mean "bad" or "negative".
I don't know, to me it all seemed exceedingly genuine. If they're spending lots of time outside in parks—"rain or shine, even snow"—their clothing choices make sense. They like reading, and their reading material has made an impression (as good books are wont to do, especially for impressionable teenagers), such as by convincing them of the value of activities like "listening to the wind".
I guess it seems a bit pretentious since those of us who were around as young adults when mobiles and the internet took off, and then worked in the industries that made the current situation happen, realise there is a happy midpoint. “The only thing better than a flip phone is no phone?” I can’t roll my eyes enough.
I dare say “our generation” started the idea of removing technology again and getting back some of the good old days.
Yeah, but kids often say groan-worthy things, or have opinions that lack perspective. I still think she was being perfectly earnest.
In order for someone to actually be pretentious, there has to be a pretense. Being purposefully non-mainstream doesn't make someone pretentious as much as a more normal individual would like to believe. Hipsters aren't necessarily pretentious. Being a hipster means rejecting something because of it's mainstream or establishment properties, and most likely for that sake alone. A hipster might be pretentious if their image is disingenuous (ex. pooh-poohing something publicly while appreciating it secretly), but that doesn't have to describe all hipsters.
I get called a hipster because I effectively dislike or have no interest in many things that most people consider good. When something becomes mainstream, I like it less because I believe something going from unknown to mainstream is usually a bad sign, and that instinct is almost always right. Breaking Bad was way better until everyone started slobbering over it and chanted "get back to cooking meth bruh", and look how it ended. Such a long way for a ham sandwich. haha
It isn't that you like something, it's that you don't want to be associated to some other things. And you don't want to be associated to those other things because of some pretense about what associating to those things means.
Maybe this is confusing because of the phrase "false pretense", which is redundant and can lead to some people thinking that there's such a thing as a pretense that isn't false-ish.
At the end of the day, I think the pretentiousness comes from superiority signalling. When a vegan talks about how eating meat is wrong the implication is that they feel morally superior to those who eat meat. And when someone rejects things generally, as opposed to just liking their own things, it implies that those things they reject aren't worth consideration, and hence anyone who does has some inferior judgement or taste.
The statement "I would never listen to disco music" implies there is something wrong with doing so, and hence something wrong with those who choose to. "I would never listen to disco music" is a pretentious statement.
in that the corporate machine made a mistake in not extracting all that it could from it in follow-up seasons, movies, sequels, etc.
You know how good a movie is by how many sequels it took to kill it.
Star Wars, once lauded, has been milked dry. There are a few good works, but by and large they're beating a dead horse.
The same thing is happening to Marvel. People checked out after Endgame.
Game of Thrones was so near to perfection. It had an unusually large cast of a hundred characters and an expansive world to draw down. But even if the new show is good, the magic is gone.
The mystery of Stranger Things after season one ended. We're getting a rehash with common character tropes you can find anywhere.
The allure of Westworld softened after season one attempted to open up to bigger themes, but actually cut down on the possibility space.
The third Godfather. Dexter. Every single Jurassic Park but the first. Jaws. On and on.
Chiefly, it's simply a function of multiplied probabilities to continue with a success streak. Eventually the odds do not pay off in your favor.
But I think another contributing factor is that our brains begin to fit the shape of the setting, the motifs, the character arcs, the narrative world - and we just aren't surprised or pleased any longer. Few people would ask for twenty seasons of a show. Or ten movies in a given franchise. Our brains learn the shape of the landscape and grow bored.
First, it would be weird to say that was because Marvel was falling apart. It was the conclusion of a decade long movie franchise. Of course people might watch something else once the story they had been following was done. It doesn't mean they won't come back or didn't like the new movies, it means they wanted a break.
But mainly, it's also not true. Leaving aside 2020 (when Marvel released their movies all online), let's look at 2021. 4 out of the top 10 movies were Marvel movies (including number 1).
In 2022, they have 3 of the top 10 slots. They were beaten out by the Top Gun reboot and the latest Jurassic Park
My point exactly. We tire of the familiar.
> 4 out of the top 10 movies were Marvel movies
Disney operates at a scale none of their peers can match. They have the most well tuned pipeline of any production company. I'd expect this.
Nevertheless, metrics point to declining interest. If I had time to write a longer comment, I'd be able to cite sources and offer more than just a suggestion to google "marvel fatigue".
Which is both sad and hilarious in the context of this thread
In 2021, the only original things were the highest production cost Chinese movie in history that glorified the Chinese army vanquishing their enemies (South Korea, the US) in the Korean War (this is the one that got a sequel) and a Chinese comedy. The western movies were the latest Bond, Fast and Furious, Kong vs. Godzilla, and Sing 2.
(A Chinese movie series also was in the top 10 in 2021)
That's been true since 1983.
Popular movies get discussed to death and over-mis-interpreted to the point where just the mention of it causes a mental effort to ignore the assumed sycophantic rambling that's to follow.
Popularity ruins perceived quality by the nature of media to seize upon it and, as someone else said in a slightly different context above, squeeze every last cent of profit out of the opportunity that's presented by it's popularity.
Technically it doesn't affect the quality, but it adds a thick layer of media slime that can take years to dry up and fall off.
Lastly, popularity and quality are two scales that have interesting intersections. It's a concept I'd actually like to investigate further.
Kojima and the Metal Gear series.
Another mechanism is flanderization, in which writers simplify characters or other aspects of the show for various reasons, mostly laziness and to conform to expectations the audience develops about how characters should act. Characters with depth become shallow shadows of their past selves as one aspect of their personality starts to dominate the others. When characters are driven by audience expectations instead of the writer's internal muse, they become soulless and predictable.
Another is overdeveloping the setting. Throwaway lines in earlier media get needlessly turned into developed storylines. It leaves less to the imagination. This is often related to the first mechanism I mention; the writers squeezing all the juice out of the earlier media.
Hipsters are people who follow trends. They try to be "hip."
Rejecting things because everyone else likes them is not being a hipster. It's being a contrarian.
If someone ever asks me for an example of a pretentious comment, I'm going to give them this
A lot of people's lives could be way better if they internalized this.
It made me realise that the mythologies of tech (an inevitable, ubiquitous force of progress and 'convenience' that we must slavishly follow or be "left behind") resides in my generation.
Also, they idolize Chris McCandless - he was also a child of privilege who wanted to reject society. Chris didn't have to die but he did because he went up to Alaska woefully unprepared. That doesn't make his death any less tragic, of course.
I guess my point is that this phenomenon is not anything new, if anything we've just gotten for enough into the 21st century that the 1970s ethic is making a comeback.
Idolizing McCandless is such an odd thing; Alaska is filled with people who rejected their past lives like he did, but who didn't die because they had more humility and respect for the land.
Anyway, my critique of McCandless is mild, talk to some Alaskans if you want to hear some proper vitriolic criticism of him. I barely scratched the surface by accusing him of hubris.
If you mean my criticism of teens idolizing McCandless, I don't know what to tell you. He isn't a good role model. There are obviously worse role models, but he isn't a good one.
Where is the roasting of teens? The closest I've come to roasting teens is saying that teens idolizing McCandless is 'odd'.
in practice: i wonder how practical it is to survive as an adult without a smartphone. uber has decimated cabs and i don't think you can telephone for an uber.
i wonder what else is unreachable/unworkable/etc...
I learned to drive before smartphones. I can assure you its very possible to find addresses without a phone. Heck, I still sometimes do it for fun! Nothing wrong with a little u-turn here or there.
reminds me of the old days when i used to text GOOGL for exact addresses
The biggest problem is 2-factor. Many services are starting to require it, which has led me to losing access to various accounts. Looking at you, Paypal.
Otherwise, it's fine. I make a paper shopping list. I schedule meetings in advance, and show up at the expected time. Uber isn't even in my city so there's no loss there.
https://i.imgur.com/V2WbK6C.png
There is no skip button. Even worse, every method I've tried to access customer support requires I be logged into an account.
I do have an Android device at home that may support TOPT, but a lot of websites still recklessly assume you have a mobile number available.
I mean, they are teenagers. I said this in a longer comment in this thread, but teenagers tend to be performative. That's sort of the point of growing up and finding yourself.
>I am glad to see "the kids" continuing to question & challenge
They are the children of (rich?) Brooklyn hipster parents at a Performance arts school[0]. Who exactly are they challenging? If anything, they are being congradulated and pushed along on the hipster path. There are Brooklyn hipsters who unironically use 1980's antenta phones. If anything this is a worn out trope.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_R._Murrow_High_School
*I don't mean to imply that you are illiterate, just that you haven't thought this through.
It's not an accomplishment, but it's definitely more, as parent commenter said, "performative" than saying they read any popular author of today.
As you yourself pointed, Dostoyevski is a required reading in high school and as anybody who had the "pleasure" of attending school, knows required reading usually isn't something what appeals to the youth (killing joy from this activity is another problem).
That's true of a lot of students, but not everyone! A couple of classmates in particular come to mind who definitely, genuinely loved the books we were assigned.
Heck, while I didn't like most of the books we read, there were a handful I loved! Montana, 1948, for example, was amazing.
Admittedly, the reader effort is still ridiculously far below that of the author.
Quoting Fry: "It took an hour to write, I thought it would take an hour to read"
Murrow isn't strictly a performance arts school, and it's not located in a particularly hip or excessively wealthy part of Brooklyn.
And I think you're overthinking the performative aspect, it's bog standard teenage behavior that diminishes over time but persists forever. Every branded piece of apparel, every vanity plate, all interior decorating are in the same performative vein.
It also might be you projecting. It's entirely possible they genuinely enjoy their choice of clothing and literature and it's not a performance.
It's not really, it's become a pretty fashionable brand in urban areas. Basically a combination of work wear and basic REI aesthetic.
Also, does the NYT Style section have a reputation of elevating some tiny little clique into a "trend" that goes nowhere because it's not a real trend, just a clique that got written about?
I'd love for something like this to be an actual trend (sans the snobbish performance), but I'm skeptical this anything at all.
One thread they're touching on that I think is healthy and good is the DIY aesthetic, and the resistance to tools and media that primarily serve to make you a passive consumer, and to choose and live ones values more consciously & proactively. These features are (or ate least were) prominent in the punk scene, but also in many other subcultures including many religious groups.
I am glad to see "the kids" continuing to question & challenge and try to take more control of their own lives, so this is great in my opinion. A bit of pretentiousness is a small price to pay in my opinion.