by Paul Wallis

Created on: May 28, 2007

YOUTH CULTURE- A HIDDEN RISK

It's a matter of opinion whether youth culture could be any cheaper and nastier. The present generation is getting the absolute worst of mass media's slopfest. Not only is it dreck, it's formula dreck. It's about as exciting as diarrhea, and about as hygienic. It's written and produced for idiots, by cretins with slightly less sense of social responsibility than a homicidal maniac in a bad mood.

So much for the obvious. There's another danger, perhaps even worse. Youth talent is getting buried alive under the massive sewer overflow we call a "culture". Young artists, writers, and performers now have an unprecedented opportunity to become the equivalent of outworkers. They have been devalued by the sheer volume of input into the various media. There's a real risk that they might get drowned out.

They are perceived as the people who are being marketed to, much more so than the people doing the marketing. Everything in media is "youth-oriented", (ha bloody ha) but not a lot of it originates from them. What does is then strained through the tedious intellects of the advertising and broadcasting industries, to stagger out at the receiver's end like a lost puppy. The music industry, that paragon of sincere cultural authenticity, is a good example. Whatever goes in, comes out as cornflakes. Noisy, garish, whatever, it's all formula. Originality, personality, and individuality, zero. Even the patches on the tracks are older than they are.

Hence my concern that these kids have no hope of doing what they're supposed to be doing, which is creating new works and new ideas. Just about all media is currently operating as a buyer's market. The products, look and feel of nearly all mass media is usually what was actually discovered ten years ago. More often that not, it's facelift stuff, cosmetic modernism, and, more worryingly, the sort of thing that the middle aged can be convinced is "youth-oriented".

That's about as healthy as it sounds. Your "youth" is someone else's idea of what it should be, not what it is. Definitely there's no suggestion that it should have anything to do with what you think it could be. What a delightful way of ignoring an entire generation. Call em all criminals, give em some crappy environment to live in, and a few naughty toy heroes, and things are fine. Juvenophobia, perhaps? Normal Advanced Apathy? Maybe not, it might just be how they're training people to respond to a market.

It's not really unusual to insult the intelligence

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