GenX Privilige

Been meditating on this meme a bit, off and on:

I was born in ‘76, graduated high school in ‘94. My first engagement with social media was while I was active duty for training (otherwise had a 12 year career in the Guard, 6 years Army / 6 years Air). I specifically remember setting up a MySpace account while sitting at the built-in booth table in my 28’ camper trailer, which was where I lived for almost two years in San Antonio. This was 2005, so I was…29! Yep, no social media for my first three decades.

I didn’t consciously design anything about the MySpace page until 2006, when an enraging event in my personal life caused me to engineer what was, in hindsight, a very “classic Hannah” maneuver.

I don’t know if y’all remember, but you could add a song to your page that would play, and that was part of the “bio”, rhetorically speaking. I added a track that I’d made on GarageBand — my version of a diss track, I suppose.

What had happened is that my dog Eva died during my preparations, returning home from active duty, and that’s too long of a story. But I had to deal with her body while still in Texas, and I didn’t want her buried there, so I had her cremated. I bought two urns, a large one for me and a smaller one for my ex-boyfriend. We weren’t together anymore, but he’d been a wonderful co-parent for some years after my acquisition of Eva as a puppy, and I knew he was mourning her loss almost as much as me.

When I got back to Flagstaff, I reached out and gave him the smaller urn, and then we had a few other communications on the subject. That was it, or it should have been. But one day, while sitting down at an outside table for a black bean burrito downtown, I saw that my flip Razor phone was displaying a voice message from 1:22am the previous night (never have had a good track record of phone responsiveness). Bemused, I played the message, and a sick feeling came over me.

It was some girl named Brooke, letting me know that my ex was her boyfriend now, and not to contact him. “We have to determine who Justin belongs to,” she said, “but he told me you’re a bitch. You can quote him.” The half-chewed bite of food forgotten in my mouth for the duration of this shocking message almost got spit out, on that part. How would that even work? “Hey everyone — Justin’s new girlfriend told me that he told her I’m a bitch. Para-verbatim.” Okay????

It was mean. Just a mean, shitty, sneering, aggressive message, and it made me feel lightheaded. I lost my appetite.

I shook it off and went about my day, but it bothered me. The next day, it occurred to me that something artistic and interesting could possibly be made out of it. This wasn’t a new concept for me — I’d been doing it with unsettling experiences transmogrified into songs, poems, essays, for a long time. I’d never received a mean voicemail before, so it had never occurred to me to make something creative out of one.

I went to Radio Shack and came home with some gadget the guy said would allow me to import the voicemail into my computer as a digital file, and from there into GarageBand. I also bought a microphone with a USB port that could go straight into my laptop. The only reason I even had a laptop is because my techie brother had decided earlier that year it was time for me to join the digital age, and had had a top of the line Mac sent to me. I didn’t know how to use GarageBand, but where there’s a will there’s a way.

By the end of the day, I had created this (and apologies for the muddy quality of Brooke’s actual voicemail, it’s too late to fix it now, I don’t have the original file anymore):

Pleased as punch, I uploaded the track, titled “My Baby’s Daddy,” to my MySpace profile, and I felt peaceful and serene again. I had thought through the ethics of it, and decided that anyone who leaves me a literally mean voicemail has karmically opted in to me sampling their shit for a new song.

If this created any ripples for, you know, THEM, I’m not aware. I don’t remember how curious any of us were about each other’s MySpace accounts lol. I just knew I successfully transmogrified the experience.

I went on to create one more, a few years later, based on a pretty shitty and demanding voicemail my husband-at-the-time left me, and he was never a fan of the end result lol.

Anyway, the point being: I recognized even the earliest form of social media as a cooperative component in my creative process, and used it as such. And my creative process has always been about making lemons into lemonade; metabolizing life in such a way that I get what I want, even when I don’t get what I want. If I could have been satisfied by something as simple as a clap back, I would have just posted the audio file of the voicemail, but no — I spent hours of my life making something interesting, melodic, and funny out of it.

I’ve come a long way, with social media, but…not really lmao. Right from the beginning, I recognized it as a place where it’s possible to go and erect an identity, which is all any of us are doing IRL too, but with less friction I suppose. Arguably less accountability. Any criticism of that process (and many are possible) only brings up larger and more existential questions, in my mind. Some of the fakest IRL people complain that other people go on social media and act fake. I can’t figure out if it’s ballsier or more cowardly to be fake in real life, so I wouldn’t even know in which direction to get judge-y, if I was determined to. Which I’m not. That motherfucker Shakespeare was commenting on the masks we all wear, way back in the pantaloons and lace ruff era, so clearly this is not a modern issue only.

Peripherally related, I mentioned this to my sound engineer Jeff the other day, in the studio — boot camp. So, I generally didn’t get in trouble in boot camp, because I generally did what they told me to do, immediately and with all my heart. Why? Because I’m not retarded. Why would I sign myself up for boot camp and then, like, resist the process.

But a lot of people did. The whole experience is about removing from everyone their preferred trappings of identity, and homogenizing the group. People didn’t want to let stuff go, so they got in trouble. I don’t want to stand the way I’m supposed to stand, march the way I’m supposed to march, wear my uniform the way I’m supposed to wear it. How is that a flex?? You can’t spend 8 weeks doing the thing you knew this was about? Pick your battles, people.

Social media, same thing. It’s a format that rewards some types of authentic expression and not others, algorithmically, which is no different than real life, when you think about it. Assess the terrain and wear the right shoes. Who cares what other people are doing? Finally, we get a way of interfacing socially where you can LITERALLY mute, block, or even simply scroll past stuff you don’t like — and people are mad about it?? What the hell?

So yeah, after spending my first three decades with no social media, I’d say I took to it like a duck to water, for the most part, because I’ve always wanted to mute people IRL. I get that it’s changing our brains, changing the entire incentive/reward structure for human engagement, standing in for other, arguably more valuable dopamine and serotonin rewarding activities, all that. My late GenX heart yearned for more Millenial-esque social options from a young age. And by options, I mean opting in AND opting out. I’ve lived in a bunch of places and among communities that didn’t suit me, where nobody got me, I know that feeling. But if you create a social media experience that is distasteful to YOU, I don’t know who to fuckin blame here! Seems straightforward.

The main thing I appreciate is the asynchrony. The introduction of delay, along with the introduction of immediacy, both being possible like never before. We don’t have to wait for letters on the pony express anymore, but we also don’t have to answer calls, or texts, or messages, at all, or until it’s convenient and we’ve composed our thoughts. I guess, as a lifelong thoughtful type person, most of my pre-internet social experience can be easily characterized like this:

Something happens.

I stand there, over-thinking it.

The moment passes, and it’s gone forever.

The pre-social media world rewarded quick-witted people, and I wasn’t one, so of course I like social media. I can go take a shower and think about my whole life before I respond to something. How is this not awesome? And quick-witted people do great on social media too, so I guess it sucks for them in the sense that it’s democratized wit, where previously they had the monopoly, so condolences, but oh well.

This yearning for a time before social media…I’m trying to wrap my head around it. Because it’s valid, I know it’s valid. It’s like, people HAD to put on pants and leave the house and stand in a line to get into a club or an event and have the courage to talk to strangers who already look like they’re having fun, and…wow, sounds marvelous. Yuck lol. But I mean, no one’s stopping anyone from doing whatever they did before. Go do that.

I was always an introvert, 100% willing to starve socially, but now I get to have my cake and eat it too, so I guess I’m not the person to weigh in on the joys of pre-internet socializing. I was there, I did it, and I still have the ability to do it.

I guess that’s the most valid criticism, maybe, is that people don’t know how to sit at a table and talk to people IRL, anymore. But did they ever…? Aren’t we kind of glamorizing a time when young people were just as feral and shitty as they are now, but we just made them clean their plate or whatever? I honestly don’t know. I wasn’t forced to sit at a table for dinner, so I had my nose in a book all the time, forking salad into my mouth absentmindedly, and it had nothing to do with the internet.

I guess what I’m saying is that I think it’s all fine. We all still get to do whatever we’d most prefer, socially, and find others who agree. People have vilified every single technological advance, for all of technology’s history. The electric guitar. Digital music tracking, where you don’t have to be good enough to do it all in one perfect take. There’s always a valid point, but people can still do it the old way…but they don’t. Because the new way is better.

And yes, we’re accelerating towards a dystopian mock up of DeepFakes, filters, and AI generated images, video, and voices, to the point that none of us will know up from down. Ted Kaczynsci wasn’t wrong. Manmade horrors beyond our comprehension, all that.

That’s all a thing, for sure, but have you noticed that all the people currently destroying our way of life and our future prospects are Boomers? This geriatric global secret-but-not-secret ruling class or whatever? Those guys are old as shit! It’s not like Gen Z or Gen Alpha are out there all, “Hey, look at this fear porn, get into your digital concentration camp corrals, you worthless cattle.”

I do of course claim my GenX privilege as the least problematic and most self-sufficient, easy going, and adaptable generation of all time, and many of my friends are older GenX or younger Boomers of course. But the sheer audacity and entitlement of these bony old bags of wind, currently occupying like the entirety of government and all — seriously, fuck off and die, or retire, or both, with that. Are we really scared about the future, and alienated by social media, and unable to distinguish fakery from reality on the internet?….or are we somewhat conditioned by the power grasping unease of these aging predators, trying to run the world when they can’t even meme. Right??

I’m ready for the memers, the gamers, the Bitcoin millionaires, the digital content creators, the track samplers, the contouring makeup tutorial wizards, the people who simply mute or block accounts they don’t like, to take up more space in this world, actually. The “mind your own business” generations who, yeah, maybe they can’t hold a conversation at the dinner table, but they’re uninterested in climbing over others towards ascendency in an obviously obsolete system. They’re too busy making something new, however small or seemingly inconsequential.

I have a lot of appreciation for the Millenials, the Zoomers, and the new Alphas. Why? Because everyone who can look at the Pelosis and the Bidens and the predator geriatrics and thinks “Yeah, this feels right” needs to move along. Just move along. Y’all had your shot. I’m not agist at all but this is getting ridiculous. You gave everyone autism with your fucking vaccines, now reap what you sow and learn to meme. (They can’t.)

Anyway, that’s it for today. I’m in Tucson, in the homestretch of remedial dental work, one more trip to the border later today and I should have all my teeth, a whole new bite, and a clean bill of dental health until the next whatever. Yes, I’m a medical tourist — how the fuck else are we supposed to afford healthcare lol.

Then back to Phoenix, and fly home to Hawaii Sunday, and — next phase! Love y’all xoxoxo