Kurt Cobain has always been dead

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=/data/lifestyle/2012/August/lifestyle_August22.xml&section=lifestyle

For US students, plane tickets, TVs are relics

(AFP) / 22 August 2012

US college freshmen this year “watch television everywhere but on a television” and have “never seen an airplane ‘ticket,’” according to an annual list created to detail the generation gap.

The “Mindset List,” whose 2012 edition came out Tuesday, was created in 1998 “as a witty way of saying to faculty colleagues ‘watch your references,’” and aims to give insight to the “intelligent if unprepared adolescent consciousness,” its authors say on their website.

According to the latest edition, for this generation, born in 1994, late Nirvana frontman “Kurt Cobain has always been dead” and actor Robert De Niro is better known for being a retired CIA agent in “Meet the Parents” than as the young Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.”

“They can’t picture people actually carrying luggage through airports rather than rolling it,” and consider “the fundamental particles of life: bits, bytes, and bauds.”

[Posteritatis]

1. Always found those lists neat, and not for the "omg dumb kids" reason most do.. (nt)

[WCGreen]

2. Or not even

know a time when watching a tv show was a big thing because it only showed once in the fall and winter and again in the summer reruns.

[liberal_at_heart]

3. here we go again bashing young people

Do you people know what book just surpassed Harry Potter and Fifty Shades of Grey? The Hunger Games. These kids are not as unaware, uncaring, and dumb as you want to portray them.

[patrice]

4. Maybe I missed it, didn't read carefully enough, where is the judgement in this? I get just statemen

t of differences, description of facts that relate to two cohorts.

Did someone say or imply that young people are dumb for not knowing what an airplane ticket looks like, or about carrying your luggage, or something?

[liberal_at_heart]

7. "unprepared adolescent consciousness", "bytes, bits, bauds"

There is an implication in this article that because they don't know everything we older people know they are uninformed, uneducated, unaware, and uncaring about the world around them. In some ways that might be true because they are guess what teenagers. All teenagers care about their looks, their social status, talking to friends whether on the phone during my time or on Twitter for this gen and going to parties. Every generation does these things. But they also care about the injustices in the world. They are the ones who play with the kid down the street regardless of skin color, religion or sexual identity, who read on the internet about people being oppressed, spread the messages like wildfire on Twitter exposing injustices to the world thus putting pressure on the world to act. I have a seventeen year old daughter. Yes, she does act like a teenage girl. She takes an hour to get ready. She won't even leave the house without her hair and make up looking just right. She is on her phone 24/7 texting her friends. But she is also an artist, and an avid reader. She took an advanced history class and fights for the rights of women, gays, atheists, and all minority groups who are oppressed in this country. I just want people to recognize that although they do act like teenagers because guess what they are, they also do contribute to this country.

[patrice]

10. Agreed! There should be a context for "unprepared" so that info-consumers can decide for

themselves whether that is a significant characterization or not. Unprepared for what? and compared to, Prepared for what?

It is true that respect is very definitely a two-way street and anyone with the greater capacity for respect (which you would assume to be the adults in any situation, by virtue of their supposedly broader and deeper experience set) has the majority of the personal responsibility for respect. It really is unfortunate that your daughter will on average not be offered the respect she deserves.



Please! accept my apology for my negativity downthread. I'm letting our situation get to me too much.

[liberal_at_heart]

11. yeah, sometimes I let it get to me too much too

I probably shouldn't take it so hard. Thank you.

[patrice]

12. Me too. I know I'm better when I'm with younger people. I understand. I know I do, because

I just spent several months with our local Occupy, also our family is huge, 3 soon to be 4 generations, and I raised a couple of revolutionary kids myself, so I am predisposed to enjoy younger generations.

The assault on our way of life just seems to be everywhere.

I'm going to get off of here now and go do something else.

Thanks very much for not going off on me. Good work, making your case for the younger generation!

[Gidney N Cloyd]

5. It's not bashing. Beloit puts this out every fall to help colleges understand their incoming class.

That said, I thought this year's list was unusually lame and off the mark. Full list: http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/

[Posteritatis]

14. Beloit's lists don't bug me nearly as much as peoples' interpretations of them

Every fall I see a whole lot of "behold this list which demonstrates that Kids These Days suck more than ever before!"

I agree with you that this year's list is particularly bad though. They're usually more accurate (the programmer thing is particularly silly), and usually feel more constructively worded (I'm looking at you, #2).

[patrice]

6. Is it the "... can't ____ "? Plenty of people can't lots of stuff, that's not necessarily an insult,

unless you just personally want it to be one, which, of course, you have every right to want it to be an insult if you choose to, just that that isn't necessarily the way that everyone else sees it, you know, unless you claim to be the sole arbiter of all meaning in all things for all people.

[madinmaryland]

8. But Abe Vigoda has always been alive!

[steve2470]

9. your subject line finally made me look nt

[pstokely]

13. And Reagan never president

but the GOP still thinks he's idolized