Hi, 39 year old fogey here. I don’t Twitter, Facebook, text, etc. Honestly, if not for reading this message board, I’d barely know what’s going on.
I also find myself wanting to dig further back into the past…to listen to music or watch movies from long before I was born. I might listen to a new bit of music if my kids recommend it, but they’re fogies-in-training themselves.
My husband is seventeen years older than I, but much more hip (not to mention groovy). He loves technology, so if I have any questions, he can usually answer them (or look the answers up on his damn phone).
I’ve always been a person very reluctant to change or try new things, and I don’t feel that it’s admirable of me to grow old so soon, but it’s certainly true to my nature.
Apologies if I missed this, but the big point that people seem to be missing is that culture isn’t about you and your tastes, it’s what’s happening in the air around you. Are all your friends. co-workers, classmates, acquaintances, dates, and carpoolees chatting on cellphones and texting and sexting and twittering and downloading and listening to certain bands and talking about certain movies and making pop cultural references to videos on Funny or Die? Probably. When you are the age that the culture pitches to, these tropes are like the water fish swim in. They’re everywhere. You don’t have to make any effort to seek them out. Most of the people you deal with for most of the hours of your life refer to them as a shared background for every interaction.
That changes as you grow older. You start interacting with a wider age range. Your tastes are affected by what touched you in your teens and twenties, which is the age that preferences are developed - ask any advertiser looking for a demo. You mature. The audience for shock horror films is a young one. The audience for crude humor is a young one. The audience for melodramatic sensitivity is a young one. Conversely, many novels, films, and plays are best appreciated when you have the life experiences that they’ve covered. Youth is not a good age to viscerally understand aging, death, coping, desperation, loss, or life failure. Why should it be?
Your time to experience culture changes, too. Everything is a time sink these days. Older people with families, aging parents, overtime at work, houses to maintain, social activities, volunteering, and political activism have far less time to invest in the fun side of life. People in college always think they’re overworked; people 20 or 30 years out think of all the free time they had in college that no longer exists.
In short, not only is it natural for older people to feel alienated from a popular culture that is directed at youth, it would be positively weird if it weren’t true.
And nobody in the entire world should be as totally uncool, unhip, and out of it as an immortal vampire.
Technology: “Hell Yes!” (so I can figure out how to make a buck on it).
**Music: **“Hell NO!”, as it’s my belief that music (with a few exceptions) died in 1979.
Movies: With exceptions like The Sixth Sense, the Notebook, The Usual Suspects, and Pulp Fiction, it’s been done before. ZZZZZZZZ
TV Same. Recycled Crap. Especially Cartoons and kids’ shows. Yelling your lines does not equal funny (iCarly, Zach and Cody).
Twilight: Vampire Soft Porn. People: Vampires are not warm and fuzzy like Ewoks. They are more like the the ones in Blade. You really don’t want to meet one. It will not be a happy ending.
This is a valid point. Young people are more defined by pop culture because to them it is all new and all around them all the time. When I was in college (early 90s) there would constantly be someone playing Pearl Jam or Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins in their dorm room.
There is a natural tendency to lose touch with youth culture. Mostly because youth culture is targeted towards young people with no responsiblilities. It usually happens in your 20s as the demands of work and family start to encroach on your “hanging out with my bros” time.
On the positive side, I get to do a lot more stuff as an adult with money than I could as a broke 22 year old. I can go to nice restaurants or more upscale bars that aren’t filled with drunk morons doing tequilla shots (at least until me and my friends get drunk and start ordering tequilla shots).
“I used to be with it. Then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with is no longer ‘it’, and what’s ‘it’ is weird and scary to me.”
-Grandpa Simpson
Yeah, we get it, you are hip, rich and outgoing. Since you started on this damn board you have gotten your rocks off on calling everybody on here nerds and basking in your own awesomeness. We get it, go away now.
:rolleyes:
Uh oh! Somebody has a case of the craaaaazies!
Sorry but it’s not your lawn and I don’t have to get off of it. Especially since I haven’t really posted anything that a sane person should be offended by. Don’t project your bitterness onto me.
I don’t do Facebook because I like anonymity and don’t wish to be found by anyone especially the assholes with whom I went to High School.
I don’t do Twitter because I have a pay-as-you-go cell phone, and every call and every text costs me money. I did set a sports bar client up with Twitter so they can message customers that they have managed to find a particular game on the big dish.
If they ever figure out how to actually brew a cup of tea, I might consider visiting them. No, a tea bag and a cup of lukewarm water is not a cup of tea.
I was with you up to this point. But I’ll give you a pass on this, as I didn’t think I really, truly “got” Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon until the third time I saw it. The first time, I was reading the subtitles. The second time, I was watching the actor who was talking. The third time, and the one that convinced me it was a great film, was watching the reactions of the other actor in the scene. Ang Lee is one of the few directors who directs every character in the scene as carefully as the leads. The whole emotional payload of the film happens in the faces of the other actors - the love and heartbreak in Michelle Yeoh’s face as she’s looking at Yun-Fat Chow. The whole emotional life of the film is subtext.
I don’t update my wardrobe because, unless I’m completely mistaken, all fashion these days is about advertising brands. It’s difficult to find a quality t-shirt these days that doesn’t have some huge logo on the thing. The actual “style” of the piece of clothing doesn’t seem to have actually changed at all. It is in a different color, a different material or the shorts are a different length. Whatever.
I agree. I don’t go to movies or concerts because I want to fit in with anyone. I see so many films that all my friends ask me what I’ve seen and if it is good. So frankly, the other kids are trying to fit in with me.
Never have before, why start now?
I’m 49 and a neophile. I keep up with the latest technological advances because I have always kept up with the latest technological advances. I am on Google Voice and Wave because they are cool and groundbreaking. But, as I said above, I have a distinctly cheesy cell phone - I didn’t even have one with a camera in it until a month ago.
I’ve never been part of any cool crowd. Why start now?
I was that guy when I was a punk-ass kid.
Agreed. My wife’s radio show led her to explore a lot of music from previous generations. We love female vocalists, and great singing is great singing.
Same here.
But, if I’m honest with myself, most of it is going to be in roughly the same genres I’ve always enjoyed, just by younger artists. I didn’t like grunge when it appeared because I’ve never liked harder rock, and while I liked quite a lot of the early rap, “gangsta” rap is annoying because I find the misogyny in most of it appalling.
But I am discovering new music constantly, and would see more live music if I had more opportunity. When I’m home in Chicago, my wife and I will see who is playing where and go to MySpace and sample the music of artists we’ve never heard of and see them. The last one I saw with her in Chicago was Little Boots, a sort of electronica/singer-songwriter from the UK, and the last one I saw myself was Asleep at the Wheel, the western swing band.
We discovered a band on MySpace, went to their show, and became big enough fans and close enough friends that I actually got a “thank you” ontheir most recent album.
sounds like most people on here are in the meaty part of the bell curve when it comes to embracing new things; picking and choosing what’s right for them. not surprising given the nature of this board.
it’s on the internet, so we’re technologically progressive at least in that aspect.
however…
it’s straightdope, and many of us are shadenfreudian bastards who not only take delight in exposing the flaws of others but also in flexing our vast knowledge-packed brains. nitpick, is the euphemism i believe that most prefer.
Hi! My name is BrassyPhrase and I’m addicted to Farmtown. <I need another neighbor!>
There is a lot of crap in any popular anything, but there is some good there too. It’s what made it popular. I’ll give most things a try.
Facebook ended up being a way for me to catch up with the only two friends I’d lost touch with and cared to hear from—and to find out that a guy that I feared would’ve killed himself, is a very happy community involved guy.
the Twitter? please. I barely care what the people I see every day are doing.
I have an ipod shuffle…somewhere. It was such a good idea. <sigh> I’m not organized.
I wish more old farts, specifically those I knew in my youth, would sign up for Facebook. Hardly anyone I know has FB. I’ve searched and searched and found only a couple of people I know.
A lot of people don’t want to be easily found by people they used to know years go, though. That’s one of the reasons I’m not on Facebook… I don’t particularly want to reconnect with people I went to high school with over a decade ago.
Getting tweets to your phone is an option, not a set feature. Before I got a smartphone that allowed me to just view the application, I didn’t have the feature turned on because my phone constantly buzzing (or even buzzing once every half hour or so) is annoying.
I don’t really mind reconnecting with my old classmates and it seems like most of them are on Facebook. Mostly it’s just not interesting to me. I haven’t seen most of them in over 15 years and they might as well be any generic suburbanites with kids.
Yeah, but you don’t just wear a giant T-shirt and sweatpants with a fanny pack, do you?
No. But pants, t-shirt and running shoes is the usual outfit. I’ve never bought into the idea that I should wear different clothes because someone I don’t know wants me to.
i hardly keep up with any new music. I’m aware of artists and groups such as Kid Rock and Coldplay, but I can’t be bothered to listen to them. I’m 52, and these were my major album purchases of the last few years:
Endless Wire - The Who
Bat Out of Hell III - Meat Loaf
The Long Road Out of Eden - The Eagles
Revival - John Fogerty
Workin’ On A Dream - bruce Springsteen
God and Guns - Lynyrd Skynrd
Chickenfoot - new supergroup with Joe Satriani, Sammy Hagar, and Michael Anthony
I am looking forward to a new Randy Bachman album with Fred Turner coming out later this year.
In other words, I listen to new releases from tried and true artists from the 80s, 70s, and even back in the 60s. And I don’t recognize any of the songs Weird Al Yankovic has parodied in the last few years.
I don’t have a MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter. I mostly watch cable shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Burn Notice, or Monk. My “reality” TV consists of Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, and Modern Marvels.
I’m not allergic to technology, though. I have an iPhone and a PS3. I have stereo Bluetooth earbuds for the iPhone and learned how to set up a server to stream music from my PC to the PS3 via wi-fi. I’m glad to be alive in the 21st century, but I just wish we had some of these gadgets when I was 30 years younger.
This is exactly what I was going to say. There was a time I knew who they all were. Then there was a long period where I might not have been a direct consumer of their music/TV/music but I knew who was a musician, and who was on TV. Now I don’t know who they are, and am really okay with that.
I pay a little bit of attention to music, but only enough to stay somewhat informed about what my son is listening to.
I do listen to different music than I did 20 years ago - or I should say more. I still listen to those same bands, but do continue to add to my playlists. Now I’m more likely to learn of a new band on the local college station, or through friends or a thread here. I don’t listen to “mainstream” radio anymore. I used to listen to Casey Kasem every Sunday.
I don’t wear trendy clothes. Never did. I do feel as if I’m turning into my grandmother when I see some of the outfits. I think wearing flip-flops year round, and to occasions that used to be formal is silly. Ditto Uggs. I go bananans when I see someone in a pretty sun-dress and fleece lined suede boots. Why oh why would you choose an accessory that looks like it would make your feet stink? (I would not react that way to Uggs with jeans and a sweater on a cold day.)
I just turned 45 a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t grown up yet, though, and probably never will.
I love technology: computers, iPods, gadgets…I’m what they call an “early adopter.” If it looks cool I’ll try it.
I don’t have Twitter (tried, just thought it was stupid). I have a Facebook account but I almost never use it and am thinking about deleting it. I don’t want that many people to be able to find me. I value my internet anonymity.
Don’t like much of today’s music–rap, hip-hop, diva warbly R&B–no thanks. Though I have found quite a few good industrial/EBM/synthpop bands I like a lot. Most of the new stuff I listen to probably wouldn’t even register with most kids. But I still love a lot of music from the 60s, 70s and 80s, though, and listen to it often.
Love computer games, video games, and pen and paper RPGs–I’m thoroughly addicted to World of Warcraft, and before that I had a Shadowrun campaign that ran for about 15 years.
Clothes-wise, I never had much fashion sense and I’m not about to start now. Jeans, T-shirts, athletic shoes, leather jackets…I don’t dress much like a girl. I really dislike most of the new clothing styles: everything for women is too tight, and everything for men is too loose and floppy. No, thanks.
I do try to keep up with the latest books from authors I like, though, like Stephen King and Graham Masterton. Don’t give a damn about “Twilight”–it sounds insipid to me.
Not very up on the new TV shows and movies. I go to movies when they look good (which isn’t that often), and up until two weeks ago, the only TV show I watched with regularity was “House.” Ended up sitting around after it last week and caught “Lie to Me” and now I’m watching that too. But that’s about it. I don’t care who’s dancing with what star or what Oprah’s doing these days.
