Taking the message into consideration I fear that I myself (along with alot of folks, I'm sure) am becoming what that song was fighting against. Of course I understand most teenagers point if view of being sick & tired of being told what to do. Lol you have to wonder was Prince actually complaining about Warner Bros & inadvertently write a youth anthem. I really did try to be a new power generation, but I cannot condone current trends - emo, self diagnosing, depression being a trend. I can overlook fashion that doesn't appeal to me. Actually sometimes I think scene kids can look pretty cool. These bands are trying to push any envelope that's left but I don't see any substance beyond that. That one's hard because any critique might just be because I can't get into scene/emo music. I'm sure y'all have figured out that I have a teenager. But I'm just worried that I'm becoming things that I previously detested. Does scene worry me because I don't get it. I refuse to glorify special snowflake syndrome. Are these teens using us parents to try to push their envelope? I can look back at trends that came from my youth & I called those trends wrong then & I would call them wrong now.



Opinions especially from young people would be so appreciated.

I would suggest working a little on your syntax, your text is quite difficult to read. It is not completely clear what your question is.

This being said I think getting old is a choice. I, at 40, certainly am the punk/hippie I was when I was 20, and my fundamental values haven't changed much.

However the world has changed: when NPG was composed it was maybe the last era when freaks and progressists were fighting traditional values, in a way u could even say the war was already over and had been won by hippies... Today we are witnessing a strange panic from conservative crowds, because they realize they have become the minority and that 60's hippie values are now ruling the Western World. So in a way of course NPG or Uptown sound a little bit out of place in 2016, and I guess the kids today don't have much to rebel against in terms of a generational conflicts because we the parents were as punkish as you can be long before them. Now I could imagine anti-abortion or conservative folks composing some sort of anti-Uptown or anti-NPG because they are have now become the counter-culture

As for the kids today I think they have their own agenda and priorities, and their own ways of rebelling against the establishment (Z's are said to be even worse than Y's and X's at their workplace, and God bless them for that). They are the kids that will see the birth of AI, cannabis legalized everywhere, the end of having to work for a living and universal income established long before they've reached retirement age. I'm sure being 20 today is as exciting as it was for us in our days, even if maybe for different reasons. And I'm sure they party hard and dream hard, as we did.

In which way exactly do u feel u r becoming what u once detested?

You asked what have I become what I detest. It's more of a general fear. That song is and was an attitude that I believed in. Have I became the old fashioned music and old ideas. Am I becoming a conservative counterculture.... I'm 37 for crying out loud, one year from being not gen X.

Monarch said:

You asked what have I become what I detest. It's more of a general fear. That song is and was an attitude that I believed in. Have I became the old fashioned music and old ideas. Am I becoming a conservative counterculture.... I'm 37 for crying out loud, one year from being not gen X.

I understood the general reasoning but on which concrete elements do you base your fear that you are becoming what u say. I mean u don't like that pop music the kids r into? I don't either, but I keep listening to a huge lot of new and young artists, just not in the mainstream (I already didn't pay much attention to the mainstream anymore when I was 20 anyway). I totally understand and respect your fears because actually I long ago took an oath that I'd never become like my father and many other older folks I knew, disconnected from the world and its culture, and ever since I've been careful not to. But I would like to have a more detailed list of the elements that make u believe u r becoming old fashioned. For example with ideas: pop music is one thing but what makes u think u r reactionary in terms of ideas (beyond being fed-up with an "I'm a depressed tennager EMO" attitude, which was already there in the 80's, only it was called goth or punk instead of EMO).

A generalized fear is hard to put my finger on any one thing. My friends are telling me that simply doing what I did when I was younger, and that is refusing crowd running & group think. I never fit in with preps jocks hoods & nerds back then, & I don't fit in with liberal or conservative now. I'm watching youth competing with each other over their self diagnoses & I see gender identity flavors of the month a slap in the face to real lgbtq folks. It feels like the Tumblr crowd isn't thinking for themselves. On my liberal side I do things like avoiding the entire state of Oklahoma when I travel. The old men from my youth I viewed were crowd thinking, but now I view modern youth the same way. I rejected neither group of people but I still call both of them wrong. I've actually found scene & emo songs that I like. I found a blood on the dance floor song that I like lol (the band not the Mj song). I'm the one who got my own kid into anime. If I had the body for it still I'd paint my nails & wear eyeliner again.




At the end of the day when I see my own child not think for themselves & be sad because sadness is now cool it hurts.

Monarch said:

A generalized fear is hard to put my finger on any one thing. My friends are telling me that simply doing what I did when I was younger, and that is refusing crowd running & group think. I never fit in with preps jocks hoods & nerds back then, & I don't fit in with liberal or conservative now. I'm watching youth competing with each other over their self diagnoses & I see gender identity flavors of the month a slap in the face to real lgbtq folks. It feels like the Tumblr crowd isn't thinking for themselves. On my liberal side I do things like avoiding the entire state of Oklahoma when I travel. The old men from my youth I viewed were crowd thinking, but now I view modern youth the same way. I rejected neither group of people but I still call both of them wrong. I've actually found scene & emo songs that I like. I found a blood on the dance floor song that I like lol (the band not the Mj song). I'm the one who got my own kid into anime. If I had the body for it still I'd paint my nails & wear eyeliner again. At the end of the day when I see my own child not think for themselves & be sad because sadness is now cool it hurts.

Mmmh... I cannot presume on how life is in the US for kids today, or how American teenagers are as a whole. I'd just remember how our parents, baby boomers that they were, kept telling us that THEY had dreams, and that THEY had fought for their dreams, and that THEY had changed the world, and that WE were spoiled brats (and we sure were ) with no social or political conscience whatsoever but in fact when u think about it we sure did worship the hippie ideals they had partly given up on. The other day I was watching a video about the Berlin Love Parade in 1995 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc7EYqjWi3w). This was me. This was us. And I thought God were we beautiful. And I thought how could this possibly be any less wonderful or utopic than Woodstock or the Summer of Love?

In the end I guess our parents didn't see the depth we had, the dreams and aspirations we had. All they could see was Masters Of The Universe and MTV, but we were such rebels in our way. They just didn't get our social codes, our language. Maybe u just fail to see how ur kids are much more like us than they seem. Maybe even better in many ways, like deep down we were in many ways more hippie than our baby bommer parents.

True, sociologists say that Z's are less adventurous and more materialistic than X and Y, but they also say they are very much preoccupied with building a better world, even more hostile to authority than we were, and keen on becoming self-emplyed. They do have qualities. What u see as a lack of intellectual independence may just be them adhering to their generation's codes and tacit rules. Or maybe not, IDK, but they are nevertheless a continuation of the changes that began in the 60's. Remember when we were young, we also felt many kids our age were complete conformists wheb we were the rebels. Maybe your kids are conformist people, maybe it feels safer for them. It doesn't mean their generation doesn't have its freaks.

And I think you should really paint your nails and wear eyeliner again

I'm 40 and I certainly have avoided the responsibilities and duties of parenthood, a stable career and respectability but I still doll myself up, go to parties, get drunk and more importantly dance all night on loud funky music.

Maybe u just need to bring some rock 'n' roll back into your life I think your problem may lay there, not with how you connect to the kids but how you feel you are losing connection with the freak in you, with your own youth. Youth is a state of mind, it's like a plant, u need to water it and pamper it

That and try and keep being connected to the way the world changes, not just fashion and music but society and technology and science and politics. I don't think the apparent return to a certain form of conservatism is really serious, I think it's another burst from conservatives to slow things down and slow them it will, but for every step backwards that they make, progressive people make 10 steps forward. We are living in fascinating times and the future is gonna rock!

Maybe I shoulda been listening not yapping. I think part 2 kinda answers what I was thinking about.