Once upon a time, I kept a personal blog which I wrote sporadically whenever something amused, irritated or offended. It was largely moribund before I started writing here at MB, but given the ranting I’ve posted recently I could probably resurrect it. Just in case I decide to, here’s some more.
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I’ve just about had enough of “generations”. I’ve been reading wowblogs and forums and apparently, the young generation or the twitter generation or the ADD generation or the insert-perjorative-generation are ruining everything. Yoofs. Damn them.
It’d be more accurate, perhaps, to say that game companies are ruining everything, by designing games which cater to the lazy generation. They’re just in it for the money, chasing the LCD to maximise shareholder return. Capitalists. Damn them.
…except don’t all of those studies about gamers seem to suggest the “average” gamer is somewhere in the 30s-40s bracket? So surely they should be designing for those people instead? People of middle years with money and lives. Damn them. Er, us. No, them.
Best not to think about that too carefully, I suspect.
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For those who don’t already know, I live in London. In Catford, home of the “famous” Catford Cat, should any of you feel like dropping by for a chat and a dram.
Although it wasn’t extensively covered by the news, Catford had its own small share of “fun” during last month’s UK riots, with a few stores looted and/or damage. Damage was light enough that, during the #riotcleanup twitter phenomenon, the council posted a tweet which effectively said ‘thanks for your support but we’ve got this.’
Aaaaanyway, the news aftermath was largely what you’d expect, with sensible discussion in some places, liberal handwringing in others, and a goodly dose of old-fashioned string-em-up, hanging’s-too-good-for-’em, bring-back-national-service shoutiness as a constant backbeat. And lots of “generation”s.
The selfish generation. The Me generation. The feral generation. The yob generation. So many generations.
My concern: generations don’t spring fully-formed from the mind of Zeus. Each generation is shaped by the generation before it, by parents wanting their children to have the things they didn’t or couldn’t have. By parents seeking to avoid the “mistakes” that *their* parents made. They’re shaped by the society they’re born into (which is shaped by the preceding generations). They’re shaped by the events of the time.
Did I just take a long time to write “parents are responsible for their children, and should feel so.”? I guess in a roundabout way I did.
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Back to Warcraft. If you’re finding yourself cursing out WoW’s generation Z’ers, it might be worth considering what your contributions to their attitudes and the way they have developed may have been.