Rantings
My niece, Rhiannon, was visiting the other day. Yeah, she was born in 1976, not long after Fleetwood Mac released the song that left half the women her age saddled with that name. I've always wondered why people, specifically my little sister, do such things. I'll leave it to others to speculate.
Anyway, Rhiannon started bemoaning the current state of popular music - specifically how she felt today's teens don't have what she described as a music of their own. It was actually a good observation and we could have had a great discussion about it. Having studied mass media in my college years, I could have told her why, and how, that happened. I could have drawn on forty years of working in broadcasting and advertising to point out the splintering of media that's happened since the advent of the internet in the past twenty some-odd years, which gives today's teens a multitude of outlets to seek out what they like for themselves.
I could have said how I think that's actually better than when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties with two radio stations and three television stations in town that basically force-fed us what was supposed to be popular. I could have told my own tales about the kind of promotional pressure the record companies would put on the radio stations to play what they determined to be the big hit. I never got the chance. She just kept going on and on and on with her rant, making rational discussion impossible. I finally just raised my hand and said "OK, Boomer."
That only served to set her off on a new rant about how I'm the actual Baby Boomer in the room and she is proudly and undeniably the Gen X'er. I pointed out to her that she was the one going off on the 'old fart rant' when I was ready to discuss the social and technological changes that have affected the entire entertainment industry since the internet came along. She didn't like my answer, so she left.
I'll never understand the younger generations…