I didn't even know I was a millennial until I looked it up. The term not just describes a group of people
born in a certain time in history, but also a culture that is fading like those before it.
...but you should still be jealous of us.
If it weren't for us you wouldn't have VR headsets, switches, PS5s or any of that shit.
If it weren't for us you wouldn't have twerking contests.
Our teen movies inspired a whole genre of children's television that hasn't really been topped since.
There would be no That's so Raven without Clarissa Explains it all. There would be no Love and Hip Hop without The Real World.
All the "trap" music out there now in some way recycles the samples from the hip hop we grew up on. Which in turn sampled the soul, funk, blues and R&B of our parents and your grandparents.
You see TUPAC as a long dead icon. We see him in Cali, Japan, and some island no one knows about in southeast Asia.
It blew my mind the other day when I realized how much I have seen since I was 5 until now. I remember fighting over the one controller to play SUPER MARIO WORLD. There was a two player mode but you had to take turns. Now you can play against people all over the world.
We have been training our thumbs since the 80s. You should be green with envy.
I get cursed out on a regular basis by teenagers online. When they find out I am a black woman in my late 30s wooping their ass, they sign off.
We didn't have all these school shootings. Do you know why?
We were wooping ass and fighting. We didn't need to shoot eat other because we were too busy punching each other in the face. And if your parents found out you didn't fight back you got an ass wooping from them.
We didn't have internet trolls like you guys do. We had dial up. By the time you got online you were too grateful to harass anyone else. Hell you might get disconnected if someone called the house.
When I was a kid the last thing on my mind was going viral. Going viral meant HIV to us. And HIV was a DEATH SENTENCE.
Now you can have HIV for like 20 years and look better than someone 20 years younger than you.
We didn't have "lean." We had "lean wit it rock wit it."
The only songs we really grew up singing about drugs were about marijuana and the camp counselors taught them to us.
Remember summer camp? Oh wait no you don't.
Now summer camp is an opportunity to take selfies in front of beautiful landscapes.
We used to get lost in them. We would discover things when there were still things to discover.
I'm jealous of myself. I pray for the Lord to send us a genius to build a time machine. I want to go back to a time where technology advanced in waves of joy instead of trickles of economic manipulation.
I actually turned down a cell phone when I was a teenager. Why would I need one? Everyone I fucked with had a house phone or lived down the street.
We played in the woods and somehow had enough imagination to create an entire digital universe.
A universe that some youth now get lost in.
I want to see original shit again; not 5,00 Avengers movies, 34 slave movies and way-too-late sequels to shit that was just fine solo.
But I still feel lucky enough to be in that sweet spot. The one where I was old enough to know what was going on but young enough to joy ride. I was eased into technology. I can still appreciate a scraped knee, honey suckle, and a long hike. I am attached to my phone but feel liberated when I get to leave it behind. When my battery is dying I don't panic. I sigh and say:
"Finally, I have a reason to go outside. "
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