The setting is Starbucks on a sunny day, today in fact. The usual players are involved in our mid-day drama. In the corner of the room: a grandfather (60ish grayish), a father (Ben and Jerry’s lifestyle) and a grandson (happy as can be, 2ish) share small talk. I overheard the grandfather tell his son,

“I want to know more about Generation Y.”

I couldn’t help myself.

“Excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude, I heard what you said, and…”

A minute later I was immersed in the conversation, recommending Y Pulse and discussing, Millennials, the recent Newsweek and Time Magazine stories on new media.

The conversation expanded quickly. Four people in plush nearby chairs, three women: one post-doc; one new mom and older woman, and one new dad, added their opinions. Spotlight on the older woman:

“I can’t stand people talking on their cell phones. They’re just so rude, rude
people. The other day, I was walking and someone was looking right at me and
cussing. They were on their wireless phone!” she said in horror.

“Rude people are rude. Whether or not they have phones. If this were 2,000
years ago, that same guy would have pumped you with a bison bone,” I added.

“I think of it like Nazi Germany. I mean, people do crazy things when they have
the right environment to commit evil, ” she said.

I paused not knowing if I should respond or just let its absurdity linger like pop fizzing in my throat. Fizzle it is…

Now the post-doc interjects:

“I don’t see how people can text and instant message. It’s so in personal,
there’s no voice…!”

“There is a voice. When you grow up instant messenging and text messaging, you
can pick up people’s styles….their voice..And sometimes it’s just easier to text and or
instant messages—you can say a lot more, take risks and there’s always
continuous partial attention, gotta love that,” I said.

Here comes the chorus of our dailiy drama…Facebook.com. I flipped open my laptop and gave a demonstration.

“It’s like classmates.com,” said the new mom.
“It’s like friendster.com,” added the post-doc.

The grandfather seemed to understand the Facebook in this dismissive—“It’s what the young kids are doing now,” kinda way. Rather than launch into the whole “new media isn’t young media,” discussion, I packed up, and as we say in generation Y speak, I bounced.

P.S. As an added bonus for your attention, here’s an article worth reading. You heard about the newest trends? People Taking cell phones to the grave.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.