Blogocentric Formulations

Day 20: The "Why" Generation

*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" 

Day 20 Prompt: How do you predict people of the future will remember the reputation of the generation of teens living today? Pay attention to pop culture like music, movies, TV shows, and literature.

I really, really hope that the current generation is remembered for more than the reality television generation. While there are certainly great reality shows like "The Amazing Race" and "Top Chef," I worry that insipid programming like "Keeping up with the Kardashians," and "Real Housewives of [Wherever]" are going to dominate the media landscape. The really sad thing, though, is that I don't think this kind of mindless media is limited to television. This is also the generation of making increasingly-worse sequels of movies until every last dollar is wrought out of a franchise, the generation of Auto-Tune and synthesized sound to replace live singing and instrumental music, and the generation of the Twilight book franchise as well as more "supernatural romance" teen book series than I could possibly name. (SIDE NOTE: I was mortified to discover that both a local Barnes & Noble and a local Target recently gutted their regular fiction sections, cutting them down dramatically to make way for an entire "Teen Paranormal Fiction" subsection. Ugh!)

More than anything, what I fear the future will remember of this generation is their limited attention spans and hunger for "mindless" entertainment where the goal isn't necessarily to impress with the quality of one's original work, but to get as much attention as fast as possible at almost any expense.

As far as predictions go, I hope I'm wrong. But considering what's popular among teenagers in today's society, I fear that this generation's media won't be remembered as much more than an embarrassment. True, there are some remarkably unique voices still out there... and if we're lucky we'll be like generations of the past where it's the truly great accomplishments that are remembered and not all this other filler.