Random Music Talk L: I Have A Dreamsicle

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I meant to say something the other day, but forgot. Was someone suggesting that in the Midwest we don't use plows for less than a FOOT of snow?
 
That isn't even a rainbow though.... and it's vertical, not horizontal. Have No Age claimed ownership of gradients? I hate Kings of Leon, but that just seems petty and lame
 
It is petty and lame, which is disappointing coming from a band the caliber of No Age. There are dozens of instances of that same kind color scheme and text on a shirt.
 
This is probably better suited for FYM, but not all you guys post in there and I know what kind of responses it'll get. I was looking for some input from the younger posters here.

'The Dumbest Generation' by Mark Bauerlein - latimes.com

Is what this guy is putting forward accurate to the younger generation who have grown up with the internet always being there? It would certainly seem so on the surface. Or is it just a case of the loudest and most active voices being the dumbest, but not necessarily the majority? (The same kids that, in times past, would've just written the word 'fuck' on the bathroom stall and high fived their buddies) I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm a little more than a half generation removed
 
lazarus said:
Damn. That was one of the fastest sites.

Mediafire is still best for music anyway.
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Yep. And if mediafire fails for whatever reason, go to filestube and it'll point you where you need to go.

For about half a second I doubted that I would be able to find the Wire in its entirety online, but I found the whole series on sidereel in about 5 minutes. :up: Even without megavideo, there are plenty of other options.
 
Jive Turkey said:
This is probably better suited for FYM, but not all you guys post in there and I know what kind of responses it'll get. I was looking for some input from the younger posters here.

'The Dumbest Generation' by Mark Bauerlein - latimes.com

Is what this guy is putting forward accurate to the younger generation who have grown up with the internet always being there? It would certainly seem so on the surface. Or is it just a case of the loudest and most active voices being the dumbest, but not necessarily the majority? (The same kids that, in times past, would've just written the word 'fuck' on the bathroom stall and high fived their buddies) I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm a little more than a half generation removed
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my impression from the review is that he's an old grump :waiting:

The problem is that instead of using the Web to learn about the wide world, young people instead mostly use it to gossip about each other and follow pop culture, relentlessly keeping up with the ever-shifting lingua franca of being cool in school. The two most popular websites by far among students are Facebook and MySpace. "Social life is a powerful temptation," Bauerlein explains, "and most teenagers feel the pain of missing out."
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You could substitute television into that quote quite easily. This is a summarizing book review, so it's possible there's some almighty nuance being choked out. But the book's title is "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, or Don't Trust Anyone Under 30", so I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He apparently talks about how people spend less time reading nowadays- the media world has exploded over the last 25 years or so, and with limited hours in the day I'm not surprised it has eaten into time that might normally be spent chowing down on 400 page novels. That's not a value judgement, I just like watching HIMYM.

One of the most interesting things I've read is that people today now have more experience writing in their everyday life than ever before. On a literal level it's far easier to compose 1,000 words in a Word document than painstakingly write out a letter by hand; and knocking out 2500+ posts at a place like Interference gives me far more experience composing (hopefully) pithy responses and interpreting context, compared to....I don't know, meeting 3 or 4 local U2 fans once a week in a pre-internet era.

link
A more fundamental problem is what Bauerlein has in mind by "dumbest." If it means "holding the least knowledge," then he has a case. Gen Y cares less about knowing information than knowing where to find information. (If you are reading this online, a few keystrokes would easily bring you, for the questions so far, vice president, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, North and South Korea, Lake Superior.) And it is a travesty that employers are spending $1.3 billion a year to teach basic writing skills, as a 2003 survey of managers found. But if dumb means lacking such fundamental cognitive capacities as the ability to think critically and logically, to analyze an argument, to learn and remember, to see analogies, to distinguish fact from opinion … well, here Bauerlein is on shakier ground.

First, IQ scores in every country that measures them, including the United States, have been rising since the 1930s. Since the tests measure not knowledge but pure thinking capacity—what cognitive scientists call fluid intelligence, in that it can be applied to problems in any domain—then Gen Y's ignorance of facts (or of facts that older people think are important) reflects not dumbness but choice. And who's to say they are dumb because fewer of them than of their grandparents' generation care who wrote the oratorio "Messiah" (which 35 percent of college seniors knew in 2002, compared with 56 percent in 1955)? Similarly, we suspect that the decline in the percentage of college freshmen who say it's important to keep up with political affairs, from 60 percent in 1966 to 36 percent in 2005, reflects at least in part the fact that in 1966 politics determined whether you were going to get drafted and shipped to Vietnam. The apathy of 2005 is more a reflection of the world outside Gen-Yers' heads than inside, and one that we bet has changed tack with the historic candidacy of Barack Obama. Alienation is not dumbness.
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I joined my first internet forum at age 11, and one of the consistent lessons I've learned is that old people are often full of shit. I'm not sure what platonic ideal I've failed.
 
LemonMelon said:
Yep. And if mediafire fails for whatever reason, go to filestube and it'll point you where you need to go.

For about half a second I doubted that I would be able to find the Wire in its entirety online, but I found the whole series on sidereel in about 5 minutes. :up: Even without megavideo, there are plenty of other options.
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Bitch, please. I know all about Filestube.

YOU'RE NOT TALKING TO SOME ROOKIE HERE!
 
Jive Turkey said:
You do realize how ironic this is, right?
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Yeah, I do. But I've read/heard the same thing a million times before, that we don't read books, that we spend all our time following celebs on twitter or talking shit on Facebook, that we're the dumbest generation, blah blah blah. There's certainly elements of truth to all that (but who's to say older generations wouldn't have done the same had they grown up with the technology?) but it's a tired generalisation that absolutely doesn't hold true to ALL Gen Y/Z. I hate being tarred with the one brush. They all write these articles as if in 20 years time there's not going to be any smart businessmen, or politicians, or activists, etc.
 
Well does it hold to true more of your generation than it doesn't? I think that's the important question. For myself, I use the internet more for learning that for anything else (well, learning and finding things to make me laugh), but is the wealth of knowledge being squandered on the under 20s? Or is youth culture just being magnified and put in the faces of people who 20 years ago would've been blind to it (ie, they've never been that interested in extracurricular learning) ? I'm not agreeing with the article. mobvok makes some great points too. Just thought it was an interesting topic as one of the most irritating things about the 'youngins' today is their atrocious spelling. It's like they embrace ignorance. But anyway, back your your tamagochi's and super nintendos or whatever the kids are doing these days
 
Jive Turkey said:
Well does it hold to true more of your generation than it doesn't?
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I don't know. Too hard to say. On the face of it, you would have to say yes. But there's still plenty of brilliant minds and I just think it's an unnecessary, unhelpful generalisation.
 
I'm Gen X and we were all supposed to have "McJobs" and no long term career aspirations. I got tired of the generalizations, too.

That being said, every time some whippersnapper types "should of" instead of "should've," I want to reach out and internet punch them.
 
The one that makes me rage the most is people using "his" when they mean "he's". I deleted a good friend off facebook because I was sick of seeing it.

I also have a friend who claims to be strongly against bad spelling/grammar, but she also uses "should of" and "your" :mad:
 
The world is better for Gen Y and all that has made them what they are. Fuck it if they can't spell (or whatever), you could never - ever - draft them. Won't happen. Ever.

Also, didn't read the article.
 
cobl04 said:
The one that makes me rage the most is people using "his" when they mean "he's". I deleted a good friend off facebook because I was sick of seeing it.
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That's funny, only because it shows how different accents can cause different poor spelling habits. We'd never see that one over here
 
cobl04 said:
I just think it's an unnecessary, unhelpful generalisation.
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I dunno, if it's true that the amount of dumb kids is increasing, it should probably be addressed.

Personally, having thought about it more, I think it's probably just a case of kid's culture being more on display to the older generations than ever before.... I'm sure we did/said some pretty retarded stuff when we were young too
 
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