#this dates back to the transitions days from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

[codesquire]

For the five of you who remember this...

I just found a torrent for the Sonseed album.

[lashaina]

let’s go back to the future!

In honour of this being the last blog for this class assignment, i think it’s only appropriate to take a look back earlier readings I have not discussed. “#tbt” is one of the most popular hashtags used on Instagram to date. As a part of the millennial generation, it seems that we live for what is old and analogue. Nostalgia is the biggest fashion statement and throwbacks are the biggest trend. Instagram is littered with enough preschool pictures every Tuesday and Thursday for this to ring true to my ears at least. We live in the age where teens proclaim to be “born in the wrong generation” and blissfully purchase record players, polaroid cameras and keyboards that look like type-writers. It comes as no surprise to me that there has been an emergence of a so called “IRL Fetish.” When it comes to communication, what is the oldest and most analogue form of it? Face to face conversations.

To some, “the offline” holds some sort of power to thrust the current generation into a new mental space where self acceptance soars and boredom ceases to exist because we have been transported to some kind of higher mental state; one our online lives somehow prohibit. However, it’s important to take notice of the fact that we are constantly connected across networks causes the “few” moments we spend offline to be more precious. The constant badgering and pressuring to disconnect and unplug often do the opposite. As human beings we often have difficultly processing the term “no.” More often than not, telling someone “Don’t look” almost encourages them to look.

The notion of cyber pessimism is not often allocated to the Millennial generation because we are often described as having been born with an iPad in our hands as we were raised in the time when there was a transition from web 1.0 to web 2.0. Although we should feel almost at home in the wake of technological innovation, majority of millennials are drawn to the off-the-grid lifestyle being sold by cyber pessimists. This is not only as a result of us bearing witness to moral break-downs and Internet crime, it is also because it’s the “in thing” to do. Bashing the online and online interactions evolved almost as distinct as the “vintage aesthetic.”

We say that everything comes back in style. By this logic, the youth in the era of my own children might look to our days as being the best days simply because it’s the popular thing to do and “face to face communication” may be an afterthought. 

Works Cited

Lindgren, Simon. Digital Media and Society. SAGE, 2017.

Jurgenson, Nathan. “The IRL Festish”. The New Inquiry. 28 June. 2012. https://thenewinquiry.com/the-irl-fetish/. Accessed 15 November 2017.