Jul 12, 2011 A Must Read for Anyone Supposedly Struggling With Gen Y Narcissism
Well today’s certainly turning out to be one filled with incredulous enthusiasm and endorsements. This “must read” really hits the “generation gap” nail though–a nail that Imprint, its affiliates, its networks, parents, children and denizens all reckon with on a daily basis. Mind you, the reckoning is not with narcissistic Gen Y-ers per se, but the very questioning that concludes Gen Y-ers are more narcissistic than others.
At 33, I’m just a few years older than the oldest of what we’re now calling Millennials. Which is to say I was born just in time to inherit the wry disdain, detachment, and self-deprecation of Generation X, then watch it immediately expire and lose value. If I could choose, in retrospect, which set of music-based pathologies to spend my teenage years absorbing—the dogged outsider mumbling I picked up from indie-rock records or the brave thrusting entitlement and self-regard that allegedly speak through today’s pop—there’s a decent chance I’d take the pop. Sure, it feels gauche to say that; the path of modesty and self-sacrifice must be more noble, right? But there’s also an embarrassed, self-effacing quality there that’s hard to recommend. Besides, if those psychologists are correct, and our culture is increasingly deluged with narcissism and entitlement, we might really need pop’s poses and costumes to help us navigate it—to have songs that feel out the dimensions of every last way to think you’re hot shit.
Check out the entirety of Nitsuh Abebe’s feature on Pop Music/Defense of Superstar Narcissism in New York Magazine.
And if you aren’t already following Abebe in the social media, I highly recommend you start today.
