Talkin' About The "Barney Generation"

There's something wrong with the world today... a lot, Aerosmith might not know the cause, but when talking about human problems, people and their education are the usual suspects.

Young adults, born in the late 80s and early 90s, are engraving their cultural notions on pop culture, just like every generation since the birth of pop culture has left their mark. However, unlike any generation before, there is a pronounced an alarming lack of vanguardism and iconoclasm in modern pop culture. Why is this alarming? you ask, well, for starters I think that it is a symptom of conformism, and given the current state of affairs of the world today, that is really something that needs to be addressed, we are being bombarded with sterile, gentrified, childish, ignorant ideas from all fronts.

Even in a day and age with the internet as a household service, the diversity of ideas seems to be a dead scene, and ignorance goes rampantly through every social strata today, even when information is one click away; of course, it doesn't matter how much you read, intelligence only thrives in open-minds (which doesn't mean "accept any idea", but it means explore diverse ideas with critical and objective eyes to get the best result possible), it's not found in any book or movie, it is something you apply to the world, not the other way around.

Where does Barney the Dinosaur fit in the scheme of all this, you ask? Well, this kids had the misfortune of being indoctrinated (seriously) with the shallow education from children programing from Barney to Disney. The influence dominates the mainstream; the nursery rhymes in the phrasing of songs, made-up nostalgia, the mediocre beats and MIDIs, the abuse of editing programs, the color schemes, the messages, the lexicon, movies and TV seem to be hour-long photographs or FX catalogues instead of being used to tell stories. Even the small medium of comics has had a boom in lousy storytelling and fans protesting the craft (seriously, how do you protest about a subjective subject-matter)...

In this self-celebrated "pink" points of view (devoid of any type of antagonism), virtues aren't learned or earned, but taken for granted. This hippie nightmare has mindfucked the kids really hard, and now they think any paradigm can be resolved with simple gestures like, wearing glasses to be smart, or, that any stupid idea deserves respect just because it exists... merits and content don't seem to matter anymore. This, at least the way I understand things, is a serious problem, how the hell do we expect them to distinguish facts from fiction?

• The 30s had horror features, Superman, and hardboiled & pulp fictions.
• The 40s had the Beat generation, post-war literature, Swing, and a golden period for cinema.
• The 50s had rogue comic book artists, Elvis and the Rock N' Roll pioneers, Johny Cash, Rod Serling, and Pop Art.
• The 60s had psychedelic rock, the Marvel Age of comics, John Lennon, Jim Morrisson, independent arthouse/B movies, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV.
• The 70s had Kiss, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, feminism in politics, video games, Star Wars, Bruce Lee, Punk Rock, and Splatter features.
• The 80s had American Hardcore & alternative independent music, extreme Metal, High Concept cinema, Pop royalty, Hip Hop, and grim & gritty comics.
• The 90s had an alternative mainstream, the rise of Black Metal, sitcoms, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Manson, alternative comics and cartooning, neo-Noir films, Grunge, SoCal Punk, Industrial & cyberpunk culture, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The XXI century has had auto-tune, shallowly ripping-off and re-frying stuff from other decades, a rise in fundamentalism, making classic monsters gay, painfully slow movies, the glorification of people that literally do nothing, the loss of privacy and some other basic rights, mass manipulation of media, and so forth. And it's not that there was nothing wrong in the previous century but, back then there were this figures who thought different, leaders that would stand against rampant mediocrity and stamp a message of diversity in their work. The closest to that from this century is Lady Gaga, whose entire revolution is imitating Madonna and dressing funny while pretending that's art, that is all that culture today can provide us with.

What do we have to look forward to? Paranoia about 2012 being the end of the world due to misinformed fucks (the Mayans made no such predictions)? Ignoring the dangers of religion and accepting the consequences under a hypocrite "liberal without a cause" banner? A pronounced vegetative state in the  arts? Turning into planet Wuss? Seriously, what's up with the acceptance of this authoritarian corporatocracy as a parental figure, and the complete lack of interest in anything that doesn't have bright colors? What's with this Kindergarden state of mind where most choose to remain ignorant of the world around them as long as they are pampered by conformist patronizing media?

"When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts" -George Carlin-

Nerd VS Geek (No, They Are Not The Same).

Well, as many of you might have noticed, I'm a bitter asshole with hints of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that is my cue for getting deep into what a nerd is: it's a term that refers to an intelligent[sic] but single-minded person obsessed with a non-social hobby or pursuit (like comic book collecting, computer programming, playing RPGs). This, in turn, has pushed the nerd away from social acceptance. along with other types of different people without marked social skills by the more mainstream yuppies. When this happened, they were all equally referred to as geeks (a word that was used in the freakshows that denotes someone that will behead a live chicken with their mouth).

This word was used in the highschool hallways as a derogatory way to call someone a freak and an outcast, regardless of said person being a nerd, a booger-eater, someone with some kind of speech impediment, an over-sensitive chronic crier, a retard, someone that peed their pants... long-story short, it was a form to mock alienated people that the jock/bully types adopted to screw with you.

Then came the 21st. Century and the world's identity crisis with what I like to call "The Barney Generation"  who adopted the hipster self-celebrating (which I have dissected before) culture as their own. These kids grew up thinking that a geek was the same as a nerd because, learning from the socially-driven side of the equation, they assumed that when they saw their big jock brother shoving some nerd into the lockers and calling him a geek, that's what it represented.

Self-proclaimed geeks today very rarely show the characteristics of the nerd types of people: They claim to like comics and such, but most of them don't read (let alone buy) comics, they mostly know the characters from the blockbuster films, plus, in a double-moral standard they tend to think comics are as ridiculous as Adam West's Batman portrayal, and that comic book fans are weird. They are not usually above your average computer user, they don't really seem to know any films that aren't mainstream (and if a movie is indie, it doesn't imply it's not mainstream), most of them are unfamiliar with what an RPG is, they are almost never science literate, their boutique nerd notions are very obviously taken from The Big Bang Theory show (whose characters I like to think of as boutique nerds), and when they claim they are a Star Wars geek, they know nothing other than having watched the films, and not even the names of characters in them like Bib Fortuna or Grand Moff Tarkin. It's ok to not know this, by all means, most yuppies are OK with it, I just think it's moronic to claim to be a nerd to fit in, in fact, the only thing they seem obsessed about is social acceptance, being precisely something nerds don't do

It still isn't cool to be a nerd, it's just cool to think you are one. Well, I'm sorry to say this, hipsters, but wearing glasses doesn't mean you are smart, having a Wonder Woman shirt doesn't imply you are a comic book savant (and much less if you don't even know what Themyscira is), everybody who listens to music knows who Led Zeppelin is (lets not pretend it's an underground band)... just get it through your head, if that obsessive-compulsive take on things is not there, you are not a nerd, because it actually takes a lot of effort and time (and money), it's not a matter of putting on glasses and a DC Comics shirt.

Finally, reading the Wikipedia entry of a comic book character is not the same as reading comics!!!

"People like us have built this culture on a century of oppression, and loneliness, and now it’s been cocted by a bunch of neo-nerd, hipster, douchebags for profit!"-Zero Charisma trailer-

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MY LIST OF OVER-RATED COMIC BOOK WRITERS

This was originally a post I made at www.comicvine.com and I thought, it could work here too:

Obviously, the following writers have made some awesome comics, but, to me, their status seems unjustified.

Brian Michael Bendis: I love his Daredevil and Powers, but his run as Marvel's master of ceremonies was stupid at best, and his take on most titles read like it was Clerks.

Grant Morrisson: All-Star Superman is one of the best Supes reads ever, and Animal Man was nothing less than brilliant. That being said, I hate his tendency to make everything over-the-top for the sake of it like what happened with New X-Men, he really didn't get what the X-Men are about, and Joss Whedon had to jump on board to clean his mess. The Invisibles to me were a hippie mess that tried to be revolutionary but didn't know how to, and to me his take on Batman was childish at best, not to metion the out of time thing and the bullet could be a rip-off of what happened to Captain America. Also, his tendency for obscure references is mere fan service, not genius...

Geoff Johns: He is a solid writer overall, but, he basically is obsessed with fan service and Silver Age revival, and that tends to get in the way of good ideas he has that turn out to be less than spectacular.

Stan Lee: Don't get me wrong, the man had great ideas and was a master of PR, but most of his great ideas were executed and taken to the goal line by others.

Kevin Smith: The Golden Nerd Boy used to do such great things like Green Arrow and Daredevil. After Batman; Cacophopny, I am AMAZED he still has a job in the comic book industry. He obviously understands Batman less than Tim Burton does, his take on the Green Hornet was insulting, and I'm not a fan of the Six Million Dollar Man, but I bet the fans will get pissed.

Mark Millar: His best work is interesting, like Red Son and 1985, but they aren't like groundbreaking legendary by any means. Kick-Ass was moronic, it wasn't realistic at all, or how many Hit Girls do you know? If you call that realistic, my next door neighbor should be Bruce Wayne!

Hipsters; Why Are They A Bunch Of Comformist Douchebags?

First of all, let's define what the word hipster means and where does it come from: to my understanding, the word virtually means "fashion chaser" (hip or hep were terms used in the 40s in the Jazz circles to describe something hot and new), and it was used to describe the beatnik kids that were trying to emulate the Beat generation in a very superficial way, completely oblivious of any intellectual depth and cultural meaning. In my opinion, the post-war generation of the atomic era had a severe identity crisis.

The above paragraph describes also what "poser" means, though this term became more popular in the 80s and 90s. They never really disappeared, they just remained around being hippies (derived from hipster), or became attached to any number of subcultures in a desperate attempt to find a sense of belonging, and in turn, after a period of time, the mainstream assimilated part of this subcultures through these hipster filters.

It was up to this century that the hipsters took off as a culture by themselves. To my knowledge, thanks to two factors: kids born in the late eighties and early nineties that grew up immerse in stuff like Barney and Happy Meals; and the internet, that made a lot of stuff very accessible without any effort for their entire life. This, in turn, created the stupidly immense identity void the world has to deal with now. Why? Because this generation was brought up to believe everything is worthless, meaningless, and transitory (don't be a wise-ass associating this to the cosmological fact), take that bravado, and put it in the middle of the fastest changing cultural and social paradigms any civilization has ever faced, and you get a bunch of morons that celebrate themselves while stealing ideas from other types of people (like the ugly looking big specs or the 80s tight pants) because they are mostly just mindless consumers incapable of original thinking that need to be embraced and accepted by their peers. Some even think this trends, the music... are something original, while in fact, anyone older knows that they are just stealing 80s synth-pop and the tired chord patterns of the Velvet Underground that have been a constant in music since the 70s. Plus, they don't mind mutilating the message, the scene, the concepts, why? because it came very easy to them, they literally only had to move a finger, downloads are one click away.

I remember being a fanboy since an early age, obsessed with comic books and music, the difference is that there was no internet and the other communication facilities we have today, so, trips to the library, spending hours in bookstores, magazine stands and record stores was quite common, and some stuff was basically unattainable, to get like, demo tapes or b-sides and stuff, you basically had know the band personally. And to get Wednesday comics in Mexico City? It was hell, you had to hunt down the issues through all the stores that carried american magazine publications, and there never was any sense of order. Not to mention, none of this was cheap. You basically bought 1% of the stuff you wanted. TV and movies? They took forever to come (if they actually were broadcasted here), and there was always the factor that they were edited, or filled with commercials. If you liked a song, well, you listened to the whole album, as the artist intended, not to mention that in most cases you had to pay for them, unlike now that people claim to like a band but only have like one mp3 of said music talent, and they got it for free.

That's why I get mad when hipster kids tell me they like comics because the downloaded Watchmen (and probably didn't get much out of it, since they aren't accustomed to reading comics or understanding their context and background), or when they regurgitate the Wikipedia article of some band, when they haven't even listened to more than a couple of songs by them. I'm not saying it is mandatory to be passionate about this things, but don't claim to be a nerd and hijack the scene, when you have no fucking clue whatsoever, not even of who you are as an individual, let alone culturally. Don't tell me you are the art vanguard when all you do, is just a re-fried version of stuff older than yourself, or consider yourself an informed critic when you still think the Beatles are a groundbreaking act (they were, 50 years ago). Just because this kids don't have a clue, it doesn't make it right to treat what some of us do love and have invested time, money, effort, and our hearts into, like a cheap whore.

This kids have interesting behavior patterns (beyond auto-celebrating every stupid, tired "ideas" they "come up" with). For example, it appears that calling a hipster "hipster", is an insult, kind of like calling Tony Hawk a "skater" in a derogatory fashion (if that is actually possible), what's so hard about accepting you are a hipster? And funny enough, they see themselves as misunderstood geeks, thinking geek means nerd, when geek was actually intended to be a derogatory term, and not really for intellectual types, but for the smelly, booger-eating freaks that lurk around high-school, the term comes directly from the freakshow geeks, that ripped off chicken heads with their mouths. There is also the "art" factor, no one has ever really defined art, except for them. apparently. They all take photographs (or is it the camera that does that?), they are all music-savant DJs (apparently, pushing buttons on a console is art), produce and enjoy mind-numbingly slow, plotless, derivative, unexciting movies (that would work better as photographs), but in no case you will find them pushing the envelope, perfecting their craftmanship (that's too pretentious, and trust me, these people KNOW pretentious).

In conclusion: Most kids today seem to be hipsters (even if they don't want to acknowledge it) that ruin everything for everyone else and don't have respect for anything other than their own egos, even though ironically enough, most lack a personality of their own.  By the way, I found this fun poster you can enjoy, even if I don't exactly concur with the Emo part.

MY MOMMY IS SO PROUD OF ME!

Wrote this in one of those silly Facebook games, the point is you have to make sentences using words that start with the same letter. I know a dog could have crapped a better one, but I liked it so fuck-off!

Dawn, Dug Dottie, Decaying & Defleshed, Dumped into my Dodge. Darling, Death Doesn't Disuade Damn Depressing Dopes from going Down, Drooling.

MUSIC CHANNEL UPDATED!!!

My newly improved music channel is now up and running, if you want to kill some time and think I listen to awesome music, stay a bit and check it out ;) check it out at the bottom of this blog (the thing that looks like an iPhone).