5 Ways We Ruined the Occupy Wall Street Generation
#2. Creating the Idea that Entertainment Has No Monetary Value
If I type the phrase, "piracy hurts the entertainment industry," several hundred people will, without reading the following words, skip down to the comments and carefully explain that pirates don't actually download music or movies or games unless they weren't going to buy it anyway. Then they'll pull out some studies showing that music downloaders also buy the most music.
But the bottom line is the music industry lost more than half of its sales since downloading became a thing. And, by what I'm sure some of you will say is pure coincidence, PC game sales collapsed in that exact same time period. It has nothing to do with whether you think piracy is wrong, or if you can justify your own personal habits. The black and white numbers say it's factually harder to make money by creating entertainment now.
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I guess that's not always a bad thing.
That's bad for you. And you can thank us for getting it started.
It made sense at the time. When I was a kid, buying music was a huge pain in the ass. CDs, cassette tapes and records were expensive as fuck, so you had to be very selective about what you bought. Finding out that a record sucked was like taking a month's worth of allowance out of your wallet, wiping your ass with it and then setting it on fire (you owe my entire generation $20, Motley Crue).
And that's if you could find the album at all; if you lived in a small town, you didn't exactly have a record store on every block. The ones you had were small and basically never had the album you were looking for (try being a small town Midwestern kid in 1989 trying to find a copy of Straight Outta Compton). The rest of your music came from Wal-Mart, who by the way didn't sell the uncensored version of any record, and you usually didn't know that until you got home and played it.
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The only words left on an Eazy-E album after censoring were conjunctions.
What I'm trying to say is that price, availability and quality were shit. The music industry was an absolute fucking mess, and we were at the mercy of it.
Until the Internet, and specifically Napster came along.
You mean we can get just the song we want, for free? Well, hell, that's no worse than recording it off the radio. So, we jumped on that shit and never looked back. Then the dam broke. We started downloading PC games, even though that industry had done nothing to wrong us. Yes, it was illegal, but it was illegal in the way that speeding on a country road at night is illegal. You had never met anyone who had actually gotten caught doing it.
Before we knew it, we had created a new reality in which creative content is effectively worthless. Now, kids trade iPod libraries in one swipe, a few gigabytes of songs zipping invisibly over a thin wire in a few seconds -- a library that, once upon a time, would have cost more than your first car.
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It looked a lot better before I discovered ramping.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to do that old guy "Back in MY day we APPRECIATED food because we had to KILL IT OURSELVES" thing. I'm saying that we've trained you to expect created works to be free, and that will have the effect of killing off a lot of the coolest stuff. You can snicker and say, "Oh, I REALLY feel bad that the guy who made Transformers 3 won't be able to buy his sixth summer home" but that's the point -- a blockbuster can afford that loss. A cool, risky indie film can't.
See, when piracy hit Hollywood, they didn't stop funding blockbusters -- they stopped funding edgy, creative movies. They're going with safer and safer bets.
Piracy did that. We got that ball rolling, and there is no going back. Instead of Reservoir Dogs, we get Jack & Jill ... and you have no idea how deeply sorry I am for that.
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"We're filming the Super Bowl crowd shot today. Bring in Eddie Murphy."
#1. Taking Away Every Reason To Go Outside
Recently, I noticed some ads on the cartoon channels that my kids watch, urging their viewers to turn off the TV and go outside:
Needless to say, at that moment my oldest son was on the computer, my middle son was playing a video game in his bedroom, and my youngest daughter was watching Adventure Time in the living room (because that show is fucking awesome). When they got bored, they'd switch places. And if I didn't make them take a break from it, they'd do that all weekend without batting an eye. I have to make them go outside like it's a chore, because I know they need the exercise.
Older people talk about how fat you're getting, about childhood obesity and diabetes and how you're all lazy slugs. They imply that back in their day, kids got up and did 50 jump squats every morning just because they enjoyed the sense of pride in their self discipline. But let me let you in on a little secret: We only got exercise because there was nothing fun to do indoors. If they had Modern Warfare multiplayer when I was a kid, we would have played the shit out of it.
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"We don't put up with that pussy sniper shit."
Instead, we had three channels on the TV, video games were something rich kids had and there was no Internet. So when we wanted to have fun, we did live-action Modern Warfare, i.e., grabbing plastic toy guns and chasing our friends around the yard pretending to kill each other (and the toy guns back then were awesome, they had magazines and slides you could click back like you were reloading them).
All that running around burned calories. Not because we cared about fitness -- what kid does? -- but because we were waiting for somebody to invent something better. They did, and now we spend so much of our day on our asses that we have to remind ourselves that there are legs below it (no offense, Legless Carl).
Again, it's unquestionably progress -- I wouldn't go back to a time before I could pay all of my bills, catch up on missed episodes of The Office, order a pizza and do all of my work without ever leaving my keyboard. But you kids are also missing something crucial. Not just the great outdoors and swinging into a creek on a rope or tackling somebody into a pile of raked leaves. I'm talking about in-person interaction, away from the grownups, outside the structure of a classroom or organized sport. I'm talking about kids, on their own, getting in trouble and setting things on fire. Kid stuff.
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Boys will be boys.
Because why should my kids invite friends over to play? They're all right there, on XBox Live. Why should they go out to a movie? We have Netflix.
We talk a lot on this site about how geek culture has taken over the mainstream and I worry that another part of geek culture -- the social awkwardness and inability to deal with social settings -- is also going to become the norm. We've slowly killed off most of the activities where kids get together with other kids and have fun (and in the process, learn how to interact).
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"It's so beautiful out here. I'm so glad I have all my friends with me to witness it."
We didn't do it on purpose. We didn't do any of this on purpose. But you'll suffer for it just the same.
So, uh, sorry about that. Our bad.
For more Cheese, check out 5 Internet Life Lessons Parents Need to Start Teaching Kids and 5 Reasons Life Actually Does Get Better.
Occupy Wallstreet isn't JUST about economic inequality or a lack of jobs for the lower/middle class, although that certainly is an important issue. It's also about the corruption of government via the legalised bribery of politicians by corporations, and the felonies of fraud perpetrated against the American people in the form of toxic mortgages and the fact that none of the people behind these felonies faced any consequences whatsoever.
ReplyWallstreet and bankers have crashed the economy and are not being held accountable, hell we handed them trillions of dollars of taxpayer money in the form of the bailouts. The top 1% is also not paying their fair share of taxes, and they have seen incredible gains in income while the rest of the brackets barely moved at all. These are all things that even Gen Xers who view younger people as 'entitled' should be able to get behind. Unless you love the idea of corporations paying politicians to do whatever they want them to, and public opinion/good be damned? Or love the idea of being defrauded and the perpetrators not being held accountable?
All of that said, good article. I can definitely see all these things having an effect on our generation, but I just think you are somewhat misguided or just ignorant about what OWS is at least partially about.
Literally all of the items in this list are things that I have already learned the hard way, some of them in a very hard way. f**k YOU older generations!
Replyi think the early part of generation y (1983-1986) was more responsible for the advent/rise of napster's popularity than generation x.
ReplyYou're wrong on the manual labor part. Flipping burgers is a s****y low paying job, but it's technically still manually labor. On the other hand, becoming an electrician is also manual labor but joining the union (here it's IBEW Local 134) and getting a journeyman's card brings $80,000+ a year assuming you work 2000 hours that year. Skilled labor jobs might be slow right now, but it's going to pick up eventually, and good pay and job security sounds a lot more appealing than crushing student loan debt and a s****y middle management job as a career goal.
ReplyDear Cracked -
ReplyIgnorance is not bliss. Kindly remove your cranium from your rectal orifice so that you may hear clearly when one of the grandmothers, employed college graduates, or veterans at any occupation near you sets you straight.
Though, I will concede "#2. Creating the Idea that Entertainment Has No Monetary Value". You have a point there.
Sincerely,
Gen X Soccer Mom
Dear Gen X Soccer Mom,
This man is not saying anything more than how the advancement of our culture has an will negatively affect the youth of this world. Ignorance is bliss. Ignoring the bad things in life and possibly even dumbing yourself down so that you can live a happier existence is a great thing. Answer me this, would you rather turn on the news and hear a story about how a mother drowned her children so you can then sit and ponder how terrible everyone involved in that situation probably feels? Or, turn on the news and hear a feel good story about a father who saves his infant daughter from a house fire? Both are real stories and both happen just as frequently as the other. Talk all the s**t you want on a website cause its not necessary to back it up (care to justify your claim? or should i just wait for my senile grandmother to tell me some out dated bullshit?) , take a step back sometime and take a look at how "ignorant" you look.
You can add photography/artwork to the list of currently undervalued creative property which people just copy and reuse. One of the few services people think it's ok to ask to have for free in exchange for 'exposure' (if the work was going to give any real exposure then you probably wouldn't have to ask). This is a lousy time to be starting out with student loans over your head and all. I went to school for photography and marketing and it's an extremely undervalued field where anyone with a $500 + camera thinks they're a pro.
ReplyAnyway, very interesting article. Thanks!
"We've slowly killed off most of the activities where kids get together with other kids and have fun (and in the process, learn how to interact)."
ReplyThe above is true, but as someone who went through high school in the late 90's with the socially isolating luxuries of email, AIM, and Warcraft II, all I can say to this is, thank god for college keg parties!
Wow, I can't believe that a Gen-X'er is apologizing to Gen Y for the lives the Boomers gave us, too. We X'ers are that tiny generation between Boomers and Y'ers. They even call the Y'ers "Echo-Boomers" because they are another big generation with the same entitled beliefs and modes of dealing with problems. We X'ers are the survivors smashed in the middle, the creative ones who will find a way through whatever these other generations throw at us while they completely ignore us. We don't always do it gracefully, but we were first at a lot of this, and, as we spend our lives working and paying off student loans while raising the next generation, we don't have to apologize to anyone for what we've become.
ReplyBeing born in 1985 seems like the biggest f*****g curse in the world. Be glad you had 5+ years to escape this horrible young American life. We live in a world where "everything can be taken from you at any given time." That's what Gen Y feels like.
One thing you didn't mention WRT #5: most of these kids went into massive amounts of student loan debt to get their degrees, and flipping burgers won't pay off their debts AND pay their household bills. That's why a lot of kids now will not go get a job at McDonald's.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThat's really funny, I spent my college working at a low paying job and then did a low paying job after college to pay off any debts I did incur. Next to no free time for years, but debt free only 4 years later! (No, I did not have 50k in debt, but my point is sitting on your ass doing nothing = worst then minimum wage)
@Charles
You would pretty much be one of the lucky ones then. I'm in the exact same situation (low-paying job after college while trying to get work in my trained field), but without the various things that I have helping me out, actually *existing* at all would be fundamentally impossible.
You're absolutely right that doing nothing = worse than minimum wage. The problem people are running into (with greater or lesser degrees of validity) is that even if they want to do the opposite of nothing and work like mad to cover the expenses they've accrued from college, etc. the option simply isn't there. Heck, just scan comments near to this ones for examples of that.
@Charles, I still fail to see how any of what Lee said was "really funny..." I think the word you were looking for was "tragic" or "a damn shame." The basic idea of college is to make more money, but it is actually just creating more financial issues for a lot of people who actually believed that.
"even though that industry has done nothing wrong to us"
ReplyHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
you would be very hard pressed to find a game industry company that isn't trying to screw its customers out of unnecessary/ unneeded money. Nobody even bothers to make single player betas that could lower glitches and current devs charge over $3 per map when they release "map packs," which would be excusable if/when they're not doing anything else. The entire industry is designed around piracy, and as a poor college student, I wouldn't buy most of the games I would pirate. I owned most of them. The new games I "steal" are the old games I send a giant middle finger to for trying to charge me for something I already own.
try stealing a dvd for a plot you already watched and then try to talk your way out with that silly excuse to a cop. Seriously sir you may royally f**k off then people like you b***h when game companies ban your ip and comp from their products and make your pirated copy a large waste of space or better yet ban you from psn or xbox live, if it where up to me i would simply send a worm and fry your system or comp all together but fortunately the hard people who work at EA or Bethesta are better people than me.
I don't think Treet read a single word of your post Alcibiades. I also find it odd that Treet describes doing immoral things to those he feels are wrong, but is clearly upset at those people for doing the same thing.
Me and my brother were lucky kids, we lived next door to our grandparents who own their own land. It's a pretty good chunk especially to a kid with no sense of perspective. It has vast forests and an irrigation ditch. We used to play outside all the time.
ReplyMost kids these days don't really have an outside to go to.
Over 100,000 likes!
Replyreading this was so f*****g awesome
Replyi appreciate that this exists
Implying OWS doesn't want to "work hard".
ReplyHell, with a BS in Physics (bachelor of science) I would be happy to have a f*****g taco bell job to make ends meet properly.
What the HELL CRACKED? The VERY ARTICLE YOU LINKED TO said that PC Gaming numbers DID NOT DROP DRAMATICALLY during the creation of the internet but instead CONTINUED TO RISE. Also that article you linked to says "does not include digital sales" huh, digital sales, which might be HELPED BY THE CREATION OF THE INTERNET.
ReplyThis is double-think in the highest. I CALL BULLSHIT AND SHENANIGANS.
That college thing? Right on the nail. My parents pushed and pushed for me to go to University, and because I got good grades, it wasn't even questioned by my school that I wouldn't be. Automatic application process, etc. I hated it, I'm now in masses of debt, and unemployable to s**t jobs because "my degree means I won't want to be a lifer" and unemployable to good jobs because I can't afford more education that puts me ahead of the hordes of us with degrees. *frustration* I'd be happy to take a 70 hour labour-intensive job, if they'd hire me.
ReplyApology accepted my dear man. But I must admit that it also in part our fault for becoming comfortable with our way of living KNOWING that there are better things that we could be out there doing. Most of us read up on things like this on the internet (as I am right now), acknowledged it, and kept going on about our lives exactly the same. Instead of changing it as we should.
ReplyAnd I agree. ADVENTURE TIME IS f*****g AWESOME.
Best post I've read in a while. I think everyone should work fast food and be waiters at some point. BTW, Adventure Time IS kick ass.
Reply"Piracy did that. We got that ball rolling, and there is no going back. Instead of Reservoir Dogs, we get Jack & Jill ... and you have no idea how deeply sorry I am for that."
ReplyWe all are, really.
The entertainment s**t is TOTAL nonsense, the value of ideas is ONLY and always has been what people assign to it via social norms. Back in the day that was "almost nothing" books were copied shamelessly, songs simply performed at whim with no regard for owner, art work blatantly copied. Actually the very concept that "ideas" or "art" are something that belongs solely to the creator and should be monetized to make them (but mostly the people that "manage" them) lots of money is a rather new concept. It only came about because ideas about such things changed, now they've changed again and saying that's "ruining" something is as nonsensical as saying changing tastes in fashion ruined a generation.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesYes there's LESS money to be made peddling "creative property" now, but face it the movie industry hasn't imploded, the gaming industry hasn't imploded, TV has gone off the air, etc the doomsayers were and still are full of shit. Just because something is worth LESS money because people are unwilling to pay as much for it anymore, or won't pay at all for shoveled out s**t, is hardly the same thing as being "ruined". It's the same old, same old "you damn kids today with your different views and values, you've f*****g ruined everything the world is ending, etc, etc"
"Laws" in themselves exist purely at the whim society and they change over time based on opinion. Prevailing opinion among youth is that current copyright laws are more or less bullshit effectively written by corporations and handed to lawmakers to be passed, and this not frankly an entirely inaccurate assessment. Indeed occupy wall street in general is aimed at the sentiment that the people in charge have almost totally lost touch with the actual population and serve only large interests with deep pockets, be they banks, corporations, or loud interest groups again hardly an inaccurate assessment. The disregard for copyright law can easily be seen as simply another facet of feeling said laws aren't about actually protecting anything expect large corporations profit margins, which it ENTIRELY true.
Copyright laws aren't about protecting artists or ensuring they can make a living on their craft; because good artists could still making livings. HOWEVER they probably couldn't get nearly as rich for doing it, but why is that somehow deeply unfair? Why is is soooo bad that some artist could say only be moderate to upper middle class instead of rich when say a soldier or teacher might need f*****g food stamps in some places? Why are artists for some reason seemingly entitled to grossly higher standards of living then other professionals?
Of course by and large the artists AREN'T the ones racking in most of that cash it's the corporations that disturbed and control those copyrights that are, and for them there is NO possible sympathy. There SOLE motive is simply profit margins, they don't give a s**t about anything else and the laws they push are geared entirely to that end. The sole purpose of most modern copyright law is maximizing those margins as ruthlessly as possible, and I'm sorry but me and many others don't feel inclined to treat laws whose sole real purposes to increase the profit margin of a greedy corporation as laws we're inclined to respect.
I'm not going to be so stupidly naive as to compare this to say civil rights, but the fact is copyright law is increasingly viewed as broken and engineered to serve the interests of a few at the expense of most. With increasing awareness of just how f*****g broken government is becoming regarding "donations", "gifts", and "endorsements" and such it's not surprising respect for the most egregious examples of such greed is virtually non-existent.
So you say young people have a "sense of entitlement", I say young peoples see a broken system they have no REASON to respect. Copyright law like any law is subject to social forces, social forces are clearly against the current system and for numerous good reason. NOTHING has been able to slow this change and nothing will, the world is changing, some will de-cry it as a horrible, horrible thing, but change is constant. Get on board and help shape it or get left in the dust pining for "the good old days"
Well played, sir.
Copyright laws were created to protect the ARTIST. If you look at music copyrights, if someone were to play a song on - say the radio. The writer of the song is reimbursed (yes, the person who actually creatively wrote the music) and the recording company is reimbursed a small stipend. BUT, that is only the recording company for that specific recording that was played.
Now, take the same song, and say you want to write a cover of it for your own album, or whatever. You get permission from the writer of the song, and you pay a small stipend to the writer of the song... and that's it. The record company makes NOTHING. They only profit when their specific recording of the song is played... (unless the writer of the song signs a stupid contract giving them money otherwise, but that is a stupid contract and totally different).
Now, the performer of the song may have a special contract where they make money, but unless they wrote the song they don't get paid extra (which is why they perform and tour and say that's the only way they get cash... because for some it is). The whole idea was that it's possible that the artist isn't the person who can perform the song the best, as the writer of the music intended.
- To answer your other dilemma, I am an entertainer. My friends are entertainers. Why do you deserve to have what we pour our sweat, time, and energy into for free? THAT IS having a "sense of entitlement". You think you're entitled to free entertainment? Someone develops a skill, say any skill, they work throughout their life to perfect it. If an architect works their entire life to perfect building a house, you would pay for it, as that is his/her skill. If a ballet dancer works their entire life perfecting their craft, and you would like to watch and enjoy a performance, is that not worth paying for?
@Omnear: Depends if you like houses, or Ballet. Lol, isnt it entitled to think you should be able to make a living off your art? I mean, isnt the culminating prerogative of an artist the developing of their art, lul?
In all honesty, art becomes your money, then money becomes your art. This applies to both sides of the argument, but is also undeniable. So yeah, a dancer might get paid to dance because they are skilled and are sharing it with the world. Or, they could be dancing because the love to dance when they aren't in their stuffy business casual work clothes 40+ hours a week.