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The Twentysomething Obsession With Doing Everything & Impressing Anyone

Hi. My name is Brook and I’ve been a Gen Y’er for 21 years.

You know us - the ones who grew up with everything? We had TVs in our rooms (remember those?) and video games and Furbys and pizza pockets and no books. We had it made. But more importantly, we were given one monumental advantage over every other generation: growing up during the digital revolution.

It was a luxury that we unknowingly embraced with open arms. As kids, we ditched our pencil cases for word processors and chatted away our childhoods on ICQ and MSN. Our parents were forced to adapt to life with these new tools but we simply grew up knowing nothing else. They were lions brought to live in the zoo and we were the cubs they birthed once inside.

What does that mean? Well, aside from the fact that we’re unequivocally FUBAR’ed from a social perspective, it means we’re tech-savvy as hell and, thus, inherently inclined & equipped to create. We have all the tools we need to bring almost anything in our heads to life in one bastardized form or another.

And that’s why I’m slowly going crazy.

Almost every night, I sit in my room and have the same mini anxiety attack. It’s time to relax, yet I can’t help but feel like I’m dicking away my time. I’m neglecting my self-prescribed duty to make something cool. I have all these tools at my disposal – tools that previous generations would have killed for – and I just don’t make use of them. Life gave me genetically mutated lemons and I owe it to the world to make super-hybrid lemonade.

Why such an affliction to create? It’s simple – we just want to impress.

In some weird, possibly vapid and very unprecedented way, my generation has been growing up alongside each of our 100-1000 Facebook friends. It’s a constant horse and pony show. We’re broadcasting our lives everyday, so we better make em’ look good. Continuously expressing ourselves via 140-character rants and self-produced webcam vignettes seems like a good place to start.

But maybe this do everything/impress anyone mentality is exactly the problem. By making it so easy to bring things to fruition, we’re actually breeding creative saturation; when everyone can “do” stuff, everyone thinks they should be the one to do it – especially when we feel that need to woo even our acquaintances. Which raises the question: by providing them with every tool imaginable, are we encouraging the creative souls of tomorrow to be good at everything but astounding at nothing?

30 years ago, creating something meant wholeheartedly dedicating yourself to it. Bill Gates couldn’t dip his feet into the computer world by doing a Google search on “HTML basics”. No, he had to find a (rare) job in the field, fight to book programming time with those room-sized computers, and ultimately zero in one sole endeavor. In Gladwellian theory, he completed the necessary 10,000 hours of practice it takes to achieve greatness.

Fast forward to the 21st century. I put about 25 hours and 100 bucks into making my first website during my sophomore year at college. I did it when I wasn’t busy going to class or binge drinking. Trust me, it shows. But the tools I had made it so easy. And while I was making a website, my friends were busy getting into photography or video production or music recording. Everyone was creating something.

Well, what fun would it be to make a bunch of crap if nobody was paying attention? Enter social media. Just upload, post, tweet, tag, and bake at 350 for 20 min., then blammo! You got yourself an audience. Which is fantastic. Because all we really want is a chance to make something – whether it’s a tweet, movie, or even this blog post - that affects other people. Self-gratification. That’s always been the name of the game. Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself this: if Facebook were to suddenly remove everyone else’s ability to “like” or “comment” on your profile, would you still post anything?

Of course not. The quick thrill of getting 8 people to like your status update has turned us into sharing junkies. We can experience and distribute creativity at the expense of honing it ourselves and in many ways we now have the opportunity to live vicariously through our monitor screens. That’s something we should embrace; we just mustn’t forget that there’s a real live world sitting comfortably outside our 1024x768 universe.

Sure, it would seem as though technology has enriched our lives on the surface, but like laser eye surgery or the next Nickleback album, we can merely speculate on what the long-term side effects may be. Just yesterday, I was reading a fairly ironic rant on the blog of superstar Gen Y rapper Drake (yes, these are things I do on my free time) about how he hates the popular sharing platform Tumblr because of what it’s doing to the creators of tomorrow.

“Instead of kids going out and making their own moments, they’re just taking these images and living vicariously through other people’s moments. It just kills me. Then you’ll meet them and they’re just the biggest turkey in the world. They don’t actually embody any of those things. They just emulate. It’s scary man, simulation life that we’re living. It scares me.” – Drake

Me too, Drizzy. Me too. Now excuse me, I’m going to spend a few more hours thinking about how I can turn that sentiment of yours into a blog post.

I’d be wasting my time if I didn’t.

@BrookJohnston

5 comments

Kathy Patterson

Wow Brook, this may be the best yet. Important stuff. I can't resist offering some advice. Next time you're feeling 'publish anxiety', take a deep breath, then take a walk...without your phone. Seriously, try it.

Chrissy

Amazingly written. It feels so overwhelming right now, the rate that we all must adapt to the latest trends in technology. I feel lucky that I grew up on the cusp, so as a kid I still played outside, learned how to build things with my hands, didn't have a cell phone until after I was out of high school. And I'm so thankful for that. I don't think I would have ever developed hobbies otherwise. When I look at how much time I waste now, getting sucked into reading blogs, or perusing Facebook or Twitter, I wonder how I would have fared if I was 10 years younger. I don't envy teenagers today at all. Thanks for this post!

@brookjohnston

Thanks for the kind words Kathy & Chrissy. I, too am thankful for growing up on the cusp of the tech boom. As far as childhood goes, I don't think there's any substitute for bike rides, fishing rods, and outdoor play-time. Another element at play here is the "paradox of choice" that we face as a generation that can do whatever they want whenever they want to. Barry Schwartz wrote a book on it. When there are so many possibilities to compare against and choose from, you spend all your time worrying about whether or not you made the right decision - instead of just enjoying what you actually selected. Here's his TED Talk - http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

JoeFerg

Nice article Brook. I can only imagine the problems teachers have in schools nowadays, trying to mitigate Facebook, Cellphones/texting, in the classroom. Kids should be having their slingshots and firecrackers relinquished instead of technological devices!

Aneisha

Could you write about Physics so I can pass Scincee class?

The Twentysomething Obsession With Doing Everything & Impressing Anyone

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