There are very few words or phrases that will always compel me to roll my eyes. "Guesstimate," "trickle-down economics" and two-syllable pronunciations of "cute" (kuh-yoot) are a few examples, but one idiom frequently uttered by members of this generation used to always bother me: "I'm not going to lie."
Most of the time, the phrase prefaces banal statements I would rarely hesitate to believe. "I'm not going to lie … I'm not very prepared for this test" and "I'm not going to lie … I really don't like that guy," I'm often told. Or my favorite: "I'm not going to lie … I got totally wasted last night."
But in my petty annoyance, I've found a remarkable insight into Generation Y and how we've distanced ourselves from Generation X. We tell people we're not lying because Generation X made young people appear cynical, jaded and careless. Generation Y has embraced sincere interaction with the rest of the world because our goal is to change society through our own self-improvement and involvement.
In his short story "My Appearance" from his collection "Girl with Curious Hair", author and Generation-X spokesman David Foster Wallace constructs a story around a fictional television actress's appearance on David Letterman. The actress and her husband's discussion on how she should act in the interview serves as an excellent summary of the Generation X mentality: "Everything is cliched and hyped and absurd, and that's just where the fun is." He writes further that the "joke is now on people who are sincere." Generation X viewed experience as so cliched and ordinary that it was best to be ironically detached from everything - better to be "not sincere" than insincere, or worse, sincere.
Self-mocking detachment became the status quo for Generation X, and it permeated their interaction with the rest of the world. In politics, the most important question for then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton at an MTV-sponsored forum for young voters was "boxers or briefs?" The movies that best exemplify Generation X - "Reality Bites," "Kicking and Screaming," "Slacker" - feature idle twenty-somethings in a sort of arrested development, placing more importance on pop culture than the very real problems of their lives. Even my favorite Generation X authors are no different - writers like Douglas Coupland, Jay McInerney, Bill Simmons and Bret Easton Ellis litter their writing with sarcasm, irony and pop-culture references. It's clear then when the Slacker (see Wayne, Garth) is a heroic figure, it's better to focus on the minutiae of life and overlook the bigger problems.
Not only is Generation Y distinct from Generation X, but one of the important characteristics of Generation Y is the rejection of the Gen-X mentality. Compared to Generation X, we have had significantly more turmoil in our lives because of 9/11, the Iraq War, a faltering economy, Hurricane Katrina and the list goes on. We didn't greet these challenges with Generation-X detachment or self-mocking, nor did we combat them with baby-boomer-esque protests.
Instead, Generation Y has made its mission to change the world through personal involvement and an "I'll-play-my-part-and-inspire-everyone-else" ethos. We've convinced ourselves that global warming can be solved by recycling, cutting our own emissions and reducing our own carbon footprint. We attack the looming food crisis by trying to eat local and organic foods. After Hurricane Katrina, donations were not sufficient enough to deal with one of the country's greatest natural disasters. Many colleges sent groups to help rebuild New Orleans, and Tulane's application numbers actually went up. With the popularity of Teach for America, we're improving our educational system by sending our best and brightest to inner-city schools. A startling 10 percent of Yale's graduating class this past year will be sent to public schools this fall to teach. How many of those students would have been accepting positions at Goldman and Sachs 15 years ago?
But it takes a certain amount of sincerity and dedication to personalize the country's problems, and, subsequently, an appreciation for anything sincere has surfaced in Generation Y's culture. One reason the media has taken so long to form a narrative for Generation Y is that our culture is fractured. There are significantly more choices and options for entertainment than there has ever been, so generation-wide trends are hard to identify.
One thing that does unite us is an appreciation for the authentic, thoughtful entertainers and politicians. Forget every policy proposal and substantive quality about Sen. Barack Obama, Generation Y largely supports him and swallows his slogans for change because he appears to mean what he says. In popular music, Arcade Fire, Kanye West and The Killers get away with - and bank on - considerable pomp and self-righteousness. Do you think Generation X would have allowed any band to take themselves that seriously? We even accept someone like Paris Hilton because she has made it patently clear that all she wants to be is an ultra-famous party girl/glorified prostitute. Hey, as long as she's honest.
I do, however, have a very real fear that our elders' criticisms of Generation Y are valid and that we are no more than a fashion-conscious, vainer version of Generation X. If it's actually true that Generation X plus one does equal Generation Y, then the future of the country is bleak. But if we play our part, engage the world truthfully and continue to remind older generations of our sincerity, I think that we'll find a light at the end of this tunnel - and that's no lie.
Ridewood graduated in the spring with degrees in government and history.
