The world of today’s youth is a far different place than any world you or I have ever known. Instead of calling their friends using old-fashioned rotary-dial and cellular mobile phones, they prefer to communicate via tweets and sexts. Instead of wearing flip-flops to class like we did, they wear flip-flops and sometimes Crocs. Instead of sexy vampires as imagined by Anne Rice, they only know sexy vampires from Twilight. And instead of watching the evening news to learn what is going on in the world, they don’t watch any news at all because that is boring.
To give you an idea of how the Class of 2013 thinks, we at VLKF have prepared a few facts about Generation Z.
- A freshmen just starting college in the fall of 2009 was probably born in 1991. The Simpsons have been on TV for their entire life. Kurt Cobain has been dead for their entire life. The Soviet Union has never existed, and stockbrokers have always been cooler than astronauts.
- They have never used typewriters or toaster ovens.
- They will look at you blankly if you ask them “Where’s the beef?” over and over again.
- Pluto has never been a planet, but Planet Hollywood has.
- They have never drunk warm milk straight from a cow’s udder.
- They never learned to duck and cover, leaving them woefully unprepared for nuclear attacks.
- Will Smith, Johnny Depp, and Tom Hanks are considered serious actors because they have never seen The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, 21 Jump Street, or The Da Vinci Code.
- They don’t like that music you listen to. What is that, like the Grateful Dead or something?
- For these students, Captain Kangaroo, Alf Landon, Charles Manson, Buddy Ebsen, the Big Bopper, Michael Jackson, and punk rock have always been dead.
- They don’t remember a time when a Bush or a Clinton was not representing America to the world in some capacity, and they don’t care.
- They don’t like Vegamite or Tang. They prefer Britney Spears to Gina Lollobrigada.
- For them, libraries are places where homeless people update their Facebook status. Apothecaries are now pharmacies, except they call them “drug stores.” Marijuana has always been legal.
- Books have always been read using a Kindle. They have never read a magazine printed on paper, nor have they ever used a movable type block-letter press.
- Under duress, they can lift several times their own body weight.
- Vinyl records and compact discs are completely foreign totems representing mysterious ancient technology and cultural rituals that have something to do with Dixieland jazz.
- They don’t even know about the Frost-Nixon interviews or the Spanish Civil War.
- They can’t remember when the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Anaheim Angels.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger has always been a politician, not an oiled-up, mostly-naked Austrian strongman.
- They believe that all pain and suffering is merely an illusion because the world is spiritual rather than physical in nature, therefore accepting medical care is a sign that your faith is…wait, that’s Christian Scientists, not college freshmen.
- The Segway changed everything for them--but then again, it changed everything for everybody.
- They have never felt the savage, primeval joy of killing an animal with their bare hands and plunging their teeth into its still-warm flesh.
- For the sole purpose of irritating old people like you, they dress up in stupid clothing from thrift stores, choose silly hairstyles, drink cheap beer, and pretend to like things ironically.
- They can’t remember when the word “gay” meant “happy” instead of “gay.”
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