For Generation Next, Italia ’90 is ancient history and emigration is not necessarily a bad thing
Over the past decade youth culture has changed beyond recognition.Subculture theory previously allowed us to identify defined pigeonholes within which to slot tribes, gangs, groups and demographics. But these days, people aren’t a category, they are a collage.
In the same way that music is postgenre, youth culture is a mish-mash of influences and interests.
Oonagh Murphy (25) is a resident assistant director at the Abbey Theatre. “Something that I hear my peers say a lot is, as an artist coming out of college, you never expect to be somebody on a high salary. So living through a recession is habitual. It’s something people who consider themselves artists are comfortable with,” she says.
The reign of the hipster, which many commentators see as the death of counterculture, saw a youth culture based on the physical manifestation of irony and the aesthetic exhibitionism of individual creativity.
There has also been a shift in how we view success and stature in society through one’s ability to be a new kind of thought-leader or influencer online. So instead of staying at home coding, the former geek can now become a person PR companies call for coverage on Twitter, and the previously anonymous teenage girl running a fashion blog from her MacbookPro gets invited to fashion shows instead of just sticking pictures from Vogue editorials on her copybooks.
This self-publishing and self-publicising phenomenon riffs on the oft-repeated Jay-Z lyric, “I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man.” If there’s one characteristic that can be identified within modern youth, it’s individualism.
“The individualism thing is a big thing. That’s the new conformity – how individual can you be?” says Ben Fraser, a 20-year-old studying business, economics and social studies at Trinity College. “If you look at who you’d traditionally think would be the mainstream crowd, all of the rugby-playing types, let’s say, even Fergus McFadden has a fixie [bike] and Jamie Heaslip opened a restaurant with Joe Macken. They’re not walking around in Canterburys [tracksuits].”
Nor is emigration always seen as a bad thing. “A friend of mine said to me the other day, ‘I’m doing an internship next summer,’ and I was asking him where it was, and he said Beijing. Emigration isn’t really viewed as a ‘thing’. There is this global idea that you can go anywhere.”
The majority of this year’s freshers will have been born in 1994, six years after Kate Moss caught the glance of a scout at JFK Airport. To them, Kurt Cobain was always a dead rock star, Italia ’90 was something that happened half a decade before they were conceived, and aircraft flew into the World Trade Centre when they were in junior infants.
As digital natives, Generation Next have perfected the art of the status update, subconsciously practising the projection of a version of themselves and finessing that practice for their whole teenage lives.
But there are definitive groups that are consequences of social change: the first generation of Irish young people whose parents emigrated here. The young LGBT people who are coming out earlier and in far greater numbers thanks to an increasingly tolerant and diverse society. The artists, like Murphy, who adopt a modern way of creative thinking using the internet and the recession alike to realise their vision. The young entrepreneurs buoyed by the fact that they understand the technological processes in which they reach their target markets far more than those older than them.
And there are definite groups that are part of economic change: the eternal student who remains in college to postpone entry into an impossibly challenging workforce. The adult who reverts to a young person by moving home (90,000 over-30s in Ireland currently live with their parents; more than two-thirds of them are men). The emigrant. The borderline emigrant. The young person who can’t afford to emigrate and is stuck in a cycle of unemployment previously reserved for those on the fringes of society. The intern who works free of charge just to get a foothold in their industry.
Eventually, society will endorse some of these changes, for better or for worse – exhibit A: JobBridge.
Generation Next: The online comments
The Generation Next series has been running all week in The Irish Times. Here is a selection of reader comments on our website
ADVICE FOR GENERATION NEXT
RoMolloyLife is fantastic but short – enjoy and treasure it. Take an interest in politics: it affects your daily life. Think before you vote. Question everything. Every once in a while do absolutely nothing.
PatrickCusackRobert Emmett was dead at 25, Wolfe Tone dead at 35, Michael Collins – 32. All made an impact early in life. So can you. Ireland needs its youth more than Australia or Canada.
JohnNagleNever take advice from other people.
MartyMooreThe time to wait for something you love and find rewarding is gone. You have to pay your bills. One of the problems that came out of the Celtic Tiger was the attitude that you can do whatever you want and certain jobs were beneath people.
Sue KelleherIn my mid-30s, my main advice would be to be guided by whatever makes you feel excited . . . You will always feel like you're in the right place.
GENERATION NEXT REPLIES
JessicaThe generations that have come before me are responsible for the burden I now shoulder as a professional in my early 20s. But the biggest issue facing my generation is the mistakes that the generations preceding mine continue to make.
The recession has created an acceptance of exploitation. Young, intelligent and enthusiastic people who are being exploited by the very ones who left us in this situation in the first place.
This culture of pro-bono work, of overtime and underpay, is damaging in more profound ways than you could possibly imagine. Slapping the label “intern” on a position does not make this exploitation acceptable. Nor does the emotional blackmail of: “Aren’t you lucky to have a job?”
Read more comments or add your own at irishtimes.com/ generationemigration/category/ discussion/
