Why is it with most teenagers nowadays?

You can't blame them...it's not stylish to enjoy artistic expression nowadays.

Peter wrote: Yes, Slart -- people have complained about teens since time immemorial, but communication is changing rapidly. Younger generations will reflect that change most strongly, of course.   We mostly think with words -- LOL.   Thinking and communication are becoming more perfunctory, disjointed and visual -- here's a cute picture so everyone can understand how I feel about that, as an English teacher and lover of language:     Look at advertising and journalism -- studies show that ads steadily get shorter, paragraphs get shorter, sentences get shorter, sentence fragments become the norm, graphic novels become "literature." Movies get louder, with less dialogue, and more (usually violent) action. Modern novels contain less and less description. When you read a story, a "movie" (visuals) should "play" in your head. Studies indicate we're losing that ability.   Today, most folks do most of their reading on the internet. Here, the tendency is not to read in a linear fashion, but to scan a web page -- almost no one reads the whole thing. Just look how visual and pictorial this very "written" medium is -- even on a forum: avatars, ads, emoticons. pictures for "signatures," etc, etc.   It's all connected, and driven by technology. First the camera, then the TV, now the computer and photographic cell phone. We are more "connected" via technology, yet more isolated within our private, virtual worlds. Look around you on a bus, in a waiting room, or at a gathering of teens. Look for the personal machines -- note the lack of prolonged conversation -- connection -- with other humans.   Most people on this forum will be basically unwilling unable to read a post this long. They cannot focus that long -- it takes effort, and facility with language (thinking & communication skills).      POST TOO LONG -- DON'T READ!   (View porn or play fast, bright, loud, pretty games instead.)

^ " Boring" is a complaint  I hear too often as a teacher, Clarke.

OK, you've convinced me, we're all doomed. 
But hey, we're all going to die anyway, though it may take a while...


Edited by Slartibartfast - June 07 2010 at 19:15

I would quote Joe Jackson's Beat Crazy here entirely, but I've been spanked it the forum for quoting too much.
"Kids today - they’re all the same
All call themselves - some crazy name
All those drugs - they can’t be sane
All that noise - affects their brains"

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/joe+jackson/beat+crazy_20072635.html



Edited by Slartibartfast - June 07 2010 at 18:33

Very interesting topic.

I´m not too old myself to recall the time about 8 years ago, when I was about 16 and started to gradually feel more passionate about prog. You see, the thing is, it´s not really easy to like (neither find out about) progressive music when you´re a teenager. When you have MTV (it´s just sad what it has become nowadays) and the pop industry washing the collective brain of your generation, then your musical growth is to be crippled for many years.

Now how many people after that find the strength, need and willingness to evolve futher in their tastes and even passionately like a certain genre or an artist when they grow up? Not many. For them, music eventually becomes a nameless, uniform backgound sound on the car stereo.

Coming back to my second point. Why did I say, it´s not easy for teens to LIKE prog? Well, because listening to pop is as easy as watching Teletubbies on TV, while listening to prog is like reading books. Don´t get me wrong - I´m not trying to belittle teenagers here. I´m trying to say that for every new discovery you have to cover a certain path.

Lastly, we should not forget about the meaning of music either. As I have learned, then in the 60´s and 70´s when prog was born, music was about values, current affairs, even politics - all the means to sense or give meaning to the world people lived in (Pink Floyd and countless other examples). There was also a lot of fantasy in it (the whole idea behind a concept album). All that bonded and united a lot of people and created generations with broader view about the power of music. In these days pop music tends to promote hedonistic and egocentric values that are timeless of course, but don´t talk about much more than shallow emotions. Also much of musical craftsmanship seems to have been replaced by sexy dance moves.  

I´m not pessimistic though. There will always be young people who will enjoy and, in the future, make magnificent progressive music themselves.

harmonium.ro wrote: It's normal for teenagers to seek for music from the most accessible sources, these being, in growing order of importance: family, friends/peers, media. So it all comes to what's available at the moment, especially in the media. If the "offer" is rich, then the "demand" will sort itself - each personal sensibility will find something to fit its needs, and the spectrum of public taste will be diverse. In my opinion, the available offer in 2010 is very, very limited. No wonder so many kids dumb themselves with crap, that's what they get when they open a TV... A decade and a half ago, during "my time", I was opening the MTV each day after school, and I was finding there on heavy rotation Radiohead, The Verve, U2, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Metallica, Marilyn Manson, Faith No More, Nirvana, Massive Attack, Tricky, plus other nice pop, electro, hip-hop, etc. A lot of stuff that I still hold fundamental for me. Would I find such a diversity and quality on today's mainstream media? That doesn't mean today's mainstream does not produce lots of nice stuff. Especially in the indie scene. But none of that can be discovered via the mainstream media. You need to find other "alternative people" to become one yourself. I am definitely not going to have a TV when I'll have kids around.

Fully agree, the 90's were an amazing period with lots of quality music that managed to reach youngsters.
I've not seen that in the 00's, partly because I haven't followed the indie scene anymore, but also because you really need to go out on a discovery of your own now to be able to find good music.
But who wants to do that with all the possible choices of entertainment and distractions we have now.




Edited by Bonnek - June 06 2010 at 07:48

Wiktor Hatif wrote: Petrovsk Mizinski wrote: Ultimately the most unique sounds come about from just doing what you do and what you do only, and not caring whether you're in the "in crowd" or with the "counter culture" or not. if you'd know what Counterculture is, you would know that "doing what you do" was one of their major  bywords :) Regardless how unconsequent and naive Counterculture was, there wouldn't be prog today without it. I'm writing Counterculture with capital "C" because I'm talking about this particular 60's early 70's movement.

I know exactly what it is, and my opinion is that it's was just bullsh*t.
I just think it's ridiculous that some people felt the need to announce to the world they would go out of their way to be "different" and "unique".
It's no better than the mindless idiots that buy into the mindless consumerist crap, it's just the same thing with a different name and I doubt the "Counter Culture" was at all necessary for the rise of prog.
People want to create music regardless of whether they feel the need to go out of their way to be different or not.
I don't think Robert Fripp woke up one day and said "OH HAY GUIZE I'M SO COUNTER CULTURE!" because that's just stupid.
He just played guitar and liked making music, that's all

Petrovsk Mizinski wrote: Ultimately the most unique sounds come about from just doing what you do and what you do only, and not caring whether you're in the "in crowd" or with the "counter culture" or not.

if you'd know what Counterculture is, you would know that "doing what you do" was one of their major  bywords :) Regardless how unconsequent and naive Counterculture was, there wouldn't be prog today without it.

I'm writing Counterculture with capital "C" because I'm talking about this particular 60's early 70's movement.

The whole "Counter Culture" thing was just bullsh*t anyway.
Once you submit to being a part of it, it just entirely defeats the purpose of it in the first place because it ends up just becoming a normal culture anyway.
Ultimately the most unique sounds come about from just doing what you do and what you do only, and not caring whether you're in the "in crowd" or with the "counter culture" or not.