Generation Like

I found this documentary both informative and quite entertaining as well. It’s the first doc I’ve seen that actually pays attention to kids who’ve grown up in the internet age by actually interviewing them and letting them talk about why and how they are doing what they do on the internet. However, I would like to point out that they seemed to cherry pick the most extreme “like-dependency” cases to showcase to paint kids as dumb, blind, hungry consumers, who had no idea what they were doing data wise, and that bothered me quite a bit.

One spot where this was most clear was in the interview with the “Tumblr girl” who was such a big fan of Hunger Games, particularly in the case of her Twitter. When she mentioned how much she was tweeeting this actor, and that she got a response, I paused the video and looked at his actual response, which was :

“Check it off your list. Now go save the world! And HURRY!”

Now, I don’t know if thats quoting the books, the movies, or none of that, but to me all this tweet says is “PLEASE STOP TWEETING AT ME, YOU ARE MAKING MY TWITTER UNUSABLE”, but in the nicest, most polished way possible. The fact that she can’t see this is pretty sad, and further reinforced the stereotype that these kids really don’t know what they’re doing.

While this documentary does point out how big of an advertising engine the internet is, I think they misjudge how “smooth” they think companies are with marketing to kids. This is because, even though teens are putting what they are interested in on social media for companies to see and use for advertising, what people like is changing so much faster that by the time a company gets done making an ad, those trends are out of fashion. This has one of two results: either the company runs the ad anyways and seems like a parent trying to use new slang to be cool to their kid, or they don’t run the ad and thereby lose a lot of money. Because they tend to opt for the former, companies seem even less connected to teens now, and teens know that! I’m reminded of an old saying, by this kind of advertising, and I think I’ll end with it:

“It is better to be thought a fool and remain silent, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”