even more quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a new rolling new york times thread

not to mention it's being compared to "the Victorian molding in my friend's terraced home"

Lynn Messina is a novelist living in New York City. Her most recent book is “The Harlow Hoyden,” a comedy of manners set in Regency England.

I want to start getting offended on behalf of my friends' kids

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/business/less-prep-more-plugs-teenagers-favor-tech-over-clothes.html?_r=0

Not the teens, teens can do whatever they want, but this guy:

Analysts and trend-spotters agree that a major shift in teenage trends, and in teenage spending, is underway. John Morris, a retail analyst at BMO Capital Markets, says that his regular focus groups with teenagers about what trends they find most appealing often stray from clothing.

“You try to get them talking about what’s the next look, what they’re excited about purchasing in apparel, and the conversation always circles back to the iPhone 6,” he said. “You get them talking about crop tops, you get a nice little debate about high-waist going, but the conversation keeps shifting back.”

i keep trying to engage my children in conversations about their day but for some reason all they want to talk about is power rangers, tv and sweets

i think it's a major shift in toddler trends

i just got to the end of the article about how boys can be boisterous and was like... er that's it? no part 2? what was that column supposed to be about?

life, isn't it a hoot

boys' clothes have fire trucks on them! OMGZZZZZZOR

I'm not sure this observation is meaningful, seems like junk journalism. Depends on the culture in your household, I think. When I was a kid, we had "tech" - we played with video games, VCR's, boom boxes, tied up the phone lines, etc.

If you look at a lot of fashion online, you'll find that every site is swamped with teens. I'm not sure being obsessed with clothes is bad for kids, though. Preferable to producing a generation of brooding school shooters.

Teen culture on fashion sites can get annoying, but I'm hopeful that teens and pre-teens will eventually become more discriminating...I.e. obnoxious peer-pressure trends like ugly goobedy-gob-on-denim will become less common.

Hahaha WHAT? Teens will always like horrible things, because teens are horrible and also super great. They'll become "more discriminating" in the individual sense as they get older and fall in line with more mainstream trends, but teens as a group, I hope they never change.

yeah, lack of discrimination is what makes teens teens. if they had any goddam sense, pop culture would ossify.

i feel like i already complained about this, but maybe not, the other week i was at a coffeeshop, a group of high school girls descended on the table next to me, they seemed to be on some kind of deliberate outing, and they really weren't there that long, enough to drink a cup of coffee, and although they were talking to each other the whole time the only times they weren't each also individually working at their phones was when they were contriving to compose the best pictures of their outing to post with their phones, and then looking at each other's phones. i knew this was a thing, but i felt like i had never seen how far it could be taken, like, almost nothing happened and nothing was discussed and this was a boring coffeeshop with plain old coffee, but self-consciousness obsession with presentation seemed like it had turned the episode into a signal event in life.

yeah, they're worse than ever, pretty much

Oh get off their lawn, all of you.

Ha, IO OTM.

almost nothing happened and nothing was discussed and this was a boring coffeeshop with plain old coffee, but self-consciousness obsession with presentation seemed like it had turned the episode into a signal event in life.

Isn't this just ritual elevating something mundane into something sacred? Or at least something set apart, something more than the apparent/visible. It's just a collective agreement to treat something in a special way, which other people who are not teenage girls do ALL THE TIME. Sporting events, any place or item or moment associated with religion--pretty much outside of birth, death, and twoo wuv, EVERYTHING else we consider important in life is because we've entered into an agreement to find it important. So ease up on teenagers.

every moment is important when you're on television. and maybe being under constant observation = girlhood, i dunno.

teen panopticon

there's no need to get all save-a-teen, i understand it, but i question whether the total penetration of social networking forms of ritualized self-presentation and self-styling into mundane life is good. teens just provide a particularly clear example of the possible extent.

I was explicitly taught that God was completely aware of my every thought and action, at all times, and I was never actually alone or without observation, and I would eventually be morally accountable for every second. So really, take your pick. Could be pop culture, could be a completely fucked up religious delusion that millions of people have agreed to accept.

Goddammit why is the "trenchant social commentary" thread still locked
xpost

you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going

thank you

hey NA, bite me

nothing happened and nothing was discussed

^see, more interesting things happen inside religion and sports than in this mindset. I know it's considered laughably reactionary to say that "personal technology" is creating human cyborgs, but Long Live the New Flesh etc.

Hahaha WHAT? Teens will always like horrible things, because teens are horrible and also super great. They'll become "more discriminating" in the individual sense as they get older and fall in line with more mainstream trends, but teens as a group, I hope they never change.

I like this!

xp More interesting TO YOU, maybe.

well, the only perspective any of us ever knows

there's no need to get all save-a-teen, i understand it, but i question whether the total penetration of social networking forms of ritualized self-presentation and self-styling into mundane life is good. teens just provide a particularly clear example of the possible extent.
* haven't seen the save-a-____ in a while, was wondering when/if it would come up; i was beginning to think it was considered passé?
* geez not to mention that the conversations of teenage girls are yours to observe AND criticise? talk about quiddity and agony.

they are if their squealing idiocies in a public place annoy the fuck out of me

Suffer the little children, morbs.

* geez not to mention that the conversations of teenage girls are yours to observe AND criticise? talk about quiddity and agony.

― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Friday, August 29, 2014 4:08 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Super OTM.

don't strawman me, LL, and don't impute motives that speak to your preoccupations because you think it will undercut what i said. how is a person's society ever not up for observation and criticism by that person?

as contendo noted, there is obviously a prevalent socialization of girls into certain forms of behavior for which highly self-conscious and carefully constructed social-networking self-presentation seems to have a relevant affinity. i don't think there was anything out of place about noting that it was girls i encountered behaving in the way i described. i'm sorry there wasn't a table of boys there, but i'm not doing an objective field study, just relating an anecdote.

And you related your anecdote in a biased way, using words like "contriving," "nothing" happened or was discussed, "self-conscious obsession," "presentation," all words that have neutral usages but in combination and in a dismissive framing, are pointedly demeaning to the group and their behavior.

What if it was framed like: They were strengthening social bonds, using the tool of social media to build connections to high-status friends or figures they wanted alliances with, consolidating human relationship power into discrete nodes, whatever--oh suddenly they're performing strategic diplomacy or something high-falutin' like that! Whaddya know. The fact that a bunch of you who read this post may find that idea laughable is a pretty good demonstration of the problem with framing.

Morbs, I'm not even touching your "squealing idiocy" because I like to like you, and to address that seriously I'd have to see you in a way that I don't want to. You, sir, are straight trolling.

xp why should you presume that i am incapable of telling the difference between, for example, contriving and some other manner of doing something? if you are contending that it should not be possible to observe and describe what someone does as contriving to do something or other, without that description constituting an act of dismissal or demeaning, then i would question whether you are not operating under other assumptions that would bar people from making good-faith judgments about the most ordinary interactions.

io otm itt, also

you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going
you get a nice little debate about high-waist going

― Hadrian VIII, Friday, August 29, 2014 8:06 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xp furthermore, i didn't say anything that denied that the group i saw could have been doing all the things i mentioned. but it's not clear that if they were, they couldn't be also doing them in a way (the way i described) that would have its own costs for the ways that people relate to each other, conceive of themselves, etc., and that that way would be open to critique.

this is an important conversation/argument and I am doing my best to refrain from derailing it but that quote is simply amazing

oh cmon, you wrote "total penetration"
you're just trying to be annoying! give it a rest
"i feel like i already complained about this..." --> maybe don't complain about it again?

everyone is so aggravated all the time
it's tiring

io so on the money.

http://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video/__NEW/CNBC/c_powerlunch_limitedbrandsontherise_100707.300w.jpg

getting a nice little debate about high-waist going

imo it's easy to forget that simply going to a coffee shop is a pretty exciting thing for a teenager to do, especially if surrounded by a bunch of other teenagers they know, and well, better preening and taking photos than demonstratively smoking 1000 cigarettes right beside you which is what i did at coffee shops when i was a teenager

god i was a fucking know-it-all dick #stillam

can't smoke in a coffee shop in 2014, though in Seattle maybe you can get away with vaping

top summer pastime around here is, like, "can I get away with vaping here"

After being in Seattle twice last month, the answer to that seems to be a perpetual and enthusiastic "yes".

vaping indoors really isn't much better than smoking and I wish it weren't encouraged

teens being bored and boring shocker. remember being on the phone for hours at home and your ear would hurt and you'd have to switch to your other ear? the internet has saved our ears.