My situation is unremarkable. I'm 24 years old - graduated from a good college, only to realize that there wasn't much point. Generation Z. An entire batch of 18-20somethings who are already making history by being the first generation to be worse off than our parents. And like all great generalizations, Generation Z needs a governmental acronym for our characteristic flaws - to give the tabloids a convenient way of pinning every societal fuck up - from rioting to copper theft - on our bored, unproductive shoulders. With typical wittiness, what they came up with was 'Neets' (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), so we know it went down something like this:
"man, I sure wish we had a catchy way to describe these kids who who aren't in education, employment or training.."
"wait... wait... oh my god "
There are a hell of a lot of us 'neets' -almost a million in the UK alone this year. And I take personal offense at being lumped into this roughly defined category. 'Neets' implies tracksuits, street corners, teenage pregnancy and knife crime (like this charming young lady). Neets smashed up the local barbershop and nicked TVs from Currys. Neets - in every form of tabloid association - equals 'scum'.
What has been totally overlooked is the HUGE proportion of Generation Z who.. realistically.. have very little complain about. I fall headlong into this category. We are educated, middle class and come from stable domestic backgrounds. Our days consist of a leisurely 10:00AM wakeup - a stroll to the magic parental fridge, a few hours on our Macbooks (not me, but you know the type) applying to grad programmes at Forbes 500 companies, and then the rest of the day consists of climbing the online rankings in Call of Duty. Don't kid yourselves, there are hundreds of thousands of us - in our final years at university, or in our first months out of it- who aren't failing to launch; we just refuse to launch until the right moment comes up. We're spoiled, we're deluded by grandiose visions of our own potential.. And we're not.. we're NOT.. fucking.. NEETS. No.
So I propose a new category, one that pays homage to our familiarity with afternoon Xbox: 'GAMERs'. 'Graduates Assfucked by Mismanaged Economic Recovery' are educated, relatively comfortable, well-traveled, perpetually bored and technologically savvy.. and from this group we can expect one thing:
a shitload of new blogs.
Hence why now is an awful time to start one. A rising tide of aimless bannermen, braying their dissatisfaction with 'too much free time' and flooding the blogosphere (lets just get that word out the way) with their vapid, (if articulate) musings on every possible subject, means that a single voice is unlikely to be heard. Therefore, rather than try to offer anything particularly new, I will embrace what I know - a load of funny anecdotes about a lot of people in similar situations to myself. And rather than being a single voice, I hope that this might become a refuge for people of similar mindsets - people chilling on the edge of adulthood, waiting for the water to warm up.
Here's my inaugural leap onto the bandwagon.
Wish me luck, Internet.
Brammo.
