Track 5 - "Reduction? and New Perspective"

This is my standard outfit for going out to bars. Remember? Jeans and tee shirts for the win, and a standard-issue button-down gives me the brand of casual that you could only find in a... '90s Seattle alt-rock bar. I'll take it. 

Hashtag born in the, hashtag wrong time, hashtag wrong place.

But it's a picture of me, taken in a mirror!!! So it's a new perspective — do you get it?! Do you get it? It's so deep! I am the DeEpeSt!>!%&

But hey, enjoy, y'all. It comes from a place of spontaneity and love. Early 20-teens, this one? I was... between jobs at the time? There were a few job interviews at the time. I remember taking my time to get ready, to look just effing perfect, the adrenaline. You remember those moments before you go into an interview, when you park in the lot, and there's a song playing on the radio, and it kinda goes into lockstep with the whole experience? Yeah, I remember this song on the radio. Nostalgia? "Pain from an old wound?" (though my Greek-speaking friends insist that it's not that simple — you know who you are... ( :-* ) ) In either case, it's just fun on the uke. :)

Oh, this is fun. I'm an Xennial (not sure how to pronounce it, yet), apparently. I love demographics, especially as they relate to generations as a collective concept of a societal construct. Anyway, you can only really label stuff like this in hindsight. 

So, there's Gen X, and Millennial, with the typical cutoff being born sometime in thd early 80s. But what do I have in common with someone who was 8 when the iPhone was unveiled? They've grown up with it. Their perceptions are different. 

"Analog childhood, with a digital adulthood," is the phrase being tossed around, and I dig it. It was a transition; I can still hear the entirety of the dial-up noise in my brain like it's happening in real time. Octothorpes were called "pound signs" instead of "hashtags." (Though I'm a snob, so I'll still call it an octothorpe.) Oregon Trail. What an interesting thing, that this mundane game was so indicative of a moment? Not a half-generation before or after, but Oregon Trail. 

I don't wanna throw shade, but today's whippersnappers couldn't get past the Kansas River without getting dysentery, so octothorpe with age comes wisdom.

Nah, I'm just playing. I'm kinda jealous of the younger gen in some sense. Allll this is native to them. And they're doing and pretty decent job with it so far, creating their own cultural standard for communication.  I guess every generation does that; but I remember calling a friend in England using the first iteration of Skype, and it was, like, $0.25 a minute. Now it's just expected to be free. That's some crazy experiential difference. 

Not sure why that was interesting to bring up. Humans like labels, I guess. It'll sell a lot more Oregon Trail merch in 2021, and that's not a horrible thing.

(Tune in next time, when Heather delves deep into the trend that is "Nostalgia for the 1990's; What's the Deal with Thaaat?" ... Seinfeld reference. Would have hit HUGE in the '90s, so it's part of the... never mind.)