If I had a conversation with my teenage self...
Well, it would be a disaster...
Bad news about the state of the world arrives with the dull regularity of junk mail. In many ways, the world is bad and getting worse, and if that was always at least kind of true even during whatever now qualifies as humanity’s heyday, it is now bad and worsening in exceptionally unappealing ways. What is good about the world always had a lot to do with its signature jostling chaos and the attendant sense of wild and worrying possibility, a place where strange and vital and unexpected things routinely happened; these are the ways that the free market strives not to be. While America is outwardly much uglier and more chaotic and demonstrably more arbitrary under unrestrained capitalism, it’s also increasingly grim and airless and stupendously wack. Some of this may be just America hewing closer to the deeply diseased personalities and addled visions of its oligarchs, but it’s also indistinguishable from the routine ways in which cultures rot, which is by collapsing into a cacophony of scams and hate speech and dim, windy trends.
As it stands, the current state of the world is busted. As weird new things happen and are subsequently justified in press statements and op-eds issued with an uncannily impenetrable, high-handed, and transparently bullshit certitude, the broader vibe argues to tune out and possibly indulge in some nostalgia. Sometimes, I imagine having a one-on-one conversation with my teenage self. If he could see me now, I’m not sure if he would be impressed, but he would wonder why I still occasionally smoke indica and play Pokemon or Red Dead Redemption. I’d tell him, “Have fun in AP History next year, dipshit.”
I’m not very concerned about my teenage self roasting me for all my signature, load-bearing defects and the ways in which my mind spirals in inopportune situations. Instead, I worry about how unprepared he is for a future that is futuristic in the tackiest and ugliest ways, janky and vicious, overtly and offhandedly sadistic, but finally so luridly tiresome and overbearing that it’s an ongoing gag. My teenage self would wonder what lies ahead of him, and the tone of my response would be that of a parent, deliriously and very obviously high on a hallucinogen, somberly telling a child that they are a cactus.
16-YEAR-OLD ME: “Do we have any cool presidents?”
ME: “Yeah, we had one pretty cool president, then it was followed up by maybe the strangest man to ever grace the Oval Office.”
16-YEAR-OLD ME: “Oh, where did he come from?”
ME: “Reality television.”
16-YEAR-OLD ME: “What about the War in Afghanistan? Did we win the war?”
ME: “‘Win’ would be a generous interpretation. Historians would probably say it was a draw at best.”
16-YEAR-OLD ME: “Hmm, ok… When did it end?”
ME: “I won’t disclose that information because the truth would bum you out.”
16-YEAR-OLD ME: “The iPhone and social media seem pretty cool. Did it ever democratize the exchange of information?”
ME: “For the love of fucking God, just enjoy flip phones, MySpace, and having real conversations while you can!”
16-YEAR-OLD ME: “What about climate change? It seems like lots of people are concerned about that. Is that something we will get ahead of?”
ME: “Well, there was one teenager from Sweden who—stay with me here—probably did more for the cause than our entire generation, but she’s not making great progress. However, we are reluctantly drinking coffee out of paper straws now.”
16-YEAR-OLD ME: “I don’t get it. This all sounds awful. Do people even want to have kids anymore?”
ME: “Actually, millions more people are having kids than you’d expect.”
16-YEAR-OLD ME: “What do you mean?”
ME: “Do you remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg?”
Me to my teenage self, "It's 1991 whatever you do, just stay here build a time machine if you must."
Me: You know how Ticketmaster sucks?
Teen-aged me: Haha. yeah. Why?
Me: I have some bad news.