Generation ?

The generation debate honeslty pisses me off! How the adults of X and baby boomers look at us, now coming of age and are "afraid" of what our "pampered" asses will do with the world. Seriously, I am not much different than the Gen Xers in their work ethic. At All. I am not pampered. Was not pampered.
Sure, I've had a good life. I do feel entitled to a lot of things. But that is because I earn what I feel entitled to. I try. I try hard. But I also follow my dreams like no one in past generations has seemed to.
I think art is spreading in the world as a more common subject of study and practice. It is evolving, changing, always, every day. And because of technology and the immediacy of contact it allows, it will change nearly every moment for each person. With what we watch, read, listen to. It all changes how we feel and think.

My generation has learned to sift through the Junk on the internet, find the valuable things, take those in, and forget the rest. There is still a lot of falsity of information out there, but it only differs technologically from the lies and old wives tales of yesterday. I am in the generational gap. I went outside and played hide and seek and got hurt, scraped, bruised in my playing. I rode my bike without my helmet most of the time. I was a risk-taker. But I also learned to be careful with how i act and what I do around other people. Around strangers, even on the internet, I've been taught to be careful about who I talk to, how I talk to them, and what information i divulge. I've become entranced by the computer, drawn in to the point where if i'm not asleep, I'm almost constantly typing, clicking, watching the screen when I'm at home. And even when I'm not at home, I have my cell phone in my pocket constantly, despite the fact that I rarely use it as an actual phone, it's mainly for texting, typing, digital communication.

Technology Has taken over my life, my world, but I've also become more advanced and knowledgable. If it hadn't taken over, I would be behind the times, stuck in the past, not current, stupid.

I'm still careful on the internet generally, but I take risks that would scare my parents, despite it being nearly normal to most young people today. I talk to "strangers" who almost immediately become friends. The space between the person and I allows for the emotional connection to happen before a physical connection can. My generation, despite it's attatchment to technology, needs immediate physical connection, attraction. We crave it, we force it, and we do not have the patience to let it grow slowly. We are used to immediacy, expectation, patience hardly exists anymore. So, if there is that space where immediate physical intimacy is not possible, we find the other connections that previous generations had the patience to wait and slowly develope before jumping in, headfirst, with the physical.
My generation is Sexual. And Openly so. We see sex, sexuality, and anything concerning it, as an open topic to discussion. It is publicised, romanticized, and capitalized upon. We cannot separate ourselves from it. As the Vagina Monologues becomes more popular and widespread, further from it's origins, it challenges us to remember that womens' private parts have a name. A name that's dirty, gross, and that we do not like saying. Vagina. An outlawed term still in this day and age.
A time when feminism is widespread and women are feeling stronger than we have in a long time. Yet, there is still this taboo towards a simple word. And there are times when Feminist struggle seems to have done nothing, the fight for womanhood seems futile. Men still earn more. Etc, etc, etc.
But Homosexuality is more open than it has ever been before. It's always been there, but today we acknowledge it, allow it, encourage expression of it, and scrutinize those that put it down. But this is only true with most of my generation. The generation of my parents is far from this. It's definitely a HUGE gap.

Also, there is a change in language that is rapidly multiplying in a painfully scary way. We don't pay attention to words sometimes anymore. We dont' watch facial expression or body language. We ignore pain, cut it down, disect it subconsciously, and toss it aside. Or take hold of it, squeeze it for all it's got. Or bully, tear down, psychologically torture.
Now, psychology is a totally different issue in this which i won't get into.

As for the change in language, we have specific words, slang terms, etc that have evolved and changed. The word random is one of these words that is currently changing, evident from the reaction of my intermedia proffessor's interpretation of the world versus my own and other classmates interprestation. We are vague, making words assume other meanings and assuming others will understand our short-cut language. We skip over subtle points and phrases that we feel our statements are already imbued or injected with and assume that certain facts are common knowledge. I've found this with my sculpture professor more than any other. Misinterpretation of words, phrases, meanings because of possible assumptions and lines of thought. Very large generational language gap.

Then, there is texting and internet speach.
A whole new world which has acquired it's own dictionaries for translation. It adapts, evolves, and only someone completely entrenched in it's world can totally understand it.
Some example:
OMG!
Lol
Wtf?
Wtheck?
Ur
Ppl
Rotfl (or it's extention: Rotflmao)
Lmao
Irl
Ilu
L8er
As well as many purposeful or accidental misuses of language and grammer.
A recent phenomenon is the integration of these "words" or "phrases" into everyday language.
Lol being said L O L the letters stated, or it being said Lol - Lawl or Loll, however it would phonetically be spelled out. Wtf is another of these. As is OMG.

Emoticons are another language entirely.
:)
:D
;)
:P
:o
;P
(f)
(l)
<3
Among soooo many others. The word 'heart' sometimes is used as a replacement for the word love. and luv is an unsure, less romantic, way of saying the three words that we tend to overuse and abuse in my generation.

Love is infatuation for us. Mostly. We see and hear the princess perfect love stories and then feel the butterflies and excitement of likeing, infatuation, and lust, and immediately assume it is love. Until we find out later, that there is more to it than that. Then we just get confused. Very confused.

But I'll stop on this topic, because it a personal confusion that I just feel our generation shares.
Wow, I could write a lot on this... Now, how to turn it into a scuplture or intermedia project.... Hmmm.....