Breaking News: I’m Too Old For This Shit

OH MAH GAWWWW!!!!!!!

Maybe because I’m the ripe age of 20, I have a hard time judging whether pop culture has always been controlled by teenagers or if this is a recent shift.  Either way, it’s an odd and vulnerable moment when you realize that you’re too old to get your head around what appears to be some of the hottest shit out there.  Having to concede that you don’t get it is a real stare-yourself-in-the-mirror-and-shed-a-single-tear moment.  God, you used to be so cool.

I can’t even pretend anymore.  It’s just too transparent when I try and talk Selena Gomez politics with all these nine year olds in outfits cuter than mine.  So, like an AA meeting for stagnating farts ages 20 and up, I’m here to admit that I’m not with it.  Here’s just a few phenomena that make me feel uncomfortable combinations of emotions, including but not limited to: grumpiness, jealousy, confusion, irritability, self-doubt, apathy, premature hair loss, the munchies.

Twilight. Oh, the tribulations of being in high school and in love with a vampire!  To be pale and mopey about your suburban privelege!  Never has there been such a unifying narrative for Hot Topic shoppers to mope behind; it’s like the youth-douche flames have been fanned into a multimillion dollar inferno.  What the fuck guys, eat some Dippin Dots and chillax.

Tokio Hotel. Last summer I watched a Tokio Hotel themed monster truck pull into a parking lot and realized that whatever this novel reincarnation of flamboyant screaming metal-suck was, I was just too damn old to get it.  When I was a kid and we wanted emo Germans, we had that one Rammstein song that somehow got on TRL, and we could yell ‘DU HAST!’ at our babysitters until what featherweight angst we had was released.  Now all it takes is a handful of tiny yowling gender-bending dudes dipping their heads in liquid eyeliner to make the tweens feel like they’re feeling.  I’d slam them all in their lockers if I wasn’t so bogged down with important errands, typetypetype.

iCarly. Honestly, I’m…not even sure what this is.  According to the Wikipedia, it’s a show about a 13 year old girl making a webshow, and every episode’s title uses the “i” in a way that makes you wish Steve Jobs could delete children, such as “iMight Switch Schools”, “iStage an Intervention”, and “iRue the Day”, an episode that guest starred the Plain White Ts. Awesome.  iWill Never Watch This Shit.

Sexting. You know how I even knew about the apparent awesomecoolness of this?  CBS News.  I have to rely on CBS fucking News to hear about what’s trendy.  To save you the humiliation, sexting is when high school kids send naked pictures of themselves via text message.  They say it’s “shockingly common” and actually constitutes a felony.  Maybe this whole generation will sext itself into jail on charges of child pornography distribution and the rest of us can all go back to watching real porn and listening to Radiohead.