Get off my lawn, you whipper-snappers!

Friday morning while doing some work in my office, I was treated to a discussion by the two hosts of a morning radio talk show. The talk was apparently prompted by a rather odd website, ihateyoungpeople.com, which asks:

The result is a bunch of videos of adults, mostly middle-aged and older, although some of them looked as though they were as young as in their 30s, kvetching about young people, including complaints about lack of manners, no respect for their elders, their sense of invulnerability, how they “don’t know anything that doesn’t come off the Internet or the TV,” and their lack of historical perspective. At least one of the videos has retorts by young people. Typical of the videos on the site is this one:

What’s really hilarious about this is that these are exactly the same complaints that adults have had about teens since time immemorial, and it occurs in societies that have never heard of the Internet. Particularly stupid is the complaint that young people “have no perspective.” Of course they don’t. They’re young. How could they? Perspective is acquired through living. If, as a typical college freshman today, you don’t remember any president before Bill Clinton or a time before CDs, DVDs, the cell phone, and the Internet, only maybe a decade or so worth, and most of those years you’re either a child or adolescent, how can you have perspective, other than what you read, which isn’t the same?

Moreover, I’m sure that none of the old people complaining on these videos ever showed disrespect to their parents or elders, right? I’m sure none of them ever made a lot of noise, played their music loud (you know, back in the 1960s), or did drugs.

I’m sure they don’t remember doing any of those things when they were young.

If I ever start sounding like any of the old farts on these videos, just shoot me. Or at least subject me to severe mockery.