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Yakety-yak, please talk back
November 26, 2007
You will never date Elle McPherson. You will never play centerfield for the New York Yankees. You will not become the next Springsteen.
You are middle-aged. The fantasies of your youth have been crushed beneath a seven-year itch, a 30-year mortgage, teen-aged kids who titter when you mention Twitter, the latest in a series of unreasonable bosses (I said this! I meant that!), an upcoming prostate exam by a proctologist with fingers colder than an Eskimo's, and love handles that require two hands to handle.
You were born in an age in which you were taught not to talk back. Instead, you fume silently as the media talks at you. If your fuming fully fulminates, instead of pulling a Travis Bickel and shooting your TV, you dash off a letter to the editor. They'll never print it or read it on air, but you feel better having written and sent it.
The point is, your relationship to the media is instinctually one-way. Yakety-yak, don't talk back.
But your Twitter-aged teens were born into the Internet age. All this two-way communication is second nature to them. You think you're the only one they talk back to? Sure, the intelligence level of that communication rarely rises above "You suck!" But the internal logic of interactive mass communications in instinctual with today's teens. Like I have to tell you, all they know is talking back.
But you can be young again. You can talk back, but without the threat of being grounded, sent to detention, or in fear of your job or being told to shut it by your spouse.
I, representing the media in this space, am not a parent, teacher, boss or spouse. The media's role is now more master of ceremonies, or ringmaster, depending on how unfettered you feel talking back.
More importantly, this instinctually interactive generation is your customer base. They eschew traditional A/V gear and use their PC to watch TV, play video games and listen to music while connecting with the world, often all at the same time. Like talking back, this digital crap is second nature to them. By acting younger maybe you'll think younger, and find it easier to access their drooping post-pubescent pockets bulging with disposable dead presidents.
So what do I have to do to provoke a response? Proclaim that I am the consumer electronics equivalent of a white supremacist and a holocaust denier? Okay. I think white goods are superior to brown and gray goods and I don't believe that Atari buried those millions of unsold 2600 ET game cartridges in New Mexico in 1982.
Too controversial? Okay, how about something less inflammatory and ripped-from-today's-headlines:
Will real books be replaced by e-book devices, such as Amazon's Kindle?
I, of course, have my own view on this. I think...no, wait. You tell me. C'mon, you can do it. Click on "Comments," scroll down to the text box, fingers on the keyboard, and type:
Y-O-U S-U-C-K!
Makes you feel young again, don't it?
Posted by Stewart Wolpin on November 26, 2007 | Comments (5)
