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a teen’s right of passage is traversed and defined by everything they seem to stand for or stand against
Adolescence’s incommensurable ambition and insatiable appetite to feel, touch, taste, smell, and experience the world and everything in it is the quintessence of what defines and earmarks the journey from adolescence to early adulthood in a young teenagers life. It’s where the parental yoke is increasingly over powered by youths’ engagement of their new identity formation as much as it’s a separation and freeing from the bonds of familial dependence. It’s also where the burgeoning and nascent of a teenager is as precious as it is precarious to his or her parents and the public alike.
Between the most crucial and easily impressionable developmental ages of 12 and 19, a teen’s right of passage is traversed and defined by everything they seem to stand for or stand against. As well as by everything he or she wants to belong to or be accepted by without reserve. It’s a young man’s game to be sure if you know the expression. A game with a signature all its own and a smell to it you can’t recognize unless your one of them. Thirty three million strong make up this large consensus of people you yourself may now be a part of or maybe even once was not too long ago. And as kids stand virile, fertile and fierce on the battle ground ready to conquer everything in their way, the mighty media and merchandizing machine also stands poised and ready to speciously help them battle the world so as to seize and inveigle the pots of gold each kid carries with them.
Representing somewhere in excess of $190 billion dollars a year, advertisers and media merchants must find all and any possible ways to cajole these dollars out of parents pocketbooks in order for kids needs be satisfied. A satisfaction derived from their desire to belong and be accepted by the world and their peers. There beneath their own color blindness as they festinate to bask in their ever increasing freedoms, the pursuit of social “coolness” in order to validate their acceptance and new experiences blinds them by the ever so increasing presence of narcissism and the media’s pressure to live up to a celebrity’s standards. And in order for the media conglomerates to loot it, they must seek, search, and hunt for it in the place the media goes to hunt cool. A place where their greed and our pre-existing amount of healthy narcissism have both collided and merged into an uncontrollable and raging fire that’s threatening to burn us all down.
Have you ever wondered how all these media and fashion houses come up with all these new but rehashed ideas every season? To begin with, these advertising and media merchants employ “Cool-Hunters” to hunt these kids out because of their ability to understand a teenagers’ language, mind, thoughts, and needs to belong to the clique. But they’re not merely kids. They’re the young and unsuspecting youth that fuels a business worth in excess of one hundred and ninety billion dollars a year. Money made by guilty parents who gladly give their kids all that they desire in attempt to make up for their inability to spend time with their kids since most parents are working twelve to fourteen hour days. And it’s this spending prowess that kids represent and own that some have been trying to conquer for as many years as popular culture has been around.
Why is this? Parents have an innate quality to want to please their kids and keep them happy. Obviously! Market researchers call it “guilt money”. What do market researchers have to do with it? Well, over thirty million very impressionable kids out there are spending billions of dollars that merchandisers all want a piece of. Their fighting tooth and nail for your attention and dollars and they’ll do whatever it takes to get it from you. But they need help because they can’t do it alone. So they enlist some vultures and predators called “Cool Hunters” to help them figure out what messages to send you so that you’ll unsuspectingly spend your money wisely on their products without feeling deceived..JPG)
You see, you’re not as cool as you think you are. Truth is, you live in a make believe world made of visceral images and marketing. And you’re its biggest sucker. Oh I know, you think you’re so original that you’re the only one wearing this or listening to that. This may come as a shock to you, but so are thousands and thousands of other kids out there who are thinking the same thing you do. And wouldn’t you know, they’re fools too! Don’t feel too bad though. I mean look at it this way, at least we have this mutual stupidity in common.
Anywhere a teenager or adults’ eyes land on, in or outside your home, has been designed so that it will land on one of the millions of media messages planted out there for you to take in. In fact, we take in over 3000 discreet messages a day. Messages that are meant, sent, and specifically designed for you. What’s more is these discreet messages that are being inculcated upon us are for the most part entertainment and clothing messages. Knowing this, do you still feel like you’re the most original kid in your clique! Thought so! Probably more since none of you read or think anymore preferring instead to be mind fucked by your cell phones, iPods, computer, and video games you play with rather than feed your mind.
But I just want to let you know that for all it’s worth you’re no cooler than the next clown who’s trying to get you to watch some new reality show. Or worse, be on the reality show like that dude Snooky on The Jersey Spores. Like him, you’ve become so sickened by your own narcissism that you’re just a shell of what you once was. A cute lovable little brat that only mommy can stand to be near. A cool shell to be sure seeing that I know how much mommy and daddy spent on that ridiculous wardrobe and gear your wearing. I should mention that I’m not here to explain it. I’m just here to think out loud as is my custom every time one you little zit popping fashion victims try to expound to us how you’ve become so knowledgeable in life at the pubescent age of fifteen.
Since kids can sometimes be, and are unresponsive, they don’t always buy in to traditional forms of advertising. This makes it’s hard to know what they want since they don’t always responds to traditional ideas and messages of Cool. But they do respond to the Underground. You know that place where your big brother hung out, or where your best friend’s sister once took you and where you’ve been dying to get back to. Where you smoked your first joint or finger banged Suzy in the back seat of your best friend’s Saturn. Poor fool! It’s not a place! It’s an idea. Thanks for agreeing with me though. However, I suppose so that you’ll better understand the “back seat” metaphor, I’ll simply term it the Underground for your sake. This way you’ll be able to better follow my spleen and obsessive behavior.
The Underground as we shall term it, is a mixture of society’s teenage to adult aged misfits, flunkies, the fringes of society, the disenfranchised, and the social pariahs and spurned rejects who derive a great deal of satisfaction from belonging to it because they’ve been rejected from all the kids they really wanted to hang out with from the beginning. Now, this is really what it is but I suppose The Underground is also, in all reality, a representation of everybody who lives rather opposed to the idealized commercialism of society and culture. The Underground is the place where you and your shattered hope of belonging and acceptance meets an all together un-bias and unprejudiced group of like minded people who cares little save that you’re against most societal norms and ideas of acceptance. This doesn’t mean it’s a place for outlaws or drug addicts or otherwise. The Underground is just more accepting of you than anyone else. And I can tell you it’s not the place where Joni loves Chachi! Amidst The Underground is where these predators and wolves called Cool Hunters prey on your lack of self worth and identity. It’s where you can pretend to be everything you’re not.
It’s here in the Underground now where these Cool Hunters have been deployed to befriend and gain your trust so as not to appear to be the same advertisers who are tirelessly trying to pound their media messages into your head. As they gain your trust by telling you how cool you are and how much they admire your style they’re really gathering info on so called upcoming trends where they then run like snitches and bitches to big media houses or fashion companies to sell them this information. That means that everything your about is being sold out because you think it’s so important to be cool. If you’re wondering why these media merchants hire these Cool Hunters, the reason they’re hired by these houses is because you guys don’t trust anybody in suits or anybody else that resembles or smells like your parents. And it’s here in the Underground where they (this corporate demographic) are not trusted nor welcomed by you. Is the picture becoming clearer!
Cool Hunters are trusted though. They’re trusted by you because these spies and vultures who lack as much identity as you do are all former “cool kids” who have branded and sold themselves out because they can’t do much else. The reason why Cool Hunters understand these kids’ lack of self identity and urgency to belong is because these Cool Hunters are suffering from the same narcissism and feelings of inadequacies you are. The only difference is they’re feeling it still now at thirty and thirty five as much as they did at thirteen or twenty two. Another difference being that these spies are still trying to fill their voids and feelings of inadequacies by punishing and invading your right to be a young dumb teenager. They’re Thieves of Innocence who have no scruples, values, or integrity. In fact I’ve come to loathe them more than cops, and that’s saying a lot I tell you. Makes no difference to me how a man or a douche bag makes a living you understand, but you idiot kids are sacred and there’s some things even the worst of us won’t do. But hey! Who am I to judge! I’m not cool and they are..JPG)
Let me continue lest I lose the thread of my spleen! In case you didn’t know, here’s how they sell you the styles you think you created on your own. For a fee Houses and Merchandisers can subscribe to companies online or retain their services wherein they can see these kids who have naively allowed these Cool Hunters to take pictures of them so as to shamelessly profit off them by copying trends that the Underground only knows as necessity. These Houses and Merchandisers can then go online and see what’s going on in the subterranean world of the streets and what the subculture looks like so as to try to get in on this look where they can hopefully get ahead of this trend and bring it to market and make billions. That’s funny! I laugh because the subculture just wouldn’t be the subculture if whoring merchandisers weren’t able to go out and commercialize a look that most of us wear simply out of necessity or second hand generating. Not because it’s what everybody is buying at the mall but because it’s not what a lot of us are buying. Savvy? That’s the funny thing…as soon as the Cool hunters find, besmirch, and slaughter it…it stops being cool. Yes, once they put their soiled hands on these items and underground styles, styles that are again borne out of necessity, they become the new trends that end up on every shelf in your favorite mall. And it’s at this point where it’s then rotated back down to the Underground through thrift stores and garage sales after it stops being cool. Hence out of necessity, The Underground simply buys these second hand items because they’re either cheap, given to them, or passed on by big brother.
It dies Kiddies because when they pick up on a trend and bring it to market, every fourteen year old kid and their little sister buys it thereby saturating the market with wannabes and look a likes insuring its shelf life and death. And you still want to be cool aye! But why am I going on and on about this? Because I want to share something with you and it won’t cost you a thing. It’s where my narcissism and yours meets!
Whether you want to be a part of the Media’s plan or not it applies to you. Whether you believe me or not, or whether you think it doesn’t apply to you, it does. It applies to everyone from me to you, to your best friend, to her parents, to your grandmother. These companies that you think don’t influence your every waking hour are the same companies who own over ninety percent of all the music you buy and hear. They own all the movies you rent and watch, all the cable companies you watch them on, and so on and so forth. They own everything including you. That’s right! They own you, they own me, and they’re taking over the planet whether we like it or not. I think that they’ve already taken over. Taken over with all these weapons of the mind’s mass destruction!
Why waste your time telling you all this when you got better things to do like play video games all day. Because I thought you might like to know what the direct result of all this is. What all these Cool Hunters and Media whores have done to society and the teenager, in fact. To every adolescent to forty year old target audience as well. They’ve turned all of us in to a vain and narcissistic reflection of our own materialism and commercialism. What do I care right! Wrong, I do care and you should too you idiot!
No one, whether it be the Media, or the Church, or anyone else for that matter could care a good god damn about anything other than how we appear to them. And that’s as a customer and a profit margin. A dollar sign in which their aim is to separate as many of those green pieces of dirty paper from us as they can. With all that said, there’s one thing that you must never allow yourself to lose…and in case you’ve forgotten or never knew…it’s your integrity. Your integrity is something you can’t buy or sell either. No matter how much you think you can, you can’t buy cool and what cool is. Being Cool is something that takes years to understand and learn. It’s not having a bad attitude or flipping off “The Man”. It’s not having the hippest clothes and the coolest phone. It’s having the power to understand that there are some things that just aren’t for sell. There are some things you’ll have to go out and acquire on your own which won’t be off the shelf and ready to wear. Cut and dry, black and white, Cool is something you earn and acquire with respect over years not time spent at the mall shopping or in the mirror. The truth is the Media and advertisers could care less what you want. It’s what they want you to want that concerns them. And they don’t care what you have to do or whether you have to sell yourselves out to get it. They only care that you get it!
Why do I care that you’re all a bunch of acne covered horny idiots who will probably not turn out to be anything but a Mama’s Boy or a turned out twenty seven year old coke whore. And why I am telling you all this? Because you're all just really weak, uneducated, under developed, hyper sexualized, liberal, spoiled, unmotivated narcissistic brats who all remind me of myself. And you’re not going to make out here in the real world. Really! Trust me! You won’t. These are different times were living in now and they don’t make men like me and my friends anymore. Therefore, your wont be able to learn this anywhere. That’s why I’m telling you this. And because nobody else is willing to tell you what you should already be hip to. It’s also what in the end will also make them less money by telling you.
There are other reasons why I’m telling you all this as well. And I don’t care if it hurts your feelings or not. Somebody’s has to tell you. I’m telling you this because whether we like it or not, you’re the one’s that will shortly be running this country and the world one day. This much we’re all sure of. And everybody in it will have no choice but to listen to your stupidity and no doubt fall victim to your ignorance. All because you’d rather be cool than be a man with integrity and grit, because you'd rather be a woman who carries a mirror around with her everywhere she goes in order to stare at her hollow reflection instead of being forced to quell the demons that haunt her every waking hour, I’m forced to tell you.
Look! You want to put holes in your face, fine! I get it. You want to dress like red carpet fashion victims thinking you look cool, no problem. Here’s the problem though since you’re wondering. The problem is you’re not coming up with new ideas or curing incurable diseases or figuring out ways to change the world for the better. You’re not sharing your brilliance with people. You’re not validating your existence by growing and learning what it takes to be a giving person in this world. All you do is take, take, take! You’re just taking up oxygen in this world. Good oxygen, my oxygen! You’re not inventing any new genius and inventions that will help perpetuate our humanity. You’re not developing new advancements in medicine, technology, economics, and industry that maintain our way of life. This is what concerns me. All you want to do is fry your brain day after day on drugs, go shopping, play video games, dream about being famous, and talk on chat lines as you try your hardest not to look like the frightened little kid you really are and who you’ll probably always be.
You all want to be famous on reality shows as actors, and models, and musicians, yet you won’t put in the time to learn your craft. Instead you want merit less and instant gratification from all of us. You want validation as a star because for some strange reason your mommy told you that you were special and deserve it. Truth is you have no talent and no skills. So now what are you going to do? I almost forgot. You’re going to be discovered on American Idol or Ford modeling agency by walking in the mall. Yeah, all those directors out there know just what mall you’re going to be in and on what day. And you think that you’ll be able to fill that gaping hole in the middle of your body. You think that this is going to dry your tears at night because you think just because you want it so bad that you think you deserve it. And you think you’re going to get it at that? There’s no applause and attention waiting for you at the end of the rainbow, so you better get this thought through your head. You’re no one but who’s to say by a little hard work and effort what you could achieve!.JPG)
You best forget being cool and what ever else you fantasize about in that limited space of a brain up there on your trunk. You better start learning to become a man. You better start learning what it takes and what it’s like to be a woman. You better start saying what you do and doing what you say if you expect to make it in this big bad place we call The World. Stand up for yourself and start believing in your self and in something else besides what the paparazzi and gossip magazines say about being a star. Forget what helpless strumpets like Paris Hilton say. Your not her, so be thankful. And you’re not on some world stage where everybody’s on pins and needles waiting to see and hear what desperate attempt at attention you’re going to do next. You better start learning a trade or a skill and understanding what it means to be self sufficient. You better learn what integrity is and where you’re going to start looking for it.
Where do you find the truth someone asked me the other day? You find it in yourself and in the things you will and won’t ever do. What you will stand for and what you will not tolerate. And where is it that you discover what character and substance are made of? You discover it in your heritage and in your country’s and family’s history. You build it by standing on principle and doing those things that are right and that build your character. You earn it by working for it! By putting value into it! And you discover it by discovering that you are afraid of some things and less afraid of other things and unafraid of any one person, including yourself. You err, fall, and get back up again. And you come to blame no one for the mishaps that your way comes. You start by not even blaming yourself. And you find the beauty within you, not on the label of your shirt or underwear. And you don’t find it in the doctor who reinvents you with the magic of plastic surgery.
If you won’t believe in what I say, you better at least start believing in yourself. Believe in a man who has made every mistake a man can possibly make in this world. Believe this from a man who’s chased every nightmare, every thing and every body away that cares and loves him because I was too afraid to get close to anybody out of fear of more isolation and rejection. I was too afraid to take the chances in life that I needed to take in order to get the things I wanted because I thought I was entitled to them because I was special. In a nutshell because I thought I wasn’t accepted and didn’t have a place in this world. Believe in the words of a man that has hated, loved, poisoned, and bottomed out like so many of us out here that you don’t have the time for. Not in what your favorite actor preaches or sells you. One of these days when you come to stand side by side what I can only describe to you as a real person, will you be crushed by the weight of the shadow that he casts over you! If there’s ever been a time to do something, then do it now I tell you. Do anything but do it soon!!! That’s all I have to say to you…