Teens vs. Memes

Teens vs. Memes

Stephanie Vainberg comments in her blog Dystopia Today on how Society Killed the Teenager. Sharing her opinion, I agree that society has been degrading as well as evolving the teenage culture. However who or what I should say is responsible for this? Easy… memes.  They are after all the driving force behind society’s cultural changes. True, people are the ones who act upon them, yet memes are the “active agents working purposefully for their own survival.” (Pg 196) Through out time genes have been undergoing cultural mutations reflecting their time period. Like evolution of genes, the environment influences them to.

Taboos are clear examples of memes. There have been revelations towards taboos especially by the teenage culture. In the 20`s, young women started to drink, cut their hair in bobs, and shorten the length of their skirt. In the 50`s the beatnik generation displayed more freedom in sexuality as well as drug use.   They were followed by hippies in the 60`s and so on. Each decade, taboos protested against existing memes as well as mutated and spread others.

As there exist good mutations for evolution there are also bad ones. Memes fit into this as well, I will however leave it up to you to decide which is what. Fashion is a meme that has come to be extremely important for teenagers. This comes in hand with another meme, beauty and the idealism that society has made out of it. Drinking, partying, and smoking have become a ¡n extremely common recreational activity. A meme that affects all society as well is a materialistic view of the world that is constantly fed by the evolution of technology.

When referring to “Society Killed the Teenager” an extremely biased position is taken. Why killed? I would personally say it was a birth rather than a death. Adults were once teenagers and experienced cultural mutations in memes as well.  Genes being immortal in a way couldn’t be killed and therefore neither could the teenage society because they follow the gene’s DNA orders. The stereotyped teen is seen by older generations as killed by society. Younger generations see it as normal or simply born from society. Nevertheless it all comes back to memes and their state and influence on what group on what time.

Meme: A cultural replicator of imitation.

Imitation: Copy or fake

Survival Value: Value for a meme in a meme pool

Cultural Mutation: The alteration of cultural characteristics