As a child dubbed as a member of the "Millennial Generation," I have grown up with technology and the internet; therefore, I have been inundated with images, news, Twitter, and everything pop culture. We live in a society where we are raised through the media. We adopt the personas that we watch religiously on our televisions. The ideal life where things just seem to work themselves out at the end of the day. But our generation just seems obsessed with the concept of escapism; we utilize alcohol, drugs, sex, film, or simply hide behind our phones to escape the confrontation of real life.
I know that I took this idea of escapism in the form of literature. When life got too tough, I imagined myself in the place of the characters that I read about. There was a comfort that I found in the words printed on this page. It is how I developed myself as a person. Each book had a unique story, a new person for me to get to know, or a new way to empathize with a friend who had a similar issue. My form of escapism soon extended itself to film, dance, theater, and occasionally, a bottle of alcohol. I’m no saint, I grew up in this generation along with everyone else, and so I have just as many flaws as the next person.
Taking this idea of escapism a step further, we are inundated with technology. We lost the simple idea of interacting with humans. There is this weird anxiety that comes with actually making a substantial relationship with people. Whenever we feel someone breaking through the wall that we created with our smart phones, then we runaway. I grew weary of this when I did not have my phone for an entire summer, which turned into the best summer of my life. I had a new appreciation for trying to get to know the quirks about a human. I had no choice but to interact with them, and learn how to simply make eye contact with them. Making eye contact, I realized, is one of the hardest things to do for a person. They get nervous and they avert it as soon as possible. I find it hilarious and scary that this small device in our hand is capable of severing true empathy, and allows us to create a persona that we believe to be true through this images.
Pop culture is one of the biggest monsters in our society; we use social media to validate our position in society, images to tell us what we should be wearing, or film to dictate how we should always approach love or drama. These are only a few examples of how we lost the ability to think for ourselves and come up with solutions on our own. But this is a scary monster because the generation before is losing to this pop culture monster. I’m not going to lie, I learned a lot from my mother, but it is still hard to compare to these images that are consistently thrown in our face. We’re a generation that does not know how to hold onto sixteen as long as we can. There’s an irony in wanting to grow up, because once we get there, we don’t want it anymore.
How do we balance our obsession with pop culture and escapism with actually living life? What is your form of escapism? I think about it all the time, and there is no solid solution to this. I’m just one person plagued with this millennial complex, but I wonder if I’ll ever find this solution. Maybe? Maybe not. I probably won’t even realize when it happens, but once I do, I’ll be set. Maybe...
