
Generation Sell - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepreneurial-generation.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all
======
neilk
I wanted to hate this piece, but I can't. This idea of "post-emotional" is
ridiculous, and probably overestimates how passionate previous generations
were. There were a lot of half-hearted hippies and punks too. But I think he's
right about a few things:

\- the ideal personality is now someone gentle, who gets along with everyone

\- the ideal social form is now to start a business or non-profit, or at least
be an independent professional

\- to this end, and due to social media and blogging, many of us are always
selling ourselves, however subtly.

~~~
notatoad
i think i've found a way to hate it. the author is spot on, but entirely
misses the point by labeling us "generation sell". it's not about the selling,
it's about working for ourselves. the band as a self-promoting, self-managing
independent entity isn't doing it to make money, they're doing their own sales
so that their music remains their own. small-time independent entrepreneurs
are very specifically _not_ selling themselves. they're selling a product so
they don't have to sell themselves to an employer. being a small business
owner isn't about selling something, it's about not selling out.

~~~
trevelyan
I suspect most people still want the comfort of a stable job or career.
Problem is that for the last ten years it has been hard to find good ones in
the general economy, outside a few growth areas of questionable sustainability
(housing, finance, health care). So the opportunity cost for 20-30 somethings
to doing their own thing has fallen, even if people don't want to admit it.

The other difference is that startups and small businesses give people a more
comfortable narrative of how their life is going. It is a lot more comforting
to tell yourself, "I'm doing badly now so I will do better in the future,"
than "I'll never get a job that pays as well as my parents."

If this was not the case, there would be much less romanticization of venture
capital and angel investment on these boards, more startups would be focused
on revenue-generating than traction-generating products, and lifestyle
businesses would not be perceived as failures of boldness for "not swinging
for the fences".

~~~
danssig
>I suspect most people still want the comfort of a stable job or career.

I suspect a lot of people are starting to realize there is no such thing.

------
anthuswilliams
I wouldn't say we're looking at a culture of salesmen. I'd say it's a culture
of craftsmen. The salesman prizes negotiation; he does whatever he has to to
get his commission. The craftsman focuses on building and presenting his
product (and himself) in a way that maximizes the respect he gets from his
peers. The difference between salesman and craftsman is subtle, but it's
clear. And I think it's a good way to explain elements of youth culture that
don't really jive with the article's point (e.g., the OWS movement).

~~~
ilaksh
Perfect example of the type of bullshit belief structure that generation sell
is built on.

A craftsman focuses on making things. He focuses on his craft. Period. He does
not focus on presenting his product at all. The product does not need
presentation or sales, its craftsmanship stands for itself.

The difference between salesman and craftsman is that they are completely
different things.

OWS has NOTHING to do with the article, except for the very end where he
mentions a new culture forming.

I'm sure you know that words have meaning. You just aren't very good at
working out what those meanings are or how they are different from eachother.

------
tryitnow
This is clearly written by someone who has not interacted much with real-world
entrepreneurs. "Agreeable" is not the first word that comes to mind when I
think of the entrepreneurs I've met. I'm not saying all entrepreneurs are
cantankerous, but I would say they're more inclined to do things "their way."

I also think entrepreneurs are a lot more threatening to the status quo than
previous youth-culture archetypes. If you are a recording executive who would
you fear most: 1) a drugged out punk rocker who is pissed at the world and
letting everyone know it 2) a hacker entrepreneur like Sean Parker.

I think history shows us who the establishment should be more fearful of.

~~~
apechai
Pretty sure the Beatles had a pretty big effect on society and the status quo.
The power of art and music tends to be a second order effect: it inspires
people.

Without the music of the 60's/70's, do you think Steve Jobs would have dropped
acid, become a Zen Buddhist and built Apple's brand as a the challenger of the
status quo?

------
mfringel
I place this mostly at the feet of social media. Since your past now never
fades, you have a few choices:

1) Don't put/do anything dubious online. (Theoretically easy, harder in
practice.)

2) Don't put/do anything that could be de-contextualized and subsequently re-
contextualized as dubious, online. (Hard, but not mathematically impossible.)

3) Create some kind of autonomy so that you're not subject to the effects of
social-media-based judgment, because social networking never forgets who you
were. (Moderate difficulty).

Individuals choose one of more of the above approaches for the various parts
of their life... possibly all three simultaneously.

Since social media makes no distinctions about who you were then vs. who you
are now, every moment of behavior counts equally into future perception... so
being polite, and deferential, and constantly "selling", is not a independent
life choice, but rather the result of a most subtle form of coercion.

Coercion is not only from the barrel of a gun. You may completely swear off of
social media altogether, or only post precision-calibrated Markov-chained text
blurbs that make you look like a model citizen, but you get much less control
about what your friends post.

~~~
_delirium
I don't think it's only the fear of putting things out there that might
reflect negatively, but also the temptation of putting things out there that
might reflect positively. I actively try not to do it, but I do find myself
participating in even online discussion groups with one eye towards potential
"personal brand" building. Am I just posting at HN for the discussion, or to
build a platform?

Or: I used to submit essays to Usenet or Kuro5hin, mostly out of a desire to
stimulate discussion and get feedback. But now I post them on my blog, and
when I'm writing them there's, consciously or not, always this background
thought of where I'll advertise that post so people read it, whether it'll get
me new RSS subscribers, etc.

I even sometimes think, on the occasions where I've written a long-ish
Wikipedia article from scratch, that if I were _really_ doing it right, maybe
I should've posted it on my personal blog instead of submitting it as a
Wikipedia article--- because I can't fully capture the personal-brand-building
at Wikipedia. I'm sure there are people who do give in to that temptation,
too.

------
moxie
The author describes youth culture's social _form_ by calling it "post-
emotional," "entrepreneurial," and eventually "generation sell." As
underwhelming as this is, I think it's incredibly generous, as I would call
its social form simply "nothing."

The tendency to start artisan businesses is not a social _narrative_ , it's
just another part of the _aesthetic_. The author compares modern youth culture
with the hippies, beatniks, and punks. But those generations were doing what
they were doing _for a reason_. Read anything from the heroes of those
generations, and you'll see a clear "grand narrative" that described the
social relationships of the world they were trying to create. The social
narrative of punk culture was not "a tendency to start bands that played three
chord songs." That was part of the social aesthetic. The narrative was one of
anti-authoritarinism, collective autonomy, and a vision for a world without
hierarchy.

The truth is that youth culture today has no narrative. Yes, money is cool
again, small-business entrepreneurship is a common pursuit, and "maker"
culture has taken root, but these are just the things people do. Ask someone
why they made the latest LED clock design out of "make magazine," and they'll
more than likely say something along the lines of "because it's neat." Look at
the average young entrepreneur, and you'll find someone who discovered
technology before they discovered themselves -- someone who is "innovating"
because that's what they read they're supposed to do, rather than out of some
informed sense of the social reality they're trying to create.

~~~
maratd
> The truth is that youth culture today has no narrative.

You couldn't possibly be more wrong. The narrative of today's youth culture is
passion. The passion to pursue your craft and the freedom to do it your way.
To satisfy your curiosity without harming the world around you. It is
unbelievably positive and optimistic. Liberty is the narrative of today and
it's a narrative that has far more substance than those prior to it.

~~~
moxie
If you seriously think that the passion of running a taco stand is more
substantial and more liberating than the narrative which led to the events of
Paris in May 1968, then I'm sorry for you.

~~~
neilk
What, you prefer tossing bricks and overturning vehicles, in some spastic orgy
of revolutionary zeal that fails to bring about any measurable change? At
least tacos are tasty.

I pretty much hate May 1968. Not so much for the event itself; there was a lot
to admire in what workers did to advance their rights. But for what it meant
to the progressive ideal. There was much conflation between the starry-eyed
ideals of the students, and the real effects that the strikes had on
government. The academic left thought that one caused the other. Hence the
glorification of dippy slogans like "I declare a permanent state of
happiness". It seems to be the watershed when leftism stopped being about
education and material welfare, and started being some kind of conceptual art
project.

------
guylhem
Spot on the "post-emotional” generation : no anger, no edge, no ego.

Is the entrepreneurial model so attractive that everything that may set you
apart has to be shaved, to avoid displeasing anyone?

To me, hating something is at least as important as loving something else.

I'll place the first brick here and proudly declare that I hate organic food
and the whole "bio" movement, since it is not scalable and mostly used for
class signaling (ala overcomingbias)

~~~
zerostar07
I think his "selling ourselves" argument is overstated. Judging from me, we
keep down emotions because we are more rational than previous generations, we
believe in science and reason vs pointless sentimentalism. Organic-foods are
just that: trying to emotionally engage people to buy products for reasons
never explained.

~~~
guylhem
Science, reason and rationalism are not incompatible with an ego. If you
believe in some right and wrong, there should also be an emotion, and
eventually an action.

I don't think selling ourselves is an overstatement here. And I would also say
that we have one of the least scientific generation- not only because
enrollment is scientific studies is low, but also because there is now a pride
in being ignorant.

Also, while trying to protect everyone feelings, all opinions are considered
as equally valid - even when some proved wrong. If that is not selling
ourselves, how do you call that?

I only took organic food as an example of what one must love to be "in",
trendy, hipster. A dissending opinion, even based on scientific facts, seems
to be frowned upon by hipsters, and by extension the new moral order. In the
organic food example, we want to believe in something other than facts. This
is not science.

Let's follow that example, see [http://reason.com/blog/2009/03/26/norman-
borlaug-happy-95th-...](http://reason.com/blog/2009/03/26/norman-borlaug-
happy-95th-birt) \- with organic food alone, the earth population would have
to be around 4 billions. We're 7 billions. Oops. Internal consistence for
organic food proponents would require suggesting china-like one child policy
or genocides.

Here, the "selling generation" is using emotional engagement as a sale tactic,
for "feel good" stuff.

Personally, I boycott organic food. I usually ask if the food I'm about to
order is organic. If it is organic, I ask for something else. If I can not be
served food that is not organic, I explain that I boycot organic food, and
that I have to place my order somewhere else.

Regardless of your analysis of the organic food, you can say that's is very
bold, and unfashionable, in today's culture.

So I guess I won't be a social media icon. Never mind :-)

~~~
TheEzEzz
> with organic food alone, the earth population would have to be around 4
> billions. We're 7 billions. Oops.

And if everyone had a car and lived like Americans then the world would be in
a tough spot as well. That doesn't mean I'm going to give up my good life. I
eat organic because I don't trust non-organic food, because I don't want to
eat animals that lived their lives in feces, themselves consuming ground up
animals that were too sick to survive. Is organic scalable? It'd be great if
were, and I encourage industry to try, but I'm not in it to save the world,
I'm in it for myself.

~~~
guylhem
"I'm not in it to save the world, I'm in it for myself"

At least, that's self consistent and honest. Maybe not a good sales strategy
though.

~~~
dennisgorelik
That strategy would sell to me better, than dishonest "organic saves the
world" rhetoric.

------
gammarator
This misses two key motivators (and ignores the fact that Portland is an
extreme example). One is an ambivalence about the products and marketing of
large corporations and a corresponding search for authenticity through DIY.
Why buy Heinz when you can make preservative-free ketchup from heirloom tomato
varieties unavailable in any grocery store? And selling the product mainly
sustains the enterprise, offering the potential for work with a degree of
autonomy. Put up a web storefront and your niche local business has global
reach.

As to “self-branding” and innocuous politeness: to Deresiewicz, these identify
a salesman. More probably, they result from a generational awareness that
one’s words and actions are immortalized online. One cultivates a persona or
risks letting others do so for you.

------
blhack
Maybe the author just needs to surround himself with some different people?
The things I see in my social circles certainly aren't the sort of feel-good,
homogenized things he's describing.

And is this really new? Haven't people (and I'm half tempted to apply the term
pseudo-intellectual here) been complaining about life being a bit passionless
"lately" since...ever?

The longing for the "old days" of the wild west is such a common complaint
that its just a cliche now.

If this article feels like it has any sort of merit to you (and you agree with
the implication that this is bad), I suggest surrounding yourself with a
different group of people.

------
Gaussian
I think in some ways the feeling of this piece embodies the phenomenon, real
or not, it attempts to describe. The writer clearly harbors some negative
feelings about hipster culture and his perception of its salesman roots, but
he won't come out and explicitly rip it--similar to the attitudes of the
hipsters he finds so enigmatic.

------
whazzmaster
(Hopefully very slight) tangent: The article describes the Millenial
Generation as "born between the late ’70s and the mid-’90s." Yikes.

I suppose when attempting to reduce such a group to a simple catchphrase
("post-emotional"), no additional harm is done by throwing those who were 21
in the year 2000 with those who were five.

My opinion is that it's always difficult to describe phenomena while inside;
easier to categorize the mood of an era once the era has passed.

~~~
_delirium
At the risk that it might degenerate into too much meta-level academic
theorizing, I'd actually be interested in an analysis of generation-analysis
itself. The way generations are segmented seems pretty strange, and shifts
depending on who's writing, what/why they're writing, and when they're writing
it. It'd be fascinating to get some sort of overview of how that process
works.

As someone born in 1981, I've ended up in all sorts of buckets. Sometimes '81
is considered the tail end of Generation X. When I was younger, I thought of
myself as solidly Gen-X, because "my" culture all seemed to be
quintessentially Gen-X culture: Nirvana, MTV, skate-punk, the microcomputer
revolution, cynicism about both staid corporate life and the hippie
alternative to it, etc. Later I realized that many people considered '81 a bit
late for Gen-X, but I had considered myself in it because as a teenager I
identified with culture-drivers who were actually 5-15 years older (e.g. Kurt
Cobain somehow seemed in my generation at the time, but was in fact born in
'67). This article, and some others, by contrast would group me as a
Millennial, but many of the other descriptions I've found of Millennials seem
aimed at people younger than me, mainly people born in the late-80s/early-90s.

~~~
bartonfink
I was born in 83, and I agree. I was homeschooled, so growing up I was never
part of a group of children my own age. I was smart at the time, and so I
tended to spend most of my social time hanging out with folks who were 5-10
years older and absorbed a lot of culture from them. I've always identified
more with the "ideals" of Generation X than with those of the Millenial
generation or Generation Y. I'm cynical almost to a fault. I have extreme
problems accepting un-earned authority, such that my wife said "you just
aren't meant to have a boss" the other day. I really just want to be left
alone to live my life in peace, like a less violent Daniel Plainview.

To get meta, I think that it's probably easiest to envision generations as
phases of an ideological sine wave. At any given time, one set of ideas and
culture - one phase - will be dominant and will contain most of the
population. However, no phase ever dies out completely - there's always a few
oddballs who will find medieval chivalry, for instance, appealing. I think
that you and I were just born in between the peaks of Generation X and the
Millenial generation, so our values are somewhat harder to predict.

------
chrismealy
That's a whole lot of waffle extrapolated from Portland's food carts (which
are great, btw) and handmade wallets.

~~~
maxogden
i see waffle did there

------
bluekeybox
He missed mods. Watch Antonioni's "Blowup" (1966) and tell me how Thomas (mod)
differs from today's hipster startup founder. He doesn't -- except perhaps
that he is a bit less polite and drives a vintage Rolls-Royce.

------
rorhskdh
Beware of cantakerous smart wordsmiths. They can articulate poisonous thoughts
convincingly.

------
whazzmaster
When I think about branding a generation, which is always done by a member of
a previous generation and with not a little whiff of "kids these days'
syndrome, it occurs to me that there might be a feedback loop involved.

If you're firmly part of Generation G (for Generic, a theoretical generation)
which has qualities X, Y, and Z but born in the mid-to-late period of said
generation, you're told from the moment you're born that you're part of a
group that is X, Y, and Z.

I don't have an answer, but I suspect that the problem with 20-30 year-
spanning "generations" which are defined and classified by older folks is
that, over time, they take on the qualities imbued by an outside observer.

------
kenamarit
I liked the article, though I do think he over-generalizes a diverse
subculture full of both crusading, idealistic boys and girls as well as truly
despicable characters. Regardless it does put into words ideas and feelings we
have all had for awhile, or at least he tried.

Being post-emotional myself (I guess), I have no real opinion to add other
than another observation that once again holds true: that the comments about
the article here on Hacker News has been a way better discussion on the topic
than the comments on the NYTimes site. Why is the NYTimes always so behind the
curve?

------
narrator
>According to one of my students at Yale, where I taught English in the last
decade, a colleague of mine would tell his students that they belonged to a
“post-emotional” generation. No anger, no edge, no ego.

Sounds like Prozac has really had an impact. These kids, when they get the
rare moment of depression or rage now, should savor it, like tasting a dish
that one only eats once or twice a year.

------
kitsune_
This is not a new idea, I remember having this discussion back in high school
with my friends, in 1996, during the dot-com boom.

------
DefinitelyNbdy
Our society is "fundamentally agreeable"?

Seriously?

Let me counter with: Two land wars in Asia, thirty (!) years of cancerous
deregulation of the private sector leading to an economic implosion, 9/11, OWS
protests, raging unemployment...

Having said all of this, I would agree that PORTLAND, OR is a fundamentally
agreeable society...it is difficult to communicate this in writing, you really
have to visit the place to understand.

~~~
bluedanieru
Of these, I would say that the only one the Millennials have any hand in is
the OWS protests, largely because many of them are unemployed now with nothing
else to do. Western society has apparently forgotten the grave danger that
comes from leaving vast swaths of your young population without work and
riddled with debt. The reteaching of that lesson is going to define the coming
decade, I think.

But the wars? Neo-liberal baby boomers cooked that up. Deregulation? GenX
loves that shit.

~~~
william42
Actually, seventy-something percent of the OWS protesters are employed.

~~~
bluedanieru
I've seen that statistic as well, and wondered if someone would point it out
when I wrote that. Apparently it's more than the Tea Party, for all the media
bullshit about the two.

At any rate that's still a large portion of it unemployed, being around a
quarter, compared to the population-wide unemployment rate of 9%. And surely
you would find overrepresented among the movement folks who are underemployed
or otherwise frustrated by the lack of mobility in the current market. So (I
think) my point stands.

------
georgieporgie
Having a large number of much younger cousins who are, oddly enough, from the
Portland area, I think the author is painting an entire generation on the
basis of a few highly visible examples.

------
ScotterC
If you don't control your personal brand. Someone else will

