Young People Of Ireland, I Loathe You

THIS IS no country for old men . . .

Thirty is a dirty word, and one your correspondent was forced to contemplate at length about a year ago. My number was up I had reached the same conclusion as Martin Amis in The Information: Ma Nature was done with me. The incredulous ding-dong of denial rang through my head: I didn t get where I am today . . .
Mind you, it s not that I was ever any good at being young. Pop-culturally speaking, the 80s were a terrible time to be a teenager, a decade-long bad hair day redeemed only by the acid house explosion in 1988. And your reporter, ever a pup with his finger on the pulse, didn t even appreciate that movement: the one rave I attended was packed with tie-dyed kids waving their arms like apoplectic trees in time with a series of repetitive beeps, beats and bleats that, to these ears, sounded like R2D2 s greatest hits. Ecstasy? Any drug which enables people to dance like that should be called Agony.
However, age has its compensations. In the current socio-economic climate, being labelled an embittered old fart seems more honourable than membership of Club 18-30. The E generation s given way to the Me generation, a repulsively self-satisfied, self-serving, self congratulatory, self-obsessed abomination of nature, a new breed of Young Irelanders obsessed with restaurants, property supplements, pubs, clubs, clothes and cars. Our famously youthful nation has become a race of communications junkies who never seem to say anything, producers who never produce anything, commuters who never go anywhere, and socialites who act in a decidedly antisocial manner. Dublin in particular has become, in the words of Christy Moore, a hotbed of nothing .
In this context, the age-old idea of the young being capable of effecting progressive change, invention, innovation, radicalism or even revolution is a joke. Ireland 99 is run by a new nationalist party: The Me Feiners ambitious, upwardly mobile, uptight automatons. And you thought Irish Thatcherism had something to do with putting a roof on the housing crisis?
For perhaps the first time in the history of the state, the under 30s have money to burn. It ain t pretty. There s no more obnoxious smell than that of new money mixed with the hubris of youth, nor no more grating sound than an underdog who has just learned to crow. Sure, previous generations may have been just as self-interested, merely paying lip-service to neo-bohemian idealism before copping onto the capitalist bandwagon, but at least for a brief window of opportunity, they acted like they gave a toss. The 70s babies on the other hand, have always sucked for a living, going from the breast to the bottle to the glass tit of the TV before finally becoming full-blown corporate suck-ups.

But before you correct me for taking kneejerk potshots at the YOPPIES (Young Organised Professional People In Expensive Suits), I ll come clean. I too have been known to wear a pin-stripe, carry a briefcase and refuse to leave the house unless armed to the teeth with so many mobile phones and pagers even the most charitable of my friends think I m a drug dealer. Plus, my domicile is rigged up with more fax modems, e-mail appliances, phone-lines, software, hardware and kitchenware than Airforce One. In this respect, any polemical potshot levelled at well-off whippersnappers is bound to boomerang back on my brow. And in truth, I begrudge no wet-eared entrepreneur a few quid in his pocket. It s when that folding green gets absorbed through the Armani fabrics into the bloodstream and goes to the brain that I start to get antsy.
The sense of automatic privilege working on the psyche of your average Young Irelander was brought home to this writer when he woke up one morning two years ago to find that his sleepy des res in South Dublin had somehow become a public car park for boomtown brats. No big deal, you might say: let s not get all territorially pissy about parking rights. Except these 9-to-5ers effectively block access for emergency vehicles and even refuse collectors; no joke in a cul-de-sac populated by older folk. And, it must be said, the primary offenders are YOPPIES who betray no qualms about abandoning their gleaming Beamers in front of someone s garage door, DARTing into town and returning eight hours later after close of business. The old definition of a freeloader was someone who d live in your ear. These days, they park in your garden.
Recently I confronted one such specimen, aged about 22, barely shaving, and by the cut of him, a corporate lackey in the pay of some Yank software behemoth with a name like DOTCOMPAQ Ltd. When I indicated that he was creating an obstruction, this callow fellow surveyed his botched parking job, took one look at me, and whinnied, Not really .
It s hard to convey in words exactly why his response got my back up. It was a combination of the tone of voice (pipsqueaky, condescending, as in, don t be such a silly little man, ) and the vagueness of the language. Not really. As in, I mean, like, sorta, whatever, y know?
Yes really, I growled. It either is or it isn t. And it is.
But then, the new white-collar classes are only the most conspicuous targets in the Keltic creepshow. Those who opt out of the brat-race are just as bad. I m not necessarily talking about eco-warriors (you can t but admire a zealot, and besides, Liam Fay s already launched his scuds in that direction) so much as the screaming ME-ME! merchants that thrive under the New Age umbrella. Self-discovery, self-healing, self-help, self knowledge . . . see a theme developing? It s this writer s opinion that you learn nothing from The Self that you don t already know. I get queasy when touchy-feely-talky folk start coming on like a cross between Walt Whitman and Oprah Winfrey:
How ve ye been, horse?
Oh, rilly good. I ve been doing some work on myself. I ve learned to forgive myself for judging myself.
Glad to hear it.
Again, it comes down to the lingo unspecific, psychobabbling Alanis-speak masquerading as Robert M Pirsig s inquiry into values . Maybe I m emotionally dyslexic, but I literally do not understand what these people are on about.

So, Young Urban Ireland has never been more hegemonic or homogenic (in attitude if not actuality), and it ll take some form of outright insurgence artistic or otherwise to get that smug look off its face. But when the revolution comes, it will be televised; rather than getting our hands dirty by participating, we ll watch it on pay per view.
Any conspiracy theorist worth his woolly hat will tell you that the New World Order of big business has long supplanted local government as The Establishment, but it s hard to buck the very powers you subsidise: most of us under 40 have at some stage bought into a corporately orchestrated notion of non-conformity, probably via sounds and images by the likes of Iggy and Ewan, gladrags by Nike and lifestyle by Irvine Welsh. To wit, even the most lightning of chromosome shifts in street-style gets co-opted by quick-off-the-Deutschmarket-targeters.
Visually it s almost like Chairman Mao except it s Chairman Champion, Gavin Friday told me last December. Everyone s walking around in Chairman Sports gear. And that isn t just a class thing. You can go to BT2 and spend #350 on your tracksuit. Or you can go to Marathon and spend #60. But it all looks like Big Brother s kickin in. At least with the Teds and punks and skinheads, you d fuckin colour.
Meanwhile, drugs have dominated late 90s youth culture, but as a recreational rather than consciousness-expanding pursuit. That coke for which, like therapy, you pay through the nose in order to talk through the arse is the drug of choice amongst the Irish obliterati makes perfect sense.
Worse, we ve engendered a climate obsessed with amusements, entertainments and novelties. 1950s America, with its pink flamingos, dishwashers and washing machines, has finally invaded the oul sod, and boy are we prepared to pay for it, consuming at a rate of gigabytes: Playstation, DVD, Minidiscs . . . a constant drain on the disposable income of the 18-30 demographic.
Your reporter recently went browsing around the local Xtravision, hoping to rent something exotic and/or old-fashioned as a change from the SkyMovies package to which he d suckered himself into subscribing. To my horror, the oldies and world cinema sections was gone, replaced by a motherfucker of a DVD display and 400 copies of Godzilla. The biggest news in Irish cinema this summer was Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, a merchandising franchise in the guise of a two-hour ad campaign, conceived and directed by George Lucas, possibly the dullest man in Hollywood.
And on the subject of cultural imperialism, the identity of the young Irish male appears to have devolved into the alright geezer mentality promulgated by the West-Brit Loaded lot, hitched to a too-cool-to-care attitude embodied by our stateside cousins. Even at the cutting edges of broadcasting, certain 20-something TV presenters resemble caricatures The Fast Show crew could cook up on a slow day, adopting an unintelligible argot peppered with jargon, steeped in irony, detachment, knowingness; a language of exclusion.
But most insidiously, while all and sundry were yammering on about the post-colonial condition, consumed by Anglophobia and fear of a Brave New Europa, we ve been corporately and culturally re-colonised by Uncle Sam, whose empire we had a substantial hand in founding in the first place. It s time to take that holy trinity portrait of Bono, the Pope and JFK down from above the fireplace and replace it with a cut-up collage of Bill Gates, Will Smith and Britney Spears: this is the latest 51st state of the USA.
Consequently, as old codgers flee the Temple bars and inner city alehouses because they ve been upgraded into Hollywood theme parks, it s time to air-kiss goodbye to the indigenous banter that makes even purchasing a pint (sorry, litre) of milk a surreal and savoury panto. PC and Amerikan terms like closure , goal-driven and issues infest our speech like a virus. Before long, the young punter serving you in the Spar will speak like his or her American relation in CVS, a combination of Mulder giving a press conference and Scully performing an autopsy ( No sir, these diapers do not indicate gender specificity ). That is, unless such menial McJobbery becomes so stigmatised, it s seen fit only for tinkers, refugees and migrant culchies.

Maybe an age like this produces the pop stars it deserves. Certainly, the current Paddypop bubblegum conspiracy is an accurate barometer of the youthful constituency it could claim to represent. Of course, Louis Walsh s saplings wouldn t seem half as pesky if the mainstream musical balance were redressed by a bunch of rock n roll rowdies or rap-braggarts; shit-kickers capable of bringing the noise with a side order of attitood.
Sure, there are stirrings afoot: Kim Fowley reckons there s something brewing in Kilkenny city, and if Parnell Street s Little Africa ever integrates with working class Dublin, we might even breed our own mutant strain of inner-city hip-hop. But until then, Irish rock n roll remains catatonic, while club culture is in danger of degenerating into my groove s rarer than yours elitism (Bass Odyssey excepted). On the other hand, veterans like Shane, Sinead, Van etc, who have the gumption to put foot in mouth once in a while, allow themselves to be ushered towards the margins like embarrassing aunts and uncles.
So, the native scene remains dominated by individuals who portray themselves as insipidy-doo-dah backslap-happy gladhandlers. And while this writer bears absolutely no ill will towards Boyzone, B*Witched, Westlife et al (in fact, I ve never met any of them), music must mean more than revelling in being young, moneyed and schtum, with nothing to declare but your jeany-ass. I can think of no more perfect host for November s MTV Europe Awards than Dublin.
Welcome to the Aryan Islands y all. Unless, of course, you re seeking asylum. n