My kids, age 16, 19 and 23, are appalled that I am blogging, and even more appalled that I think that these entries constitute blogs in the first place. They laugh at my formal sentence structure. They mock my correct spelling. They seem to believe I have car-jacked a Lamborghini to deliver my laundry. Definitely not cool.
Then, thankfully, I was upstaged in cluelessness when my 84 year old father-in-law joined Facebook. He friended my kids and their cousins, causing a minor surge in inter-cousin hilarity. He was smiling, hugely, in his profile picture, and the picture was way too close-up, just his face, filling up 90% of the frame. He described his politics as “conservatives,” a puzzle to everyone since he is not. And he misunderstood the reference to “interested in,” and answered “men and women.” This would come as a surprise to his 83 year old wife. However, he did receive several nice but confusing friend requests from other elderly men.
What does this mean? For my kids, the spread of behavior that defined their youth and technological savvy has now been democratized to the old and the decidedly un-hip. The fact that blogging is now a big company marketing sub-category pretty much means the edge is moving elsewhere. I’m not sure where my children will relocate to, but I don’t expect to find them on Facebook when I finally get around to joining. By that time, when I answer “interested in” by writing “enterprise software,” no one will even know to LOL.