I guess I'm getting old because I'm about to wag my finger at the younger generation here (get off my lawn!).Bill Maher coined a phrase in Real Time last week that struck rather an interesting chord. He referred to Millennials as the Guitar Hero generation. A group of young people who would rather play a video game with a fake guitar, than pick up a real guitar and learn to play.
Bill certainly had a point.
I was reading Yahoo! Answers today, and some youngster (or disturbingly illiterate older person who writes like a teen) asked where he could find a poker bot to assist him beating his father in an online play money poker game.
Most of us can remember when we beat our fathers at a game for the first time. It is a rite of passage to finally get old enough to realize that your parent is not infallible or unbeatable.
But what story is our little guitar hero going to have for his children one day? "Yes son, one day I figured out how to download a program someone else had written and use it to cheat at poker for play money against my dad. I can still remember the look in his eyes as he proudly acknowledged I had finally beaten him. One day son, you too will learn to cheat just as I did, and you'll outsmart your old man, just as I did."
Of course the slight flaw in this master plan is the reality that cheating prevents you from actually learning the game. There are a million web sites to read, thousands of books. But some people they would rather cheat. Let's hope this isn't really a hallmark of the Guitar Hero generation.
2 comments:
A couple of things...
1. Guitar Hero has introduced todays kids to some actual GOOD music.
2. It was a gateway into my 7 year old starting to learn on a real guitar.
Bill is very clever, but that doesn't mean he's an authority. I have 4 children, 5-15 years old who I get to observe daily, along with their friends. Bill is a tad out of touch and his cynicism clouds his thinking.
1) There are any number of ways that young people find out about classic music. I can remember being in my teens and having friends who were really in to older music, as opposed to the usual pop stuff.
2) I question how much of a gateway it really is. Let's face it half your family are in a band! You even play guitar yourself! I'm pretty sure that the family influence is a lot bigger pull than a video game. Remember at the age of seven, most kids still idolize their parents and want to follow their lead.
I never claimed Bill was an authority on children, I just thought his phrase was interesting. There have been plenty of similar news items that discuss studies of so called Millennials. I don't even have any proof that Bill came up with that phrase, it was just the first place I heard it.
I'm sure Bill is a little out of touch when it comes to being a parent, given that he is not one and not married. But I think he does a pretty good job of keeping up with the times for a guy in his 50s. Must be all the 20 year old models he 'parties' with!
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