The Twixters, and Fandom
Jan. 19th, 2005 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldTIME Magazine's January 2005 cover story is on The Twixters, a new life-phase that's emerging between teenager and adult. Modern educations have ceased to be worth much in the job market, so they can't afford a home, a marriage, or kids. They're renowned as Secret Masters Of Friendship, the "New Tribes."
I don't live with my parents, which would be wrong to them, but as long as I don't have kids or get married, I have no one to be irresponsible to. Why does the transition to so-called "adulthood" create more neediness in this world just in order to level it back out to zero in their lifetimes? If you're worried about being selfish, there's plenty enough pre-existing need to be met without having more kids.
And don't get me started on permanent, institutionalized romantic commitment as a pointless anachronism and "The One and Only True Forever Love" as a hormonally-deluded illusion.
And career? Anything worth loving is worth doing as a labor of love, for free, like open source software. People pay someone else to do the rest, which is called a job.
The article talks about "settling down" as if its value needed no defense whatsoever. What's that, a real-estate ad? The best they could do was question-begging, vague moral tut-tutting and undefined fear. We are expected to follow the railroad tracks of normality "because... uh... hmm... um... Peter Pan!" It should have asked, "why shouldn't everyone be a Twixter?"
Has this resulted in an influx into Fandom, which seems tailor-made for the tribalizing Twixters? Even though I'm 30 and therefore outside the high end of the age range, I am a Twixter and so are my friends. It occurred to me while reading the article that I don't spend time with anyone who has children. At M.O.F.O., I can only think of three couples, and none of them have kids. Is it just me, or do there exist two distinct hermetically-sealed contingents of Fen? I speak of those who have a house, a spouse, a career, and children; and those who have one of the above at most. Never the twain shall meet except at Concom meetings?
I don't live with my parents, which would be wrong to them, but as long as I don't have kids or get married, I have no one to be irresponsible to. Why does the transition to so-called "adulthood" create more neediness in this world just in order to level it back out to zero in their lifetimes? If you're worried about being selfish, there's plenty enough pre-existing need to be met without having more kids.
And don't get me started on permanent, institutionalized romantic commitment as a pointless anachronism and "The One and Only True Forever Love" as a hormonally-deluded illusion.
And career? Anything worth loving is worth doing as a labor of love, for free, like open source software. People pay someone else to do the rest, which is called a job.
The article talks about "settling down" as if its value needed no defense whatsoever. What's that, a real-estate ad? The best they could do was question-begging, vague moral tut-tutting and undefined fear. We are expected to follow the railroad tracks of normality "because... uh... hmm... um... Peter Pan!" It should have asked, "why shouldn't everyone be a Twixter?"
Has this resulted in an influx into Fandom, which seems tailor-made for the tribalizing Twixters? Even though I'm 30 and therefore outside the high end of the age range, I am a Twixter and so are my friends. It occurred to me while reading the article that I don't spend time with anyone who has children. At M.O.F.O., I can only think of three couples, and none of them have kids. Is it just me, or do there exist two distinct hermetically-sealed contingents of Fen? I speak of those who have a house, a spouse, a career, and children; and those who have one of the above at most. Never the twain shall meet except at Concom meetings?
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Re: This is good stuff.
Date: 2005-01-25 09:39 pm (UTC)