Bloody young people of today!!!

Hairy Homer

OK I'm at the stage where youthful idealism has faded and been supplanted by weary pragmatism. But I still like to think I can combine a tolerance for the different tastes of the younger generation with occasional empathy for new innovations that they can help bring to my attention.

Until now.

It appears that there is now a chart for the most popular mobile phone ringtones downloaded every fortnight. What the **** is going on!!!!

I know it's part of growing up that you adopt tastes and attitudes designed to irritate the hell out of your parents' generation. But this is going too bloody far. What is wrong with the young people of today?

My generation had the Boomtown Rats, the Stranglers and the Sex Pistols.

The generation before sang ' I hope I die before I get old'

You have the ****ing Nokia ringtone. I'm glad I AM old.

Bring back King Herod. We need him now.

Victor

Who do you think is selling them to the young people? These youngsters are being exploited by their elders. Think of the noise as payback.

Tommy Vercetti

old people :rolleyes:

BlitzKrieg

do you have to be old to hate those lists?

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by Victor
Who do you think is selling them to the young people? These youngsters are being exploited by their elders. Think of the noise as payback.

Hey kids. Just say no.

Borzoi

Apparently the turnover from the sales of the ringtones exceeds that of the singles sales - then again given the ****e these young people listen to, why would I give a toss?:D

sceptre

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
The generation before sang ' I hope I die before I get old'

These days the kids are singing along to Robbie Williams singing "I hope I'm old before I die". Worse, they're the kids that have some (not much, some) taste.

martarg

Mobile ringtones are a harmless hobby. You will not know what lack of taste is until you have listened to some of the music Spanish kids listen to nowadays...

http://www.davidbisbal.com/

This guy is absolutely huge in Spain.... (where is a good weeping smiley when you need it?) Then, there is a wonderful late-night show where people pull down their trousers and yell abuse at each other as part of the everyday routine. Kids never miss that either....

mudflapgirl

Ringtones are the lesser of so many evils (I say this since I don't have to get the bus anymore and listen to them the entire way home) there's a lot worse out there that people could be doing. Every generation is the same, our kids will torture us and so on til the end of the world.

All we need to do is teach them some dam respect for authority, some manners, and give them a short sharp slap accross the face and tell them to cop on and they'll be grand!



(before you start yelling and whatnot - I don't really mean to walk up to young people and smack them - unless of course that's your thing )

leeroybrown

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
It appears that there is now a chart for the most popular mobile phone ringtones downloaded every fortnight. What the **** is going on!!!!

The reason for there being a chart is pretty simple. Mobile phone ringtone sales are starting to catch up with UK singles sales. I think there was one poor single sales week where ringtones out sold them.

What annoys me is people paying high prices for poor quality midi representations of bad songs so they can annoy us whenever their phone rings.

Paladin

Ignoring the new polyphonic ring tones, I found it amazing that people paid for the simple midi tones. What kind of fools are they?

Also why not create the tune themselves using the composer? In fairness its pretty damned ez altho leway given for tonedeaf people.

Also yes, we all know the pop charts are rubbish. The thing is thats reflected in money too. The big money is in the "farewell" tours of big old rock bands like the Rolling Stones. Lots of the pop acts make it to single charts without every making back much money. A week or two later and they are gone.

Sarky

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
Hey kids. Just say no.

Say no to kids? Makes sense.

Sleipnir

Hey! Kids? Just say no.

Victor

Originally posted by Paladin
Ignoring the new polyphonic ring tones, I found it

Vain ones seeking popularity?

sceptre

Originally posted by mudflapgirl
All we need to do is teach them some dam respect for authority, some manners, and give them a short sharp slap accross the face and tell them to cop on and they'll be grand!



(before you start yelling and whatnot - I don't really mean to walk up to young people and smack them - unless of course that's your thing )

Send them off to war. That'll make men of them all. Even the girls.

pauldeehan

I don't think all young people are like that tbh, there's a spectrum. Some are at the extreme that makes a ringtone chart necessary to their lives, whereas most (hopefully) have a bit more taste and sense.

Personally, I'm a big fan of previous generations music (The Stranglers, Bob Dylan, etc) and a lot of the people I know are big fans of 70-80s music.

orangerooster

As Pauldeehan just said theres a degree scale-at the worst end we have the people who change their ringtones every single day for whatever muck (knacker trance-"SCOOTAH" etc) they think is good and then you have people (the minority unfortunately) who've never contemplated downloading a toss ringtone and just spend their money on decent music or whatever.As a member of the youth of today I think that yes the vast majority of young people today need a good sack-beating and abusive shouting session to get them to cop on.

mike65

Originally posted by Hairy Homer


My generation had the Boomtown Rats, the Stranglers and the Sex Pistols.

All togther now - "Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches" or maybe Something Better Change for this thread...

Ringtones are to this generation what crackly 45s on a dancete were to my parents generation. I bet somehere there is a "Rock Around The Clock" poly tone.

Mike.

Silent Bob

All ringtones are evil. Set the phone to vibrate instead

kano476

Originally posted by BlitzKrieg
do you have to be old to hate those lists?

im 16 i cant stand it. i couldnt be arsed wasting my money on tones, i mean 6 euro for a bloody cheap sounding series of blips.
its funny when people say "oh i spend 40 euro a week on credit" trying to sound like they are popular. and then you see they have 85 ringtones. :rolleyes:

superconor

Yes, people in my year boast "oh my god i spent £30 on my phone last week"
to which i reply "do you not have friends?"
"yeah i do thats why i text them, why what do you do?"
"speak to them. in real life."

them things are a pure rip though, £1.50 a tone at 3 tones a week? fudge off!

dr_manhattan

Damn, this makes me feel old: the sensation of, when these guys say "people in my year are boasting about XYZ" I'm thinking "ooohhh, is that what the young people boast about now..." haha...

But here's my 2 cents:

Kids these days (ahem) are pretty much in a vacuum as far as what makes things valuable or worthwhile - it makes to late 70s (my early development) seem like a bygone age of innocent, easily defined social mores.... it was simple. The system was crap, rebel against everything and distrust money. Easy peasy.

But the only messages we're giving kids these days, whether by example or via soap operas or the music biz, is that sex and money makes things valuable. Originality doesn't matter, individuality is an illusion created by ringtones, clothes and deoderant. No escape from reality basically. I don't envy 'em.

So It's not a surprise to me that issues of a sexual nature (i.e. popularity and all it implies) become blended with issues of cash (i.e. how much a kid spends on call credit) in the schoolyard. They're not working 3 jobs for nothing you know. They are in pursuit of status that *we* told them was valuable.

After all, blending sex+power+money is a human speciality. If we wanted our kids to be less obsessed with fake trash, maybe we should try being a bit less obsessed with it ourselves: perhaps if we were a bit more genuine in our dealings with each other and them, our kids mightn't assume that the ****ty plastic things in life aren't important. It's not off the ground they get it, ya know ;-)

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by mike65
All togther now - "Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches" or maybe Something Better Change for this thread...

Liberation for women, that's what I preach.

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
Hey kids. Just say no.

Say yes kids - don't listen to Mr. Grumpy.

Uncle Corinthian needs your money to put it to good use.

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by The Corinthian
Say yes kids - don't listen to Mr. Grumpy.

Uncle Corinthian needs your money to put it to good use.

Why does the 'I'm your wicked Uncle Ernie' song from The Who's Tommy come into my mind on reading that?

Must be my age.

;-)

dr_manhattan

doesn't that make you part of the generation who hoped they'd die before they got old?

And they called my generatrion slackers? At least we sang about nothing, did nothing and aspired to nothing. That's achieving your goals, that is.

Whereas a generation of who fans still alive? That's just lazy and uninspired

;-)

yossarin

Why does the 'I'm your wicked Uncle Ernie' song from The Who's Tommy come into my mind on reading that?

its probably his avatar - He's glad you can't see or hear him..

The sale of ringtones is socially interesting as 'tones are at best a rebranding / poor quality copy of what was someone elses song anyway.

a metaphor for current pop anyone ?

Sleepy

"Your parents fuck you up,
they don't mean it but they do."

Hairy Homer

I should have to teach you poetry?

They **** you up your mum and dad
They may not mean to but they do
They give you all the faults they had
And then some extra just for you

But they were ****ed up in their turn
By fools in old style hats and coats
Who half the time were soppy stern
And half at one and other's throats

Man hands misery on to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf
So get out early while you can
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin




My kids love it when I recite that to them. Doubtless some little teenage turd will text it into his Apple Mac, set text to speech to replay it in a Stephen HAwking voice, then transmit it to his mobile phone and use it as his ring tone.


Hope I haven't given anyone any ideas

Sarky

You mean apart from the flaying alive of anyone I hear with a "new" "hip" ringtone?

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by dr_manhattan
doesn't that make you part of the generation who hoped they'd die before they got old?

And they called my generatrion slackers? At least we sang about nothing, did nothing and aspired to nothing. That's achieving your goals, that is.

Whereas a generation of who fans still alive? That's just lazy and uninspired

;-)

Well there are some parallels.

Ever seen the mpeg of the fat guy thumping his computer and smashing it to bits in utter frustration? (Very Pete Townshend)

That's me, that is.

Victor

Originally posted by The Corinthian
Uncle Corinthian needs your money to put it to good use.

Coke and hookers do not constitute "good use".

sceptre

Originally posted by Sarky
anyone I hear with a "new" "hip" ringtone?

Do kids still use the word "hip" without putting a "hop" directly after?

Dammit, I can't remember whether I'm generation Y or generation Me now.

oscarBravo

Originally posted by sceptre
Dammit, I can't remember whether I'm generation Y or generation Me now.

...or is it generation Me Too!? </aol>

simu

Look beyond the stereotypes and kids are the same as ever - some are spoilt, others are not.

As for that philip Larkin poem - how dull. It's not amazingly well written, the message is trite and the worldview expressed is over-simplistic. "Get out early" - pity he didn't take his own advice before finishing the poem!

Hairy Homer

Well I actually wrote it down from memory so maybe I didn't get every word right, but it's a pretty close approximation.

Each to their own Simu: some like accessible pithy poetry; others like the impenetrable prose of James Joyce. :-)

Stately plump Hairy Homer has never been bugged by somebody on a bus minding their own business by reading James Joyce, unlike people with mobile phones with 'cool' ring tones.

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
Each to their own Simu: some like accessible pithy poetry; others like the impenetrable prose of James Joyce. :-)

As an aside, I was walking around Dublin two weeks ago and it occured to me that Bloomsday is basically an up-market Star Trek convention.

Hairy Homer

Well I'm sure 'Nanoo Nanoo' is originally a quotation from Joyce. :-)

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
Well I'm sure 'Nanoo Nanoo' is originally a quotation from Joyce. :-)

Only if it begins to make sense the fourth time you read it

simu

Originally posted by The Corinthian
As an aside, I was walking around Dublin two weeks ago and it occured to me that Bloomsday is basically an up-market Star Trek convention.

This is true. I'm a fan of both Star Trek and Ulysses but I stay miles away from such public gatherings as I suspect they'd be full of waffling morons. (Well, with Bloomsday, the academic conference seems ok - it's the parading around in old clothes eating food mentioned in the book that annots me).

Is it any wonder that today's kids behave strangely if this is the sort of thing they see adults doing?