I recently watched the old movie Bonnie and Clyde. It struck me how easy it was to be a crook back before cell phones. You could easily steal a car, rob a bank, and then eat dinner at a restaurant a few towns over. No one knew what you looked like and once you were gone from the immediate vecinity you were back to being anonymous, just another person. Think about that for a minute. You could actually do all kinds of stuff in public and in private and not worry one second about anyone ever seeing you do that particular thing again. As long as no one took a picture it was history as soon as it happened. Wow, what a foreign concept for this generation. My generation and generations before me had things much better. When we wanted to do things with a certain amount of anonymity we just went a little ways down the road. Our parents actually had to have their eyes trained on us to catch us doing stuff. How simplistic our lives were. We had much more freedom. With all this anonymity you could become a famous outlaw or you might want to go the other direction and become a famous law man. The point is you had enough space between your actions and everyone else that you could get away with a few mishaps or missteps. You could always deny stuff. There was no video of the action. Just deny it and it’s your word against whoever was there.
When I was a teenager I occasionally went out with friends. This going out was always couched in terms of doing something wholesome together with friends when speaking of it to parents. I’m not saying we lied or anything, we just left out key pieces of information about the whereabouts and the actual goings on of the event. They didn’t really need to know exactly what went on anyways. It wouldn’t have done my parents or me any good at all to know each others private business. I never asked my parents what went on in their bedroom and they never told me. I will never want to know that information. I will drive ice picks in my ears if I ever hear it. I knew they went in there every night. That’s is all the info I need to know. They gave me the same privacy when I was going out with friends. They knew I was going out. They had a vague idea about where I was going and with whom. They really didn’t want to know exactly what I was doing. They trusted in the fact that I was raised by them and that would have to be enough for me to do the right thing. Sounds crazy as I’m typing it. I didn’t always do the right thing but I never did anything really terrible either. I’m not telling what I did either. There is no video evidence of it. No one caught it on their cell phone. If someone tells you a story of me being bad at these little gatherings just come and ask me about it. I’ll deny it ’til the cows come home. When I left the house I was gone. I was incomunicado. I was personae non grata. Until the minute I showed back up I was simply gone with only my wit to guide me through whatever happened.
Today’s generation is never left unattended. It doesn’t matter how far they are away from their parents. They are not gone. They can be reached. They also cannot act in any manner they may wish to act in. Acting badly, or funly as my generation would call it, always runs the risk of being recorded and sent around to everyone. They have no anonymity. I remember the time when a girl hoisting a shirt up would immediately cause your eyes and brain to go into picture and store mode. You had no choice. In order to save such a unique and amazing experience we would have to take a mental picture and store it. I’m glad I learned this skill. I’m forty three years old and I have some lovely twenty five year old mental snapshots. They are in prestine condition. I still look at them from time to time. Here is the point, I’m the only one that can look at them. We haven’t evolved the capacity to telepathically send these mental pictures to each other. When that day comes we are truly screwed. There’s a few ladies, you know who you are, who would be rather embarrassed if their children, who think they cannot do wrong and have not done wrong, were to see a few of my mental snapshots out of my private collection. For now they are safely stored in my mind only. I can’t imagine having images and/or video of my various teenage escapades floating around cyberspace for all to see. What if I want to run for president some day? Those kinds of images could be damaging and we would have been snapping photos and shooting videos like crazy. Such is the stupidity of youth. I shudder as I think of it. However, there is another dynamic that is equally disturbing.
What about these people who voluntarily take compromising pictures and video of themselves and send them around? I could see me and my friends back in our teenage days doing that. If we would have had cell phone technology back then our children would live in perpetual embarrassment today. The images and video would be horrifying to them and us I imagine. These kids today who voluntarily do this are really asking for it later in life unless they plan to become pornographers or something. They don’t have the luxury of anonymity like we did. Their bad behavior is going to follow them around forever. I feel for them. I can hear their children ask them years from now things like, “mom, why are you holding a beer with one hand while exposing yourself with the other?” Maybe some child will ask his father why he decided to drive the lawn mower into the swimming pool naked. Those are going to be tricky conversations. The images and the video doesn’t lie. They can’t deny everything. The best method of protection for this generation is not to do anything. They stick their heads inside their gadgets and rarely come out. Their parents are a green button away at all times. Their behavior is just a button push away from going viral. No wonder their heads are down and they don’t make eye contact. They can’t risk it. Hey, they are safer. That’s good. They are boring. That’s bad. I can’t imagine growing up with parents who had that kind of control. I needed space. I needed room to mess up and figure things out myself. Bonnie and Clyde would have never gotten started if they had been born in this generation. That’s probably a good thing. Damn, their movie would have been so boring though. I don’t think I could have watched it.