atti

I was sitting in a coffee shop over the weekend, enjoying my thoughts and an extremely challenging crossword puzzle. After a while I was beginning to become frustrated with my lack of answers and took to scanning the room because I... am a people watcher. Not a stare-er minder you, but a watcher. There's a clear difference. A stare-er just... stares. He/she has no consideration for the other person whatsoever and doesn't care that they are being blatantly rude. A watcher is crafty, methodical.. calculating. We glance and move on, only returning after a while because A.) we don't want to get caught B.) there is so much to take in

Little things grab my attention and at a place such as a coffee shop there are details to be scrutinized. So that's what I do: look at people, what they wear, what they are reading or doing and invent assumptions based upon direct observations. The writer in me, of course, conjures up stories about Mr. and Ms. John Q coffee-sipper and their vibrant lives. At least I make them out to be vibrant since I know deep down mine is rather mundane. I yearn for escapism vicariously through strangers.

After a few passes around the room, I notice that most of the people in the room are sporting the same fashions. That cleverly phrased tee-shirt and washed out jeans. Square framed glasses with a new messenger bag from fossil that houses your yellow ipon Nano. Can't leave home without it.

At the time I shrugged it off, I was at a college coffee shop, of course I'm going to see people in their early 20s wearing similar things. It happens. So I went forward with my day until night fell and I was out on the town. A different part of town.. hours a part, I wind up at the mall doing the same thing. Letting my eyes wander as I stroll down the walkway. And once again I see the same thing. Carbon copies of people walking about. All shapes and sizes of people with a similar ere about them. Then the most revealing thing of all was when I looked in the mirror. I, also, had fallen into that same demographic.

I'm sure you are wondering at this point where this is going, and I'm slowly but surely getting to the climax of this whole thing. Our generation is heralded as being independent and striking out against conformity. When this movement began it was gradual, a few trendsetters here and there leaving the pack to be experimentalists. Trying those new fashions, listening to those off the wall bands and taking the time to sit in front of a tv and watch that independent movie. As time went forward the great minds of mainstream society were catching on to the fact that individuality can be bought, packaged, modified, slathered up as something catchy and appealing and sold back to the masses of an up and coming generation.

So what do we see, the few bands and movies that were once unique and eclectic being copied, replicated and mutilated into something else completely. With this re-vitalization of what was deemed "cool" or "in" the floodgates were dropped and in came a rush of people ready to be a part of this re-imagining. A new self-image was born. Things like "myspace" and "facebook" that in the infancy seemed small and insignificant, grew into something monstrous and widespread over night.

Now you can log on any time of the day and see what people are thinking, see their favorite bands, shows, movies and compare them to your own. Exchange, debate, modify your views based on everyone else now that we are "connected."

Our struggle for individuality and our search for something new within ourselves has not evolved us into something better, but rather.. devolved back to that one thing that we sought to leave behind...


conformity.