Gen Y and new narratives

November 8, 2005 8:07 AM

Can you direct me to some seriously good blogs written by gen Y people that could be could illustrations of 'the voice of the gen Y'?

Going to write a disseration on Gen Y blogs and how there's been a serious shift in the media from a top down perspective (compagnies creating media) to bottom up one (people creating their media, and pusblishing their own history, as history in the traditional sense is created by establishments or enpowered classes).

posted by Sijeka to society & culture (11 comments total)

Other than suggesting that you browse myspace or livejournal, no suggstions for gen y blogs come to mind. However, Danah Boyd's blog is a fantastic source of information about youth culture and new media/social technologies.
posted by necessitas at 9:23 AM on November 8, 2005

What, for your purposes, is the definition of "gen Y"?
posted by raedyn at 9:24 AM on November 8, 2005

Well what years do you define as Gen Y? I would consider Viceland pretty definitely Gen Y (vs Gen X), I'd have to say it's "voice" is definitely different from any previous alt-mags that I can tell. When I think of Gen-X established alternative magazines they're markedly different than the whole hipster, irony thing.

How about any of the Nick Denton blogs (gawker.com, defamer.com)? The demographics from what I can gather are young office workers, squarely in Generation Y. It's definitely a different way of hitting the same target, Generation Y still cares about the celebrity worship but feels guilty about it -- thus the snide, mockery.
posted by geoff. at 9:25 AM on November 8, 2005

Gen Y - for the purpose of my studies at least, internet users born between 1980 and now, post Gen X.

Mainly I argue that Blogs is a new way for people to write down their individual story which otherwise would be forgotten by the historical process . Therefore blogs have enourmous empowering potential in terms of self representation...

Thx for the suggestions...more please!
posted by Sijeka at 9:33 AM on November 8, 2005

Necessitas - Fantastic link, thank you.
posted by Sijeka at 9:36 AM on November 8, 2005

This is such a weird question: my blog is popular, I'm Gen Y, does that make me "a" voice of a generation? Well, I guess. But there aren't really any superstar bloggers I can think of that are younger than 25 and which everyone hits up... The A-list -- that is, the Kottkes, Matt Haugheys and other Technorati top 100s -- are all, as far as I know, older than that. There's gonna be examples but there's certainly nowhere I turn to as an authoritative representation of what it's like to be me or my friends.

Vice is definitely written and edited by people older than that, and does not feel remotely "of me". The only suggestion I can think of is Ultragrrrl, who I basically loathe, but who certainly represents a certain young NY hipstertrash-optimist-ambitious-fangirl kinda thing.
posted by Marquis at 10:17 AM on November 8, 2005

Yeah, I'm with Marquis on this, there isn't anyone yet that I feel is representative of my generation. I looked through all the links on my blog and I think only two of them are written by a person born in the 80s. One would be Aaron Gleeman and he mostly just writes about Twins baseball. The other is Michael Roston who keeps the blog Looking for Someone to Lie to Me, which is very well written but also quite technical (if you can say a political blog is technical). I certainly wouldn't say that either falls into the category of good illustrations of 'the voice of the gen Y'. We're all still stuck on LiveJournal/Myspace/Facebook. On LiveJournal, apoplecticfittz, captainmplanet and trembyle are are all pretty popular (and all three of them are labeled "bloggers" instead of LJers which is something of a distinction) if that means anything. I suppose I could see them becoming voices of my generation.

Also, I am definitely not the voice of my generation but I have a blog listed in my profile. I'm at least contribute to an overall voice, I think. Feel free to check that out.
posted by panoptican at 11:29 AM on November 8, 2005

Also, here's the right ultragrrrl link.
posted by panoptican at 11:32 AM on November 8, 2005

One more, Acid Around the Clock was posted in the blue a few days ago. I'm not sure if it's written by someone born in the 80s but I get the feeling it is.
posted by panoptican at 11:36 AM on November 8, 2005

Gen Y - for the purpose of my studies at least, internet users born between 1980 and now, post Gen X. - Sijeka

That's a pretty broad category, including both my two year old daughter and I. We're both (in very different way) 'net users. Couldn't tell ya who/what is a "voice" that can speak in some canonical way for both of us. Maybe some of that relates to the ages you're talking about. The toddler to twenty-five set is, for the most part, still quite occupied with establishing their 'independent' identies and wants to be different different different (not too different, but different enough) which causes a fair amount of fracturing of the group.
posted by raedyn at 11:39 AM on November 8, 2005

Aaron Swartz is who I would choose as the voice of my generation.
posted by blasdelf at 3:04 AM on March 9, 2006