What might be the proudest boast of any young person now, teenager, or twenty-something? They have been given, willy nilly, demographic tags like ‘m

Off the grid - Official site of Stephen Fry

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2021-07-23 15:30:08

What might be the proudest boast of any young person now, teenager, or twenty-something? They have been given, willy nilly, demographic tags like ‘millennial’, ‘post-millennial’, ‘Generation Z’, ‘i-Gen’ — not out of anybody’s acute cultural observation, sympathy or understanding but either to bulk up a HuffPo article or to delineate convenient advertising categories, within which many sub-categories can be established. You are not a person, you are an algorithmic assumption, a mould into which hot selling-jelly may be poured.

Well maybe. But I’m going to suggest that if I was young now, my proudest boast would be: ‘My friends and I, we disappeared ourselves. No social media, no email, no chat, no wifi, no selfies, no SMS, no smartphones. We did it. We did this thing. We Got Off The Grid.’

Why should anyone want to dissociate themselves from all that connectedness, fun, convenience, reach and power? Well, because it would be – and I can’t be bothered to search for a better word and anyway perhaps there isn’t one – awesome.