Topic C, Part 2: Hope I die before I get old. Oh, wait -- too late.

Great timing! Firstly, because I just saw a Frontline piece on TV last night that addressed the changing face of journalism (or, The Rise of THE BLOG), and secondly, because today is indeed my birthday.

I am turning 31, no longer on the Twenties-Thirties cusp, but I've felt "old" for quite a while. More than once over the past couple of years, I have found myself muttering, "What is up with the kids these days?" I'm not sure when and in what era I got stuck, but it happened just the same.

However, despite feeling somewhat distanced from an age group I was once in (and not so long ago, thank you very much), I don't think I'm quite as out of touch as whomever is responsible for these "lock up your children" news stories. I mean, seriously? Who's scared of emo? Was it ever actually threatening? Teenagers still connect with it, to be sure -- and maybe that's what's frightening parents, as always -- that there's a form of music to which their children deeply relate, which they themselves cannot understand, and thus even greater separation from their offspring is created -- but, Moms! Dads! Emo isn't even goth! Emo is kinda like the hair metal of my youth, except with a lot more crying.

It's funny that Frontline noted that even though most people still get their news from television broadcasts, younger audiences consistently turn to the Internet for their information (with nightly viewings of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, of course); for an "old people" news outlet, Frontline is certainly not oblivious to the shifting tastes of target demographics. In terms of these generations, I don't know onto which side of the divide I land. I suppose I've fallen somewhere in the divide itself, into some chasm in which I know that most of today's music isn't exactly made for me, but I still (somewhat secretly) enjoy "Dance, Dance" (I know, /a: for shame). It's a hole in which I'm so old that I listen to Big Tracks by choice, in a non-ironic way (with frequent, sincere, detours into Top Tracks), and willingly load such songs onto my MP3 player; but it's a hole in which I'm young enough to actually know how to operate an MP3 player, and it's a hole in which I'll never be too old for cake.