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I spent most of the day today up in Annapolis, MD watching Navy beat Air Force yet again (31 to 20).  It was a ton of fun, and I always love going to Navy football games.  So it was pretty funny for me when I came home and checked out Wired News to find “OMG! The Navy Calls MySpace Kids Alien Life Force!”

Here is a quick excerpt and my comments after the jump:

The MySpace generation is a “somewhat alien life force,” a Navy recruiting presentation contends — with a language and lifestyle that’s almost unrecognizable to adults.  And because the kids are such “coddled,” “narcissistic praise junkies,” they’ll be beyond tough to bring into the military.  Propensity to join the armed forces among these so-called “millennials” has dropped to as little as 3%; that’s down from 26% in 2001.

Knowing my dad’s friends in the Navy, I kind of doubt that the report was unintentionally hilarious, as Wired says.  But in any case, I couldn’t help but laugh when I read over it.  Not because I disagree, but because I kind of agree, and I’m only 24.  I avoid Myspace like the plague as it is simply terrible in my opinion, and I often feel like it’s an incomprehensible subculture.  However, this new “alien life force” constitutes by no means the entire younger generation (far, far, far from it).

Not everyone in the younger generation engages themselves in the type of schizophrenic typing outlined in the news story.  Just look at the Young Writers Society; there are loads of articulate, intelligent young people out there.  The Navy’s main problem in recruiting those people is not that they are an alien life force, but that they form a group of young people who are more well-informed about global events than any other previous generation.
Anyhoot, it’s a really funny story to read.