(Nicked without permission from grace's blog. Does that run counter to blog ethics? No matter, she nicked something from someone else, so I'm exonerated :) )

"we've got a completely different new generation of gep/cap juniors on our hands, ie the J1s downwards. They're all plenty intelligent enough, and talented enough, nobody of yisheng caliber yet but there's always time for that to grow. A lot of them blog - i mean hardcore blogging, webdesign and pretty pictures and all, and worryingly, a lot of them also sound as if they've not grown out of the angst/ frilly poems stage. Words like 'solace' and 'shimmer' and 'angels' and 'darkness' appear a lot. Nobody quite has that wonderful childlike sense of humour, the i-refuse-to-take-myself-too-seriously outlook, or at least they don't sound that way on their blogs.

Somewhere between my generation (generation??) and theirs, something happened. People decided to devote more attention to the pictures and the layout and the words than to making every word count. I think I'm a last relic of an ignored age. (We don't even get the dignity of 'forgotten', just the indignity of 'ignored'.) I think I come from a time when words were more expensive to write down and paper was expensive; and so you didn't flagrantly use so much space for the expression of nothing. A whole batch's mindset shifted and went 'click' - when did everyone decide to return to ethereal Byronic heroism (not to mention hedonism)?

And so this is what happened. Very ordinary people like me, who just sort of happen to write, and play warcraft3 on the sidelines, and watch too much star trek, and do other very ordinary things rather than trying to pose as something we're not - we're lost in the net of brilliantly design-savvy, perpetually morose, artsy online people. The web is their domain. And there's some really excruciating poetry online (my own included).

Maybe it's only the online ones. That's what I'm hoping. Maybe the ones who don't blog are off somewhere, spending their time quietly writing something real..."

I believe, senile in my dotage, I have also lamented the angst of the young uns.

Precocious they are. I'm not sure I was that mature, or at least seemingly mature, at that age. I think my mind was rather spongy at that time, but then I've always been a little wacko.

They change layouts like footwear. Not that it detracts from the content, but the content is dark, depressing and gives you the impression they're gonna asphyxiate themselves auto-erotically anytime. Our juniors have the same content, it's just that it's presented more nicely (and with Evil Comet Cursor, dammit!)

I don't know what's worse - dark angst in dull colour schemes with a prevalence of red and black, or mindless animated gifs and a basketful of neoprints.

Verbosity can be fun. I think I tire too many with mine.