Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

The following was published in the Sunday Times on 8 April 2007:

Sunday Times 8 April 2007
Don’t Say ‘Uncle’ to the Generation Gap
by Colin Goh

Every Spring, the Wife and I get invited to speak by Singaporean undergrads in various US colleges, and overall, it’s usually a delightful experience. The only downside with hanging out with so many youngsters, is feeling older and older with each passing year.

“Do you realize,” I whispered to the Wife during a recent engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, “that we’re one of the few people in the room who grew up in the age before mobile phones?  And I may be the only one here who has ever sent out a telex.”

This year, the feeling was especially pronounced, with their incessant chatter about Facebook, MySpace, and the various virtual spaces that they occupy, often simultaneously. When I was the same age, existing in one dimension was difficult enough. At best, I could occupy two: the ‘real world’ and the Land of Nod.

To rub their virtuosity further in our faces, the kids at Penn also found the time, amidst their studies (assuming they’re studying, lah), to mount a two-hour musical about life as an overseas Singaporean undergrad.

Despite the poppy score and the witty, sometimes gleefully cynical libretto, however, the single line that stayed with me the longest was in a scene involving the breakup of two longtime college sweethearts. “Admit it,” said an intermediary to the ex-couple, “you’ve still been reading each other’s blogs, haven’t you?”  Now that really brought home to me how different youth has become: the casual indifference to the divide between public and private, the ubiquity of confidences, and the incessant voyeurism.

And friends! Thanks to online social networking sites, this is the generation with the most friends ever, especially ones they’ve never met physically. When I was a kid, you were seen as a few tau pok short of a rojak to have imaginary friends. Now it’s compulsory to have as many as possible.

Glimpsing a generation gap has come as a bit of a surprise to me.  As a dabbler in pop culture, I’m exposed to more youth trends than most, and I guess I didn’t expect to feel one so soon.  Sociologically, I was labelled Generation X, which was already perceived as a deviant from my parents’ generation.  But how quickly my demographic has become the mainstream!  It’s like hearing the song you used to play to annoy your parents as piped-in lift muzak – think the Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy in the UK’, played by Richard Clayderman.

Perhaps the speed is because generations are increasingly pegged to technological shifts, which happen faster and faster – email, the Web, bittorrents, I don’t know what’s next. At this rate, probably teleportation.

Or maybe my discomfort is just my refusal to accept I’m actually growing old. It certainly made me whince when the MC introduced me to the audience as someone who’s been active in the arts for ‘over a decade’. At least he didn’t call me ‘Uncle’’.

But should generation gaps be accepted or bridged? I’ve always been leery of the older dude trying too hard to be part of the younger crowd.  You’ve encountered the type, I’m sure – the balding fler in the tight-tight t-shirt and trendy sneakers trying to impress young chicks in the club with his hip-hop moves.  On the other hand, is he any worse than the old coot in his pyjamas, sitting in the kopi tiam, one foot on a chair, slurping kopi from a saucer while complaining toothlessly about the ‘chewren nowsaday’?  Maybe we’re all doomed to be middle-aged Homer Simpsons, blundering away cluelessly through life, never truly able to know how others think.

Some youth behaviour seems especially far out – the tattoos and body piercings, the cutting, the culture of ‘hooking up’, the appeal of Bratz dolls – that it might be tempting just to dismiss them all as youthful stupidity that one will soon grow up to regret, or rashness that must be eradicated before it undermines society as we know it.

But some form of good faith attempt to understand the variance must be necessary from everyone, so that we don’t just impose our own experiences and prejudices on our successors.  This may seem trite, but our willful blindness to social change is evident in so many places, from the regular hand-wringing in the Forum pages to even seemingly well-intentioned policies. It would be a shame if the one thing our heirs learn from their forebears is to be presumptuous or cynical about their descendants.

We’ve been invited to speak at a couple more colleges this Spring, but I hope to do just as much listening.

Colin and the Wife’s film ‘Singapore Dreaming’ opens in Philadelphia on April 14.

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