I've never lasted more than a month doing this sort of thing. I doubt this will be any different. If you ever have to sit through this shit I spew, I apologize in advance. More than likely, I will wake up tomorrow, forget all about this, and you will never will. And even if I do continue, there's still no reason for you to be reading this.
What is Pop. 1984? Well, I was reading Pop. 1280 and I thought Pop. 1984 would be a great title for my imaginary book of essays that I had just thought of at that very moment. You know, next time I'm on the shitter, I'd be picturing talking about my brilliant book of essays called Pop. 1984. Conceptually, the book would be on how I've experienced pop culture in my lifetime so far. Then I went on to thinking of a specific essay, which I've not yet written, and might not ever, on what it means to be born in 1984. This was supposed to be the scariest fucking year ever. What does it mean to share a birth year with the most infamous year that was, but not really?
After about six seconds, I had an answer. Was it a real answer? Of course not. I pulled it out of my ass. I don't have anything to back it up now either. But I thought it was interesting. I thought perhaps the 1984ers would ultimately bring us to where George Orwell thought we'd already be in 1984. 1984 would only be the beginning. People born in 1984 (and admittedly in the couple years before and after as well) are the very unique generation of having experienced childhood with and without the internet. Those short-short wearing weirdos who grew up in 80's didn't have it. And these new millennium kids always had it.
We had both. First half of my childhood, I was outside, playing with rocks and shit, having to use my imagination for entertainment. When I was 11, Windows '95 came out. The game changer. Me and my friends (1984ers) were on AOL by '96. We were 12. That means the rise of the internet happened exactly in the middle of our childhoods (and the split was in the right time too, without it when our imaginations were most free, and with it when we needed access to pornography). We were the changing of the guard. And we embraced it.
What does this have to do with the Orwell book? Social media. That's us. The idea of big brother watching us is no longer relevant in the Orwellian sense, but that's because big brother is us. We just constantly volunteer every single bit of information through social media for no good reason other than others seems to be doing it, and the desire to fit in. There is no reason for the thought police to keep tabs on us because we give it to anybody that wants to see it every single day. Then I did three-and-a-half seconds of research, looked up Mark Zuckerberg on Wikipedia, saw he was born in 1984, and holy shit, I might be able to make this gigantic stretch into an okay essay.
There is no reason to ever read past this post. Everything before it are pages that will be used for organizing.
