Thursday, January 31, 2008
Dylan, the sage
Dylan, host of "Dylan's Couch," talks about his date with Jessica and her adherence to "The Manual" of subcultures. "The Manual" was an article on Wikipedia that has since been taken down. But, if you check out this Wiki link, you can access a massive list of youth subcultures, which might come in handy as you're trying to complete the homework/writing pieces for class on Tuesday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youth_subcultures
Dylan has amazing insights--insider insights--into youth subcultures and all that's problematic about searching for "the group" you want to ally yourself with and about modern marketing (brainwashing) tactics. Once you've watched, you might want to check out more of Dylan's storytelling: www.dylanscouch.com
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7 comments:
I'm not sure if "The Manual" actually exists. I tried to do a couple quick searches and couldn't really find what Dylan is talking about. Too bad, I was interested in looking it over to get a better idea of some of the youth subcultures I could choose to study. Oh well,this isn't the first time a joke went over my head.
I did find this though:
http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-High-School
At the bottom of the Wiki it has links to these relevant Wikis:
*How to Achieve Straight A's and Still Maintain Coolness
*How to Get Nice Grades While Still Being a Cool Socialite
*How to Write a High School President Speech
*How to Dress Well in High School
*How to Accessorize Your School Uniform
*How to Avoid Student Teacher Relationships
*How to Be a Social Butterfly in High School
*How to Get Paid for Grades
I changed the Wiki link, Greg, so you might want to check the new one out. "The Manual" is indeed gone from Wiki, but a great list of subcultures IS there--one that might help you come up with some possibilities for research. Like I mentioned in class, when you're thinking about subcultures to study, think about possibilities that disrupt what you think you know about youth. For example, what about those talented, grounded, morally sound teenagers who work their butts off in school and hope to make the world a better place someday? Who are they? Where are they?
Dr. Cook, while cleaning the woods behind my house, I was thinking about your comment: "talented, grounded, morally sound teenagers who work their butts off in school and hope to make the world a better place" and how they seem to be hard to spot in our society.
At first I began questioning if those teens are extinct in our society and if so why.
But an hour or so into my thinking, I started to think that for the most part they are in hiding, because a large portion of society seems to neglect and disapprove of their identities. Many of our actions support this notion.
I think most people, teens including, want the world to be a better place. However, for the world to be a better place, we need to be better people-- take that as you like. I think given the chance and shown the direction, more teens would be apt to humbly develop themselves in a way that may help contribute to a better world. But, how to get there: how does one person get there; how does one person get others there; and how do others get even more people there?
Then again, who knows, maybe those teens are hanging out with Bigfoot; yeah I thought about Bigfoot while cleaning up the woods, too.
I'll end with a shameless plug:
Anyone interested in learning more about cleaning up woods, I suggest reading Tom Brown's novel, Grandfather [underlined]. If that gets your juices flowing, I can suggest some other readings.
(I deleted my last post because of a major typo. I really should start typing up replies in Word.)
Go Dylan, this kid is cool! Anyway, I was thinking that youth is really the prime age to get excited about changing the world - it tends to be when a person is most idealistic. I'm not talking about idealism in a bad way, I mean it does require a certain amount of naivette (is that spelled right?), but if no one acts on high ideals, nothing in the world WOULD ever change. As far as the characters told about by Dylan, they just made me think of how spoiled we are in this country, that clothing becomes such a crisis. But anyway, its cool when kids are able to stand outside of it and observe their society.
I agree with Stephanie that it is great to see a youth analyzing his own culture. It is important that youth know about the different types of subcultures that are out there because it will allow them to be more open about them. But, unfortunatley that does not always happen. Avoidance is usually taken place (as it was in Jessica's case about Abercrombie and Fitch).
Anyway, Dylan is absolutley funny and he does a great job interpreting how some of his peers may think--in a ridiculous way.
I mean, come on! Being limited to only a few stores because "the manual" says so? All this "manual" is doing is restricting the youth from living the way in which they want (going stores).
^^Thanks for the wiki link.
and
I don't necessarily think that just because a teen belong in a certain subculture means that they don't work as hard or don't hope to make the world a better place. I don't believe that subculture are as tightly defined as Dylan expressed... sometimes you just fall into a particular/several subculture(s) without trying.
There are those youth that takes their subcultural identity to the extreme. When I first entered high school, I knew several old classmates who made a whole new identity for themselves over the summer. Dylan is poking fun at these kinds of extremities and it's nice to see that he observed the behaviors in teens.
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