"don't blame MySpace for my generation's soul-searching"

- by Brad Stulberg, my former teammate and roommate

Read his op-ed article in it's entirety on the Detroit News website here.

Wayward Michigan girl reflects teens who seek meaning in world of affluence

Brad Stulberg

Katherine R. Lester's recent trip ended just shy of the West Bank when authorities intercepted her in Jordan. Yet the journey of soul-searching for the Lester family and for bewildered parents across the world has just begun.

Katherine, a then 16-year-old rural Michigan girl who is an exceptional student, met Abdullah Jinzawi of Jericho through My-Space -- an interactive global networking device that allows individuals of all ages from all places to forge cyber relationships.

Katherine seemed no different from any of her friends. She told her parents she was traveling to Canada and ended up in Amman, Jordan, trying to meet Abdullah.

But why?

I am a contemporary of Katherine's and the one thing we share in common may be the most important to understanding what went wrong: We are members of Generation Y.

Born into the age of abundance, our generation has grown up surrounded by infinite material pleasures. We are often told how lucky we are and how thankful we should be for our luxury cars and our LCD iPods.

While we may have endless material wealth, my generation lacks something far more important -- moral wealth. Moreover, we lack an overall sense of meaning.

Quite frankly, outside of deciding between Gap or Polo, my generation hasn't had to struggle for anything. In our lack of struggle, my generation is struggling to find meaning and self-worth.

We search all over. In yoga studios, we bend over backwards, longing to achieve peace of mind. When we walk the aisles of Whole Foods, we are really just hungry to find something wholesome about ourselves. Addicted to reality TV, we live vicariously, ignoring our own, often empty reality.

My generation's latest stop in our quest for meaning can be found on the cyber-highway. MySpace and similar online networks have become a refuge. For so long, we have been desperate for someone to listen, searching for something to verify our purpose and self-worth. We found MySpace. Katherine found Abdullah.

In reality, the recent MySpace fiasco should not be so surprising. MySpace is the perfect product for my generation. On My-Space, we think we are finding the meaningful intangibles we have sought for the better part of our lives. In Katherine's case, she was sure that she found love.

While it is hard to say if love has gone cyber, we can all agree that no 16-year-old girl (now 17) should be traveling to the West Bank to meet, for all intents and purposes, a stranger.

Somewhere along the line, there was a breakdown of responsibility and decision-making in the Lester household.

Still, none of this would have happened without MySpace.

Pundits have already suggested MySpace be regulated and that a new policy be created to prevent future incidents from ending in the Middle East. But perhaps the real underlying problem here isn't MySpace, but MyGeneration.

Brad Stulberg is a 19-year-old Farmington Hills resident who attends the University of Michigan. Fax letters to (313) 222-6417. E-mail letters to letters@detnews.com.

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I'll write an article about MySpace in the near future. It's no doubt one of today's greatest achievements and failures, all wrapped up in one cesspool of ignorance and immaturity. In any case Brad is right; MySpace is a portal to many whom after years upon years (and many of the members of MySpace are experiencing those years now) of peer pressures and living the popularity caste in school, can to a limited extent open up. MySpace isn't by any means a new concept; Friendster, Facebook (which is by far better), and even AsianAvenue back in the day had the "online get together meet random people" concept that MySpace completely duplicated. That's why I was surprised it even made it so far, but I guess it won the war of attrition. MySpace allows people to show off their individuality to the world, and lets people feel like they have their 15 minutes of fame because they're displayed to such an enormous community. That's one reason I think MySpace is, to put it lightly, idiotic, but I'll talk about that later.

I've done yoga with Brad and shopped Whole Foods with him as he mentions in the article, and it's made to me clear now that both of these events are trends. Yoga is already a annual billion-dollar market and Whole Foods is an ever-growing chain of "health" food stores that will more likely than not stick around. Our generation, Generation Y, easily succumbs, surrenders, and sucks off these types of trends, and goes further to show our key fault, which Adult Swim has loudly advertised before: Generation Y is a bunch of consumer whores.

It's how we've grown up and how we were raised, and is the only society and culture in which we know how to live. It's unimaginable to be put into a position in a foreign country, where money is scarce and instant gratification is beyond a second thought. No one hates money but no one realizes what it does either, because everyone is too blinded by its powers. In my opinion, America regards money greater than God, and that will be America's eventual downfall. We fight for our right to preserve our freedom of consumption while our enemies fight for their religious right to existence. The latter usually tends to fight with more ferocity and passion, although our side has the financial savvy to create better, more efficient killing technologies, which is why we're winning our wars.

A counterpoint to Brad's argument:

OneShot315: did you see stulberg's oped in the detroit news
Nggoodz7: yea its cool that he's in there but i totally disagree with the article
OneShot315: really why
Nggoodz7: because its all bullshit, first, he's not the spokesman for our generation, two, WE havent had anything to struggle for, but WE represent the bottom percentile of our generation, there's a world outside farmington hills where kids dont have their parents money
OneShot315: isn't that what he's trying to say
Nggoodz7: no
Nggoodz7: rich kids have always been rich kids
Nggoodz7: there's no generation disparity
OneShot315: yeah that is true
OneShot315: and most of them go on to lead rich successful lives
Nggoodz7: i think its an incredibly broad generalization
Nggoodz7: i dont think dante down in the atlanta ghetto is a 20=year old thinkin about his ipod and gap and polo, our families represent 5% of this country
Nggoodz7: i want to write an angry reply so it gets published, i mean im proud of him for writing something but im vehemently against it
Nggoodz7: i just dont think regular, middle class america can say how "we're always told to be thankful for our luxury cars and ipods"
Nggoodz7: i think those kids work their asses off to afford a crappy car and maybe save up enough money for an expensive toy
OneShot315: yeah i mean i guess it goes both ways there are some real rich kids and others who aren't so much
Nggoodz7: theres a lot more middle class and poor kids than there are rich kids
OneShot315: yeah
OneShot315: in our high school parking lot there were a lot of crappy cars but i'm sure there were a lot more nicer cars than at your average school
Nggoodz7: i mean yeah its farmington hills
Nggoodz7: but we are sheltered and well off
OneShot315: yes we are
Nggoodz7: and i like every minute of it
OneShot315: of course
Nggoodz7: although i feel if i were poor id be angry and better at sports

In this case Goods is right, we do have a certain work ethic instilled in us after seeing how successful our parents our with their six figure salaries, but nevertheless our expectations of living are much higher than those outside. I'm not in much of a position to say a lot considering I was born into, have grown up in, and still reside in one of the richest counties in America (word up to the real OC) and still have all of my necessities handed to me by my parents, but realizing the problem is the first step towards the solution.