There's a vague memory somewhere inside my head that I'm trying to bring into focus. My mother asking me about something, maybe a particular artist, a trend, something that she found confusing. And me explaining it, almost surprised that I had to explain such obvious things.
I say this is a vague memory because I'm pretty sure it happened, and I'm sure it happened lots of times, but I could not give you specifics.
Why am I thinking of this today of all days?
Well, it's Sunday, and it's raining, so it's a good day to think. But also, I seem to be getting hit left and right with posts about something I simply don't understand: Aura Farming.
All of a sudden, I'm on the other side of those conversations.
All of a sudden, I'm the boomer, as the kids would say.
My old stomping grounds, the university where I honed my love of computers, is apparently the battleground for aura farming competitions. My brain, ironically enough, cannot seem to compute what I'm seeing, even more so because the academic setting, I thought, was supposed to filter out these sorts of banalities.
Then again, I say this knowing full well I'm the only one with a problem.
Ok, to call it a problem is also not correct. These kids dancing terribly, stroking their three poorly grown hairs growing out of their chins, are not harming a soul. It should not bother me, and maybe it doesn't really.
I just don't understand it.
I really don't.
Aura farming?
I take it this must be a thing from anime. It has to be. I can't help but remember Goku elevating his "aura," eventually turning blonde. So, I take it the kids pretend this sort of thing is empowering them somehow.
Maybe they think if they farm enough aura they will surely pass the tests. God knows Calculus II can be rough, but I somehow doubt it influences logical thinking in the slightest.
Because I'm slowly becoming the strange white-bearded man, today I made a comment about this on the TikToks. The young lady who received my negative comment, me simply stating that I found it embarrassing, correctly pointed out that being yourself is never embarrassing.
I had to give it to her.
The kids are just having fun, and it hardly matters if I understand it or not.
One has to resign oneself to understanding generational gaps. It's not just the language, which of course I can clearly hear and be confused by, but more importantly, the humor, and thus the key elements of social cohesion.
I wonder if I will feel like an alien by the time I'm eighty.
I wonder if older people do.
Maybe that is why they stop worrying about hurting people's sensibilities and become so blunt.
Ha!
MenO
