GEN X vs GEN Y

An all-out war erupted a couple of days ago which started with a tweet (but, of course). Comedian Harith Iskander tweeted a joke (as he normally does) about Legoland. The same tweet was COPIED AND PASTED by another twitter user and sent out to the world, effectively passing it off as his own original thought.

OK, let’s pause for a while and basically evaluate YOUR own reaction to this piece of information. How do YOU feel about it?

I related this to a Gen X mate of mine yesterday during lunch, and his jaw virtually dropped.

Of course this wasn’t so with quite a number of people on twitterverse who basically thought Harith was being childish and, er, “old” about things. One of the tweets I picked out was: “Tak nak tweet kena copy, tak payah la main twitter”.

This tweet alone shows why we are doomed in so many ways. At this point, the younger lot out there are already thinking that this is another, “listen to us, we’re old and wise, and you’re wrong” rant.

Well, it might be that. Haha. But apart from the generation gap, what’s more serious here is the “VALUES GAP”.

You see, after picking my mate’s jaw off the floor, we went into the subject proper and basically said in unison that we’d never dream of doing such things cos “WE HAVE ETHICS”. It’s not really even about how you “main twitter”, but about how we negotiate through life with honesty, and respect for others. Pretty basic expectations in any culture and upbringing, really.

It didn’t help that others piled on the disrespect with “dah tua pun nak kecoh” tweets, when he merely asked the dude why he did not simply retweeted his tweet.

I don’t really have an earth-shattering conclusion, just that maybe we could do better with re-instilling these values amongst those in our circles first. It’s getting chronic out there with people sending out job resumes through their jantanidaman@yahoo.com emails, refusing to spell properly (or CAN’T spell properly), and basically having no regards for intellectual integrity. And, no people, there’s nothing “biasalah” about all these things…