Where have you gone, Joe d'Influencer?

If one believes in such stereotypes, I am of the mini-generation that falls smack in the middle of Generation X and the Millenial/Gen Y groups. Usually, Gen X'ers are those born between 1965 and 1980, and the Millenials are those born after 1980. For those of us born in the gap period around 1980, culture does not know exactly which group to shoehorn us into.

I call such generational groupings 'stereotypes' because in a grand way, they are the textbook definition of pigeonholing an entire group of people into a " conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image," to cite the dictionary definition of "stereotype." I always find this cultural fixation interesting because most people absolutely buy this idea of set generational patterns without question. This is ironic because 21st century culture generally abhors the idea of stereotyping people. I'd get run out of town if I said something like "because you are Asian (or black or whatever racial group), you have these immutable stereotypical characteristics..." Or, for another crude example, I could say "All gays talk with a lisp" or "All Mexicans are lazy" or whatever offensive trope you like. Personally, being originally from Southern Appalachia, I tend to get a bit peeved with "white trash hillbilly" type slurs, which are one of the few socially acceptable slurs that mainstream culture still countenances. But, I digress...

My point is that regardless of what one things of the usage of offensive stereotypes, the one stereotype that culture still largely belives lock, stock, and barrel is the generational one. The Silent Generation, the Greatest generation, the Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y/Millenials/, Gen Z, and I think there is now what they are calling Gen Alpha. The stereotype names seem to have gotten stale...I mean, we can't think up something more original than simply starting the alphabet over with Gen Alpha? I guess they did go Greek, so maybe that's something. I really hope the subsequent generation is not called Gen Beta. I would hate to be in a group of Betas, but that is neither here nor there.

Back to my original point, I am in that weird group sandwiched in between the X'ers and the Millenials. My little sub-generation does not fit really cleanly into either group. We straddle the generational fence. we generally are fine with technology and new social media, but we are not dependent on such devices. We grew up in a pre-computer world. Computers in our childhood did exist, but they were largely only in movies like Ferris Bueller's Day Off or War Games or else only owned by the super-rich. I was a junior in high school before I ever encountered a computer that had internet capabilities. There was an old Apple II at my middle school that ran on floppy disks, but about the only thing you could do with it was play Oregon Trail and die of dysentery at recess.

My mini-generation is about the last group of people in the Western world (outside of groups like the Amish) that remembers a world without computers or the internet. What we bring to that discussion is that we remember that world, and it was not a bad place. The world functioned. We were generally happy. We could amuse ourselves without looking at screens every two minutes. We could even find information without Google. Granted, it took some digging in a card catalog and wandering around aisles of books looking for the right combination of Dewey decimals, but we could do it. Finding information was more like going on a quest, but it was a worthwhile quest in a worthwhile world.

Most younger millenials and subsequent generations look back on the pre-internet age with a sort of morbid horror, like we are all milking goats and fighting off bad mullets and/or the Black Death in 1982. To be fair, I think most generations look back at earlier ages in the near past with that same chronological snobbery. I remember talking to my grandparents when I was a child and marveling at how they possibly survived the Great Depression and World War II rationing, even though the world of my grandparents' youth was much more like my own childhood in terms of technology than my daughter's current technological reality is to my own childhood. 

I have been contemplating lately how the internet has radically changed the world in which we live, particularly social video media outlets like Youtube, Facebook reels, TikTok, etc. Being of the mini-generation that I am, I tend to disdain of the ill effects of such things, particularly on youth. I think a lot of that vapid content does, in fact, make people stupid. 

However, I was struck this morning at my own generational hypocrisy on that issue. I heard the news that a particular Youtuber, Dingo Dinkleman, that I have followed for some years died unexpectedly. He was a content creator and conservationist from South Africa. His videos were in the vein of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, who died several years ago. Dingo was a showman, but not a showman for the sake of his own fame and fortune. Like Irwin, his showmanship was geared towards bringing awareness to animals and conservation, particularly highly venomous snakes like green mambas. He did several videos on Youtube talking about various highly toxic snakes, amongst other animals. He was an actual zoologist and was building a giraffe zoo in South Africa at the time of his death, sadly by being bitten by one of his green mambas. 

This news sort of hit me a bit harder than normal as celebrity deaths go. I never met the man personally, but he seemed like a good guy who went to church and had a family and kids. He was exactly my age. I enjoyed his content on Youtube. He was a professional. He advocated using gloves and hooks and being well trained in handling wild animals. He was not some untrained Youtube hack who handled deadly snakes for clicks and giggles. It was not the venom itself that killed him apparently, but the fact that he was deathly allergic to any form of venom. It was the anaphylactic shock that killed him and not the venom itself, so the reports I am reading say. Please don't take this as criticism of him. He had a dangerous job, and he died doing what he loved. Accidents happen, even with the most professional animal handlers. They are, after all, wild animals. Snakes bite to defend themselves, and sometimes they slip through even the most high tech of precautions.  

This comes on the tail end of the death of another Youtuber I followed for many year, Brian Barcyzk, the Snake Bytes guy. He died of pancreatic cancer far too early last year. He was also a handler of reptiles, though he did not keep highly venomous snakes himself. I have found I have greatly missed Barcyzk's upbeat videos and discussions of animal genetics, etc., over the last year, more so that I was expecting for a Youtuber influencer celebrity type. I have no doubt I will miss Dingo in the same way. They were both in their own ways a dying breed of showman entertainers, but generally their  showmanship was to bring light to topics that people are ignorant and fearful of, like snakes and reptiles.

We had our own celebrities on TV when I was kid. They were old school influencers, you might say, that influenced in good ways. People like Jack Hanna or Mr. Rogers. LeVar Burton and Steve Irwin. Even old Captain Kangaroo if you want to go back that far. For that matter, even Bozo the Clown had life lessons for kids in his own weird way. We seem to be losing those wholesome influencers. Not sure if that's my growing old codger in me speaking, but there does not seem to be anyone picking up the slack in mass media. There are plenty of celebrity influencers aplenty, but the wholesome ones not so much.

I often wonder what today's kids will talk about in the nursing home 80 years from now. Will they reminisce with memories they have in common of old influencers long gone? I really don't see old people jamming to replays of the break up songs of Taylor Swift in 2085. Perhaps I am wrong, and there will be cultural memories in common. 

Where have you gone, Joe d'Influencer?