Gen Y overload

Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe no one else feels this way. Is it just me?

Am I the only one tired of "Gen Y" branding?

Recently, I've seen a spike in talk about the infamous "Generation Y."

"They hand out their MySpace pages before ever reciting their phone numbers; they haven't had a land-line telephone since they moved out of their parents' houses; they text faster than you can type; their idea of a commercial is something they saw on YouTube..."

"Known for their irreverence and short attention spans"

"You must encourage your organization to recruit and retain these employees in innovative ways. If you don't, they're just going to turn up the volume on their iPods and tune you out"

Even from an actual Gen Y:

"Big headphones"

"Jeans, sneakers, hoodie - and a jacket? Behold, the new corporate uniform. "

"Half-caf, nonfat, short, tall and sometimes not coffee at all, it's a Gen Y staple. "

"iPod: The identifying mark of the Gen Y flock. Enough said."

Wow, almost like we're mysterious chimps being studied in an anthropological study. Here's another description I'd like to add about Gen Y: we don't like to be pigeonholed.

Are we lagging behind?

I have a confession:

I'm a social media novice.

Every day I make an effort to conceal this embarrassing secret, but it's impossible to hide all of the evidence (the fact that this is my second blog post is a good indication). I resisted jumping on the Facebook bandwagon for a couple of years and joining the MySpace craze for even longer (watching too many Dateline specials on missing teens might have been the reason).

At the risk of further incriminating myself, I'll admit that I only heard about Second Life in March (please, hold your gasps).

Second Life, a popular MUVE (multi-user virtual environment) created by Linden Lab, has been growing rapidly since its release in 2003. How much more will it expand? Researchers predict that 80% of active Internet users will have some kind of a "second life" in a virtual world by 2011, according to Gartner.

"Other students must have heard of a program this universal," I thought. So I asked my friends. No. I asked fellow classmates. Nada. Has everyone I know been living under a rock or are college students, who are usually at the forefront of emerging technologies, lagging behind on the virtual trend?

The simple answer: no.

Educators and students across the country have been using Second Life since its inception. Maybe the University of Oregon is just behind. Luckily, it's offering this class on new media in the fall. Even if we are behind on the times, at least we're acknowledging it.