Here Is the Entire Reason Wall Street Is Occupied

Believe me, I miss it too.

This sucks. This wasn’t the future we were promised. We were told we were special and that we could do amazing things but they raised us to be lazy, unmotivated and somehow convinced we’re fucking amazing. Most of us are not.

I remember listening to this in my grandparents’ basement in 1993. It changed my fucking life. I didn’t know why I was so pissed off but I was, and years later, it led me to End the Fed rallies, after which I founded a world-renowned website known for its angry, expletive-filled tone. Fuck yeah. Fuck this. I don’t know about you guys but I certainly didn’t grow up privileged but I didn’t starve either. I didn’t have a Hypercolor t-shirt but I knew what they were. Now that I’m 30, all of that seems so silly. There are bigger problems on this planet, and what t-shirt I own is not among them.

I don’t know about you guys but I’ll always remember April 8, 1994. I know where I was (Madison, WI) and I know what it felt like when I got the news. Sorry to be overdramatic but we didn’t have many heroes… I watched Headbangers Ball and discovered the Internet when we got our first Windows 3.11 PC at a Best Buy Christmas sale. My mom paid too much for it but I listened to the hissssssssssssss chicka chicka brrrrrrraaaaaaayyyyy and knew that my life would never be the same. 17 years later, I work on the Internet, publishing online content for a leading UK parent company, part-time contracting out content for another completely unrelated industry and constantly combing the Internet for the next thing to rant about. I had no clue it would lead me here but it did and I love that.

I don’t know anyone my age or around there (the 28 – 32 year olds are Gen X/Yers, don’t you dare lump us in with the Millennials) who doesn’t miss that carefree time if we stop to think about it. Nancy fucking Reagan telling us to Just Say No. How many of us use drugs regularly? How many of us function just the same? But we’re still brainwashed by this idea that drugs are bad, mmmkay.

Personally I’m pretty pissed off that life isn’t like a God damn Color Me Badd video after all. Why the fuck did I have that picture of Jordan Knight on the back of my door for, then?

I get it. We’re all mad. This is bullshit. Not to rub it in, but I figured out it was bullshit in 1st grade when I told a classmate the Easter Bunny was a motherfucking fake because he and Santa had the same handwriting as my mom. Busted.

Still, I’d love to return to a time when LEGO was enough and Jem was a high-quality television show and I beat Mother Brain in the original Metroid. But that’s gone now. I have a PS3 that would kick that 1985 Nintendo’s ass but there’s something about how good it made life that attracts me to the nostalgia of that time. I think that’s where a lot of the Occupiers are – we grew up in a world not at all like this one and don’t appreciate not being able to plug right back into it. Super Mario 3 used to make the world drop away; now I have to hit the liquor store, the cigar shop and hope Fallout 3 can take me away. Strangely, the Capital Wasteland scenario of that game resembles the Washington, DC I live in, but I still keep Super Mario 3 on a Chinese-made Nintendo DS card so I can play it when I really need to get away. How fucked up is it that so many of us live like that?

A lot of us miss that time. Whatever it was that made it what it was. When we didn’t know how fucked up things were, and when our parents told us shit like how special we were and how awesome we were even if we were far from it. Many of us know nothing about discipline, a routine or any type of structure. Our parents had it beaten into them, so it’s no wonder we ended up like this. You could say we’re coddled but too few us actually accomplished enough by now to say we’ve had it good (the rare start-up super genius excluded, of course).

Do you get it? We were duped. And we’re mad about it.

Understandably, but, someone should have asked me. I would have told them about the Easter Bunny, Santa, the New Kids on the Block and Ben Bernanke. Fine, I didn’t figure out Ben Bernanke until I was 27. A lot of my peers’ parents have no fucking idea who the guy is. WAKE UP.

So they’re pissed. We’re all pissed. It was all bullshit. It continues to be.

That doesn’t mean anyone owes us anything. Let our parents suffer the consequences of what they built (I hope you guys realize it’s partially their fault college is out of reach or a crushing debt burden for so many of you – it was their idea that all of us deserved “the right” to go, so their demand for the financial products that led to the college bubble drove your education costs higher); their huge echoing houses, their crap piled up in the garage so they have to park their SUVs in the driveway. Fuck that. We’re above that.

The “American Dream” somehow counts homedebtorship among a person’s loftiest goals (along with a college degree, marriage and children) but who says we have to buy into their version of perfect?

They were wrong, you guys. Really fucking wrong. Let’s not make the same mistake they did.

Cut up your credit cards. Educate yourself in a library. Seek out those older than you to tell you about how it used to be. Look beyond instant gratification.

Look at your parents. How fucking gratified are they right now? That’s what I thought.

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