Opinion: The generation gap is more than just a numbers game

As a media person then in my 30s, I was practically duty-bound to have some working knowledge of such trends. So, I asked one of my good guy friends, a few years older than me and also in media, to download the app, so we could try out its key features, such as texts and photos that disappeared once they had been viewed by the recipient. Surely going hands-on with this social-media phenomenon ourselves would shed light on why the kids were going nuts over it?

Firing up the app, we sent each other ephemeral texts that went “I don’t get this”, “Why do people like this?”, “I still don’t get it”. Ten minutes later, as I deleted the app from my phone, it hit me that this was what the fabled generation gap was about. It was not for a want of trying to understand youth culture. I was genuinely mystified by the appeal of a platform like Snapchat, just like I had never understood curling as a sport or people who deliberately rough it on holiday.

I was glad when Snapchat’s popularity faded a few years later, no thanks to events such as celebrity Kylie Jenner tweeting that she no longer used the app. (Parent company Snap’s shares immediately dropped by seven per cent, or US$1.3 billion, after that tweet.)

Rimowa x RTFKT (Photo: Rimowa)

2/2

These days, I’m confronted with Snapchat Version 2.0 in terms of digital reminders of the generation gap. No, I don’t mean TikTok, which I imagine is no longer cool now that all the oldies — I include my generation, by the way— are on it. What I am referring to is all things metaverse-related, which is the big thing marketers are pouncing on right now, not least because it is driven by the younger generation. I sort of understand the concepts of NFTs and blockchain, but many things continue to befuddle me.

Why, for instance, are there so many NFTs of monkeys floating around? And, with all the ups and downs, is crypto actually the future or reckless suicide? But sometimes, something unexpectedly comforting emerges from these strange new worlds.

While writing a feature about fashion brands and their Web3 projects, I was researching luggage brand Rimowa’s collaboration with digital studio RTFKT — pronounced artefact (say it ain’t so) — when I came across an FAQ on its microsite. The first question on the list was “Wen drop?”

Presumably a slangy, short form for “When is the drop?”, the question was about when one could expect the collaborative suitcases and NFTs to be made available. As I gazed upon that pithy question “Wen drop?”, however, I was not appalled by the deliberately bad spelling or grammar of crypto slang. Rather, I was struck by the phrase’s comforting similarity to Singlish. It felt familiar yet unfamiliar all at once. Just like a generation gap.