21st century rant

Does anyone else wish they were born in the 1920s? Ok, I know I have a tendency to idealize bygone eras. It probably would have been harder to get a PhD back then, being a woman... However, at this moment, any age seems preferable to this artificial, corporate, sterile one. Why had I the bad luck to be born in the 1970s, when all the fun was over?

Online personals, though amusing to read, seem to embody how low 21st century people have sunk. To package the self as a commodity, using corporate lingo ("FYI"- what the hell does that mean?), for the benefit of some lonely soul on the other side of the screen. To reduce the self to a SWM or a BBW, to a hodgepodge of superficial personality traits-- "sense of humor," "Ivy League school educated"--photo of breasts/penis attached (all the emphasis on male/female body parts is perhaps a backlash against the "gender abolition" phenomenon-- the fact that differences between the sexes have been steadily evaporating in the machine age. Nonetheless, it is pathetic).

How can we not feel degraded by shopping for a partner and marketing ourselves like household appliances? How can we not see the trend itself as antithetical to any romance or adventure? Only fifteen years ago, it was the rare person who subscribed to a dating service. Now it is the norm. The more corporate & technologically advanced America has become, the more its people have regressed on the social scale. (I say America, but really it is a worldwide phenomenon). Men and women, women and women, men and men, transvestites and drag queens, have no idea how to relate to each other anymore, to form satisfying relationships. This was always a problem, but now more than ever. Might it not have something to do with the proliferation of Starbucks and reality tv shows? DVDs and iPods and laptops? Prozac and Wellbutrin? Political apathy? Poetry parodies (ooops- I mean "slams")? Jaded, cynical, self-conscious prose? New, moneyed, gentrified urban areas, with no traces of any former gritty charm? Silicone breasts and Lolita uniforms? Mindless conversations, people yapping on cellphones...

And all I want to do is whirl around in a Harlem speakeasy in my silver-blue flapper dress, listening to Bessie Smith, or huddle in a vinyl booth in some greasy spoon Midwestern diner, engaging in a real conversation with a real human being.