The Youth Today

This weekend I was determined to find some more writers for the web site, so I sought out to do so. It was beautiful out and with my fiance away for part of the weekend I figured I would do work all day and play all night - with the Write Guyz of course.

When it's beautiful out, if you live in California, where do Californians find themselves on days/weekends like these?

At the beach!


In this instance I did not go to the beach; however, I went to the Huntington Beach area to meet up with my fellow 'Write Guy' Jimmy Kicks. We met up at this Archery spot (check his review of it soon) in Orange and I must say, when I walked in I knew I wasn't in "Kansas" anymore. Deer heads on the wall, bow and arrows, pictures of animal carcasses on the counter - I literally was waiting for 'Larry The Cable Guy' to pop up with a "Git-Er-Done!"

After a nice conversation with the owner, we headed to the local mall to really recruit for and to promote The Write Guyz' web site. If you are familiar with the area, we hit up 'The West Minster Mall', or should I say 'The Ghost Town Mall', cause by mid-day it was practically empty. From what I remember though, it's one of those malls that seems to be living on life support. I used to work nearby and unless it were Christmas, it basically is about as busy as Pee-Wee Herman's Playhouse - and I do mean "Playhouse".

Hey-Yo!

Here is where it got bothersome for me. As I walked around talking to people, it just so happened that the demographic of people I could find and talk to were somewhere between 17-25 years of age. I must have spoken to over a dozen people by myself, not to mention Jimmy Kicks who was talking to people as well. Of everybody we spoke to, I got one person (whom had asked for our business card) to actually send a friend request on our company Facebook page. Other than him, everybody else had the same thing(s) to say:



"I'm sorry, I don't know anybody who writes or blogs."
"What is blogging?"
"All my friends and family are stupid, they don't write."

The most disturbing response was, "I don't know anybody that is in college." I was really astounded to hear that one. I for one am not a college graduate, yet; however, I know many people who are in school or have graduated. How these people do not know anybody in school is amazing. That in it of itself speaks volumes. I remember looking at Jimmy as we walked out and I told him that I just couldn't believe so many people do not write anymore. Maybe I'm a little bias cause I was the Sports Editor of my high school news paper and I also did some work in college, therefore, I was surrounded by people who not only "had" to write, but loved writing. So much has changed since I was in high school and college and I do not like it.

I ended up leaving that mall and on my way home I stopped at a mall closer to home to do much of the same. This mall was much more crowded than the previous, so I was excited to hit some people up. Truth be told, I was much more successful as I met a few people who were truly interested in writing. Although, once again, I ran into person after person whom simply did not write, nor did they have any friends or family members that did.

My evening ended in much better spirits as I met up with the other The Write Guyz to watch what turned out to be a great movie, 'No Strings Attached', yet despite the way my evening ended, I could not help but feel dejected by the youth today. Are writers truly that scarce or was it simply an anomaly? This I do not know, but I do know that the youth today has gotten lazy, because the one thing that literally, and I do mean literally, each and every person had in common was - they all used Facebook.

I guess if I were looking for people to write on our 'walls', maybe we would have hundreds, maybe even thousands of people by now?

After all, quick quips, anecdotes, and details of how much they pwned their friends on the internet is what our youth has become - right?

::shrugging::

To bed with my quill I go, praying things change...somehow...someway...someday.