On the occasion of the famous trapper Snik's controversy over the lyrics of the song Chinchilla with all those who accuse him, I decided to go back a little. The trapper went crazy with what was written on social media, as they report that the specific song promotes sexist stereotypes, with references to sexual acts, vulgar characterizations of the female gender and drugs.
Welcome to 2022.
I will mention a simple sociological fact, which many did not give the necessary importance when it should. Not that anything would change of course.
In the 1950s in Greece there were cafes. A place where adults, teenagers and children met. The adults for company and ouzo, the teenagers for an orange juice and the children for no submarine.
So far so good. In this area there was an age demarcation, with clear roles. The grandfather with the stories from earlier years (war, part-time job), the father with his own, and the teenagers and children listened, or did not listen. Even if they did not listen, something caught their ear. These included the values of this generation, see day labor, life struggle, dignity.
Not that there was no diversion, but we are talking about the majority.
Then came the 1960s, when the hippie movement began in America, angry teenagers seeking freedom of speech, freedom of sex, and of course (if you remember) many drugs. The movement of the movement in Greece started with music. But the simple sociological fact we mentioned above was the modernity called cafeteria, bar, pub or disco.
New nightclubs have split generations. Elsewhere the young and elsewhere the elderly. Values changed because the young man (and all of us) needed one identifiable identity. An identity that would make him stand out from the crowd in the cafeteria.
Use dad's car, long hair, rock, disco, easy money, etc, etc, or extreme behaviors such as substance use. Imagine teenagers who have not formed a character, to shape it in this new era, and in a completely new environment.
Then came the television that served information from America directly to our living room, while before it was circulating with the boat that took three months to reach.
With the immediacy of the information, and the advertising values have changed. Here we go again, the easy money of the Americans, or otherwise the model of the successful person who sits and takes it, without a daily wage.
Then came the internet and the lightning fast transmission of information.
It's the new system, Stupid. Its the progress.
Is Snik expressing his opinion or the new generation? A new revolution created by YouTube and Pornhub. Looking to find values in Pornhub's female protagonists? But children learn about sex from there. Children are bored, they don't make sense and adults have a hard time making sense of them. Besides, they don't have enough.
We suddenly do not like the patterns we have created and we try to react. Unfortunately, the decade of the cafe is gone forever. For better or worse, things are moving forward.
No I'm not a puritan, I know where I live and I try to enjoy it by trying to avoid the pitfalls. But, and speaking completely philosophically, what remains unchanged from the time of Socrates are values.
The others, not those of the Stock Exchange. That is why during the economic crisis in Greece, many people argued that it was a crisis of values.
I agree, values remain the constant by which societies are judged. Unless the judge is in someone's pocket.