Years ago, I slowly but surely approached towards, and arrived at, an epiphany
of sorts. The typical epiphany that every youth has when they reach a certain
age and start to see, as adults say "how the world really works." I
was figuring out what the truths really are for my own reality and I didn't like
what I found, in my own and other's day to day lifestyles. As I saw it, my own
government provided an infrastructure that existed only in theory - they talked
big at election time, but it always seemed that when it came time to provide
services for real people in real situations, that our own elected leaders
couldn't and wouldn't deliver, citing any number of excuses. It seemed like they
were more interested in trying to pimp me out to the corporations who were
slowly weaseling their way into the power structure - I found the government
reducing the same services that my own paycheque paid for, and using that to
fund private industries' profit-making schemes. These companies who had assumed
control of authority didn't seem as benevolent and friendly as I had envisioned
them to be in my childhood years. Back then when I was younger, I sang along
gleefully with their commercial jingles and hounded my parents to buy me the
same toys that the cartoons I watched were trying to sell me. I saw my own
friends slaving at jobs where they were treated like shit and making minimum
wage, only to scramble to the mall to buy exorbitantly-priced products adorned
with corporate brand-name logos, for fear of social ostracization, caused by a
monopolized media onslaught of unrealistic social expectations, bent on making
us BUY in order to be happy. As if that wasn't enough, religious zealots were
all around, as always, on the TV, in government, crowing and bashing us all over
the head with their bibles and their outdated and narrow minded rules on how we
should live THEIR way. I never seemed to understood religion - going along
blindly with someone else's code of ethics always seemed like something I didn't
want to be a part of. These people weren't promoting love and unity, they were
ultimately just offering another packaged way to hate and divide people. I had
stopped believing in Santa years ago, so the thought of having an imaginary
friend ("God"?) at that point just seemed pathetic to me.
All
the while, I watched the internet turn slowly from a potentially liberating and
communicative tool, into another means of promoting commercial interests - I had
had enough. Enough of chat lines, enough of porn rooms, enough of banner ads,
enough damn e-commerce sites! This was and IS the most vital and important time
for the internet - the time where it becomes really about whether or not it will
be a tool for all types of people to communicate and share their ideas and learn
from each other, OR, just another way for the people who have retained
social/economic/political order over the population, to use the internet to get
us to shop, work, fuck, live and THINK any way they want. Just like television
all over again.
I
started GENERATION FUCK YOU as a collection of URLs to pages, which in my humble
opinion, present alternative views that contradict or ridicule the way things
are being done now in this society, as well as giving exposure to campaigns,
causes, and movements whose directives and aim, I want to support. GFY is an
umbrella term for the increasing amount of anger I see my peers, friends and
enemies harbouring towards the way that our society (specifically North American
society, but this can apply to any region) functions. It is not a prescription,
nor the solution. It is a reaction, one that is intelligent and calculated, as
much as it is aggressive and impulsive. It is rebellious in nature, but not
rebellious for merely the purpose of being rebellious. At this point, I feel I
must upgrade the manifesto in order to address some concerns and criticisms that
have been levelled against the site, in order to clarify what the purpose of all
of this is.
PARANOIA?
I must stress it is not about living your life paranoid, or full of hate. Life
is too short to make it any worse than it can be. There are things that are
great about our society, things we cherish and couldn't live without. We are
capable of leading fun-filled and rewarding lives. I will add, there are
corporations with good intentions. There are governmental structures and
politicians with good intentions. We at GFY are not a flock of predictable
cartoons that you'll find who lining their heads with aluminum foil to prevent
alleged ultra-secret governmental mind control projects. Having said that,
ignorance is hardly the virtue that most wear on their sleeves like a badge of
honour these days?!. We base our beliefs on real life problems, that are
documented and right there in the newspaper, on the TV, right in front of us,
that most choose to do nothing about... Or think they can do nothing about. That
attitude has to change. Living your life, aware and informed of positive and
negative decisions that affect your day-to-day life is not only logical, but
essential to enjoying life as much as one possibly can. It's called
"life", I would hardly call it "paranoia".
CONFORMITY?
Just because we at GFY take reservation with those who conform and blindly
follow society's rules no matter how wack and immoral they are, DOES NOT MEAN
that this is the same thing, a conformist club, for anti-comformists. (What an
absurd criticism of what we're doing, could you miss the point of all of this
anymore?!) We are anything but! Forget your tired cliches about us being
black-clad anarchist terror crews with molotov cocktails ready and poised for
lobbing at financial buildings - We are teenagers, parents, seniors, in the
working sector with 9-5 jobs, unemployed, black, white, male, female, whatever.
You do not have to fit any rigged stereotypes in order to share with our
discontent, it's ALL of our world to improve! There are issues and viewpoints
that each of us feels is right in society, and as well, ones that we feel are
wrong. You are free to agree and disagree with what you will, there is no black
and white polarized GOOD VS EVIL opinions to have. Find your own rules, be an
individual, try to find what makes you happy in life and what doesn't. We are
not telling you WHAT to think, we are TELLING you to THINK, period.
"FUCK"?
The FUCK YOU element is an important and highly symbolic element in the GFY
mentality. People see the "FUCK YOU" and get turned off right away -
What can I say? "FUCK YOU" is only just 'words' - whatever, grow up!
The people who cringe at the site of a swear word are the real childish ones.
Don't tell me you haven't said one "bad word" in your whole life,
you'd be lying. We're all human and we all have the capacity to get angry enough
to cross that line. But at what point is 'everything' out there that's making
life not as good as it can be, too much for you? At what point will you tell the
forces that be, straight out, to fuck off and go away and never come back? How
much is enough before you learn how to take a stand, draw the line in the sand,
and say "FUCK YOU" flat out? When your liberty... when your
freedoms... when basic human freedoms and provisions are being directly
threatened or compromised by the systems of authority that control how things
work - at that point, I say "FUCK YOU!" without restraint, without
hesitation. That's where I draw the line.
DO SOMETHING WITH YOURSELF! PT. I - BITCHING
Drawing the line is only the first step. Complaining and swearing 'til you turn
blue and lose your breath won't get you anywhere. USE your anger, use your
negative energy in a positive way, by actually doing something about what pisses
you off! Don't bitch to me about how much the world sucks for you, go out and do
something about it! And DON'T tell me to move to another country if I don't like
how things work, it's MY country too, and I have just as much of a say in what
goes and what doesn't go - Who's the bigger patriots? The slack jawed
flag-wavers who do nothing but sit on their ass, or the people out there, the
activists, the organizers, who work for real change and progress to help KEEP
our countries as great as we know they can be.
DO SOMETHING WITH YOURSELF! PT. II - ACTION!
GFY voicing their frustration by identifying problematic issues in the world, is
only a catalyst, not the final solution - We ARE working in our own ways, on and
off-line, to address and take care of what we feel is wrong. We've got rights
that we must protect. Pick your battles wisely. Read up and read both sides of
the story, become aware of the causes of the problems you face! Pick your
enemies wisely, and act on your feelings! If some politician isn't doing their
job, then hound their offices, write them emails, phone them and tell them what
you WANT them to do. Better than letting someone ELSE decide how you are to be
ruled. If some company uses immoral and unthinkable means to advertise or sell a
product, then tell them! Don't preach to the converted, get out there and do
something with your important and valuable time and ideas. Like Jello Biafra
says... "Don't hate the media, become the media!"
=SUCCESS!
GFY is already a success in my mind, more successful than I ever believed it
could be. I built a site, in order to clarify my own personal views for myself,
as well as shedding some light on a facet of reality which I feel has typically
been swept under the carpet by our masters. In the past 4 years, 275,000+ of my
new friends on the web have checked out this site, which features starting
points towards what I believe to be educational, amusing, sometimes frightening,
views against what society is controlled into believing is the'norm'. Read about
and visit some of the links. Sign the guestbook if you feel we have done a good
or a bad job. Email us and tell us to "fuck off" if you don't like
what you read, or give us some props if you think we're onto something special -
If even just one person re-evaluates what they think about a given issue,
because of one of this site's links, then we've achieved our mission.
With
all this in mind, "FUCK YOU" (*wink*), and happy surfing!
-J. Schizoid / March 2002
http://www.lunaticfringe.org/~schizoid/GFY/