March 22, 2011

Youth Culture: What do you see?

At first glance, I just couldn't stand this video. I'm still not sure that I can even now. But apparently 30 million folks stomached it enough to make it one of the top trending videos on YouTube. I think that there are some very interesting things that come out of this video that youth workers should probably notice about the video.

1. The Weekend
Whether we like it or not, culture has defined the goal of the week is to find a way to get to Friday night as quick as we possibly can. In college, the weekend gets extended to four days anyway so you can replace Friday with Thursday. The reality is that students have caught onto this. Makes me wonder what our weekly service is in our student's lives.

2. The Party
Everything is a party. If you can have more people there and have it be "fun," you have yourself a good time. The desire for close community is not a high priority for preteens through senior high. At least not at the outset. Deeper relationships are for romantic relationships and need not apply to every day life. How do we turn the "party" into something that students can gain life from?


Interesting, if you look on the actual YouTube page, you'll notice there are 144,000 dislikes of the video. Just goes to show that while this video is catchy, and I would say that it tends to be somewhat accurate to the culture, it does not strike a cord with the majority of people who have seen it.

I'd be curious to see what a student thinks of the portrayal of their culture in the video. I think the results would be pretty interesting.

3 comments:

mindi jo said...

Wow. I can say that I "dislike" it for numerous reasons. Partially because as an English teacher, hearing her say "We so excited" makes me want to slap her :) I may ask my girls what they think....

Geoff Cocanower said...

I'd be very interested in the results.

Kirsten Snodgrass said...

Well, first of all. That girl cannot sing. All her "It's Friday"s are annoying. Second, the term 'get down' means many different things but I believe it's only meaning in this song is to party but you never know. It could have been put in there for other meanings as well such as sex. And the party scene that is put on....well let's face it those kinds of glamorous parties don't really happen in our small town of Nappanee, sure there might be parties-people get drunk-do stupid things but she made that party look like all fun and games with innocent people, which we all know is how most non-christian parties do not happen. As for parties with christians those are another story...that atmosphere can sometimes be entirely different than others with different activities and different kinds of people.

But this song does have a truth to it about making it to Friday. I think that's how many people think. When I was in high school that's all I wanted-was the weekend to get here so I could sleep in and see friends. But with growing that changes in some people. It did with me. Once I got out and saw the world and went through things in life I grew up and realized there is more to life than fun. It takes work and you go through things that make you see it's not all fun.

This song is seems very young and naive. This song I think would attract junior highers and young high schoolers. Basically, attracting those whose lives are about having fun and who haven't really seen what the world is like.