you aren’t hip, that isn’t news

News implies something… new. The Gainesville Sun published a story yesterday about teenagers robotripping — tripping off of Robotussin cough syrup. This isn’t a new concept. People always seem to pat reporters on the back when they crack a story about some new fad teenagers are into. Well, congrats on cracking the code to a younger generation, you’ve really crossed the gap. Robotripping was popular when I was 16, which means this story is at least 5 years old.

Why haven’t reporters yet found a way to crack into the secret lives of teens? I imagine all one would need to do is skim some live journal entries or get some scrubby-looking kid with ripped up jeans and a red Hot Topic mohawk to give you an update. When Tom Wolfe came out with “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” a novel about a sheltered college girl who gets introduced to the hookup culture, the media went wild. OK, I give Wolfe props for doing research on the topic, but I am confident that there are plenty of others more qualified to expose this subject. Do you honestly believe that the college kids Wolfe attended parties with spilled every raunchy secret about our promiscuous, Roman bathhouse generation to a kindly 70-something-year-old southern gentleman?

Well my goodness, I do declare!