I just finished reading http://www.rushkoff.com/essay/sportswearinternational.html, an article on why companies will profit economically by focusing their energies on coming up with more creative ideas/designs instead of looking to kids for what’s cool.

Here is one of the author’s more interesting points:

“The problem with being the center of attention is that it gives [teenagers] nowhere to turn, themselves. When even their parents long for the adolescent sexual utopia of the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue or the idyllic and equally adult-less Dawson's Creek, kids have nothing left to aspire towards. None of them are experiencing anything close to the good times suggested by these brand-image universes. They are teenagers, for God's sake. It's a terrible, terrifying time. But they have been put at the very center of the universe. Marketers want to please them. Their parents want to *be* them. All eyes, and all cameras, are trained on the teen.”

So I’ve been watching the new season of “Degrassi: The Next Generation” and as usual, they’re dealing with interesting issues. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, “Degrassi” is a Canadian show about a group of teens in Toronto who go to a school called Degrassi, and the crazy stuff that happens to them. The tend to deal with a wide range of social issues, and the tagline for the show is “Degrassi: it goes there.” So far this season we’ve had street-racing, jail, dating a co-worker, teen mothers, and the sexual problems faced by paraplegics. They just finished a two-part episode dealing with teens and internet safety and privacy, which I found really interesting. The premise of the story was that goody-goody Christian cheerleader Darcy (with the help of resident creep and all-around jackass Peter) starts posting sexy pics of herself on her blog in order to raise money for the cheerleading team. Peter tells Darcy that he has a friend who likes to read her blog, and this friend ends up being their benefactor of sorts. Although the pictures were password protected, some students hacked in and downloaded them, plus it turns out Peter’s friend was just some random guy he met in a chatroom, who later shows up at Darcy’s house, scaring the hell out of her.