Generation Bling Bling: materialism and consumer culture

Newsletter to Generation Bling

Newsletter (and Manifesto) of 'Generation Bling-Bling'

Bling-Bling' is the sound of a cash register running up a total of flashing name brand clothes and shoes. So we, the members of 'Generation Bling-Bling' have often been called a generation that defines itself solely though its conspicuous consumption of the 'right' clothes, music, shoes, and brightly colored cell phones and laptops. What one wears, buys, uses, and all the other products and labels one identifies one's self are what make up the general identity of 'Generation Bling-Bling.' All of these things are more important than what one does, who one's family is, or what one knows to our generation, it is alleged. We watch and consume advertising rather than make art. We go to the mall, not museums. We are of the moment, rather than of all time. (CNN, 2003)

But if this is true, why has the phrase Bling-Bling may recently have been added to the Oxford Dictionary? (Wayne, 2003) Will generation Bling-Bling read the dictionary? On our laptops, via the Internet we certainly will. We have come up with new ways of learning, new forms of street theater. And in this we are not so different from previous generations. Do not the names of the past generations of dandies, mods, and other fashionable young people still roll off the tongues of historians?