SPLICED MAGAZINE /
THE LAST WORD
ISSUE 04
Kids these days, I hate them.
It’s Saturday 08:00 am and I’m staring, miserably, at a picture of a cassette tape
next to a pen. It’s been posted to Facebook and headlined: ‘if you know how
these two are related you’re a true 80s kid.’
by Leani le Roux
I’m on Facebook because I couldn’t sleep
in – maybe it was because house alarms
were going off here in suburbia or it was
the neighbour’s goddamn chicken again.
Or because grown-ups are genetically
predisposed to get up before nine, no matter
how much they drink. Welcome to your life.
Ah, so let’s feel better by stalking people on
Facebook. But then you look and your feed
is exclusively dedicated to posts of babies or
weddings. Where’s the good stuff? Answer:
Not on Facebook. Reason: You’re old and the
cool kids have gone elsewhere.
We’ve all felt the creeping sense of
has-been. Even Facebook is desperately
trying to stem the tide of young accounts
opening elsewhere. It’s throwing billions
at Oculus VR, Whatsapp and the like. All
I can do is open accounts where these
whippersnappers are double-tapping each
other’s duckface selfies.
So here’s what I’ve seen:
Leani le Roux is a 30-yearold business owner of
Wordsmack Publishers
and is already feeling her
age. In between yelling for
the neighbour’s chicken to
shut up, she’s attempting
to make African science
fiction the Next Big Thing.
Check her out on Twitter
@leaniw and buy a book
for god’s sake, it makes
you clever and interesting:
www.word-smack.com.
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Snapchat is plain damn confusing and
the brief glances of poor quality pictures
can surely only have one use: that of sending
blurry pics of your boobs to some boy not
worthy of seeing them anyway. Then there’s
Vine. I spent an entire morning shooting
a video of some of my books creeping
along my bookshelf. It was awesome. It
was meaningful. I used my tired old brain
to fashion a tripod out of a pot and my iPad
cover. And then I looked up and realised I
have a job and a life and never went back.
I’m on Instagram, I blog, I follow blogs, I
signed up for social media sites that follow
interesting blogs or conversations, I’m on
Quora, Medium, Reddit, and non-event
Google+. Even Mxit (which is apparently,
like, SO uncool), where the app checks all
300 phone numbers stored on my phone
and came up with zero friend suggestions.
And just in case you think I’m a creep,
I’m technically doing this for work – my
business is publishing three Young Adult
novels soon, so I’m calling it market
research…
But to my second point. Remember how
we’d enjoy a certain sense of bravado when
some asshole tagged you in something
totally inappropriate, for all the world to
see? Yeah, these kids don’t do that. They’re
already experts at using social media as a
personalized, tailor-made public relations
machine. They find their ‘look’ or their
competitive advantage and they exploit it.
They identify with a star, a writer, singer
or movie and make it part of their brand.
And they’re using that social media power
to make money or get free stuff. As a
market, they’ve really asserted themselves.
I speculate that it’s because they have
smartphones and credit cards. With
opinions and money they’re pandered to
by publishers and Hollywood. By the way,
check out Divergent and how the world is
going crazy for it. And its incredible success
was driven by teenage girls who use the
term ‘squee’ at least once a day.
I am incredibly, d W&W76