The Demographic

On Aging and Changing Tastes and Saying Fuck You to Everything

For years you’ve denied it, even to yourself. You’ve watched the singers, athletes and actors you’ve loved come and then go, ephemeral placeholders in a pop culture wheel that never stops turning.

(Perhaps you’ve even faced the indignity of watching their children come to prominence, which is the fucking worst, a very demoralizing public proclamation that death looms ever nearer).

Maybe you’ve pretended to like the mumbling nonsense they call rap these days, gritted your teeth at the rise of face tattoos, pretended it’s okay that many of the standard-bearers of your youth have been CANCELLED for reasons not always entirely clear to anyone who was alive at the time. You’ve likely watched the evolved, mathematics friendly version of basketball, a contact-less competition between malcontents centered on who can launch a three-pointer from further away, all the while holding back the ever-growing desire to call everyone under 30 sawft.

There comes a time when you can’t really hide it anymore. You wake up hurting. Injuries don’t come with a story attached—they are the result of attrition, of the body simply declaring “no mas.”

You, friend, are going to get old.

I did.

There’s no use pretending. After a four-day family vacation, I returned to my regularly scheduled programming in worse shape than I started, a sure sign that things are not what they should be. Yesterday I went to the store and bought a pair of all-white leisure shoes designed entirely for comfort. I wore Jordan Ones in and On Clouds out.

And, God, it felt good.

Technically I am still in the preferred demographic for advertisers. But spiritually, it’s already clear I belong to another time. I don’t recognize most of the celebrities I see discussed on social media. The style and pace of the professional wrestling on television both confuses and annoys me. Movies are mostly unwatchable trash, based on the comics of my youth but with none of the energy or charm. I can see the machinations of corporations everywhere, the young trained to judge art based primarily on how well it sells to the culturally-illiterate, the rise of “stans” and the endless stream of regurgitated content, remakes and prequels, each somehow deadening an already soulless “property.”

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None of this provides me much in the way of hope, for the future broadly or my own chances of being entertained and enriched by a popular culture that doesn’t just seek to reach a lowest-common denominator on their own terms—it actively lowers the bar and encourages them to wallow further in the muck.

Anyway, let’s just watch this match between Rick Morton and Nick Bockwinkel from 1982 together and try not to think about the decline of civilization for at least 15 minutes. It’s not much, but it’s all I have to offer today.

Jonathan Snowden is a long-time combat sports journalist. His books include Total MMA, Shooters and Shamrock: The World’s Most Dangerous Man. His work has appeared in USA Today, Bleacher Report, Fox Sports and The Ringer. Subscribe to this newsletter to keep up with his latest work.

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