Friday, August 1, 2014

My Relationship Is Pre-Alpha

So now there's a trend for beta marriages. That's living together for a year or two before actually getting married. Get it? It's just like beta software: trying it out before it's ready for public release.

You're probably also thinking, how is that new? Didn't we get over living-in-sin generations ago? The name is cute, and surprisingly descriptive.  (Funny aside: when I used Bing to search for "Beta Marriage" it included a link to this page on Betazoid Marriages.)

It's another example of the media bending things to for their narrative of millennials as an alien breed warped by technology. Here's the current generation just doing what the last several generations have done, but we attach a technology-related name and treat it as something new.

Having said that, it seems to be a common phenomena for us to act like generations each invent the world anew. For instance, it was hilarious when Baby Boomers were horrified that their teenage kids were having sex. Had they already forgotten what they did in their youth?

So let's come to terms with it: generations aren't that different, people do have sex before marriage, and it's been happening for so long that no one gets credit/blame for inventing it.

No comments:

Post a Comment