Teenage wasteland 2.0: Rebellion goes online

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Here’s the new thing on Facebook: teenage rebellion. Confused? Tess Chapin of Sunnyside, Queens explains on her new group page, “1000 to get tess ungrounded“:

so basically i was grounded for 5 weeks for a MISTAKE that i didnt fully know the outcome of. my parents flipped shit and grounded me for 5 WEEKS. thats my childhood right there. please join so i can convice them to unground me. please please please. you guys all know what its like to be a teenager with (sometimes) difficult parents, so lets ban together as teenagers and proove something to my parents, there are actin a fool.

That is her childhood right there, everyone. Five weeks of early 2010. And so, she’s decided to raise awareness of her situation in the hopes that her parents, seeing the obvious devastation they’re causing will side with the masses and reverse their decision.

Just for the record, Tess was grounded for breaking her 11:30pm curfew and for drinking at a party.

Anyway, predictably, the group had limited appeal until the New York Times picked up the story:

This is teenage rebellion, electronic style — peaceful, organized and, apparently, contagious.

Ugh. I hope not. If anything, this pretty much marks the death of teenage rebellion. It is peaceful and organized, but it’s also ineffective, lazy, and totally misguided.

What’s most aggravating is that Chapin, in a depressingly post Gen-Y way, seems to believe that the internet will solve her problem.

As Hortense at Jezebel.com writes,

This isn’t really “teenage rebellion” (that would be the drinking and curfew breaking) as much as a weird notion that ANY cause is justifiable as long as you can get the entire internet to back you up.

And it’s that expectation of the internet’s abilities that is perhaps saddest, if for no other reason than the fact that – certainly in this case – it won’t work. No matter how big Tess’ group becomes, she will remain grounded, and no amount of people in her online group will legitimize her stance. In reality, Tess’ problem is her own lack of responsibility, and that problem will remain unsolved until she actually takes action on her own. Obviously.

What’s interesting about this story is that it marks a very definite spot where the Facebook world ends and the real one begins, and how that line is somehow often forgotten. Normally, we either experience the exact opposite (we make plans on Facebook, and then follow up in the real world), or the media provides examples of that for us (the relationship status change that leads to a real world divorce, or a wall post that leads to a very real murder).

In this case, Tess has confused random opinions of the online world as justification for her own beliefs. (And if that doesn’t basically sum up the internet, I don’t know what does.) Which is a bit of an issue, obviously, because it exists within the acceptance that the internet is the solution to every problem. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s not. But unlike other media that are usually on the receiving end of teenage anger (music, books, films, etc.) the internet is fully interactive and, as Tess has proven, customizable to one’s specific anguish. In that, there’s no challenge, which is sort of what rebellion is all about.

So what lessons has Tess actually learned from this? Who knows, but one might assume that her attempt at online martyrdom has been somewhat successful, in a bizarre way. After all, her situation received coverage in a major national newspaper. But in the end, Tess’ Facebook rebellion suffers from the same problem as any movement entirely dependent on a single medium: it’s effectiveness hinges on her access to a computer. Note to the Chapin parents…