There has been a social phenomena to which I did not pay much attention, but when I saw that even Milagros Socorro felt compelled to write on it, I had to pay attention. In short, it was a video about the angst of a certain subset of Venezuelan youth who are considering leaving Venezuela. Apparently it went viral and the kids were cyber hate bombed on Twitter. I suppose I was spared that disgrace because of my limited use of Twitter. But our local blogsphere also wrote on it, from serious and thoughtful Miguel or Bruni, to Quico who wrote what can only be qualified as an undignified crass piece of mean, the more so living outside of Venezuela.
My take is very simple: whether these kids are justified or what their social standing endows them with is nearly irrelevant. The video, technical and artistic merits put aside, is about the angst of a group of people and it is a valid statement for that group, no matter whether that groups is 0.0001% of the population or 10%. For those who do not understand this I suggest that you brush up on the likes of Kerouac or Rimbaud before you decide to evaluate how justified these kids are in wanting to be allowed to live on their terms. We were all young once, weren't we?
The video after the jump in case you have not seen it yet.
The Maduro Toilet Paper Crisis
18 hours ago
Fully agree with those kids and your analysis Daniel. This is their freaking planet and they should be able to pace it the way they see fit.
ReplyDeleteI love this post Daniel and agree completely.
ReplyDeleteWhy put any class of people down? And kids for gosh sakes!
Some folks seem to want to be honorary members of the under class....by openly idealizing them, they feel like they are inoculating themselves against any accusation of being economic exploiters .
Are they saying these kids don't have a right to be themselves or to have any conflicts or suffering just because people are starving in Africa and barrio folks are in bad shape? After all socially conscious people can travel to Europe and eat in good restaurants as long as they TALK about the poor.If they really believed in what they preach they could start tithing and giving a percentage of their incomes to the poor.The poor in their own families or in their own neighborhoods might be the best first start -That way they know for sure where the money goes and nobody has to know about it :)
Starbucks revolutionaries? Please ! Most don't know the barrios at all at all.
But hey, even if they DO spend their time really helping the poor, that is no reason to hate the rich.Either we "love" all people ( in theory) or we love nobody.
By making fun of and deriding some middle class kids who express their angst, does that make us more democratic? I don't think so.I think it makes us less so....firepigette...ps Chavez did a great job of infecting many of the opposition folks with the same basic message
As said elsewhere, of all people that could -with a degree of credibility- be incensed about the video and rasgarse las vestiduras debido a la suprema e intolerable indignacion, we get Francisco Toro -the mother of all sifrinos (and proudly so)- and his equally sifrino groupies. Quite unbelievable this neo-indignado fru fru movement.
ReplyDelete"...the mother of all sifrinos (and proudly so)- and his equally sifrino groupies."
ReplyDeleteUm, wow. I think I'll stay out of this one. (slowly backs away and gently closes the door behind him)
About the 20-somethings...their 'tirando pelotitas a la luna' was at least more honest than the churlish denouncements from pretenders, who try to pass themselves off as something they are not.
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