Trendiness and age

Edith Zimmerman laments in the New York Times that she's starting to feel old at the tender age of 28, and it's the Internet's fault.

... the Internet is a new kind of barometer for keeping track of exactly how old you feel: how many things you don’t get, how many mini-Internet worlds you can’t find the door to; exactly how many crickets in the world you can no longer hear chirping.

That's not how I think of the Internet (or rather, the World Wide Web), but one can understand Zimmerman's perspective considering how she earns her living.

For the past three or four years my job has been, in some capacity or another, to stay on top of Internet trends and viral videos and memes and other nerdy and non-nerdy things that take up all my time and energy and days and nights and dreams and thoughts.

No wonder she's feeling old. Trendspotting as an avocation I can understand, but as a vocation?

Trendiness is for the young. I don't mean that only the young can be trendy; I mean that the older you are, the less likely you are to give a crap about trends.

The young are still figuring out who they are and what they want out of life. Trends keep them in the mainstream, sometimes ahead of it.

As you age, a couple of things happen. First, you find that some of what you're told is new, isn't. You're reminded of things you've seen before. In a word, you start to get jaded. Or, if you're less cynical, you become "worldly".

Second, ever so gradually, you discover who you are and what you want out of life. You want to dig deeper into your particular interests rather than flit from one thing to the next. Trendiness is all about flitting, so you lose your taste for it.

Zimmerman thinks she's feeling old. The reality is, she's growing up. She should be happy about that.

(She would probably make herself happier if she got into a different line of work, but she'll figure that out.)