There’s a profile of 24-year-old Glen Ridge blogger, Emma Koenig, in yesterday’s New York Times entitled “Wash That Blog Out With Soap.”
Koenig writes a popular Tumblr blog with a racy title that ends with “I’m in my 20’s.” The NYT says she also has a book coming out next month, and a deal pending with a production company to develop a television series. The Times describes Koenig’s blog as:
…a sweetly dark look at a life stage, something resembling the HBO series “Girls,” but defanged a bit. Like the scribbles on a ninth grader’s spiral notebook, it is hand drawn, Ms. Koenig’s curly feminine printing in speech bubbles and checklists, flow charts and pictograms.
When I read this this morning, I saw “Koenig” and “Glen Ridge” and knew at some point that the feeling I had would come true, and about 3/4 of the way through– there it was: her brother is the insanely talented Ezra Koenig of “Vampire Weekend” (one of my have bands, though I wish they’d, you know, do that crazy thing that bands used to do: put out new music, but I digress.)
With that though, the article was fishy- not too much info other than it’s “racy.” So I checked out the blog and saw a rather obvious attempt at much of the current 20-something stuff that passes as “humor” (the overly “confessional” kind) now. Sadly, as a big fan of “Girls” and the wonderful Lena Durham, I found Ms. Koenig’s blog reductive, boring and obvious. (Though I hope with her book and TV deal, she finds an original voice, and not just a Hydrox version of Ms. Durham’s Oreo.)
But the dreadful and (again) obvious, and done-way-too-much “Speed Dating” video doesn’t give me much hope. Really, this kinda thing is way too pervasive in kids today- I see it in much of my students who seem, like Ms. Koenig to feel as if they are so special (“everyone gets a trophy!”), that they are the first generation EVER to well, be 20-something, be unsure about work, sex, friends… Did I say they were in their 20’s?
So from this formerly 20-something from another time, I sign with an “oh well, whatever, nevermind…” to those “finding themselves.”