The You Decade

It's taken over 30 years, but it looks like the Me Decade is finally being upstaged by the You Decade.

Now that Time Magazine anointed "You" as their Person of the Year, armchair sociologists, sleep-deprived bloggers, and corporate marketers will pat themselves on their collective backs and toast this honor with customary self-regard and individual expression. Baby, it's the Brave You World.

There's something to be said about Time's year-end imprimatur raising a celebrity's Q-rating. Hey, now we're all famous. And just how well-known? Conduct a Google search with your name and it will spit out your popularity ranking.

Does the You Decade mean that the Seventies' heady stew of narcissism and self-absorption--which flowered under the glow of black lights, disco, Earth shoes, est, and personal growth manuals-- is completely dead and gone?

Has Me taken an U-turn?

Will that conversational chestnut "But enough about me, what about you"? be replaced by "But enough about you, what about me?"

Or is the passing of the pronoun torch from Me to You less of a break with the solipsistic past and just more of the self-referential same? It's not like we're seeing fewer iPods, cozy home theaters, and BlackBerries cluttering our lives. If anything, we are trending towards an accelerated retreat in the direction of even more individualism, atomization, the apotheosis of the self.

Rather than wait for Big Media, we now broadcast to the world who we are. Thank you, YouTube. We're all LonelyYou15.

It almost goes without saying that our own social networking has significantly expanded as a result of our participation within the buzzing electricity of the Net-centric hive. But since we're spending more time in front of the computer than with friends and family, what will be the long-term effects of this disruption?

We invite keystroking strangers into our lives because: a.) it's safer; b.) it somehow feels more authentic; c.) it's more fun; or d.) we're addicted to the rush of the new.

And doesn't it feel swell to have Time on our side? They recognized and championed the little guy--all of us! So let a million blogs bloom. Keep those videos streaming into the cyber-agora.

For every ten thousand cat videos that clog our ISP data pipes like so many digital hairballs, there have been newsworthy gems which have made a profound impact. Former Senator Allen's macaca gaffe marked a watershed moment in the power of shared, participatory democracy.

But before we further indulge ourselves as newly self-appointed communication barons at the expense of the Fortune 500 global media, it's important to look at the meaning of You in the broader, empathetic, and more inclusive context of cultural and political awareness. After all, our nation prides itself on being insular, isolated, and incurious about the outside world unless it directly effects us.

We need to graduate from You to We. But it must be something much, much different than Bush's post 9/11 mantra: "You are either with us, or against us." Our gaze must travel outward, not inward--divorced from saber-rattling threats and chest-thumping nationalism. Our national self-interest demands as much. We must strive to keep open the borders of our hearts and minds.

Meanwhile, globalization and connectivity will continue its boundary-effacing march across the shrinking, warming planet. Perhaps some day in the future, we'll see Time anoint We as the Person of the Year.

But for now, I will miss the Me Decade actually. Yet, when one really thinks hard about it, You is really Me 2.0.