Now What? (Life Post-Grad): The Internet Generation’s Stubborn Refusal to Leave Their House

R.I.P. Borders. This week the second largest book retailer in America declared bankruptcy and liquidation. Everyone expected it to scale back its store locations for months now–the smart money even said it would declare bankruptcy–but I don’t know if anyone expected it to close every single store. This is just part of a pattern of retail businesses closing due to the rise of an online generation that seemingly never likes to leave its house to spend money on anything.

I guess I’m old fashioned for my age in that I really don’t care for online shopping. I never really NEED to buy anything but food (certainly nothing that Amazon or the five dozen Amazon clones would sell) and its nice to just wander around a place that isn’t a grocery store–with its survivalist charm–every once and a while. The experience of going to a store is probably more important than anything I’m buying at the store, so when an online retailer says I can be spared the “hassle” of actually leaving the house to buy an IPod, I guess I’m in the minority that thinks “If it’s a hassle to buy a piece of frivolous technology, why buy it at all?”

So it’s a little disheartening that Borders went the way of Blockbuster and music stores before it and I now have one less place to browse around aimlessly. It’s even more disheartening that movie theaters may go the same way. I don’t know how many people my age and older tell me they never go to the movie theater anymore. It’s not that they don’t watch movies, just that they bootleg them. Sure it’s illegal, but something about downloading movies just doesn’t bother a teetotaler that would spend every sunday at church and not even buy an alcoholic drink (which is legal). “What about all the people that worked on that movie?” “Fuck ’em,” they seem to say, the same as they said it to music artists and book authors the way they’ve never said to Wall Street or big oil or big pharma (it seems only artists are good targets for theft). I bet if they could download reefer, we might see more people doing that too.

And one day I’m sure we will see that sold online along with every other thing. But the pesky question for me is still: Am I the only one tired of online shopping? Would no one else like to leave the house with me and watch a movie on a proper screen instead of your laptop or physically look at books before downloading them to a sterile device where they will have all the charm of legal documents or even go to the movie rental place to browse which titles look the best?

The answer seems to be a resounding no followed by long stares from people as if I’m from Mars. “We go out,” they say and list a bunch of bars and clubs they’ve been to in the last week. So there you have it, Generation Y and beyond aren’t shut ins…they’re just uninterested in leaving the house for anything that isn’t drinking. I think I’m even more depressed…