Middle class is so this [but not next] year

For the last five years or so, I've been going on about the way that culture has adopted a sort of new-seriousness.

Roughly, my thesis has been that at the back end of the nineties a bunch of terrible bastards in art and pop culture managed to convince Britain that it wasn't worth caring or arguing about anything any more as it was all just a laugh.

By 2005 though, the pendulum had swung back the other way and the middle classes decided that knowing stuff was cool again. First of all, this was because everyone had lots of money and they wanted to show they were above all that. And now no one has any money so they don't have any choice.

It's pretty easy to see how this fits with grown up stuff like the foodie movement. But I think it's actually affected all parts of culture: the boom in cycling, especially fixed; the folk music revival; outdoorsiness; beards. Essentially, status has come from skills and knowledge and less from owning expensive things. Bling has lost out to [carrying] books. And hip hop beats have lost out to bands that dads like.

Which all means that a lot of youth culture has looked a lot like adult culture. And adults and young people have ended up at the same gigs.

Thing is, if I was young, I'd be pretty annoyed with adults right now. Youth unemployment's about to go through the roof. All the houses and all the cash has been tied up by the over 40's. They've screwed up the planet. AND they want young people to pay their pensions.

If I was young, I wouldn't want to hang around with adults. I wouldn't want to play folk music that they like. I'd want my own music. My own festivals. And my own language. I'd tell adults to fuck off.

So that's the beginnings of a prediction... The back to nature stuff is at its peak right now but soon it will decline. I'm expecting youth culture to get more youthy and put a bit of distance between itself and the adult world. We'll hear more slang and more clothes that only work if you're young. And I'm expecting all this to happen in digital spaces and then parties that adults won't understand.

The only fun thing, if you're a grown up yourself, is going to be laughing at the 35 year olds in ad agencies trying to keep up.