SUBSTACK / 21 OCTOBER 2025
NOTESFROM THEFIELD
Generation wars are the stupidest thing on the internet. Here's some nice things I noticed IRL.
- Published
- 21 October 2025
- Region
- Peace River
- Form
- Field note
“THE IN-ROOM AIR FRESHENER WAS A NICE TOUCH.”
I’m on an author tour with the BC & Yukon Book prizes. We’re in the Peace River Region, which you can Google if you’re urban, but if you’re small town you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say, populations from 500 to 20 000, about 2 highway hours of wilderness between them, tree planter’s paradise, and pipeline country. I’m talking to high school kids mostly and my colleague Jenny is talking to elementary age kids. It has given me the opportunity to touch grass and now I’d like to pass that on to you.
The internet has amplified so many social conventions that used to be avoidable. Coming of age only to turn around and bitch about the next generation is one of them. So many missives on how the upcoming generations are monsters. And now, here I am, dignifying them with a response!
NICE
THINGS.
Yes, the students we’ve met all read. They have favourite authors. At the first school, a girl asked if I’d read Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men. My favourite book of the decade.
They sat still and listened to me speak for sixty minutes, and did the writing exercises I offered.
They were hesitant to answer my questions and read their work out loud, which hasn’t changed since I was a kid. If I (positively) acknowledged anyone for too long they got twitchy. But they asked questions and a few came up to me privately to share their writing after the talk.
I got the impression that they weren’t sure what to do when I referenced something that was too many years in the past (always have to drop some V.C. Andrews jokes for the librarians) but nobody threw down a chicken jockey 6 7 gyatt and demanded we do battle for generational supremacy.
They know what Tamagotchis are.
I finally got to see the flat affect expression everyone is talking about. It looks exactly the same as every teenager flat affect expression since time immemorial. I am nearly fifty years old. If you don’t remember this period of masking and self-protection, there is something wrong with you.
Also, many kids were warm and open. Most, in fact. Which strikes me as a miracle considering what they’ve already been through. A global pandemic, ffs.
This isn’t a research essay obviously. I’m a tourist here so my observations are only helpful as a counterpoint to all this annoying doomer generalizing. I wouldn’t want to teach kids this age, and I have nothing but respect for teachers. Teachers are overworked and underpaid and at the frontline every day. Everyone who is not a teacher looking for a place to vent needs to know that declaring an entire generation lost makes you look: North American-centric, hopelessly out of touch, and willing to look stupid online for likes. There’s a nice place between blind optimism and doomer-ism and that’s where most real-life conversations live. Realism is not going to win you a lot of instant clout, but maybe there are other engagement-friendly ways to frame a conversation.