Let me admit it; I’m a “Baby Boomer”. That’s something to be rather sheepish about these days. My generation (remember that song by the Who, “Talking ‘Bout My Generation”?) was supposed to “change the world, rearrange the world”. And it didn’t. It turned out that we were an extremely self-centered generation. We liked being young and sexy and wild and crazy, but now we’re not. But we’re trying to still pretend that we are, and that we’re just as “hip” as the young folk.

The young trendsetters are now called Generation ZQYBX or something like that. They have the right to quote one of our mottos back at us: “WHY DON’T YOU ALL FADE AWAY, DON’T TRY TO DIG WHAT WE ALL SAY” (yes, indeed, that line is from The Who). We didn’t in the end offer them any lasting wisdom about life to latch on to. We got all upset in the late 60s about how terrible the world was being run. But that was mostly because Uncle Sam was sending too many of us to Vietnam, a war-gone-bad like today’s Iraq war (but about 10 times the magnitude); and was arresting us for smoking pot. Once we got past all that, we wanted tax cuts and SUVs and McMansions and welfare reform (elimination). That’s how we rearranged the world.

I took a look recently at some of the “networking” web sites that attempt to cater to Baby Boomers. These include Eons.com, Rezoom.com, Multiply.com, Boomj.com, and Boomertown.com. I’m not including links to any of them here because I don’t think that they – or the Baby Boom generation in general – are worth it. Not that the young digital generation has any wonderful alternatives – MySpace and Facebook get me dizzy and make me nauseous. And all that stuff on them about accumulating “friends” and being popular – how phony is that?

But when I see all those pix of graying people with big smiles and great bodies and interesting lives on the Boomer sites, it doesn’t do my stomach any good either. I look at the services offered and topics discussed – health, lifestyle, dating, travel, vacations, investments, real estate, mortgages, careers, celebrities, spiritual living – and it all seems so self-centered. It’s so Bill Clinton. Why aren’t there pages for FAILURE. SELF-DISAPPOINTMENT. REGRET FOR NOT DOING MORE FOR THE FUTURE. LACK OF COMMITMENT. STUPIDITY (INCLUDING OUR ONE-TIME ATTITUDES ABOUT SEX AND DRUGS). NEW-FOUND RESPECT FOR OUR ANCESTORS. LONG-DELAYED REALISM. MEA CULPA WORLD, WE WEREN’T SO SMART AFTER ALL. And finally, WHAT CAN WE YET DO TO LEAVE SOMETHING POSITIVE BEHIND.

That’s the Baby Boomer web site that I’ll sign up for. It would have to be certified Bill Clinton Free (I’m still hoping that Hilary will redeem the family name). I’ll take it seriously if you don’t have to give away a bunch of personal information to register, as you do with the typical Baby Boomer web sites. Obviously, the folk who run those sites know that Boomers have $$$, and info about them can be sold for marketing purposes. Yea, the Boomer sites are just so Boomer-ish. Yep, that’s “My [hypocritical] Generation, Baby”.