We Are The Digital Kids

Being a new girl here is a lot to process. Your dopamine receptors are haywire from so much of what feels like the right kind of attention and you preen out of paranoia. Sometimes you tap-dance about books, music, movies, food and politics for complete strangers. For hours. You mind-meld with people you hope to never see again because they scare you a little. You get sick from the options and the sleep deprivation and the vodka. Your friends from home tell you you’ve changed and you’re convinced that envy’s poisoned their flabby, docile minds. If you’re lucky, you snap out of it. I snapped out of it when I became responsible for a gaggle of interns. It was like being the counselor at a summer camp run by a cult.

This new breed was a misfit clique that blogged, researched, fact-checked, ferried samples, lugged equipment and got bylines for their trouble. They held down second jobs in restaurants, bars, hair salons and temp offices and were rewarded with glossy titles the longer they stayed. They worked hard, raged hard and accessorized aggressively. Earrings became blowfish-big to draw attention and ward off predators. Their hungriest, slipperiest years were terrifying to behold. The ones who grew up in New York seemed to take it all in stride and precociously had a sense of their breaking point and breezily steered well clear of it. The transplants that had to build work, friendship and love from scratch all went a bit nuts and cannibalized themselves and others.