Researching reform schools, I came across this page from the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice. The school is located in Florida, a state chock full of boot camps, reform schools, ‘tough love’ clinics, juvenile lockdowns and other centers for maladjusted youth. Having access to the very subjects they’re studying make the CCCJ an invaluable wealth of information on troubled teens, as seen in their revealing ‘Kids These Days’ subheader:
….Where to begin? That Adbusters is somehow being lumped not into delusional hippie/Burning Man/protester territory but into the average teen mentality? Planned Parenthood and Condomania links sitting side by side? The errant mix of sites teens might visit (Last Rites Tattoo) and sites only concerned parents would ever, ever check out (Juvenile Slang)? THAT TEENS TODAY COULD BE PRO OR ANTI DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS?!?
Alas, many of the links no longer work, probably a conspiracy on the part of JVs (that’s juvenile delinquents to you non-inductees), but if you’re curious for the D&D stuff the search terms used were “anti d d dungeons dragons satan worship rpgs role playing” and “pro d d dungeons dragons satan worship rpgs role playing”. No bias there!
For those of you desperately wanting to check out ‘Hyperreal: Raves!!’, it jumped ship here. There’s something infinitely sad about linking to pages and forums not updated for years. If you really want to dig a splinter under your nail, I dare you to read the FAQ question ‘what is techno music’? If you’ve ever wanted to know the difference between Trance, Ambient and Deep House (the proper answer is ‘no, never’, by the way), now you can!
So go forth, learn something about Kids These Days, and next time you see a teen-aged youth on the street wearing their floppy jeans and Hip Hop singer shirt, give them the secret handshake and a wink of understanding.
