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Thank God Some Young People Are Too Coked Up To Have Sex
By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 16, 2011
Modified Mar 16, 2011
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 16, 2011
Modified Mar 16, 2011
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Earlier this month, we learned that teens and young adults have been having less sex than ever, according to a new study by the National Center for Health Statistics. Ever since, we've been extremely perplexed as to why those 20-somethings reportedly aren't—but thanks to a trend-baiting Observer piece, we have some ideas why now: it's because they're coked-up narcissists who attend shitty parties and are obsessed with Twitter!
The Observer came to this conclusion about hip, "raccoon-eyed" young people: "Sex is antithetical to the way they socialize, disruptive to the larger plan, a gateway to chaos in a digitally ordered world." But let's parse the methods of their scientific study a moment: they say they "spent a few weeks at parties and gatherings" which lacked any sexual tension. It seems to us that they had an absurdly limited, narrow group of horrible people they were following for the piece: Harvard MBA students who talk about their vigorously updated Twitter accounts while doing lines of coke with film assistants...EXACTLY the kinds of people we don't need accidentally procreating.
Sex is only equated with messiness for this particular subsection of self-described narcissists, because they travel in minuscule circles where everyone knows everyone's Tumblr feed: “New York is too dense; you’re running into people all the time, everyone knows everyone. Sex just doesn’t make sense—it’s dirty,” one male consultant in his mid-20s told them. Of course, from everyone we know, that's not at all what it's like for most NYers of this age group. Their story is only interested in this one cadre of "coked-up careerists." There are accounts of young people's blossoming sex lives all over the internet. And worst of all: just because the writer doesn't see people go home with each other doesn't mean that they don't. We suppose we should just be glad that they don't blame the lack of sex on the fact that women don't enjoy having sex.
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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