OK AGEISM

My profile picture has been updated on both beBee and LinkedIn and it features a hobo looking shot as I sought a disheveled and aged look for my new OK AGEISM avatar.   OK AGEISM is a play on OK BOOMER and not a criticism of how millennials use OK Boomer.   It is saying essentially the same thing, I reject the mindset of ageism and am not fazed by it.  It is the same as saying

SPEAK TO THE HAND

At the same time looking like a homeless man on LinkedIn an BeBee is a better fit to my long standing view that we should brand products, customer experience and services and not be branding people.  At the same time I have retained my old profile picture as a historical element in the CityVP Banner. 

What I do like about this profile picture is that there is not an attempt to look younger but to do the complete opposite, which is to try to look much older.  It is not a case of "old and proud" but that how people perceive our image is their problem.  I don't see me losing job opportunities due to my profile picture because the same people who would not employ me if I was well dressed and groomed are the same people who will not employ me regardless of my profile picture.

My explanation to Gen Z speaker Sam Demma simply reaffirms that I accept why the OK Boomer tag was originally used and I don't agree with that mindset, as much as I do not agree with the mindset of accepting a prejudice like ageism.

It is important not to get caught up in the dialogue of victim-hood and rail against an attitude which is not going to shift.  It is an attitude created by the boomers and which young people have inherited, so it was not born out of a whim and it isn't going to go away like a whim.  For sure the meme of OK Boomer will be in and then quickly out as quickly as it came, but attitudes about ageism have been hard baked into our society over decades.

1966 : The Year Youth Culture Exploded

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/nov/15/1966-trip-good-vibrations-pop-revolution

At Facebook I utilize a reference to James Dean, who died in 1955.  His image was immortalized as the "Rebel without a Cause" which was one of the three movies he had completed before his untimely death.  Every time people on Facebook celebrate my birthday, they are actually giving a head nod to James Dean, but the link is so difficult to fathom, most simply follow the habits of social media - to do rather than to think.

Ceci n'est pas une Dean is a play on Rene Magritte's "This is not a Pipe" - and in this case it is saying that CityVP on Facebook is not James Dean.  That is a direct reference to the annual rounds of birthday wishes I keep getting which are "Ceci n'est pas une Dean".   I still smart that somehow the data from Facebook found its way into my beBee profile.  How that happened is beyond me but that is not my problem.  There are certain aspects of our life which are none of the business of social media companies, so long as we are clear that we are over the age of 13. 

So this year it is OK AGEISM - and I am good with it.  I am not going to get any younger in the decade ahead so as we start out a brand new decade today, I look forward to a renewal of using my spaces at beBee and LinkedIn as a continuation of my learning media and my primary goal here, which is my own learning and self-development.  I continue not to use the online space for promotion or getting a job or highlighting my family life or the work I actually do.  All of that has nothing to do with my CITYVP MANJIT profile.  2020 may also become the last year I continue with Toastmasters, with my thinking being that my OFFLINE learning space should be the Public Library, but that still remains to be determined.

So Happy New Year and Happy New Decade and OK Ageism !

OK AGEISM AT LINKEDIN