On this, the day of the complete and total Bernie Bro meltdown, when we realized the true limitations of meme-based politics, let us bring awareness to a very important topic: Awareness. Awareness has had a lot of champions lately, from ice buckets full of awareness to Macklemores who sing anthems of awareness while donning aware-hair. Remember when the Black Eyed Peas brought awareness to chemical gasses? Our lack of awareness on that issue luckily stopped right there. We have keep raising awareness with our tweets because awareness is always too low.
Today, Bedford + Bowery brings us the latest awareness hero in today’s society, Brooklyn-based comedian Catherine Cohen, who made this video “Be Aware (Millennial Anthem)” under the so-apt-it-hurts name Imogen Dragons. It pokes fun at low-investment awareness campaigns plaguing our generation. She’s parodying the point that the most important thing to be aware of is, of course, her.
The lyrics are an absurd jumble of socially conscious issues and self-promotion, with lyrics like: “kids are shooting kids/I got an internship at Vice,” and “the one thing that bugs me most today/is that one time I got tired right around 2pm.”
Maybe this feels particularly potent today on a day everyone is sharing poorly designed memes of “the real math” of the delegate count in the primary, or maybe it’s part of the whole “share if you agree” Facebook culture that means you can rage about the death of a single zoo animal while still eating your double bacon zebra cheeseburger with extra panda fries for lunch. Or maybe that it’s a week where we’re co-opting rape stories for viral lift, I dunno. But I do know one thing: it’s not just a millennial thing: Lack of self-awareness about your efforts to get people to engage in laptop awareness campaigns comes from all generations, because everyone of every age is terrible.