Of Melania and millennials, writes Shweta Bachchan Nanda

Starbucks has earned its place in history! Not in some 20-something’s Snapchat story about how she just had to stop by for a refuel of her fav Pumpkin Spiced Soy Latte Medium Foam. I am making this up as I don’t drink coffee (gasps of horror) and have no idea what throwing these ingredients together in a beverage would mean (much less taste like), but I do know that teens everywhere would have used up precious brain space remembering the way they’d like their Starbucks done, than say something essential like a blood group. 

So, it came to pass that last Monday night an out-of-work journalist drinking his Starbucks (Venti Ice Coffee, to be exact) and watching Melania Trump give her maiden speech, realised an entire paragraph was plagiarised from a Michelle Obama speech made in 2008. Of course, he tweeted it and brought the world’s attention to what is now the most infamous rip-off ever. Twitter just wouldn’t let go, giving birth to hashtags and GIFs.

In fact, the other day I even used the term ‘Melania’ to call out someone on my group chat who was echoing a little too assiduously my jokes! Even more entertaining than the colossal oversight, were the theories used to discredit the very people who were discrediting Mrs T. Wouldn’t we all love to have this team of spin doctors when we were in school and got caught for using another student’s essay for inspiration (in the loosest meaning of the word)? 

Whoever said imitation is the best form of flattery, has it backwards. There is just so much of the written word out there, available in any format palatable to you that it’s easy to get lost and or misled by the fine print (because no one is paying attention to it any longer). We get our facts from Wiki-something or the other, which at the best of times, is generalised information gathered and submitted by anyone who wishes to!

Alarm bells anyone? No one uses his or her own language. Try scrolling through a regular teenager’s Facebook or Instagram posts, everything is captioned with borrowed words or lyrics from songs, without any filters whatsoever and many times without quotation marks, because we all know what the millenials have done with punctuation. 

The other day, I was on Instagram when something my daughter posted came up, with the caption “boats and hoes”. Bringing her attention to it I asked what she was going for with this kind of language because in my book, it is the opposite of appropriate. “They’re lyrics from a song, Mom. Calm down.” 

Ermmm, am I going crazy or did she just call herself something unsuitable and not even realise it? I was further schooled in teen-speak. Turns out, “hoe” isn’t as derogatory as it used to be. “It’s like another way of calling out your friends. Like, really! You’re so hyper, mom! And why are you stalking me?” 

I’m hyper? While I wasn’t looking, my kid has been Kardashian’d. It may be too late to do anything about it, and I’m not supposed to freak out? Welcome to the world we live in. We are appropriating cultures, lifestyles, and language irresponsibly and passing it off as authentic; that’s what troubles me the most. 

Gone are the days when imitation equalled flattery. What happens today, is essentially an entire generation looking outward — not for inspiration, but appropriation — because quite frankly, they’re lost and their role models are increasingly questionable. Everything is done for maximum impact and no one pays attention to detail. It has become more important today to be original than it ever was and maybe it’s time we all learn that God is in the details.