I’ll be honest—I didn’t really like Generation Like, though I’m still having a little trouble digesting all of the ideas presented. Unlike Digital Nation, which frustrated me to no end, Generation Like hit a little bit closer to home. I am newly 19, so I guess I still qualify as a teen? I can’t figure out if I’m supposed to be one of the troubled kids that Doug Rushkoff and the other experts constantly refer back to.

Personally, I do not consider likes to be a currency. The favorites I get on my tweets do not validate my existence. I do not take social media seriously enough for it to make that much of an impact on my self-worth. That being said, I definitely know people who value and internalize likes. I don’t think social media encourage one type of behavior or another; they just amplify a user’s pre-existing desires. It’s a matter of perception.

Rushkoff talks about teens like he knows what’s best for them, but they deserve a lot more credit than what he’s giving them. I hope he doesn’t think that all teen friend groups sit around the table and help each other develop their social media brands. (That was a little weird, it has to be some sort of social anomaly.) There’s a difference between what those teens were doing—cultivating their personal brands for the sake of likes—and what Tyler Oakley does.

I’m not a fan of Oakley’s work. I’m glad that he’s doing well for himself, but I feel like the Web is over-saturated with his presence and I’m sick of it. Apparently, he knows how  to play the game though. In fact, he’s self-aware enough that he can give corporate presentations. However, when “Ceili Everdeen” spends four to five hours daily promoting The Hunger Games via all her social media platforms, it’s the game that’s playing her. I don’t think it’s about “fame by association,” rather feeling engaged.

Oakley makes actual money because he endorses these brands in his videos in a way that’s transparent but still productive. Ceili earns sparks because she makes GIFS on Tumblr or shares a Facebook post on a friend’s wall. I’m moderately sure that Ceili knows the difference between sparks and money; fangirling is not an occupation. There’s a lot of layers to the issue that Rushkoff presents, but I don’t think he does it justice. Though the economy of likes is thoroughly stratified, he seems to want to treat Oakley, Ceili, and the kids from Jersey gathered around the table meticulously planning out their profiles all the same.

The economic underbelly of the Web has always confused me, and Generation Like only added to that confusion. To balance that with a little more positivity, I do like Rushkoff’s style as a documentarian. He’s very good at smooth transitions and developing an ideological arc.