The wrong demographic

I seem to be at that awkward stage in life. I'm a "tweener", but not in the sense that it's usually meant. That is, I'm in between, but the question is "between what and what"?

The answer is: between the groups that the media are targeting. Look at where television advertisements are aimed. The evening news, ah, well: they're hawking adult diapers, denture adhesives, and heart medicine. Young people, it seems, do not watch the evening news. Most other things are sponsored by advertisers who are selling either to young parents or directly to the kids. Note the hip-hop music, which would not work well on the evening news. I'm too young to join AARP, yet I've been abandoned as a consumer.

Well, that's not entirely true. Apart from the "one size fits any age" sorts of ads, there is one product they want to sell me, and for which some ads are specifically aimed at me. I'm at the age where I'm not on a fixed income, and I've had the years to build up salary and savings, so they're looking to me for the big-ticket item: They want to sell me a car. Actually, they want to sell me a new car every six months; they want to give me a mid-life crisis and then sell me a car to combat it. I can tell this because when they show me the car, it's doing very cool things, like sliding sideways (how do they do that?), while they play The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again", Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll", and The Doors' "Riders on the Storm", music they know I will relate to.

This is my generation; this is my generation, baby.