Aging & Wisdom Quote by David James Elliott

Elliott’s line takes a familiar adult pastime - dunking on “kids these days” - and flips it with a sly admission: we almost prefer the stereotype. “Not as vacuous as we would like to lead ourselves to believe” isn’t really about youth; it’s about the comfort adults find in condescension. If young people are shallow, then older generations get to feel wise by default, and nobody has to confront how culture, schooling, and media incentives are actually shaping attention.

The hairdos and “looking at other beautiful people” jab is doing double duty. On the surface it’s the glossy, image-obsessed world of pop culture (and, given Elliott’s profession, a world he knows intimately). Underneath, it’s a critique of how we reduce youth to what’s most visible: aesthetics, desire, consumption. The quote’s real target is the adult gaze that mistakes what’s marketed to young people for what they’re capable of wanting.

“Maybe they’re interested in learning something” lands because it’s modest, almost understated - not a grand defense of a generation, just a nudge toward humility. The intent feels less like moralizing and more like a corrective to lazy cultural storytelling: young people are curious, but curiosity often looks different now (messier, networked, less credential-bound) than it did when the critics were in school. Elliott is asking for a recalibration: stop treating youth as a punchline and start treating them as an audience with agency.