How we made it suck: Vampires

In the past few years, no other cultural staple has been more pummeled into retardation than vampires. Back in the day, they had the romantic depth to please the ladies while still maintaining enough killer integrity to get a nod from the men. Bram Stoker’s vampire turned the boon of immortality on its head – so much so that the upside of being able to watch the rise and fall of human empires didn’t compensate for the inability to enjoy human pleasures: sex, sleeping, eating, etc. Of course, real human contact is also off the table because of a vampire’s thirst for blood. The thirst frames the real symbolic potency of being a vampire- they end up destroying whatever they love. Pretty deep stuff, might even have one thinking about the nature of humanity, mortality, and other such lofty questions.

Too bad we made them suck.

Your millennial vampire is a very different creature to its 20th century counterpart. Apparently, metaphors didn’t poll well in the focus groups so most of the negative aspects of vampiredom have gone the way of the Pogo Ball. Instead of being immolated by sunlight, the millennial vampire will begin to sparkle. Yes, sparkle. It’s hard to even type that into a blog post without feeling ashamed. How could it end up in a novel manuscript? Mild sparkling, and sometimes no sparkling at all, have freed up the day for vampires. Now they can just be normal teenagers and attend classes, pine over girls, and compound regular teenage angst with the added concern that nobody understands them because they’re a vampire.

Millennial vampires don’t need to destroy what they love, because being a vampire is a pretty sweet deal. After you’ve turned, the first thing to do is seek out your vampire buddies and dish out some high fives. On top of the aforementioned daytime sparkles, millennial vampires can make vampire love, eat a deer with their vampire spouse, and presumably even raise vampire toddlers. Some of them even keep diaries to record their vampire feelings. Is it just me, or are vampires now exactly the same as humans except for a slightly ashen complexion, daytime sparkles, and a dietary change.

The millennial vampire takes a sweet-ass metaphor and turns it into the cultural equivalent of an IKEA coffee table.

And that, is how we made it suck.