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But gradually we’re waking up to realize that our place in history is uncertain, that our destiny is no longer predetermined by perpetual growth. The greatest generation, which weathered the depression and defeated fascism, is considered exceptional because it was willing to sacrifice itself for the benefit of future generations. By this standard, the boomers are the worst generation because they have sacrificed the economies and environs of the future for their own comfort and security. But what of Gen Y?

Unlike Gen Xers, many of whom found ways to express anticapitalist sentiment through subculture, Gen Y has nowhere to run or hide. All forms of cultural rebellion have long since been appropriated and integrated into the ideology of capital. Marketing firms and advertising agencies now enjoy an unprecedented relationship with the avant-garde, so much so that they’ve become one and the same.

Gen Y only has one choice if it wants to avoid becoming a lost generation: push the boomer way of life onto an ice floe and let it die. Rather than Bourriaud’s altermodernism, we should pursue an alter-realism: dispense with the art gallery altogether and make reality our experimentation lab.

There is a revolutionary current running through the subconscious of this generation that has yet to be realized or defined. We champion piracy, instinctively believing that information should be free and open, that intellectual property law is contra-progress and that capital is not a necessary intermediary for social organization. Postcapital collaboration is our daily bread, and we hold a distinctly global worldview, void of class, race or nation. But we grew up too comfortable, played too much Nintendo, watched too much Saved by the Bell, read too much Chuck Klosterman and not enough Frantz Fanon. We naïvely drank the consumerist-credit card Kool-Aid, and now that the Final Fantasy is upon us, we’re in danger of sliding into a delusional techno-utopianism.

This is our decisive moment. Either we wallow in debt as passive observers of history and pray that technology will eventually solve all our problems or we actively seize power and deal with the consequences. While Gen Y outnumbers the boomers, we won’t hold the balance of power for another ten years, at which point the climate may be all but lost. So democracy is not an option.

We should take our cue from the likes of the Brazilian Pixadores, a disenfranchised group of graffiti artists from the favelas of Rio who storm and vandalize art galleries and universities to proclaim their existence against the society that excludes them. But rather than storm art galleries we should pursue a policy of strife: storm and occupy whatever political and economic space we can.

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