All that glitters is not gold. It was the Seventies, the mood in America brought about an air of exhaustion and cynicism. The American people were tired and forlorn, the country had been through some most trying trials and tribulations in the recent years. Between the Watergate scandal that shocked the world and ultimately resulted in the resignation of a sitting U.S. President, and the end of the deadly decade long war in Vietnam, the country was in need of a change. A new era had dawned; it was a time of exploration and indulgence. The once taboo ideals of the outgoing “hippie” generation, free love, peace and general acceptance, had come to infect the mainstream. What came about was a culture that put a heavy emphasis on individual expression. It was a culture in which pursuit of pleasure had triumphed over all. It was a time of freedom, but freedom on an entirely different scale. It was a brief fleeting moment in history, after the advent of birth control and before the onset of the AIDS epidemic, that left an indelible mark on society. Conspicuous decadence and endless excess turned into overindulgence and debauchery. Hedonism had been brought to the forefront of contemporary society. All of these factors have come to define what pop culture affectionately refers to as the “Me Generation”.

The “Me Generation” was a term so poignantly coined by author Tom Wolfe in the 1970’s. It was his commentary on contemporary culture. It has come to describe a subset of society, fueled by disposable income and sense of boundless freedom, that came about in the mid to late seventies.

A true defining moment in the history of the “Me Generation” was the rise of Disco culture. Disco was the expression of pleasure and excess previously unheard of. The combination of blatant sexuality, rampant widely accepted drug use and an infectious dance beat gave way to a cultural phenomenon that was a direct manifestation of the “Me Generation”. There were many popular clubs all over the world, Xenon, Paradise Garage, but nothing defined Disco quite like Studio 54 in the seventies. By the “me generation”, for the “me generation”, Studio was the brainchild of entrepreneurs Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. It opened on 254 West 54th Street in midtown Manhattan in 1977 and came to define the social scene in the late seventies. The mixture of famous people and beautiful nobodies proved a successful equation; and people flocked to its pearly gates from across the globe. The endless opulence that came to define the deliciously decadent disco known as Studio 54 was a direct result of the demand from “Me Generation” for all things bigger, better and brighter. The rampant drug use and public fornication that went on inside of the walls of Studio was unlike anything anyone had previously seen in contemporary times. It was pervasive hedonism on a biblical level, comparable only to the likes of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was a time of great freedom where the Quaaludes flowed and the cocaine snowed from the heavens above.

Studio wasn’t the only institution in New York in the late 70’s that catered directly to free love and wild excess. There was another infamous establishment in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel on the Upper West Side of NY. It was a club for those looking for true sexual freedom, catering to a heterosexual clientele. This club was Plato’s Retreat. It was a genre defining establishment that the world will never see the likes of again. Plato’s Retreat brought the wife swapping key parties of the 60’s from the suburbs to the chic locale of the city. Fun fact, the space in the Ansonia Hotel that Plato’s Retreat occupied was formerly the Continental Baths, a gay bath house where stars like Bette Midler and Barry Manilow got their start. One of the great sights of the club where one could either participate of simply watch was the mat room, where on any given night there would be 30 to 40 couples having sex all together all at once. It was a time in New York when sex wasn’t a frightening conquest. You could be walking down Madison Avenue on your way to dinner, meet a stranger, have sex and be on your way with no consequences.

In a culture with an emphasis on all things pleasurable, a balance was lost, and as the old saying goes “no good deed goes unpunished”. There were seriously detrimental effects this emphasis of indulgence had on society which changed the history of the world, this is the legacy of the “Me Generation”. As a result of a culture that promoted casual drug use and reveled in ignorant bliss as to the negative impact that widespread unprotected sexual intercourse has on the human population, the “Me Generation” has left an indelible mark, not only on society, but on the course of human history. The AIDS epidemic is one lasting legacy the “Me Generation” has had on human existence. A virus of biblical proportions, befitting of a culture comparable only to Sodom and Gomorrah, a culture so cavalier in its attitudes towards modesty and sexuality that only the hand of god could strike down. AIDS has wiped out a significant part of the human population since its propagation in the early 1980’s. It has managed to kill millions upon millions of people in a matter of decades.

While there are obvious consequences to unchecked hedonism, one fact can’t be denied; the late 70’s were a great time, a party that will never be seen again. The “Me Generation” gave us the consumer centric world we live in today. The music produced in the disco era was the music of carnal pleasure expressed through a tempo resembling that of the hypersexuality that surrounded the culture of the time. Hearing that infectious dance beat will bring a smile to anyone’s face, it’s the sound of a good time. Bands like Chic, Sister Sledge and artists like Donna Summer still get air play to this day. Creativity and glamor became intertwined through art which became commodities for a consumers market. Andy Warhol the godfather of Pop Art created a world in which fame was the goal, glamor and self-indulgence were the avenues to get there. As the great humorist and author Fran Lebowitz once said, “Andy made fame more famous, he kept using the word fame over and over again.” Lebowitz also opines that the idea of fame and the hunger for it has corrupted our world. While it may not have corrupted our world, it certainly has molded our tastes and interests.

The “Me Generation”, however brief it may have been, laid the groundwork for the next generation to expand upon. It gave way to the greed, conspicuous consumption and shallow materialism of the Yuppie culture of the 1980’s. The “Me Generation” provided fodder for the youth it spawned. It provided another level of newly acceptable behaviors for the Yuppie generation to extrapolate upon. To say much of zero worth came from this era would be to look at history through a prism of cynicism. From those who lived it, loved it; the up’s and down’s that is the progression of time. There will always be positives and negatives with every generation. To ignore the consequences would be to live with ones head in the sand, but to choose to look back with warm fondness and great appreciation for a time of wild decadence and carefree attitudes is the sweeter way to go. Would we be who we are today had this period in human history not existed? In the decade that encompassed Studio 54 and the excesses of Wall Street in the 1980’s, the world had been changed. And it’s all because of the “Me Generation”.