Safety in numbers

...an excerpt from...
White Noise
by Don DeLillo
(1985)

I tell my students they're already too old to figure importantly in the making of society.  Minute by minute they're beginning to diverge from each other.  'Even as we sit here,' I tell them, 'you are spinning out from the core, becoming less recognizable as a group, less targetable by advertisers and mass-producers of culture.  Kids are a true universal.  But you're well beyond that, already beginning to drift, to feel estranged from the products  you consume.  Who are they designed for?  What is your place in the marketing scheme?  Once you're out of school, it is only a matter of time before you experience the vast loneliness and dissatisfaction of consumers who have lost their group identity.'  Then I tap my pencil on the table to indicate time passing ominously.