For teens and young 20-somethings, it's getting harder and harder to be cool. The ante is up, WAY up, and risky stunts are increasingly a way to win notoriety. This translates into status, free beer, babes and occasionally, an early grave. "Car surfing" - riding atop a moving vehicle - has recently killed a 19-year-old college student in Louisville, Kentucky, and another 19-year-old in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin.

The student killed car surfing in Louisville had a 4.0 GPA last semester, according to his father; proof positive of grade inflation.

Car surfing: It's a full-blown phenomenon. As this article about a 2003 car surfing death in Florida notes, an Iowa doctor has even written about car surfing for a medical journal called The Annals Of Emergency Medicine. Another sick thrill growing in popularity now is "the choking game," a get-high-legally form of Russian Roulette. It has resulted in several deaths, as well.

A young practitioner of extreme bicycle stunts explains to the Associated Press the underlying psychology of all this madness.

"My generation is looking to be different; they're looking for ways to be individuals," says Christopher Sorichetti, a 20-year-old from San Diego who's been doing high-flying bicycle stunts since he was 12. "My sport is almost like a rebel sport. For the guys, it's kind of like a bad boy image. You're popular, pretty much, because you're known as a bad boy."

Sorichetti has ruptured a kidney, punctured a lung and broken many ribs doing bike stunts that have gone wrong. And this summer, he broke his right forearm in two places after falling. Still, he plans to get back on his bike when he recovers. "I do it for the feeling of knowing it's dangerous and knowing you can get hurt doing it," Sorichetti says from his hospital bed. "I couldn't see my life without it."

It's an attitude that causes many adults to scratch their heads. But experts say that young people today are wearing their wounds as a badge of courage - and constantly looking for ways to outdo one another. "As stuff becomes more common, then the degree that you have to go to be uncommon - to be unique - is a little more extreme," says Dr. Jeffrey Smith, the orthopedic trauma surgeon in San Diego who put Sorichetti's arm back together.

Others note that young risk-takers may react the way they do because they've grown up with constant stimulation from video games and TV. "They have become adrenaline junkies," says Dr. Lynne Tan, a psychiatrist at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in New York....Technology also has given young people the ability to share their stunts with one another by way of the Internet - whether it be their latest skateboarding trick or an outrageous stunt, such as friends pepper-spraying a buddy for a laugh, or even jumping off buildings.

And here I thought street luge was cutting edge.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at August 2, 2005 11:27 AM

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