Adulthood in the face of a well documented youth; or Wil Wheaton is a time traveller.

I honestly believe Wil Wheaton is essentially a time-traveller. Not from the distant, TNG type of future, but from 20 years into the future.

Because, seriously, think about the journey he’s had to go on:

Maturing into adulthood with his evolution as a person, and his awkward phase, not only public, but immortalized and meme-ified and trotted our whenever anyone disagrees with anything he says, or does, or even just wants a laugh at the expense of someone they don’t really know, but are familiar with.

That is going to be everyone who entered the teen years from about 2006 onward, and grew up in a place with internet access and a social media enabled peer group.

You don’t need to give soul-crushingly accurate answers to Tiger Beat questions to get mocked anymore (and remember, a lot of what gets attributed to Mr. Wheaton in his teen years was likely coached, massaged, edited or plain made up to appeal to an equally awkward teen demographic). You do it yourself, with facebook status updates and tumblr posts and youtube videos.

In a few years, someone is going to realize that a generation of north american youth is going to need to learn to deal gracefully with the fact that there is a permanent and far too accurate rendering of the most awkward, embarrassing, partially formed elements of their personality and personal history.

And I really hope that generation ends up mostly coming out of it as well as Wheaton has.