Role Strain in the Making

Anyone alive during the last fifty years must be familiar with the tendency and trend of college-age youth to rely on mere spectacle and forced drama to Address Issues and to Raise Awareness.
  Subsequent generations, for a time, witnessed these antics in hindsight, logically noting that such feel-good dramatics at the moment served the hungry ego whilst outweighing any possible practical solutions.
  Ergo, one would think that mature minds would eschew look-at-me shenanigans in favour of persuasive methods with a more rational approach — appealing more to the adult than the child, lest they become a living cliché spouting trite slogans without any thought behind them...

Today’s actual dialogue:

Bystander: “It looks like you strongly believe in your cause. What constructive steps are you taking to remedy the issue?”

Protester: ”Well, um... we’re gonna get together and have a meeting... and decide what actions... like... to take...”

What happened?
  Are today’s youthful protesters unwilling to learn from history or are they unable, given the inarguable dumbing-down of education, nay, even parenting itself?
  Judging from the consequence-free attitude seen in discarded signage left littered thoughtlessly about the quad after their public posturing, one must conclude the worst: the means are the ends themselves — Attention-Whoring 101. Spent theatrics can often be quite a sad curtain call. But let us not allow fading youth get in the way of Nostalgioid Opiates.