The generation gap has returned, with its hands full of Doom links and Ameritrade software. In the same way that we used to pelt our parents with eggs because we’d grown up with a profoundly new set of premises (TV, Vietnam, Count Chocula) kids today are shooting pellet guns at our cars because they’ve grown up with the Internet and junk bonds.

Already when I look at Jennifer Lopez, I feel the same way my parents must have when (if ever) they looked at Aerosmith: Not only do I not understand why some people like her, I don’t even understand why some people hate her.

What crystallized this gap for me recently was the story of Jonathan Lebed, a 15-year-old high school junior from Cedar Grove, who last week became the first minor ever to be charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud — something the rest of us are not actually smart enough to accomplish.

Mr. Lebed, if I understand this correctly (though my whole point is that I probably don’t) had an Internet stock trading account, and would buy cheap, little-known stocks such as Yes Entertainment or Classica Group. (Pretty fancy name, heh? Want to know the name of one of its subsidiaries? Deli King.)

Then he’d put up hundreds of posts on Internet finance boards, under various fake names, saying his stock would soon increase by 1,000 percent. The volume of trading and hence the price on those stocks would immediately skyrocket, because — and I know I’ve said it before, but I’m running out of ways to express this — people are friggin’ idiots.

With 11 such transactions from August 1999 until last February, he scored a profit of $272,826. But don’t worry, they punished him real good. Without admitting any wrongdoing, Lebed settled with the government by giving back that money plus interest — a total of $285,000. But he gets to keep $500,000 from 16 other questionable trades; news agencies are doing gushy articles about what a clever and popular kid he is; his parents aren’t even mad at him; and we have the following stellar quote in the New York Daily News:

“Right now I just want to concentrate on building my businesses and starting more businesses,” Lebed said about his two Internet-based start-ups. “I’d like to get involved with local politics.”

So at least we finally know how to discipline a teenager properly: Take away a third of the money he stole, advertise his web pages, and announce his candidacy for alderman.

First of all, it worries me how easily and comfortably Lebed has born the spotlight. I’m used to people telling reporters not to quote them, even for benign things such as (someone really did freak out at me about this once) how long the local church has been holding its annual Strawberry festival. “Y-y-y-y-y-you’re not going to use my real name, are you?”

Second of all, why didn’t his parents punish him? I wouldn’t have either, of course, but that’s only because I’m not quite sure what he did. The sum total of my knowledge about the stock market is that, 10 years ago a broker told me to do something. I did it. It was a mistake. End of story — except that the broker bought the stock for me, sold the stock for me, and made a commission both times. I sort of see the difference between that and what this kid did, but I also sort of don’t care.

With Lebed, though, I feel like I’m looking down the valley of The New Ethics. It’s not that con artists haven’t always run things. The difference is that, now, everybody just thinks that’s groovy. And, well, maybe it is. Admittedly it is kind of cute and inspiring that a 15-year-old kid can con and humiliate other evil geniuses.

But unless someone makes it otherwise, clever, dishonest kids grow up into clever, dishonest adults. And that, from one generation to the next, does not change.