Baby Boomers vs. Generation X vs. Millennials

http://gawker.com/targets-dumb-internal-guide-to-millennials-and-other-g-1678496059

Just in case you needed a refresher of who you're meant to be as a member of your generation.

Generation Y (1981-2000)

Confident, determined, upbeat...

if only

i'd be more offended if i was an "old veteran" (1922-1945). "Patriotic, practical, dedicated, hierarchical, given to personal sacrifice and delayed gratification, economical." these people are not your slaves, target, sometimes they want stuff for themselves too.

Intergenerational fairness hasn't really caught on substantively at the political level yet here in the UK, despite the Guardian and the Resolution Foundation trying to give it a good push.

But it's an issue whose time has come.

a rough estimation:

Baby Boomers = narcissistic
Generation X = depressed/apathetic
Millennial = anxious/fragile

i am seeing more and more pieces about how my generation's anxiousness and fragility is secretly manipulative, a way for us to get our way.

It's interesting how quickly the narrative regarding millennials has shifted from 'hyper-confident and outgoing' to 'anxious and fragile'.

my favorite complaint about a generation of straight A students with tens of thousands in student debt they can't pay off with their dead end jobs was "entitled"

Yeah, I'm much more copacetic about being called a slacker for the thousands in student debt I can't pay off with my dead end job.

i feel defensive about all the generations though. "baby boomer" culture has had a stranglehold on our country for too long, i guess, but still that's not the fault of the baby boomers themselves. there was some popular comment in that gawker article about how baby boomers who still work at target should be shamed because they were the most privileged generation in history and i wanted to reach into kinja and strangle that person, or at least log in and give them a good verbal dressing down

I like my own tail-end of the boomer window (1961). (See? I'm narcissistic.) We love Highway 61 and "One Bad Apple," find Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine campy.

It's interesting how quickly the narrative regarding millennials has shifted from 'hyper-confident and outgoing' to 'anxious and fragile'.

yeah really this is interesting, even though i dont think those personality types are necessarily opposites! i wonder if these generational traits tend to emerge as a result of the preceding generation's descriptions of them. the boomer = narcissism one is particularly interesting to me because i think the popularly of that term only emerged as way to describe boomers: see Christopher Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism"--which is perhaps one of the first books i know of (would love to know of similar books) that adopts a kind generational framework (ie, "we are different (usually worse) than our parents"). that whole dynamic is itself pretty interesting.

like, i can't imagine (though it's certainly possible) someone in 1900 muttering "these kids today."

I wish the stock gen x descriptors didn't suit me as well as they do. But, pssh, whatever, like I even care about that authoritative, corporate bullshit anyway.

as a millenial, i think millenials are extremely good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wCXr_6wgns

oh nice!

I am now embracing my millenial designation, even though pretty much every one of my peers was born a couple years before me and I was born at the beginning of '81

I mean, I got out of college when the prices were only starting to hike up, found gainful employment that I've retained since then, and generally am pretty ok

but, solidarity, my fellow millenials

i feel like growing up with the internet is the more definitive thing than the exact years

my own personal marker for Millennials is that they can't have actual, living memories of the 80s.

dang you got me

they were probably bad anyways

i was born in december '87 and have only vague memories of 1990-1993

i believe i arrived just in time for peak "bad to the bone"

I remember the 80s, so maybe I'm back out of the club

*listens to foreigner*

like, i can't imagine (though it's certainly possible) someone in 1900 muttering "these kids today."

― ryan, Monday, May 2, 2016 11:00 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no way, this has been a constant throughout human history

as an actual "generational" statement or just the folly of youth in general? I imagine even the latter depends on an idea of adolescence that is itself rather new in the scheme of things?

though yeah the idea of societal degeneration and "declension" is far older (and maybe these "newer" ideas simply glom on to those older ones)

I read a really bad late novel by Edith Wharton (Twilight Sleep, 1927) which is 100% on the theme of "this younger generation of people is feckless and useless, what will a world in their incapable hands be like"

i was born in december '87 and have only vague memories of 1990-1993

― ejemplo (crüt), Monday, May 2, 2016 11:32 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i believe i arrived just in time for peak "bad to the bone"

― ejemplo (crüt), Monday, May 2, 2016 11:33 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I remember the 80s, so maybe I'm back out of the club

― μpright mammal (mh), Monday, May 2, 2016 11:57 AM

http://45.media.tumblr.com/a85e5d7fc85bba23a7f3e09a3f1ca1a9/tumblr_neaqitaUoJ1roul0do4_400.gif

i'd feel pretty good about a world in the hands of my generation except for the part where it's already fucked beyond repair before we got here

I read a really bad late novel by Edith Wharton (Twilight Sleep, 1927) which is 100% on the theme of "this younger generation of people is feckless and useless, what will a world in their incapable hands be like"

― Guayaquil (eephus!),

ha – I read it last year and was pretty appalled.

i remember everyone remembering the 80s in 2002, fun times

as a millennial born in the nineties, i learned a lot from VH1's I Love the 80's.

I first heard "Billie Jean" and "Blue Monday" as MIDI files in a freeware Pac-Man clone for Windows 95

This would be a whole lot easier if everybody was born in clumps. Like in 1945, someone decided: let's all fuck for a year and we'll have a generation of kids who all share a common experience. Then we'll take a breather to raise those kids so that they all have the same values, experiences, and cultural touchstones.

Okay, that went great. Now it's 1965, let's make another bunch. These ones will be totally tubular.

Hmmm. 1985. Where were we? Oh yeah, reproduction. Quick, everybody make some babies.

Instead, what we have is a continuous stream of births. Alas.

http://www.clickhole.com/article/no-coincidence-9-months-after-fuck-day-first-wave--4234

I don't really know any teenagers atm but I follow a few on twitter as an anthropological experiment, and I think I like this gen of highschoolers. they remind me much more of my gen than do the millennials.

I just bought two Wharton collections from Library of America and I think that book is included in the second one - can't wait!

dang there are kids in high school who weren't alive on 9/11

I just bought two Wharton collections from Library of America and I think that book is included in the second one - can't wait!

― Don Van Gorp, midwest regional VP, marketing (誤訳侮辱),

that's where I read it. The Mother's Recompense is better.

I just bought two Wharton collections from Library of America and I think that book is included in the second one - can't wait!

If The Bunner Sisters is in there, go straight to that one, wow.

Twilight Sleep not just bad but really different from the good stuff; to the point it was literally hard for me to get my head around the fact that the same person wrote it.

In good Wharton, by the way, generational differences are certainly an issue but I think the view from middle age is less "kids today are terrible let us explain to them how they should be" than "our time is done, we shall now graciously and regretfully fade into the expensive wallpaper"

Wharton's heroine in Summer is a teenage unwed mother

i am totally Generation Wharton

Boy, Gen X's stock couldn't be much lower these days (b. 1968)...we truly are the Jan Brady of this bunch

i am seeing more and more pieces about how my generation's anxiousness and fragility is secretly manipulative, a way for us to get our way.

― Treeship, Monday, 2 May 2016 13:22 (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Starting to believe this btw

lol

Boy, Gen X's stock couldn't be much lower these days

I dunno, our attitude is described as "conditional loyalty" which I think far the most sensible stance out of all those depicted

but then I would (b.1971, have purchased Zima)

well at least you never boomed a baby

Time to drown my Gen X sorrows in OK Cola

had a millennial written Twilight Sleep she'd have called it Twilight: Sleep.

i think of millenials as 'people who got fucked over economically and are really tight with their moms'
gen x as...ted rall basically?
there's some people in there who hate the carter administration because gas lines
and boomers think they invented everything

I am poorly educated

or...
...millenials unlock mountain dew badges through phone things
...gen x hated marketing but the ads for mountain dew were a tongue-in-cheek mockery of how bad ads are
...and boomers had mountain dew ads with an actual fucking hillbilly

or...
...millenials make dank memes for their youngs tumblr gif thing
...gen x got in flame wars on usenet
...everyone before that your life is unfathomable bcz no internet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm_LmlFeNnM

i wish i was a racecar driver who enjoyed the undying loyalty of wanda. baby boomers had all the luck .

A little history lesson for you millennials who might not be aware that a lot of the slang you use today originated from gen x-ers.

http://hoaxes.org/images/hoaxarchive/1992grungespeak01.jpg

my own personal marker for Millennials is that they can't have actual, living memories of the 80s.

― ryan, Monday, May 2, 2016 3:22 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what's the cutoff for millennials? i was born in '82 and i remember most things from age 2-3 on up pretty well

idk, i think millennials were born in the mid-late 80s and came of age in the 00s and very early 10s. early 80s seems like a gray zone generationally. seems more like Gen X to me

xpost Gen X is the Jan Brady of the bunch because they're the most underpopulated of the three by far

it used to be defined as mid-80s, newer defs stick it in some wobbly 1980-1985 beginning age

i'm a highlander

X gonna give it to ya

...gen x got in flame wars on usenet

lol yes this

It doesn't seem polite to vote for my own generation, but it doesn't seem right to vote against myself either. I think I will abstain. Yes, that's the ticket!

Typical generational apathy and indecision

so, are we voting for favorite, or most hated?

same thing, in this case..

I read a really bad late novel by Edith Wharton (Twilight Sleep, 1927) which is 100% on the theme of "this younger generation of people is feckless and useless, what will a world in their incapable hands be like"

It's actually the other way round in some of Henry Green's post war novels: like, here we are (the younger generation) having to struggle all the hours God sends, doing crappy office jobs, having to put up with rationing etc when you lot (the older generation) got to enjoy yourselves drinking and dancing and having sex with one another in the 20s and 30s.

as a millennial I'd like to officially disavow the generation that refers to Larry Graham as "Drake's uncle"

http://www.factmag.com/2016/05/16/drakes-uncle-leads-tributes-at-prince-memorial-service-in-minneapolis/

everybody check out this song it is PERFECT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLpE1Pa8vvI

i tried to sit through it, had to turn audio off quick, then i tried just reading it, and i skimmed and got to the participation trophy line and i was just reminded how fucked up capitalism is for the 15th time today

who is micah tyler and why is he cloning himself so much and also why does he wear so many hats

i don't know but people keep posting it on facebook. a group of 3-4 people keep posting parody videos about millennials and the guy who hates vegans and people who do yoga

some ppl just hella thirsty for the approval of their shitty elders man

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Lines up with board demographics.

haha eff baby boomers

Hey! I resemble that remark!

Some days, I just like to sit back and watch my generation march briskly into oblivion. We are gonna the meanest and the crankiest. Can't wait.

http://i.imgur.com/TZihEZg.png

millennials do love their boycotting too much. that said i'll bet the dude in the band cheryl mentioned probably sucks and deserves it.

I don't know how Snapchat is supposed to work. The last new band I got into was Spoon. But damn, watching the Pokemon Go explosion fire up my peers like it was Elvis shaking his pelvis on Milton Berle made me realize that sun has already set on the Generation Xpire.

intimate sing-a-long with a bunch of washed up gen-x'ers sounds like an ok time, or more likely, a slice of hell on earth

Depends on how much molly is there.

i feel older than the people who are younger than me

I think at least one of my parents listens to the college rock satellite radio station or the "alternative" one that is a weird cross section of the 90s through present. It's confusing. I don't think my dad knows any artists and definitely doesn't buy any music anymore. I got him a Bluetooth speaker and then walked him through installing the satellite radio app on his phone.

My mom is really into Fallout Boy or something like that?!?

Baby boomers are weird

my parents are resolute dorks they don't even try to feign an interest in indie culture

but they both has smartphones and i, of course, do not. except the one with just wifi i use for tinder.

*have

my parents don't know anything about any cultures! I am pretty sure my dad literally flipped between stations until he found one he found pleasing.

my dad definitely is way into his iPhone, my mom kind of begrudgingly has one now and loves to text me emoji. it might be easier than the full sentences she prefers due to the rheumatoid arthritis.

my parents don't even know that my brother is a hipster. they think his slovenly outfits are a function of his thrift/stupidity

my son is a hipster: the treeship's brother story

Varg on boomers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu2nIZyiH48

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/04/two-types-of-millennials.html?mid=facebook_nymag

As it turns out, there are good reasons for this. Old Millennials, as I’ll call them, who were born around 1988 or earlier (meaning they’re 29 and older today), really have lived substantively different lives than Young Millennials, who were born around 1989 or later

the Census Bureau’s definition (born 1982–2000) or Pew’s (about 1981–1997)

iirc marketing companies have just used "up to 35 years old" or somesuch for the last few years, without changing the number. So you can age out of being a millenial! :)

why does the census bureau use a made-up bullshit marketing category

I'd trust them more, considering they have some ability to track birth rates, demographics, income, etc.
so any group they've thrown together at least creates a demographic out of statistical commonalities

if they do that, yes; but then there's still the name and all its baggage

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

every generational label is covered in baggage

especially the Baggage Generation (1856-1877) !

i was literally having this distinction between old and young millennial conversation with my wife this weekend.

There's a real divide between the kids who grew up with a computer in their house and the kids who grew up with a smartphone in their pockets.

i think not being a true digital native; remembering having to phone friends on the landline of their home, or go round to their house and knock their door to see that they're in; remembering not having the internet; remembering making plans to meet people and then either you or them not being there because there was some complication and you had no way of contacting each other; and fairly crucially not having a social media account of any type until you were in your 20s, and scant evidence of your teenage years existing online is a very significant difference.

xp. yeah, not having a smartphone until your late 20s vs having a smart phone when you were 12 is also v significant

none of us are true digital natives, we're still a few years off from having neural implants

instead of jacking in, we're stuck with jacking off

I guess the equivalent for Gen X'ers is Old Gen X wouldn't have grown up with (or at least not until their teens) digital watches/VCRs/home computers whereas Young Gen X (i.e. me) would have at least known people who had them or seen them at school at a young age. E.g. I was 5 when the ZX81 came out vs 15 for someone born in 1966.

people in my peer group (born '81) and a little younger are fascinated with drawing these lines to differentiate their 80s/early 90s childhoods from the late 90s/early 00s childhoods of other people they know/observe. i'm not immune to it but it's the kind of observation about which everything that could be said got said five years ago and there don't need to be any more articles about it imho.

but the internal gen-x divides fascinate me! thinking about my own extended family, where my boomer mother's sibling cohort had kids over just a huge range of time. so my reference points for "gen xers" range from people who are now like 57 to people who are now 37, unless i count too. their childhoods were probably very similar in tons of ways (esp. the existence of the media monoculture, and a certain continuity of the general socio-technical apparatus, versus the techno-centric changes people articulate with millennial groups A B and C) but it's nonetheless a damned broad span of time!

I've usually divided Millennials into "Generation Y" AKA "Millennials old enough to remember when they weren't being called Millennials" (1981-1989) and "Generation Pokemon" (1990-whenever the cutoff date actually is).

people in my peer group (born '81)

my man

yo

Sup

The ryanair generation, our generational baggage is covered in labels

cutoff btwn young/old millennials is whether or not you remember 9/11 imo

people in my peer group (born '81) and a little younger are fascinated with drawing these lines to differentiate their 80s/early 90s childhoods from the late 90s/early 00s childhoods of other people they know/observe. i'm not immune to it but it's the kind of observation about which everything that could be said got said five years ago and there don't need to be any more articles about it imho.

but the internal gen-x divides fascinate me! thinking about my own extended family, where my boomer mother's sibling cohort had kids over just a huge range of time. so my reference points for "gen xers" range from people who are now like 57 to people who are now 37, unless i count too. their childhoods were probably very similar in tons of ways (esp. the existence of the media monoculture, and a certain continuity of the general socio-technical apparatus, versus the techno-centric changes people articulate with millennial groups A B and C) but it's nonetheless a damned broad span of time!

― ✓ (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, April 26, 2017 7:32 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I do this too because I want to imbue myself with some sort of cultural significance because I was born in 79. I'm definitely not a millennial but not really a Gen Xer. Someone referred me to this article which is kinda dumb, but lays some of it out. I first started using a PC when I was 9, had a cell phone at 21 and a smart phone at like 25.

https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/04/oregon-trail-generation/

78, Apple IIc

81

Gameboy when it was new

i have played a star trek game, written in basic, on a trs-80

yeah I can't understand being in my cohort but not remembering 9/11/2001

I was at the beginning of my junior year of college and my sister's peers were starting their last year of high school, with a bunch of them joining the armed forces within the year. The dotcom crash had hit bottom right before then, and the economy seemed mildly bleak -- nothing compared to 2008, in retrospect

it's not as bad as being a 1964 baby boomer (!) and being born after JFK was shot

I was telling the kids Challenger jokes in the car yesterday.

i have had similar conversations like this with my students. im 31, and i teach mostly 17/18 year olds. for me the divide is "do u like spongebob memes" because i try explaining to them that show got big when i was kinda too old for it, whereas they grew up with it p much all their childhood.

that's what i tell my college students about harry potter

they howl in indignation

yeah, i was gonna mention that, too. ive since watched the films but never read the HP books.

My challop in this matter is that age of adoption of computer / internet / smartphone appears to me to have very little impact on people's basic nature and I don't buy this as a driver of temperamental/sociological differences between my cohort and the cohort 20 years younger, if indeed there even are material temperamental/sociological differences.

that's what i tell my college students about harry potter

that's what i tell people about pixar movies

arthur memes were the ones that made me realize that I am old now

for me it's when i'm playing an online game and everyone has amazing reflexes except for me, and then i realize they're all my children and i haven't been making any payments for several years now

I graduated high school before 9/11. I have never played with a Harry Potter nor have I read a Pokémon. I don't take pictures of my food, I eat it. To me a "snap chat" is something you do with your hands while talking. We didn't have "iPads" we had a saying: "hi dad(s)". Beards were for domestic terrorists and mall Santas. The way we "streamed" music was by pissing on CDs! The only "apps" we had were before dinner. The only things we "binged" were alcohol and drugs! The only "molly" we knew was ringwald, and we watched her movies on good old fashioned VHS tapes. You kids just don't know.

and senior things? well you just wouldn't understand! it was all co-ed naked volleyball and that was definitely normal

Pokemon is a dividing line for me - I don't remember it being a thing at all and still associate it with little kids but just a few years after it's a common part of their adolescence.

"XY Cusp" has always felt pretty accurate for me (81) as much as these generational things can be - my media consumption was all Gen X (grunge and My So Called Life) but there was only a short gap between Apple IIs running Oregon Trail and dialing in to Prodigy and then Geocities pages in junior high. My older brother was already out of high school by the time of Prodigy and out of the house by Geocities.

I think anime in general is big divider. Everyone younger than me seems to love it or at least more than a passing familiarity with it.

In my head I still call it Japanimation

I think I saw that scene (you know what I'm talking about) from Ninja Scroll and was like "no thanks" and never watched any anime again. I kinda hate cartoons anyway apart from the classic era of the Simpsons. Speaking of which, I'm old enough to remember when the Simpsons were super controversial and edgy!

i think not being a true digital native; remembering having to phone friends on the landline of their home, or go round to their house and knock their door to see that they're in; remembering not having the internet; remembering making plans to meet people and then either you or them not being there because there was some complication and you had no way of contacting each other; and fairly crucially not having a social media account of any type until you were in your 20s, and scant evidence of your teenage years existing online is a very significant difference.

― -_- (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, April 26, 2017 6:55 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

- and it never did us any harm... Share If You Agree!!! ;)

my little brother wasn't alive in the 20th century & I don't think there's any significant difference between him and me & my other brother (mid-old millennials). something v desperate about ppl trying to think in these terms

My youngest brother and his cru are market different than the other three of us tbh, lol death of catholic Ireland in 1990

Markedly

the big difference in his peers at this age seems to be the lack of distinct tribes i.e. no moshers/goths/emo sorts per se, everything's more mixed & normcore as hell

From what I can tell it's kids with swords versus kids with nunchucks.

used to be jocks vs nerds, now it's all nerds

You know how they've got those apartments for people with Alzheimer's, where all the appliances are from the 60s, the phone is black and sits corded to the wall, the TV is a giant cathode console with a button to push to make the screen go back to b/w?

I just wonder if in my apartment, I'll have a PS2 or will they go all the way back to a Sega Genesis?

We're going to get VR goggles and rooms that smell like mousepads

I remember when that's what you called those horrible sticky traps you put by the door.

I'm oct '80 so bang on the cusp of Gens X and Y, and I always felt like I noticed a difference in attitude, even among people just a little older or younger than me. I remember my older friends, when I was growing up, wearing their deadbeat badges with honour. Many of them were happy to live on the dole or to squat or were generally uninterested in careerism through a good chunk of their 20s. Getting a job was 'conforming', 'selling out'. There was a lot of concern about 'selling out' among these peeps, and in a way they've stuck to these values (despite finally getting jobs). Among people younger than me, I don't think this would have even been entertained. There were fewer development grants for artists etc, so any bohemian dreams of living off your creativity were quashed unless you could afford to go and work at a start-up in London. Careerism wasn't just an option, it was essential. The idea of signing-on wasn't a mark of cool, it was a mark of being a drain on state resources... This is obviously just applicable to a couple of narrow groups of people in commuter-belt UK, but still it's something I noticed quite strongly.

Incidentally, my own litmus test for UK Gen X / Millennials is the image that springs to mind if you hear the word 'terrorist'. Even today I still think of an Irish guy in a balaclava, so I guess I must be more Gen X than Millennial.

I'm old enough to remember when the Simpsons were super controversial and edgy!

― Fiddle Catstro (latebloomer), Thursday, April 27, 2017 2:12 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol I was talking about pop culture stuff with my mom and she said, "When you were a kid we didn't let you watch South Park"! and I was like uh, mom, South Park came out when I was in high school and we didn't have cable. You're thinking of The Simpsons, which was never really that edgy, and I watched all the time a few years after it was deemed "edgy"

this was of course after I saw Book of Mormon with her and I realized I'm still not into musicals and definitely not ones that are 90% material recycled from South Park

Incidentally, my own litmus test for UK Gen X / Millennials is the image that springs to mind if you hear the word 'terrorist'. Even today I still think of an Irish guy in a balaclava, so I guess I must be more Gen X than Millennial.

<extremely psychoanalysis voice> I think of my mother, masturbating.

this song is amazing... like, it's even more Algiers than Algiers. The Northern Soul thing is amplified but it threatens to be drowned under layers and layers of harsh noise. I fricking love it and it's easily better than anything off the first album (which is saying something)

oops. wrong thread

I think of my mother, masturbating.

wait who's jerkin' it in this scenario, you or yr mother

asking for a friend

When deep psychoanalysis voice is present, everyone masturbates.

It's like musical chairs, but with enough chairs for everyone

'describe in single words only the good things that come to your mind about your mother, masturbating'

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Umc9ezAyJv0/maxresdefault.jpg

:'-D

millenials love their oxycontin

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/05/daily-chart-21

See, back in my day, we didn't have these cameraphones with a ruler app downloaded on it see...

http://i.imgur.com/GtWCpqE.jpg

this meme is real

Incidentally, my own litmus test for UK Gen X / Millennials is the image that springs to mind if you hear the word 'terrorist'. Even today I still think of an Irish guy in a balaclava, so I guess I must be more Gen X than Millennial.

dude with an uzi

I have a boss that's right at the end of the baby boomers, awesome guy. Baby boomers are fine, but the older they are the worse they are and this guy is at the far part of the right end. I'm at the beginning of the millennials. I think a large part of the reason we work well together is that we neatly cut out the most garbage generation that's ever been: gen x.

whatever

What did gen x do that was so bad?

dressed cool, slacked

sold out, man

Hm

https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/k-bigpic.jpg

I feel like there is a split between older and younger millennials. Like a dramatic rapid shift in what it means to be a 21 year old from 2010 to now.

On another thread ryan said that everything has become political now, which feels right. Aesthetics/taste seems way more marginal in how people position themselves in the culture now. Maybe. Just spitballing.

millennials be spitballing

Old millennials.

Young millennials have better sense than that.

I'm "Generation XY Cusp" so I proudly embody the worst characteristics of both generations.

slacker narcissist

nice

On another thread ryan said that everything has become political now, which feels right. Aesthetics/taste seems way more marginal in how people position themselves in the culture now. Maybe. Just spitballing.

― Treeship, Saturday, June 3, 2017

I'm under this impression as well, though I obviously have no way of proving it empirically. Although aesthetics is never devoid of politics, the two aren't one and the same. Simply glossing over the former as though it were mere window dressing is an existential mistake.

The archetypal "hipster" would either ironically re-appropriate mass culture or reject it in favor of some underground "alternative" culture. In both cases, the goal was to carve a space for oneself outside the mainstream, which is political definitely but quietist as well.

Nowadays the zeitgeist is so loud people don't even try to pretend they can avoid it.

tbh you would be amazed how good parents with young kids are at avoiding a lot of the zeitgeist that doesn't involve either tv that happens after their kids go to bed or headlines that are on whatever news site they check at work over lunch

I don't meet enough gen'xers that aren't reasonably pissed off by their day jobs. Most either cynical or apathetic about their work.

I'm "Generation XY Cusp" so I proudly embody the worst characteristics of both generations.

you own your own business, right? and stick around Texas despite itself. you really don't - you are responsible, determined and least of all "all about me" - I'm just saying it's demonstrable even if you leave out the self-awareness which is an instant DQ for anybody trying to belong to any stereotype

I embody 2009

I work for a big evil corp and actually enjoy my job too often

https://i.imgur.com/Req588D.jpg

seems accurate

Eh, fair point. Whatever.

https://i.imgur.com/dw2ywqs.jpg

Boomers: actual phone calls
Xers: email threads
millennials: slack
gen z: discord

Folks... https://t.co/WU9JgfGwxo pic.twitter.com/pRAHrFIdBc

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) September 4, 2018

https://i.imgur.com/buvDZ5Z.jpg

* really good use of that King Crimson song

* i was at a house show over the weekend and this guy started talking about his taste in house music and how he liked old school stuff from when his parents were his age -- his parents were young enough to be my high school classmates.

which got me thinking -- were baby boomers the first generation that really tried to socially/culturally integrate with younger generations -- or is it just another boomer myth? Like the stereotype of the aging gen-x hipster just seems like an update of the "weird old guy" at punk shows in the 90s?

The weird old person has been hanging around at the the young people since ancient Mesopotamia, I’d guess

Wait what xp

were baby boomers the first generation that really tried to socially/culturally integrate with younger generations

there's also the flipside of that which is that so many of the touchstones of the boomer generation never went away - you can still go and see the rolling stones in concert, paul mccartney's still pumping out albums, music and film from the late sixties and early seventies are still forever being referenced in new art etc

speaking of younger generations, a couple of friends and I were wondering: were millennials the first generation to think (collectively, as much as a "generation" can think or exist really) the generation after them was unambiguously better in any single way? given that every single "the first generation to" complaint/theory is wrong, the answer has to be no, right?

Are men’s sperm counts really dropping that dramatically with no explanation? That is definitely a symptom of more things going wrong in public health

Btw i don’t think generation Z is better than me and ky fellow millennials.

BPA and phthalates in plastics, according to the article

there's also the flipside of that which is that so many of the touchstones of the boomer generation never went away - you can still go and see the rolling stones in concert, paul mccartney's still pumping out albums, music and film from the late sixties and early seventies are still forever being referenced in new art etc

and boy did they

i feel the boomers should be split into two generations. my parents were born in the early sixties and i don't associate them with any of that stuff.

they're not big pop culture people in any case, but if anything the 80s and 90s were their era. when they were my age, it was already the early 90s.

your parents are generation x

or possibly "generation jones"

Technically they are boomers, as the cut off is 64. Mt mom was the youngest of seven so she does seem knowledgeable about the whole “boomer experience,” although she somewhat despises that era (vietnam/counterculture) which she says “destroyed her family.”

yeah boomers need a subgeneration because it's demographically viable to say there was this continuous baby boom through the mid 60s but you end up with a twenty-year span for the "generation," such that first-round boomers could have kids that would also qualify as baby boomers. and then culturally, yeah, there's very little affinity between ppl who graduated high school in 1967 and in 1985 or what have you.

hence the "generation jones" concept

yeah boomers need a subgeneration because it's demographically viable to say there was this continuous baby boom through the mid 60s but you end up with a twenty-year span for the "generation,"

I feel like the fact that people feel the need to subdivide these 'generations' to spans far shorter than actual human generations points to a flaw in the original theory.

otm. so so tired of people talking about generation whatever.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/05/sally-rooney-millennials-normal-people

I feel this could have been written about so many books of the last 40 years. "[...] her characters use irony to dilute their existential anxiety about being over-educated and aimless in a time when the very world order seems up in the air."

Sund4r, my point is just that if a parent and child can belong to the same "generation" then either that generation has been too widely drawn or we should stop talking about "generations." i agree with the latter in principle but it can be a nice pointless diversion and if one doesn't want to engage in it one can just avoid this thread, idk.

I do want to engage in it!: I'm pointing out that I think the theory is deeply flawed.

The thread started out mocking generational theory don’f forget 🌈⭐️

Either you have to draw the generations widely enough that a parent and child can be part of the same generation or you have to draw them so narrowly that their spans have nothing to do with generations in the biological sense.

(That's not the only flaw, though.)

But the theory has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with culture, I assume

the gilmore girls seem like the same generation

X'ers. rory is technically a millennial though, i believe.

“It’s stupid to measure position by a bunch of lines that all intersect at the top and bottom! If they all intersect, it’s meaningless!”

“Measuring position by continuous lines that just go around in circles doesn’t tell you anything!”

This isn’t a nerd forum please use a different analogy using cultural touchstones that millennials can relate to

back in the 90s, when generational theory was also popular, people born in the early 60s were considered Gen-X!!

Kinda feel like people who weren't born/were too young to remember Cuban Missile Crisis/Kennedy Assassination aren't boomers.

similarly, people who weren't born/were too young to remember Reagan's presidency aren't really Gen-X

born too early to explore the universe, born too late to boom a baby

that sounds right. i think my parents are more like Gen X. they seem like they were too old to like MTV, nirvana, etc. but really they were just too lame

Here's my rubric and the only one I'll accept

If you were around for the 60s but not world war 2 you're a baby boomer

Gen Xers think Ghostbusters and Back to the Future are really good and important movies

Millennials were in school on 9/11 and remember it

Gen Zers have no memory of 9/11

If you were in school on 9/11 and also care about Ghostbusters and Back to the Future, you're a cusp millennial, probably you were born in exactly 1981.

37 year olds are millennials. they are all over tinder and they have stupid media and tech start up jobs.

"stupid" is disparaging. they have the new york kind of jobs that everyone in my milieu seems to have.

more like peedia and tech fart up jobs

Gen Xers think Ghostbusters and Back to the Future are really good and important movies

yr obviously a millennial. i saw those movies in the theater. they were fun, but not really "good" or "important" -- kinda like the cherry coke of movies, and I do like Cherry Coke, but if I were to make a list of "good and important" things, cherry coke would not be on it.

It's more like, Gen Xers grew up with the shitty, corrupt leadership of Nixon (early X) and Reagan (later X) -- the "just say no to drugs" era

Anyone can be a millennial if they want to be.

is that why so many dudes in their 40s are dating/trying to date ppl in their 20s?

I feel like over my life I've continually dropped into and out of Gen X. For a while I'm pretty sure I was in Gen Y, which no longer exists.

That’s right sarahell—Idealism

back in the 90s, when generational theory was also popular, people born in the early 60s were considered Gen-X!!

I remember this. In fact that was how Douglas Coupland defined the term in his book Generation X which is where all this started. Somehow Gen X leaped forward five years at some point in the '90s.

I’m not sure if I’d choose to be a millennial if I was allowed to pick tbh

I’m not sure if I’d choose to be a millennial if I was allowed to pick tbh

ancient millennial proverb

Somehow Gen X leaped forward five years at some point in the '90s.

Yes!! I remember it used to end in 1975 or 1976.

(but this is what I was getting at, at least in my cohort there seems to be this near-universal feeling that millennials are in fact a doomed generation and the generation after them is like them but better in every single way)

They cant be better off though as they’ll live through more decades of climate change

yeah, I was born in 77 and definitely remember not being in Gen X as a teenager. I got recruited later on.

xpost

To me the 1959-1964 babies have always seemed like an in-between generation, just as the babies of the late '70s seem neither Gen-X nor Millennial.

And I'm another Gen-Xer who thought Ghostbusters and Back to the Future were fine but nothing super special and am very surprised people still talk about them.

millennials are in fact a doomed generation and the generation after them is like them but better in every single way

this was the Gen-X zeitgeist in the 90s iirc: we were born and raised during a time of decay, but things started getting better after we were already doomed, like public education funding started increasing when millennials started going to school.

otoh, it was easier to get into good colleges because there weren't as many of us.

we were born and raised during a time of decay

Think about it: Steve Winwood albums!

I feel like the prognostic for millenials used to be much better than it is currently. We'll see in a couple of years how it goes for the post-millenials, I'm pretty sure society as a whole will continue fucking up.

this was the Gen-X zeitgeist in the 90s iirc: we were born and raised during a time of decay, but things started getting better after we were already doomed, like public education funding started increasing when millennials started going to school.

how quickly that sentiment faded on their part

(from what I can tell the people who hate millennials most aren't boomers at all but gen x)

I'm in the Pepsi generation

It is probably tedious of me to point this out, but the Baby Boom earned its nickname early on from sheer amazement over the numbers of infants flooding the post-war world. It was bestowed on them by newspaper journalists.

The designators for all subsequent generations have been bestowed by marketers, because the sheer weight of boomers taught corporations that selling to young people was hugely lucrative. Soon marketers learned that labeling generations made them sound like they knew arcane lore that would help corporations sell stuff. Now all this marketing hokum has become so mainstreamed that young people actually believe in it and find personal meaning and identity in their generational label.

Breaking news: being a Gen X or Millennial is about the equivalent of being a Sagittarius or a Gemini. You'll learn as much about yourself by reading your daily horoscope as you will by reading about what marketers say about 'your generation'.

It’s almost as if people say extremely similar things about each generation as its members pass certain age milestones.

And yet, each generation also has distinct cultural experiences growing up which mark them as distinct from every other spawning of humans.

yesterday at work i was listening to a youtube playlist of hair metal from the 80s, and i think i like it more now than I did at the time? (not sure if that would work for Steve Winwood)

being a Gen X or Millennial is about the equivalent of being a Sagittarius or a Gemini. You'll learn as much about yourself by reading your daily horoscope as you will by reading about what marketers say about 'your generation'.

well, you'd need to do your whole natal chart. Sagittarius is way better than Gemini, so I'll claim Sag for Gen X thanks!

Now all this marketing hokum has become so mainstreamed that young people actually believe in it and find personal meaning and identity in their generational label.

oh fuck right off, older people also believe in it

(this is however an excellent demonstration of my last post!)

But the theory has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with culture, I assume

I'll admit to not having read the whole book but my understanding is that Strauss and Howe did intend for their 'generations' to be the span of a 'season of life' (as per Ch 3: https://books.google.ca/books?id=d8bBFGJq79sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=strauss+howe+fourth+turning&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNy5LgpaTdAhUBwFkKHT1BBhkQuwUILTAA#v=onepage&q=strauss%20howe%20fourth%20turning&f=false)

i'm just kinda envious of millennials -- and it's easy for envy to turn to hatred -- idk I'm a Scorpio!

Everyone can fuck the fuck off until they take their social science prerequisites

https://www.scribd.com/doc/86911597/Longitudinal-vs-Latitudinal

older people also believe in it

you are right that many do. and don't they seem ridiculous clinging onto that?

Aimless, are you an Aquarius? If not, I kinda feel like you must have that somewhere in yr chart

it’s like y’all spend all your spare time listening to music and hiking in the woods or some shit

they sure do, but not as ridiculous as people who take a fairly broad phenomenon and blame it on the shallow youngs

I doubt that many people self-identify as boomer/genX/millenial/etc. These are labels used for other people.

And afaict generational theory was not just about shared pop culture touchstones but about shared values, behaviours, and characteristics. This is what I most take issue with. xp to self

Based on how astrological dabblers react when they hear it, mine must be the scariest "star sign" of all. Not Aquarius, fwiw.

guessing you're referring to yr sun sign, which represents the ego (more or less), like, on ilx, people are probably most likely to perceive your mercury sign (communication/expression), mars sign (related to arguing, what excites you), and probably your rising sign, which is how you appear to others.

people who take a fairly broad phenomenon and blame it on the shallow youngs

if blame is to be bestowed, I blame marketers and the media who parrot their nonsense with perfectly straight faces. my own experience is that the depth of 'youngs' is quite variable on an individual basis, but with the same predictability as the rich getting richer, it is those who most value depth who get deeper.

well, with so many houses to fill and such a limited number of signs to inhabit them, then statistically speaking I would have to assume Aquarius does show up in at least one of them. so consider your guess confirmed, mathematically

xp to self: Geminis are actually rad too -- I kinda feel like they are the best at the internet, so it's kinda a compliment to millennials being equated to Geminis in an internet post

well, with so many houses to fill and such a limited number of signs to inhabit them, then statistically speaking I would have to assume Aquarius does show up in at least one of them. so consider your guess confirmed, mathematically

― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, September 5, 2018 11:34 AM (thirty-seven seconds ago)

most people have multiple planets in the same sign (principles of astronomy), and plenty of signs that don't affect their personality at all. So, I think yr math is off, or you don't get astrology ... idk

the part of my generational heritage, whatever it is, that i think comes through most strongly in myself even today is my distrust of advertising and repulsion at branding. it's possible this is an idiosyncrasy but i think it's probably a factor of when/where/how i grew up and what i paid attention to during my youth. also fiercely hating reagan and distrusting the rich.

i also didn't enter my birth date/time into the astrology website because i don't know where it's going. why would i trust a random website?! no way, FU. lol

we owe you nothing!

astrology is only good for owning your friends with memes, except it isn't even good for memes for me because my sign is the one all the people who make memes hate

Astrology is way better than the generational stuff

I fucking hate all of you

Well not la lechera she just stopped in to offer a personal perspective

But JFC not being able to understand generation theory and how it’s abused by hacks is just sad

Astrology is such a Boomer thing.

https://i.imgur.com/XwSR8Js.jpg

What is non-hackish about the theory in the first place?xp

my sign is the one all the people who make memes hate

i like all the signs and i also make astromemes.

gen x people are like boomers junior

I'll admit to not having read the whole book but my understanding is that Strauss and Howe did intend for their 'generations' to be the span of a 'season of life'

Still, I don't think they're attributing intergenerational differences to anything other than outside influences. The theory seems to be based on the assumption that culture (meaning all outside influences) is always changing. If culture didn't change in let's say a 50-year span there would be no reason to say a mother & daughter belong to different generational cohorts. (I haven't read the book either, so...)

but astromemes, and a bunch of ppl who are into them actually discuss this -- often reduce signs to stereotypes

like, if I were a Taurus, I'd be kinda annoyed at how all the memes about me involve food

As crazy at it may seem, despite all the shared values, experiences, cultural touchstones and what not, not just of our generation, but all belonging to the solid phalanx of one specific year in one specific city, all the members of my graduating high school class now exhibit a wildly diverse array of opinions about politics, religion, society and morality. Blows my mind.

i'm a virgo and have no idea what astromemes say about virgos but historically what people say about virgos has never made me feel good

ppl also discuss the fact that Beyonce has a Scorpio moon, and that is why she is awesome, despite being a Virgo

Still, I don't think they're attributing intergenerational differences to anything other than outside influences. The theory seems to be based on the assumption that culture (meaning all outside influences) is always changing. If culture didn't change in let's say a 50-year span there would be no reason to say a mother & daughter belong to different generational cohorts. (I haven't read the book either, so...)

The fact that culture is always changing is actually a reason why I think dividing people into discrete chronological cohorts of x years is such a flawed enterprise.

I'm glad we're all here rather than in the politics thread.

I fucking hate all of you

― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Wednesday, September 5, 2018 2:44 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

won't be the first one to

I <3 Virgos! They have an innate intellectual curiosity, they work hard, they are organized, and care about details and things that are useful and functionally important

afaict all possible properties have been attributed to all possible signs and all possible generations

relatedly, all foods will eventually be found to cause all possible health outcomes

(Culture obv changed during the 'Boomer' years as much as it did between the 'Boomer' and 'X' years. And the outside influences on people of different races, classes, genders, etc within a cohort are going to be very different, for a start.) xp to self

people are alike in some ways and different in other ways but in most ways, in the aggregate, they are more alike than different and have been for as far back into the past as we can peer

I <3 Virgos! They have an innate intellectual curiosity, they work hard, they are organized, and care about details and things that are useful and functionally important

― sarahell, Wednesday, September 5, 2018 1:56 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Furiously taking notes on how to be a better Virgo rn.

every single piece of astrology content on capricorns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrK-FwELA7I

I <3 Virgos! They have an innate intellectual curiosity, they work hard, they are organized, and care about details and things that are useful and functionally important

<3 it's not sexy but i'll take it!

Can we make an astrology board i could get into it

one of my fave memes is "roommate cleans negative energy with sage while you clean rest of the apartment" and the person cleaning the rest of the apartment is Virgo or Capricorn. Capricorns are rad too!

I found astrology intriguing when I was a child but if anyone tried to talk to me about my sign rn I would probably curse at them

TBF I am probably not the best representative of common Virgo traits because I'm basically a walking disaster in many ways (gen x represent!).

I fucking hate all of you

― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Wednesday, September 5, 2018 11:44 AM (twenty-one minutes ago)

typical Aries

TBF I am probably not the best representative of common Virgo traits because I'm basically a walking disaster in many ways

It's likely that you have some other planets that are badly aspected w/Virgo ... which creates inner conflict. Also the fact that you consider yourself a "walking disaster" because you feel like you are not living up to some standards or other, is very much a Virgo trait

Culture obv changed during the 'Boomer' years as much as it did between the 'Boomer' and 'X' years. And the outside influences on people of different races, classes, genders, etc within a cohort are going to be very different, for a start.

Sometimes there are big jumps or disruptions in culture that allow you to see a clear before-and-after picture though. The problem is these moments don't often coincide with one other and that's why breaking gens down by particular years is so iffy. And this kind of theory is obviously a macro kind of thing that you can't look at on a micro level. Yeah, everyone is different; people even go through their own personal evolutions.

Like, the basic theory seems to have been that 'seasons of history' occur in a fixed cyclical pattern and that a 'generation' who passes through a 'season of life' during one of these historical seasons is going to have a number of characteristics, values, and behaviours in common. xp to self

Sometimes there are big jumps or disruptions in culture that allow you to see a clear before-and-after picture though.

Yeah, that's true that e.g. people who go through a world war or depression together may have some major shared life-changing experience but I don't think there's enough like this to support the idea of 'Generation X', 'Millennials', and a generation that is being defined before it even has much life experience.

Anyway, I should read the whole book so I can hate it more authoritatively.

Waste of time, you’re probably guessing what it says just fine.

https://sayingimages.com/wp-content/uploads/capricorns-how-you-see-yourself-how-others-see-you-capricorn-meme.jpg

https://78.media.tumblr.com/a30133f9ffc02bfb9f7839ddddfbee00/tumblr_pbbd22Z3m01xxu1gfo1_640.jpg

xxxp Agree with that... I mean I've seen major lifestyle changes due to internet & mobile phones etc. but it's debatable how much effect all that's really had on people and of course more than one generation has had to deal with it.

anyway, Capricorns are obv badasses

see this is a perfect example of being portrayed as a fucking dick

"please believe in this thing we made up, also we hate you"

it is definitely true that no generation has learned different lessons from the same event because it happened when they were in daycare at the time, instead of watching the same event happen as they got ready to start their first full-time job or go off to college.

we have been at war in Afghanistan for 17 years. this has had no substantially different effect on people whether they were born in 1980 or born in 2000. totally provable statement.

Obama would totally be the same person if he had been born during the 1930s. Makes no difference. People are all different and also the same! Shrug a lot and wave your hands around at the uselessness of trying to model anything with less than absolute precision.

But wait so what if Obama had been born with a Kuato, what if that

that makes him a gemini right? that makes the most sense

i'm upper mississippi and i'm on the go
my zodiac sign is the virgo

xxp - so many ilxors adore "angry goat on roof"

also the newspaper memes are all kinda like that

the uselessness of trying to model anything with less than absolute precision.

The difficulty is not that the models derived do not apply broadly to tens of millions of people in aggregate, but that they are often presented as saying something valuable about individuals within that aggregate. A statement such as 'Gen Xers want this, hate that, or view this other thing with suspicion' is so ill-formed that it is either without useful content or else simply a falsehood, depending on how you interpret it. A statement such as Gen Xers are 15% more likely than other cohorts to say they want this, hate that, or view this other thing with suspicion, has some value.

generations and astrology are both horseshit y'all fyi lol

TBF, so are most other means by which we aspire to condense the sum of a person or a people.

I am undescribible.

this is a board in which we are trying to settle on the exact definition of a "New Jersey," let people have their memes

New Jersey is a Virgo too :)

generational differences can include things like "before and after the polio vaccine," but I can understand how that might seem abstract to most people here

astrology is closest to the longitudinal "hey everybody acts like this if you watch them long enough" Saturn's Return dumbassery

but yes latitude and longitude same thing shrug lol

they're both just lines right

don't try to tell me any different i don't have time for your explanation i'm a goddamn moon in aries you son of a gun

okay so here's another mean meme

https://78.media.tumblr.com/04f6c3734e17535b66071d104422a7c1/tumblr_p5givgAp0T1x95nrqo1_1280.jpg

Slippery When Wet is a Leo just looked it up

The version of generational differences that (I think?) you're describing makes enough sense (I think?) if I read through the sarcasm but that's not really what I understand 'generational theory' to be. xp to Tombot

Or if it is, that's not what I take issue with.

that's true that e.g. people who go through a world war or depression together may have some major shared life-changing experience but I don't think there's enough like this to support the idea of 'Generation X', 'Millennials', and a generation that is being defined before it even has much life experience.

here's one for tauruses (notice free space in middle is food)

http://geekxgirls.com/images/_articles/zodiac-bingo-02.jpg

i'm upper mississippi and i'm on the go
my zodiac sign is the virgo

I respect ums' commitment to bringing hip hop back to its roots

what sign amongst us does not appreciate a robe, i ask

good ass eyebrows?

assbrows?

I recently interviewed a 19 year old who told me "I am an old soul, so I tend to identify with millennials."

— Liam Stack (@liamstack) September 14, 2018

oooooooof

👌

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=entVpj_IT6M

are people born in 1998 really self-identifying as millennials/gen-y'ers these days? is this the future Ella O'Connor fought and died to secure?

it's a good song (especially by youtube musician standards) though I don't think any of his concerns are unique to his generation except for the bit about climate change really hitting the fan

Does it still count as having millennial burnout if I've never come close to optimizing anything?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxdPH_VV4AAyp9N.jpg:small

oh well, whatever, nevermind

https://pics.me.me/boomers-yelling-at-millenials-for-toast-millennials-yelling-at-boomers-39502162.png

A mistrust of science isn’t new — it’s been around since science really started picking up steam, and the thought that it’s definitive of our age is just wrong. Noticing that we should be skeptical of the thought that we are going through some particularly new and baleful moment in the history of ideas. We’re not: we’re just retracing arguments that humans seem, perhaps just as a matter of temperament, to be inclined to trace. The contemporary leftist who responds to those who want to use, e.g. blockchains for social good by pointing out bitcoin’s ecological cost, or who responds cynically to data about how fewer people are living in extreme poverty thanks to capitalism by pointing out that, well, thanks to capitalism, in not so long, fewer people will be living full stop thanks to climate change can, I think, be viewed as giving voice to the same sort of anti-progress viewpoint as Rousseau. It didn’t take Derridean differance to enable people to wonder about the negative effects that progress entrains.

https://medium.com/@mittmattmutt/millennials-as-romantics-not-postmodernists-b678818d84ad

Hat tip michael B for the link

Obviously it’s a super pop, super surface level example of intellectual history, but I think it’s more accurate than, for instance, jordan peterson’s fuming over “postmodern neo-marxists.” There is some truth to the observation that so-called social justice warriors are more interested in perspectives than facts, but this isn’t a point against them. We live in a period of uncertainty—the irrationality of our society is impossible to overlook at this point and there aren’t “pragmatic” answers to things like climate change, only revolutionary ones. In these condtions it makes sense for people to turn to ideologies that from the outside might seem factional or non-constructive to older generations.

It’s not a coincidence that Diogenes is one of the heroes of Jenny Odell’s buzzworthy book about “resisting in place.”

every moment has its same profile

i find the present moment is spoiled for choice in terms of language, and while the attendant imprecision can be difficult i appreciate the richness of, particularly, queer language.

you can call such people - they can call themselves - post-modernists or romantics or counter-enlightenment (this is _completely different_ from "dark enlightenment") or any number of other things; the words themselves are less important to me than the diversity of thought engendered thereby.

i find that when alt-right types use the trappings of rationalist, enlightenment discourse - when they attempt to affix concrete and immutable _meanings_ to words - this is often an attempt to create new epithets and slurs they can use against people they disagree with. when faced with people like peterson who so clearly show the limitations of rationalist thought, why should one attempt to rationally debate them? my refusal to rationally engage with these ideas and those who espouse them is not an opposition to reason, but merely the recognition that the preconditions for rational discourse do not exist. hence productive and useful activity requires alternatives to poisoned discourse, requires re-framing.

I think there's a differentiation between scientific realism and practical implementation that's hinted at but not realized in there. Very few people are going to fault Isaac Newton for publishing on a theoretical cannonball that's able to fire far enough to orbit the planet because it was technologically impossible at the time and purely a thought experiment. Comparing that to the blockchain, where the practical implementation is not only possible but the effects of popularization predictable in the near term, are two different matters.

You could counter that the tendency toward questioning social positions is a more hypothesis-centered approach in that social cause and effect are taken into account. I think claiming it's a romantic viewpoint blows past the stance that ethics have a role in the application of science, and so-called objective thought is often anything but. It's not vague forces that move from materials science to a glut of plastic objects floating in the ocean, and it's not "bad feelings" coming from racist ideologues that people are worried about. It's the adoption and unfettered growth of seemingly innocuous things far beyond their original scope, and you can make epistemic arguments showing exactly how these things have played out historically.

When people talk about a rationalistic worldview they don’t just mean a position that believes in science’s ability to answer questions about the material world. They mean the Enlightenment position that human reason is the tool can overcome all obstacles—so like Steven Pinker. It’s a normative view not an epistemological one, but it disguises itself as such.

Peterson is a weird example because he is a true reactionary—he doesn’t think we should “mess with” thing like the market or language, as this would be dangerous social engineering. But nevertheless he is interpreting the romantic or postmodernist tendencies of millennials as dangerous to civilization.

I think the main issue with JP is he has no idea what he's actually saying and just has a punchlist of things he thinks are bad while bumbling on about human reason

I agree with the author of the medium piece that we’re in an era of skepticism in america. People are more likely to describe social problems as intractable, or constitutive of our society in a way—a society that is wasteful and destructive in its essence, requiring new paradigms. This kind of structural critique used to be confined to academia or certain pockets of radicals or whatever but now it’s mainstream.

And it is a romantic outlook. It demands you stand apart from received values. It’s not especially new either—there was a wave of this kind of thinking after world war i and in other periods.

I haven't read the article yet (sorry) but I take issue with the equation 'postmodernism = Romanticism' (give or take a few qualia). While the latter has unquestionably informed the former, and not just chronologically, it doesn't ramp up suspicion towards metanarratives to the same self-defining extent, especially in the field of politics. Postmodernism has always been about embracing subversively blurred boundaries over and above urgent revolutionary impulses, deemed overly teleological in the then-dying wake of Marxism/Hegelianism. If we are to buy into the idea that the current generation is more neo-Romantic than not (and this thesis does hold some amount of water), I think it's equally safe to say that it too is a reaction to postmodernist playfulness and ambiguous (dis)engagement. Few things are as un-pomo as so-called 'identity' politics.

He’s not saying they’re the same. He’s saying the attitudes of millennials attributed to postmodernism could more aptly be tied to a deeper tendency—the outlook that people started calling romantic in the late 18th century.

It’s not a coincidence that Diogenes is one of the heroes of Jenny Odell’s buzzworthy book about “resisting in place.”

― Trϵϵship, Wednesday, May 15, 2019 5:16 AM (nine hours ago)

it's weird when someone on ilx namedrops someone I know personally

I thought you might know her! I think her book is really good—she articulated a lot of the concerns I have attempted to explain on ilx in a flailing fashion.

i do her taxes ... her bf is also cool and a writer ... he looks a little like you ... not like eerily similar, but kinda

Ha, this thread revive comes at an opportune time for me; see, at the beginning of the week I encountered a very young-looking paramedic and she just about made my month when she swore I didn't look a day over thirty. Considering I'm about a decade older than that and I'd worried my maternal bloodline's predilection for preserving their external youth beyond belief had passed me by, this was very heartening, not only because I'm an aging member of a cusp generation that doesn't exactly know where to slot ourselves (mine is the "Xennials", i.e. half-Generation X and half-Millennial) and am keenly aware of how comparatively superannuated I am to a great many people, it also enables me to effectively claim I can "pass" for a full member of a generation (the Millennials) and thus feel a sort of kinship with a specific generation, even if it's via artifice and sneaky trickery.

I'm not at all surprised the Gen X'ers won out in this poll considering the generational makeup of this forum; when I was more of a regular around these parts, there were a great many ILXors who were at least a handful of years older than me and thus more fully entrenched with "Generation X" and all that means. I suspect that legacy influenced the results of the voting back when this poll was first posted.

https://i.imgur.com/8qAN4wx.jpg

Perfect.

Is Kirsti an "Instagram influencer"? That's the only possible sane excuse I can think of for that photo. (Also, as a Mexican-American, I relish the opportunity to say I'm actually taller than she is.)

you're tall then! 5'6" is taller than average for an american woman.

i hate the term "adulting"

the zoomers are better than all of us

Lol @ results

the only thing i hate about millennials is the astrology

If you use "adulting" after having a child, your child should become a ward of the state immediately.

the only thing i hate about millennials is the astrology

Pretty sure they use it to pwn the Gen Xers, trolling themselves in the process.

lmao at the idea that gen x somehow evaded astrology

So all those 'lol @ millennials getting into astrology' pieces are fake news?

they've superseded the "gen x getting into astrology" pieces of yesteryear

I'm technically gen Y so I wouldn't know.

I have 28 teeth in my pocket right now.

The entire Kirsti 31 photoseries feels unresolved.

https://www.sunshynepix.com/Blog/Kirstis-Golden-Birthday-Cake-A

there's probably a german word for the existential discomfort i'm feeling after clicking on that

Norwegian iirc.

28 teeth on my dresser, yessir

it's so weird how it looks like she is having a party but she is the only one there
why photograph such a lame party that abundantly?

To prove that you can have a kickass birthday party all on your own.

but it is not kickass and not a party if there is no one at the party, it's just a photoshoot

Didn't say the proof was convincing.

can i stage a photoshoot of myself standing on a stage pretending to sing/play an instrument and call it a photograph of a performance? even if there is no audience (beyond the photographer) and no one asked me to perform and i didn't actually perform i just posed for a picture?

that is definitively not a party if you're just eating cake alone in the woods w a sign & your photographer

hey, she never called it a party

i'm not a kristi 31 defender here, but this is definitely a photoshoot with all the signifiers of celebrating a birthday with no actual celebration

so many questions about this beguiling woman. what are her squad goals? how many Fs does she give?

I want to know about the traumatic dog licking themselves incidents.

But she also hates cleaning so maybe the answer is right there.

I did some rEaSeArCh and it turns out she's an instagram mommy with 1,028 followers, 80% of whom are other instagram mommies and 20% of whom are lonely single men who love booty. she celebrated father's day by wearing a one-piece leopard print swimsuit with her husband's face printed on it (not this exact one, but the concept is similar):

https://i.imgur.com/l7eptPm.jpg

Apologies if this is already known to you all, but it has come to my attention that the 'adult cake smash' is a Pinterest subgenre unto itself.

https://www.babble.com/parenting/adult-cake-smash-birthday-photo-shoots/

maybe if the draft is reinstated for next gulf war selective service can fast track a new conscription category?

One of my questions got answered! Why it was turning 31 that merited the big celebration.

I hate it when the dog licks himself too!

there are tons of these things, adult cake smash. someone on my insta feed aggregated them in his stories one day. it's disturbing. it's like next level, gender-reveal-level normie inanity bordering on insanity.

At least Kirsti isn't a boomer. Our reputation has been tarnished enough as it is.

xxp I think something said golden birthday which is some invented holiday where your current age matches the day of month? so turning 31 on may 31st or whatever

I don't even know

been halfheartedly pondering the overlap between instagram moms and the pre-existing milieu of suburban wine moms this afternoon and, while not a perfect circle, there's a definite early millennial/mid-millennial overlap

i've definitely gone on dates with suburban wine moms, and perhaps with aspiring instagram influencers, but never someone who has been both

instagram seems bad

I really hate the term cougar juice, but they don't make it easy.

Are they going to keep complaining/complimenting themselves in regard to "adulting" until they die?

Something about "being a kid at heart" that tolls throughout the Millennials and the Boomers. So many 40somethings in 80s commercials, can't believe they're wearing a SUIT and TIE, hearing the distant call of the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" echoing from somewhere past the conference room windows...

I don't see a whole lot of that from my generation. Except from Beto, who's got some trip going on that I'd wish he'd keep to himself.

I don't care much about instagram, it seems mostly spon cons and people doing yoga in inappropriate places. But I hate that a lot of places/tourist destinations have become unbearable just because people go there to get a shot for their social media.

The worst is when people ask you to move in a museum so they can take a picture of a picture.

my dad’s boomer version of “adulting” jokes was probably his insistence that he’s still working on figuring out what he wants to be when he grows up

now that he’s transitioning into retirement, he’ll perhaps have the time to work on that

DId boomer dad's have adulting jokes? I always thought they were more on the Al Bundy, giving up on life at age 40 angle.

I never see any of this on Instagram bc I don’t follow these people. It’s pretty easy to avoid!

I don't have an instagram account but every so often I like to watch the short vids of pasta being made.

I never see influencers or spon con or famous ppl bc that’s not why I’m there. It makes me sad to see people sorted into slots like wine mommy and insta mommy and any unnecessarily pigeonholed group. I guess that’s what they’re putting out there. Glad I don’t have to see it, with the exception of Kristi’s bday photo shoot.

afaict "adulting" jokes/comments at least among my peers are m/l a sort of ironic comment on the distance between what adult life looked like when we were kids versus what's attainable and/or desirable to us now. since so few mid-30s ppl in my circles have kids, own homes, or have job security, very little of their lives look like their parents' lives in the 1980s. so when something does, like getting a car or buying a durable large appliance, it sorta stands out. but i might be misreading it or coming from a very narrow area.

since so few mid-30s ppl in my circles have kids, own homes, or have job security, very little of their lives look like their parents' lives in the 1980s

this was the case w me in my mid-30s too. It hasn't been like the 80s since the uh 90s

That’s not much different from my experience as a person at the tail end of gen x except there were a few marrieds w kids. Not that many.

Everyone has been more or less screwed since the boomers. Might as well all stick together instead of subcategorizing each other to death.

gen xers are junior baby boomers stop playing

always confused about where our lines would split, catholics vs tiger cubs vs furious tattoo artists maybe

uk? thatcherites vs blairites vs corbynites? seems neat enough.

Douglas Coupland designed some very mediocre furniture. Although I liked his mod table.

much of silicon valley can probably be blamed on gen x, but zuck's a millennial

yeah sorry I normally frown on dumb hair-splitting / narcissism of small differences between microgenerations. anyway i imagine that as a pre-hashtag cohort, gen x would have gotten this kind of sentiment across in a different way. maybe like a really wordy, snarky t-shirt with distressed typewriter font or something? i was a kid, idk.

all of you will be baby boomers when your time comes

Something about "being a kid at heart" that tolls throughout the Millennials and the Boomers. So many 40somethings in 80s commercials, can't believe they're wearing a SUIT and TIE, hearing the distant call of the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" echoing from somewhere past the conference room windows...

― pplains

i'm a kid at heart because my crippling childhood trauma prevented me from ever reaching emotional maturity

"Rose bud..."

https://i.imgur.com/CvHnx7Y.gif

https://i.imgur.com/2jKqZX3.jpg

Lol

feel like a lot of the people living in a house with their spouse and 2.5 kids aren’t the ilx posting type

except pplains — i see you there!!

haha xp

“all the gen x people were there”

aka the olds

https://i.imgur.com/fbIa0i8.jpg?1

that's a good one

i wish zoomers existed in 2016 when i made this poll. they're the best ones.

they seem to have more of a generational consciousness than the millennials, who always seemed vaguely embarrassed or defensive about being millennials. i wonder if this is a positive -- like can it be channeled the way class consciousness can into meaningful political action?

iirc the class of 2000 started getting promoted as such when they were like kindergartners so maybe the drumbeat of millennial zeitgeistery wore those kids down

also newspaper editors liked to torture us for sport in the early 2010s, commissioning all those op-eds wondering why we weren't buying houses during the worst job market in a generation

best is still the horrifying amount of sex we were having, until we suddenly weren't having enough

classic. zoomers are getting ahead of this by going on the offensive right away.

millennials could never really bring themselves to disparage a whole older generation. we recoiled from generalizations and lacked a revolutionary consciousness.

we were just like a massive punching bag essentially

I think you all kinda enjoyed it.

yr like the Cindy Brady of generations

it's over though now. the zoomers are the ones to watch.

I think you all kinda enjoyed it.

poor perverse bulb

I don't buy the wonderful zoomer narrative. Plenty of them would volunteer to be the foot soldiers of the Fourth Reich if a Twitch streamer told them to.

can it be channeled the way class consciousness can into meaningful political action?

climate change is rendering generational divides unusually material but nothing like as material as class. don't mind the occasional deployment of generational consciousness for the sake of gretaist rhetoric but soon of course the boomers will be gone and here we will all still be, not on the same side.

"ok boomer" otoh i must confess i have been waiting for my whole life. too old now to indulge in it myself but god bless.

if all the zoomers agreed to not get any tattoos they could effortlessly tag and outdate the millennials

https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-less-wealth-net-worth-compared-to-boomers-2019-12

When boomers were roughly the same age as millennials are now, they owned about 21% of America's wealth, compared to millennials' 3% share today, according to recent Fed data.

some of us are like 40 i thought. and we own a measly THREE percent of the nation's wealth?

https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-less-wealth-net-worth-compared-to-boomers-2019-12🕸

_ When boomers were roughly the same age as millennials are now, they owned about 21% of America's wealth, compared to millennials' 3% share today, according to recent Fed data. _


some of us are like 40 i thought. and we own a measly THREE percent of the nation's wealth?

millennials (born between 1981 and 1996)

hey buddy, we're a youthful 38 over here!

Gen Z is better than all of us. The end.

too early to tell

Expect disappointment.

Zoomers are going to find a way to elect Pewdiepie President.

No way. I work with Gen Z kids every day, and they are definitely conscientious and committed in a way I haven’t seen before.

i have limited contact with kids so I'm probably basing my somewhat negative judgement of gen z on seeing stoned teenage boys calling each other fags on the bus recently and them seeming basically identical to the youth of my day 20 years ago

soda OTM

gen z is v queer

Driving home it occurred the gdamm world was looking a whole lot like a William Gibson novel these days. Thing is that the internet and stuff like that has been around for a while and at least to me, it turned out different than I thought it would by a HUGE margin. Future is here. These kids are growing up in The Incal or at least a step towards it in a way.

My daughter scripts her own discord chatbots, she’s 8

she doesn’t have a concrete bird for a companion yet though

The boomers were the generation that made a best seller out of I'm OK, You're OK. Now it is coming back to bite them in the ass.

the children will save us

until they have to cover rent

every generation needs to shut the fuck up, this shit makes me want to shoot myself, stop talking forever

Shout out to Gen X, the only generation who can keep our asses at home without being told, the motherfucking latchkey kids, the generation used to being neglected by fucking everyone. We’ll be the only ones left.

— Lauren Hough (@laurenthehough) March 15, 2020

otm

The responses are even worse somehow.

if i believed generations were real it might be enough to convince me gen xers are all narcissistic delusional toddlers. good thing i don't believe that

thinking about jumping ship and joining gen z. they seem to have fun on tik tok.

They Are Something Else.

Caught sight of one my 10-year-old son's text conversations with his best friend.

BF: H, If you ever died, I wouldn't be at your funeral. Know why?

H: why

BF: I'd be in jail.

BF: for shooting the guys who killed you.

H: ok

H: but what if i died of cancer?

BF: then I'd still be in jail.

BF: for shooting all your doctors.

I mean this sincerely, they are hilarious.

A fun read to start the day.

Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers-as-americas-largest-generation/

Fun fact: if you were born on Dec, 31, 1964, you are a Boomer. If you were born the next day, Jan 1, 1965 you are a Gen-Xer. This means, that you could have been in the same classroom every year in school, graduated the same year, participated in all the same fads, watched the same shows at the same age, entered the workforce the same year, and still be of two different generations! It's magical.

Lemme know when millennial voters overtake boomer voters.

Aimless, demographic slices are abstracts projected on to groups by age, but it's really about shared cultural references and life experiences

I was born on around a similar generational cusp but I was mostly unaffected by the 2008 recession and the job market crash, although my peers who went to grad school and were entering the workforce a few years later really felt it. On the other hand, I was an internet early adopter and can relate to a lot of late-period Gen X'ers as far as that goes, but I didn't capitalize on it.

There's a lot of variation among groups but it's, again, a general abstraction that has some relevance when it comes to trend analysis. It's less useful than analyzing, say, people born in a particular suburb across a small number of years, but a hell of a lot more useful than astrology

lol

^^ short version and what I should have said

but yeah, main point is being "wow, what a difference a day makes" about what's meant to be a statistical abstraction is fun

fwiw the main way I really noticed generational marketing in the past was a free weekly publication that used to be dropped off in front of stores and restaurants (rip free weeklies) that was sold to advertisers as targeted at "people in their mid 20s" but what they really meant was "people who will look at ads for cheap townhomes in nearby suburbs"

so there's really a very late gen x/early millennial demo that is definitely easily identifiable as "people who owned cheap townhomes" and I can think of maybe a dozen people that were peers that fit that

but it's really about shared cultural references and life experiences

yeah. I know. but by this standard generations blend imperceptibly more often than not, and the standard labels promoted by marketers and feature writers confuse matters more than they illuminate.

the boomers started at a great dividing point, where WWII had kept young men and women physically apart and children very few, then suddenly the men came back and mating exploded almost instantly. but that sharply defined beginning point gives a false sense of unity to the boomers, because no one can say when that generation really ended or the next began.

ok boomer

(Aimless clutches chest and falls, twirling, to earth)

oops. I mistook that for *finger guns*. how about a "GET OFF MY LAWN!" instead?

lol i am not actually that much younger than you (i am 48 ffs!) and yet somehow it is you, in every thread, endlessly restating the obvious

i mean, you're a good guy! but lo the portentous emanations

man i wish "obvious" was the worst thing continuously stated around here tbh

if yr posting at 3:30am u might as well say it

Wait until it hits you that on Jan 1 1960 ppl didn't immediately start all smoking dope and playing around in the mud naked in a field

a one year or longer ban on any writing having to do with the concerning the concept of generations in any way would be a good start

love generations and how there are different ones

^^^gets it

(and then some)

love generations and how there are different ones

you'll love it even more when generations can name and define themselves, instead of Advertising Age magazine

I was part of the late boomer ‘me generation’, we were considered spoiled and overly self confident by previous generations. hearing that at the time didn’t bother me

the zoomers today are also spolied and overly self confident, but in a different way. they are more socially conscious and seem altogether more advanced to me

more to the point, perhaps, is how each generation is compelled to surrender to capital in its own way

30 years ago my college tuition was almost feasible, particularly if i spent the first year of it as an rotc midshipman (hoo rah)

a diploma -- which signals class far more clearly than potential -- is much pricier today

mating exploded almost instantly

mb I just don't know enough boomers but all the most retrograde individuals in my life are self-satisfied gen xers

Look me in the eye and tell me, that I'm self-satisfied. Hey, are you self-satisfied?

i feel like millennials are old and exhausted before their time, all too willing to hand the zeitgeist to zoomers

they seem more qualified tbqh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzGnX-MbYE4

treeship getting all introspective, shocker

getting?

(front) the un-introspected life is not worth living

(reverse) lottery: 2 - 12 -14- 19 - 28 - 31 - 40

The time has come to say fair's fair
To pay the rent, to pay our share
The time has come, a fact's a fact
It belongs to them, let's give it back

how can we dance when the babies are booming
how can we sleep while the zoomers are looming

i feel like millennials are old and exhausted before their time, all too willing to hand the zeitgeist to zoomers

― treeship., Tuesday, May 5, 2020 2:36 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i'm a millenial right on the cusp of gen x and i feel ancient tbqh

please feel free to strangle anyone who chirps brightly, "age is just a number". put it on my tab.

that's where generations come into play, because a 40 year old might understand a lot of a 28 year old's experiences, but a 60 year old to a 28 year old, nah

don’t think that’s true at all

I'm at the same shows as the 28 year olds and don't see any 60 year olds man

don’t think relating between generations is about shows

Shows: what, you? No

my neighborhood has turned over a bit but is still disproportionately people in their 30s/40s now

I'm thinking of the nextdoor posters from nearby areas who complain about their homes not appreciating compared to other neighborhoods or their blocks having issues with kids and thinking, yeah, demographics changed and your peers moved to other neighborhoods or the suburbs. but it's evidence that you have a demographic cohort, and you no longer live among them. not your fault, not theirs, but the houses are less-maintained and populated by younger people with even younger kids making comparably less money than your peers who moved :/

that's where generations come into play, because a 40 year old might understand a lot of a 28 year old's experiences, but a 60 year old to a 28 year old, nah

Is that really generations in the demographic sense or just commonalities between ppl are are closer in age? Like would a 2020 60 yr old time traveling boomer relate to a 28 yr old boomer in 1970 as much as they'd relate to a 60 yr old in 1970? Idk depends.

generations are.. made of people.. who age

Thanks siri

I mean, they might bond over having gone to the same Grateful Dead show and then one would ask wtf a smartphone was

xp otm

and a 60 year old in 1970 would have a shitload more grandkids, demographically

Ya. Some things are specific to eras and some things are specific to stages of life. Seems like the 2 get conflated.

fuck you mh

seems more likely to me that a 28 year old might understand a lot of a 40 year old's experiences, but a 28 year old to a 60 year old, nah.

my memories of my twenties have, understandably faded somewhat in the face of further decades of urgent, often difficult struggles, but on the whole it remains the decade where my entire adulthood was formed and many of my most important days were lived out -- compared to which, whatever popular culture was doing at the time pales to insignificance.

the problems I faced and my attempts at solutions are what really mattered. if you think that the problems of people in their twenties today are of a completely different quality than in the 1970s, well, that is what each generation thinks to some extent. it wasn't as different to those in their midst.

any given any year old can understand or not understand anything

that this mode of thought continues as a thinkpoint distresses me

deems, you're not far removed from 28, now, aren't you? sorry if I stepped on your toes there. you seem like an understanding sort of fellow. I was after speaking in a general way.

not at all

im giving out to mh tbh

tbph im not sure i even read the posts under the mh post i found objectionable

this happens a lot

i think it means i overtalked ye soz folks

generations aren't much use when employed on the level of individuals, it's a macro big picture thing. any given 60yo might be sympathetic to the economic plight of 25yos but that overlooks how the dynamics work on the big scale

yes

this is a good thing

due to the protests i've recently been inundated with social media posts from 32-45 year olds exalting "gen z" and applying to them an essentialist laundry list of cartoonish personality traits and i don't think i can take another 10 years of this. it's just gonna keep happening over and over and over again, the same exact way and i don't want to be alive for it. at a certain point the exaltation becomes fetishistic, creepy - millennials applying traits that were bombastically attributed to them 5 years ago in a slightly more bombastic and self-assured manner. turns out zoomers are socially anxious (but it's funny), confrontational, woke, and they tip well - these have nothing to do with age, this is just how the standard twitter user with a commissioned fanart avi of themselves wants to be seen. stop projecting your idealized identity onto teenagers you weirdos! none of this is real you're just contributing to social media's drive to flatten humanity into a more flippable pancake

booming post

fuck, I should have said zooming

lol

due to the protests i've recently been inundated with social media posts from 32-45 year olds exalting "gen z" and applying to them an essentialist laundry list of cartoonish personality traits and i don't think i can take another 10 years of this. it's just gonna keep happening over and over and over again, the same exact way and i don't want to be alive for it. at a certain point the exaltation becomes fetishistic, creepy - millennials applying traits that were bombastically attributed to them 5 years ago in a slightly more bombastic and self-assured manner. turns out zoomers are socially anxious (but it's funny), confrontational, woke, and they tip well - these have nothing to do with age, this is just how the standard twitter user with a commissioned fanart avi of themselves wants to be seen. stop projecting your idealized identity onto teenagers you weirdos! none of this is real you're just contributing to social media's drive to flatten humanity into a more flippable pancake

― ℺ ☽ ⋠ ⏎ (✖), Saturday, June 13, 2020 4:33 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

to be fair gen x did it to millennials first

and the zoomers will do it to the yoomers/xoomers/xillennials/zilent generation/generation pepsi/whatever we settle on in 8-10 years

what percentage of these posts include the line "the kids are alright"?

(17 year old e-girl makes a tik tok about communism)

35 year old leftist professor in bushwick: Methinks the kids are alright :) haha anybody know this girls age?

— Patrick (@lunch_enjoyer) October 31, 2019

Zoomer fetishism is weird because they’re also
heavily influenced by Nazi twitch gamers.

that doesn't represent the zoomers I know

a whole thread about disparaging people who aren't your age

the zoomers you know don't represent the zoomers you don't know

agree, but

I guess we're all thinking about general statements, I'm included

"Comparing generations is a very easy, very useful way to understand culture. Generations comprise vast swaths of people all similar enough to be safely lumped together and discussed as a mass, almost as if they constituted a single individual. You can speak of a generation's values and even its beliefs. Most importantly, you can blame them for things."

treeship's original post really said it all

Lotta "kids are alright" tweets tonight.

None of us really understand zoomers as a generality (including people who are parents to zoomers). Feel like you have to be of a gen to really fucking get it y'know. Like for all I hate and stereotype boomers and gen x and have grown up on their cultural products etc. I dont really know them and zoomers havent had the time to end up being the establishment, most of us wont live to see that

I thought this was the sourdough generation

to be fair gen x did it to millennials first

Not me I hate those guys every last one of them

Good morning Lorrie Moore has declared war??? pic.twitter.com/1dsb2yQHoF

— Stephen Piccarella (@spiccarella) July 15, 2020

i can see how the type of person who thinks BDSM was invented in 1983 would think these things

She said the term was invented in 1983, then expressed some doubt about the extent the practice of BDSM existed prior to that. The doubt was unmerited, but there's no reason to make her sound more clueless than what she actually said.

i don't think moore is a generally clueless person and i've enjoyed a story or two of hers in the past. the point is that, like nearly all discourse around cultural generations over the past oh 60 years, the scope of the supplied bitter generalizations doesn't even extend beyond a small, privileged class of straw people - upper/upper-middle class, white, and in this specific case, heterosexual to the point where leather bars are thought to be a fairly recent invention

if these are the only people that make up your world then sure go off i guess. what's the point in even reacting to this stuff, it's just kayfabe entertainment for a very specific brand of person

i do love the "millennials had harry potter boomers had old yeller" line - my boomer mom once told me that in high school every girl walked around with a copy of catcher in the rye and every boy walked around with a copy of lord of the rings

yeah this is ludicrous, I mean They seem like nice people. But not normal. is a wholly deranged thing to say about a whole "generation"

She's right about one thing though, millennial's music kinda sucks, if you're talking about the new music their generation likes. They do have excellent taste in old music, though.

Gen X musical taste is more offensive than either boomers or millennials

Gen Z who knows but 100 gecs are pretty cool

Gen X musical taste is more offensive than either boomers or millennials

Fair enough. Whatever the generation was that was making music in the '70s and early '80s. That was the best time for music.

Generations schmenerations but Lorrie Moore rules and her sentences are great whether true or false

100 gecs are pretty cool

This group is my "your taste is garbage - never talk to me about art or culture again" litmus test.

Lorrie Moore is kind of overrated IMHO. I read Alice Munro for my uptight boomer fiction

But yeah, she can go off all she wants and she'll be dead soon, and many of those who will ever care about what she did will soon follow. It's like great yr bitter that you lack understanding of contemporary culture, you could also shit the fuck up

This group is my "your taste is garbage - never talk to me about art or culture again" litmus test.

Don't break your hip, grandpa

money machine is one of the greatest songs/videos ever

Lorrie Moore is kind of overrated IMHO. I read Alice Munro for my uptight boomer fiction

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Friday, July 17, 2020 6:29 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm. i think who will run the frog hospital is great tho. her more annoying stylistic tics started outweighing the good stuff circa gate at the stairs imo, and i found bark nigh-unreadable

When I say Lorrie Moore is great I am not talking about "Gate at the Stairs" any more than when I say REM is great I am talking about "Reveal," and yes, Alice Munro is better, but if I didn't read anyone who wasn't as good as Alice Munro I would barely read

i have no idea who any of these people are -- except for REM and older generations' favorite young adult "climate activist Greta Thunberg" -- i remember seeing the movie of Old Yeller in 2nd grade on monthly movie day, the month after they showed us Free to Be You And Me ... this was a few years before FTBY&M star, and noteworthy Boomer, Michael Jackson became known as a pedophile ...

When I say Lorrie Moore is great I am not talking about "Gate at the Stairs"

ok but are we not talking about something lorrie moore wrote like recently. her sentences don't rule forever

Harry Potter also gave young millennials the idea that everyone has a superpower that only has to be discovered. Hence the rudderless waiting.

See, this is quite a good summary of my life, but I'm an xennial, too old for Potter to have been formative, so I'm p sure it doesn't come from there.

Also (as someone who hasn't read all the books so I may be way off here) isn't HP quite clear that Harry only has special powers because he is the special son of an unknowingly special lineage, and the boring normy kids don't get superpowers?

Boomers tended to blame their parents for only what their parents did and were [not what the Boomers did and were]

Hmm this does not fit with the things I've heard my parents' generation say about their upbringing at all at all

but OK, I'm bored of reading this now, whatever, I only liked the part that sounded like it was about me - generationally psychogeneralise that (ornate Japanese shrug emoji here)

the idea that 'i could secretly be a special person with superpowers' is kind of the whole conceit behind Star Wars too. And I guess most superhero comics too, so it goes for the Silent Generation. Trying to think of what the Boomer equivalent is

Matilda, the book, was also very impressionable on me as a kid in this respect

"my real father was the king but he hid me away for plot reasons" is hardly a new idea in storytelling

isn't HP quite clear that Harry only has special powers because he is the special son of an unknowingly special lineage, and the boring normy kids don't get superpowers?

not exactly - Hermione's parents being normy is an important point in the books iirc

we better not tell this person when the X-Men debuted

that article is stupid, and a majority of the people i know haven't read harry potter and don't know anything about it. born in 84.

I'm Oct 1980, so I fall bang in the Xennial hinterland. Always found it strange that Star Wars never impacted my social group as a kid, despite some current friends being agog at the idea that I only first watched them in their 1997 remixed forms. Seemed to be more of an 'older sibling' obession. As for HP, I read the first four books and watched the first four films, but it always felt more of a 'kid sister' thing than anything I can really call mine.

i was a snobby piece of shit even as a kid, so i refused all 'kid stuff' after about the age of twelve.

like, i've never seen The Lion King lol.

Obvious dearth of hakuna matata

"Harry Potter also gave young millennials the idea that everyone has a superpower that only has to be discovered. Hence the rudderless waiting."

and that superpower turns out to be the power to tell the author of your favorite books to go fuck herself

a majority of the people i know haven't read harry potter and don't know anything about it. born in 84.

'85 here. I don't know anyone who's read it either, although several of my friends have seen the films. I definitely felt too old for that shit when it came out and even as a longtime high fantasy enthusiast it was off-putting to me because its core cast of characters consists of kids. I didn't care for kid protagonists in these kinds of settings when I was a toddler so I obviously wasn't going to change my mind at the age of 12-13, which is when I first got wind of the franchise. Chalk one up for 'I never liked Rowling anyway' (I'm very good at living up to this particular cliché).

'Harry Potter? Oh you mean that kids' film?' is an effective declaration of war which I like to employ on occasion

'Harry Potter? Oh you mean that kids' film?' is an effective declaration of war which I like to employ on occasion

― doorstep jetski (dog latin)

as someone who is not unfamiliar with rather more literal effective declarations of war of late, i would question your approach here. first, dismissing something as being "for kids", or "infantile", or "babyish", or whatever, is not a good dismissal because there is nothing wrong with children's entertainment. second, even if that was a good dismissal, telling people something they love is shit... if you think someone is shit, and you can't think of better reasons why they're shit than the entertainment they enjoy, perhaps you don't have very good reason for thinking they're shit.

also just like, not that fun of a conversational gambit.

born 81 here, got into the Potter books while working at a bookstore in 2000 (the local paper photographed me in Harry getup promoting the midnight launch of Book 4), enjoyed them thoroughly with some reservations towards the end. i do get the sense of slight distance from the kids who *grew up* with them, for whom the characters are universally known archetypes and references (as Star Wars was for, yeah, my older siblings' generation) --- "that guy was such a Horace Slughorn" etc. but that's just how time works. some of the same youth have told me they're jealous i was a teen in the 90s, when music was great. same ol story!

but c'mon, they're very very entertaining boarding-school adventure/mystery books plus a fun melange of magic tropes with a generous dash of Matilda to kick things off. as harry ages they trend more towards lore-heavy, long-term payoff YA melodrama, which also works well. there are some interesting ideas sprinkled around, and a nice eye for everyday types of villainy and cowardice; if The Youth learned from these books to be bolder and braver, then right on.

they also turned *bajillions* of kids into lifelong readers. immeasurable effects there imo. i steered SO many parents towards dahl, l'engle, lloyd alexander, and i can't even remember what else, based on their descriptions of the things about harry potter that their kids responded to. some of that i'm sure just turned into sales of shlock for adults! but idk i think they helped raise reading's profile as a popular and not-just-for-weirdos activity.

Born in the early 70s and I think everybody my age I know has both read HP, is very familiar with the characters/mythos, and was so before we all had kids! Maybe there's a kind of valley effect where people in their 30s can read kids' books but adolescents / recent college grades can't or won't?

born in early 70s, has never read Harry Potter, seen any Harry Potter movies or Lion King -- though a few years back I was in a band with a millenial who once brought a grade school friend home to watch their VHS of the Lion King after school and half-way through they discovered his dad had overdubbed porn onto the tape -- and that is my Lion King story

no that's how the actual lion king goes

Rule 34.

born in 90, basically everyone i know has read the potter books (well, everyone who read books at all) with varying degrees of love/obsession. i have a friend who re-reads all seven books every summer.

born in 86, nearly everyone i know has read the potter books (well, everyone who read books at all) with varying degrees of love/obsession. I have not read them nor seen the movies, and recoiled from the whole phenomenon while it was still new. I wish I could say it was for better reasons than simple kneejerk elitism but hey sometimes that pays off in the long run

tbh I was very much pushed into a certain track and was also a weird little punk kid. I got arrested for the first time for protesting when I was 15. Deeply weird and obsessive and opposed to what i termed "mainstream culture."

avoiding all art is a good way to make sure you don't have any problematic faves

Born in 1971. Never saw The Lion King until this year. Was turned off to everything Harry Potter by an asshole co-worker circa 2000-2005 who was obsessed with the books. Nobody I've met IRL since who's heavily into that stuff has come off like anyone I'd want to hang out with or talk about...anything, really.

spoken like a true gryffindor

born in early 70s, has never read Harry Potter, seen any Harry Potter movies or Lion King

same. i was working in bookstores when the first few came out, though, and it was pretty cool to see all the kids fucking stoked to read these increasingly huge books

i find the 'which school/house/whatever they're called would X get sent to' stuff tedious but tbh i come across HP references far less often than stupid star wars references

everyone i know has read the potter books (well, everyone who read books at all)

Ime HP clicked with the 'I don't really like reading but I like this' crowd above all.

also lol at table using rejection of harry potter to establish teen punk cred

I was born in '75 and have read a few HP books and seen Lion King, although I attribute both to parenthood. Most everyone I know has also read these godawful books.

whats harry potter

Born 1979. I saw the original Star Wars movies as a kid on VHS but didn't develop any attachment to them and, even though I knew the movies were a big deal, I'm not sure I truly understood until college that they were objects of obsessive interest to some of my peers. They just weren't really a part of my immediate world.

I did see The Lion King and all of the other major Disney movies from 1989 to 1996, but I think I was too old to be obsessed with them. In my view, they were generally just well-reviewed movies with good songs. IIRC, I saw The Lion King with a couple of female friends (it was the summer after sophomore year), and then we probably played mini-golf or got ice cream afterwards. Haven't seen it since.

By the time the Harry Potter books came out, I was in college and had no interest whatsoever in reading anything marketed to children. (I'm not as much of a snob as I was then, but I'm still not particularly interested in Harry Potter.)

At age ~10, the narrative series I was most into was probably the King's Quest computer games.

Born in 84, by the time Harry Potter came out I had very defined tastes in sentence-level writing and HP was too clunky for me. Pushed through the first three to see what the fuss was about and then gave up. Did read a lot of Philip Pullman though.

I'd read Pol Potter tho.

Born in 81, had zero knowledge of the existence of the Potter books until the movies blew up - but it seems like people 2-3 years younger found it foundational, with almost a hard line in the middle of 1983.

Christopher Pike novels were my bad YA weapon of choice.

I have vague memories of YA novels from the 70s featuring a smart awkward female protagonist who lives in NYC and may or may not be Jewish meeting a cute, cool boy she does fun things with like attending leftist discussion groups and publishing underground newspapers -- I don't think it was a series.

no that's how the actual lion king goes

― Guayaquil (eephus!)

good teenagers, take off your clothes

I'd read Pol Potter tho.

― pomenitul

pretty sure that's just j.k. rowling's twitter

Between age 10 and 12 I read the first 20 Xanth novels so I could never throw stones at Potterheads.

The closest thing to YA novels I read as a tween were kitsch-ridden tales set in the Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering universes, such as R. A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale Trilogy and Arena.

And does The Wheel of Time count?

After Xanth I got the first Wheel of Time book but there were no puns so fuck that.

Our local braid-tugging and bathing experts will resent that remark

Sometimes I feel like the only person in my age cohort (late eighties/early nineties) who didn't, and still doesn't, get HP. There's something about the whole boarding-school setting that I find inherently repulsive. What a terrible setting for a fantasy!

What a terrible setting for a fantasy!

One about magic, anyway.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Pol Potter: a young man discovers he has the magical powers of genocide

So this is apparently a thing:

https://polpotter.bandcamp.com

xps actual LOL @ unperson & pomenitul

I have vague memories of YA novels from the 70s featuring a smart awkward female protagonist who lives in NYC and may or may not be Jewish meeting a cute, cool boy she does fun things with like attending leftist discussion groups and publishing underground newspapers -- I don't think it was a series.

Sounds like a great candidate for Let's help each other identify books we dimly remember reading as kids !

Is Pol Potter the only one allowed to wear glasses?

listening now -- i am disappointed ...microfascism 2 seemed so promising but it just sounds like fucking around on ipad synth apps

In high school all the girls in my class were heavily into The Mists of Avalon, which came out 1-2 years before most of us were born.

fucking around on ipad synth apps

Meant to approximate the sound of Adolf Hitler in art school iirc.

oh pol potter -- i had such high hopes 4 u

I have vague memories of YA novels from the 70s featuring a smart awkward female protagonist who lives in NYC and may or may not be Jewish meeting a cute, cool boy she does fun things with like attending leftist discussion groups and publishing underground newspapers -- I don't think it was a series.

This makes me think of Buffalo Brenda by Jill Pinkwater, but there's no main boy character in that one, just India Teidlebaum and her friend Brenda, and also it's from 1989 and they don't live in NYC. Great book though.

sarahell, that sounds like a Norma Klein novel.

Between age 10 and 12 I read the first 20 Xanth novels so I could never throw stones at Potterheads.

You're brave to admit that, milo (oh shit, me too)

I had very defined tastes in sentence-level writing and HP was too clunky for me. Pushed through the first three to see what the fuss was about and then gave up. Did read a lot of Philip Pullman though.

As someone else with very defined tastes in sentence-level writing, I would say that the Potter books hold up in quality as the series goes on better than the Pullman books are doing!

I kinda don't want to know what these books actually were ... I am more content with my vague memories.