x-posts Yeah, I'm sure it was not nearly as appealing if you weren't a 15 year old girl with the world's biggest crush on Ethan H.
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:21 (six months ago) link
People born in the British Isles after WW2 are known as 'the post-war generation', sensibly. The only booms going on at that time were from unexploded German ordnance accidentally trodden on by poorly-paid rubble clearance teams. And the only X's in relation to what Americans call Gen X were the ones put on ballot papers next to Tony Bair's name in 1997 before everyone twigged he was a war criminal. We just don't really do generations.
― never invade Londonistan (Matt #2), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:22 (six months ago) link
xp haha, as a nearly 30 year old man I wanted to tell the characters to get off my lawn. I was a big fan of several of the actors, but much preferred them in other films.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:26 (six months ago) link
I want to be part of the Greatest Generation, so unfair!
― The Prime of the Ancient Minister (Tom D.), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:28 (six months ago) link
Sorry, Tom, we came in after the good times.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:28 (six months ago) link
Was it “reality bites” not the “the big chill” for gen x
― brimstead, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:29 (six months ago) link
sorry for atrocious grammar
― brimstead, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:30 (six months ago) link
I have never seen The Big Chill.
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:31 (six months ago) link
I have not seen it in years, but have watched it probably upwards of a dozen times.
Holy shit, maybe I am a Boomer.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:33 (six months ago) link
I've never seen Reality Bites. The movie young teenaged me watched and thought "I wanna be that guy!" was Repo Man.
― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:38 (six months ago) link
And to be clear, I wanted to be Sy Richardson, not Emilio Estevez.
― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:39 (six months ago) link
I was deeply embarrassed by Reality Bites at the time. I had friends who liked it but mostly I hated everything about it. I was 18 and had been through a lot already at that point and those people were not people I related to at all. Absolutely loathed Ethan Hawke and his character. I was a very grouchy jaded young person. As a GenXer frequently was. I’ve grown to be much less of a hater but at the time hating was the only currency I had.
― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:41 (six months ago) link
I feel reasonably millenial I guess. Born into a cozy End Of History consensus, radicalized by the '08 crisis. Remember a time before the internet, followed it as we both became older and worse. I don't think millenials have a Big Chill/Reality Bites type movie, though alarmingly enough it could still happen.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:43 (six months ago) link
Well the character isn't a very good one though he redeems himself at the end. Kinda.
I think if I was 18 when I had seen it I might have felt similarly but I was a very bright-eyed young 15 y/o who didn't know better yet.
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:48 (six months ago) link
I think it's harry potter for them. Idk but I feel like milennials fucking love him and having never read nor seen any of it/them that's one thing that tells me I am definitely not one of them.
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:49 (six months ago) link
Harry Potter is not a Generational Statement! Of course there's tons of popcult I associate with millenials but Reality Bites/The Big Chill are explicitly about their generations.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:53 (six months ago) link
The characters in The Big Chill were the cooler older siblings I didn't have. Interestingly, it was in heavy rotation among my friends in college in the mid-80s, which would have been more about 15 years removed from the college experience of those people.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 15:59 (six months ago) link
"Cool" may be pushing it for some of them.
Mean Girls is the Millenial big chill/reality bites y/n
― brimstead, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 16:00 (six months ago) link
Hmmmm maybe? No, I don't think that's quite right but it's close.
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 16:05 (six months ago) link
Daniel I know! I was being silly but HP does seem like a very big deal for them.
It’s probably fight club or something
― subpost master (wins), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 16:07 (six months ago) link
In the UK Skins is the millennial generational thingie, although I don't know how well remembered or loved it is.
― your mom goes to limgrave (dog latin), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 16:07 (six months ago) link
Oh no it’s Garden State :-(
― brimstead, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 16:11 (six months ago) link
Fuck, it prob is Garden State at that
Mean Girls more like our Breakfast Club/Clueless
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 16:17 (six months ago) link
I am technically Gen X, since I was born in 1979, but never thought of myself that way, because almost all of the iconic Gen X cultural signposts were about people older than me who had deep knowledge of watching 1970s TV shows as children. Apart from My So-Called Life, there weren't many depictions of xennials for me to more closely relate to. Still, like Erica, I went to see Reality Bites at age 15 and vibed with it as a movie about people I didn't necessarily identify with but did think were *cool*, in that intriguing aspirational space between peers and parents. I also read the Douglas Coupland novels Generation X and Shampoo Planet around the same time and had similar feelings; they were appealing because they felt cutting-edge and zeitgeisty.
― jaymc, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 16:22 (six months ago) link
Yet here I am a scant 4 years older and repulsed by Reality Bites. My comparison to Ethan Hawke that comes to mind for me is my abnormal parasocial relationship with Paul Westerberg. I really felt like he was speaking to me when I was 14-15. As I got older I fell out of that but it lingers as a touch point in that he was my idea of a cool guy I wanted to be in love with. Lol.
― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 16:51 (six months ago) link
lol I also felt like Westerberg was speaking to me when I was 15, tho that was in 1985. (My first grumpy reaction to all the Gen X talk circa 1991 — when I was a grouchy jaded 21-year-old — was, "You do realize the Replacements invented all of this, right?")
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 16:59 (six months ago) link
lol it's totally Garden State!
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 17:12 (six months ago) link
donnie darko felt like more of a big millenial moment when i was in high school than garden state
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, 3 April 2024 17:26 (six months ago) link
and somehow appropriate that it's set in the 80s instead of the 00s
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, 3 April 2024 17:27 (six months ago) link
Really I feel like I'm the Simpsons/Seinfeld generation, if anything. Generation SNES.
― Premises, Premises (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 18:33 (six months ago) link
i watched garden state tens of times in high school and attempted to revisit it a few years ago and gave up twenty minutes in, unwatchable. so yeah it's the millennial reality bites
― ivy., Wednesday, 3 April 2024 18:37 (six months ago) link
agreed that donnie darko made a bigger impact and had a longer tail of influence, because it is actually good
― ivy., Wednesday, 3 April 2024 18:38 (six months ago) link
How do we feel about the proliferation of "neuro-spicy"?
I heard this for the first time last week at a librarians' conference, when two young-ish information professionals from Ohio announced and detailed their neurospiciness for us at the start of their presentation: for one it was an auditory thing which meant she might have to ask us to repeat any questions, for the other it was a recall issue which meant she might at times have to refer to her notes. Both of these struck me as fairly standard aspects of giving a presentation, so fairly unspicy...? Neuro-korma maybe. Neither showed any unease at public speaking in a auditorium of 200 people; the presentation was faultless.
― fetter, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 19:56 (six months ago) link
if it helps people with mental health issues self actualize then it’s probably good
― brimstead, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 20:09 (six months ago) link
" could care less" is just a linguistic peeve for me
― stwahberrymilkgirlll, Thursday, 4 April 2024 00:41 (six months ago) link
"Could care less" has a cute twist to it, though. "I couldn't care less" is pretty definitive: "I care nothing about this topic, thus I couldn't care less." In contrast, "I could care less" has a kind of shruggish admission to it: "I suppose I could care less about this topic, now that I think about how little I care about it." Idk, I know it's a malapropism but it's always kinda delighted me. Generally though I quote the Quebecois when I need to express indifference: "J'care pas", lips slack and slightly open, tone extremely monotone, "pas" rhymes with "duh"
― Premises, Premises (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 4 April 2024 00:48 (six months ago) link
I would never in a million years say neuro-spicy, but I'm agnostic on other people using it if they're comfortable with it. To me it has an offputting cutesiness.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 4 April 2024 01:31 (six months ago) link
i think we need not try to shame entries to the thread else nothing wwould be allowable on such defence and we should try to have standards
neurospicy objectively awful like
― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Thursday, 4 April 2024 02:06 (six months ago) link
For me Reality Bites was …to "ok now yr just pandering."
― sarahell, Thursday, 4 April 2024 04:17 (six months ago) link
Neurospicy makes me think of Sapiosexual … it sounds like ur brain is hott?
― sarahell, Thursday, 4 April 2024 04:22 (six months ago) link
This Soraya Roberts article on the whole backstory of Reality Bites is really good: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/03/reality-bites-captured-gen-x-25-years-later-helen-childress/583870/
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 4 April 2024 04:37 (six months ago) link
I have never walked out of a movie except Garden State, what loathsome trash, tho I guess many Xers feel that way about Reality Bites. I have an abiding affection for Winona so
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 4 April 2024 10:55 (six months ago) link
I don't think millenials have a Big Chill/Reality Bites type movie, though alarmingly enough it could still happen.
how have we come this far without anyone nominating Juno?
― Paul Ponzi, Thursday, 4 April 2024 12:06 (six months ago) link
That's High School though when the others are all post college so not sure that really fits.
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Thursday, 4 April 2024 12:30 (six months ago) link
Had also thought of Can't Hardly Wait but again - HS. I think that and Juno are more equivalent to Pretty in Pink, B Club etc.
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Thursday, 4 April 2024 12:32 (six months ago) link
Big Chill is very different from Reality Bites imo. The characters in the Big Chill are in their 30s, it's a "Boomers deal with growing up" movie. I can't think of a Gen X equivalent off the top of my head.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 4 April 2024 12:57 (six months ago) link
kicking and screaming comes to mind, they're 20-somethings though
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Thursday, 4 April 2024 13:38 (six months ago) link
Well for a time every wright/pegg film & every other Kevin smith film was about men of that cohort finally growing up & putting away childish things? Always rang a bit hollow as the creators immediately went back to playing with their Star Wars figurines
― subpost master (wins), Thursday, 4 April 2024 13:53 (six months ago) link