Generations

I've long been waiting for the media to finally figure out what generation I'm in, so that I'll be able to define myself properly. I have a feeling that I'm too old for this "new generation" stuff and too young to be with the happy kids anyway. Not to mention which, isn't EVERY Disney movie happy? I mean, it was just that Gen X was supposed to be so damn ironic about it. My generation was between the death of Grunge and the birth of Teen-Pop. We had third wave Ska and Garbage and late period Nine Inch Nails. Irony wasn't forgotten, but nor was it particularly revelatory anymore. We didn't make films like Ghost World. Nor did we laugh at them. We didn't care. The closest thing we had to an Anthem was written by the Smashing Pumpkins, or actually "Lovin (is what I got)" by Sublime. Pity us.

I haven't seen it, but isn't the Emperor's New Groove supposed to be a bit more sly and sarky and less concerned with morality than Disney's previous stuff? So either Disney are 10 years behind the times and just coming up to some vile self-referential, self- conscious stage in their oeuvre, or they are reflecting a deeper cynicism which is now percolating down from the stained tissue filter of Gen-X to the shiny coffee-pot of the under-tens.

Either way, I do hope that apathy, cynicism and irony don't go away (because that's all I can do as well), but, funnily enough, I also hope they don't become any more prevalent in the media. I am getting sick of all this clever-clever non-specific flippancy in the style sections of the Sundays.

(I am apathetically cynical about mainstream irony. How cool am I.)

I think I'm somewhere between Gen X and Gen-Net, I think maybe I'll it Gen-Why?

As far as I'm concerned I'm Generation DG. Balls to generalisations, as I've been saying so much recently.

How radically different d'ya think yer life would be if you'd grown up w/ the net? (Some of you will have, ie. had it thru teen years.) It seriously makes my head explode just to contemplate.

man, if i could get up the energy to give a fuck about giving a fuck, but who gives a fuck anyway - cynical, ironic (in an alanis kinda way) and apathetic...fuck em, they can fix the world...

People my age who think Coupland is a god for writing Generation X are tosspots. IT DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU, FOOLS.

When we say younger generation, do you mean my age (20) or do you mean the kids who go to underground garage clubs? This is a matter I often find myself thinking about and come up with no reply. I've always mixed with an older generation group as well as my own peer group and therefore am worried that I will never have a generational identity I can read a book about.

OH NO.

Coupland is horrible anyhow. I don't know why I even read Miss Wyoming, I already knew I thought Coupland was a talent-free sackface bastard.

I think it would've been great to have had the net when I was say 13, for social and educational reasons it would've been a help.

It would have been a complete disaster having the net when I was 13. Clubbing together to buy jazz mags was an important bonding ritual - what's the point if I can just go somewhere and download it all?

OK also it would have also fucked up my already tenuous ability to relate to people. Which is what it's done anyway, but less so.

Actually, I think us Lost Generation folks (the 22-30 year-olds, give or take a few years) have it pretty good. We were able to experience life both with and without the Interweb. And, actually, I think my ability to socialize with people has actually IMPROVED since I've gotten on-line. You wouldn't know it if you met me, but, damn it, I'm a social powerhouse.

Generations are the music genres of society. No, they're not SHIT (like I insisted during a HOT CHAT this morning), but they're not the be-all & end-all. Unless you work for a media outlet. Then you best hope you find some superficial shit to focus on and beat into the ground.

And THANK GOD someone else is calling Douglas Copeland on his sociological horsepuckey. _Microserfs_ was the worst bits of a college textbook and a half-baked novel smashed together, and fluffed up with stupid text images.

I was reading a think-piece last week (probably in the New York Times Magazine?) about the Death of the Generation. Why? Because the idea of a "generation" is too broad to compete with the sophisticated demographic carving-up marketing now requires.

Now that's funny.

Regardless, I think the unfortunately trend now is the media / culture-pundit desire to define "generations" before they've even reached adolescence. I wouldn't completely argue that there aren't defining characteristics of those who emerge from a particular environment, but they're so complex and nebulous that it's just going to have to require 30-40 years to get even the slightest grip on what they are.

Most annoying thing: the way people keep wanting to slide "Gen X" steadily downward to perpetually refer to people in their twenties, even years and years after the fact. This is such a weird blindness of certain older people: "Hey, look at the 15 year old with dyed hair--so Gen X!"

Generations don't exist. I hate Douglas Coupland. For a better representation of the truths of what a generation isn't, how about "Cheaper By the Dozen"? Or "Kiss Me in My Little Canoe"?

How about the local newspaper haaing a 14-year-old girl writing a column called "The Voice of X?" As in Generation X. This is clearly awful.

I am stuck in universtiy and feel myself entroyping. It is a pleasent sensation. I think this makes me X.