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

I’m guessing yr not in a red state map. If you were my only note would be that red-state govs and legislators are starting to get expansive ideas about the highway patrol, seeing it as their own personal police force. e.g. deploying them to high-crime urban areas.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Friday, May 10, 2024 9:38 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the only thing that would surprise me about this is if it were a red-state only thing....

True nuff.

Not being in Academia, I don’t want to make claims about whether the increased tuition is used well by the schools

i was deeply unemployed for 15 months and somewhere in the middle of that I actually started to apply to be a cop in Oakland, because I figured 'how hard can it be since they don't actually do anything". I did not actually apply because I missed some meeting and apparently they only do the hiring a few times a year.

oh sorry map i was being light-hearted i do think uniforms are cool. i don't actually know your gender or sexual preferences. i wish you well and hope you find a job that you like! i am non-binary myself by the way. cheers!

There are so many job listings for "correctional officers" - shit pay (relative to being an actual cop) but all the cruelty you can dish out 8-12 hours at a time.

once you guys all become cops you can have your own dedicated office ILXor thread

A few years prior to the pandemic, I got part of the way into getting a private investigator licence before discovering that the PI system (at least here in California) is set-up primarily as a post-police career for law enforcement. The states all have different requirements (California requires at least 6000 hours of investigative work before you can apply) but Alaska, Idaho, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Wyoming have none at all - you can just move there and immediately set up shop

I have a good friend who is one but like a financial one not the guy in the car staking out the people on Cheaters. Asset tracing. Anyway he still has a licence that lets him do and access crazy shit. Not remotely a cop but that is interesting. Huh.

the PI system (at least here in California) is set-up primarily as a post-police career for law enforcement

I looked into it in NJ, not out of personal interest but as research for a book, and IIRC it was pretty similar — blatantly designed so that ex-cops would qualify instantly and everyone else would have to basically apprentice to an ex-cop for half a decade to qualify.

I have a good friend who is one but like a financial one not the guy in the car staking out the people on Cheaters. Asset tracing. Anyway he still has a licence that lets him do and access crazy shit. Not remotely a cop but that is interesting. Huh.

Forensic accounting and asset tracking was what I was interested in - when I was taking the PI classes at CalState Fullerton I did get access to the California PI job board which was great for the occasional lucrative internet research job, but there wasn't nearly enough to make it sustainable (most firms already have a full complement of researchers and no one outside ex-law enforcement is getting those positions now)

Yeah he runs one of those firms now. Maybe he got lucky but it was one of his first jobs out of college and he's been at the same place ever since. Things might have been a bit diff when he started idk.

DC btw

Don’t become a cop, map

Aw, c'mon — one of ILX's shoutiest lefties becoming a literal tool of the fascist police state? What could be funnier?

"but given that you kinda haven't ever acknowledged me or other gay or queer posters on this board"

also map i'm sorry you feel this way. its certainly something i wasn't aware of. not acknowledging people. because they are queer. i feel like i have identified most closely with women and queer people in my life. (most straight men i can take or leave...its case by case. i'm inherently suspicious of them...)

I got some much needed advice from Kyle Davis (AHS season 1, Dexter, IASIP, Friday the 13th, all the NCISs actor) who confirmed what I had been thinking about my 17 y/o who wants to go to film school. That advice was ‘DONT GO TO FILM SCHOOL’.

lol based on what's happened to the ppl I was friends with in film school I would say that's solid advice. I'd add don't do English unless you want to teach.

Man, they're really coming for Gen X on TikTok these days. I guess the Boomers got too old? I love that there is barely any retaliation though. Stitches I've seen have mostly been along the line of 'Okay. Whatever'

― Esteemed character actress (sunny successor)

what response did they fucking _expect_ from gen x

it's like these people have never _seen_ SFW. they understand nothing about our culture and yet they stand in judgement of us.

okay. fine. whatever.

I have this terminally online boomer guy on FB (knew irl through an old job) who likes to go on and on about how "The Biggest Wealth Transfer In History" is beginning as his generation dies off and gives everything to their struggling heirs. It's all I can do to not chime in and tell him how most of said wealth will be going to the banks, mortgage companies, healthcare industry etc. and basically what's left for anybody else is garage sale shit (books, furniture, DVDs etc).

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain)

y'all i need to figure out what to do with my paperback copy of _the firm_, i just found out the people i was planning to leave it to in my will don't want it

please help me figure out how to best make sure my priceless cultural heirloom is preserved for future generations

should i start a trust?

i feel like disclosing something right here in this thread that probably gets me a side-eye or an 'are you serious?' from many here. it certainly would have from the me of a year ago. i'm seriously considering a career change into law enforcement.

― he/him hoo-hah (map)

it's ok map, occasionally having blatantly obviously terrible and self-destructive ideas is queer culture. last month i went through a weekend where i was considering becoming a TERF. so i'm not going to judge you for considering becoming a cop.

The 'only do a subject that's going to make you money/pay for itself in the long run' thing might be rooted in truth but it can still fuck off. I *loved* studying English - particularly at MA level - and the idea that it was wasted money is, in the scheme of a life, bollocks.

Caveat: I did get some financial support from the state but, even with that, I only finished paying off my loans last year (15 years after handing in my thesis); I don't consider reading for four years a waste of time and money.

(Yes, I am an English teacher. Don't @me.)

I don't think it's wasted but in hindsight there are so many other things that I could/should have done that would have set me up much better in the long run. Considering that money has been a major source of stress for me my entire adult life, I can't help but think it might have been wiser to pursue a more practical degree. I never wanted to teach though now I think I prob should have. Idk. I'm glad you're happy you did it I just know that I (and several friends in similar situations) would have been a lot better off going down a more technical or career specific route.

Map there are some cool cops out there and you would be one of them, I say go for it why not

I had sex with one of them.

Lol

One of my classmates in an alternative processes photography class was a film major, she and her husband had run up $20k in debt without yet completing her final project. At the time I was thinking about taking the intro film classes and seeing where it went but talking with her put that idea to bed immediately.

xps sorry if that sound grumpy or aggressive ENBB. I feel quite defensive about it tbh - because I loved it so much, because I hate what's happening to the liberal arts in this shitty country and how education is becoming purely about how we can make students into tiny profit machines. Which is to say, unfortunately, you're broadly right.

I'm on the 'map, don't become a cop' side I think. Retrain as a teacher. You'd be awesome.

Clearly, law enforcement could be recruiting much, much better people. On the other hand, much, much better people are typically not drawn to law enforcement as a career. I say "typically," with no offense intended to map; however, I wonder if even the people who aren't already disposed to being authoritarian bully boys are eventually ground down by the nature and structure of policing.

Xpost - not at all, I totally understand. It's incredibly disappointing.

I haven't interacted with many cops on a personal level but when working with Black and Latino cops working as off-duty security - people who didn't seem law and order reactionary bullies by nature - it seemed like the camaraderie of the group does much of the work in making authoritarianism more acceptable. The other cops are your teammates, your bosses are constantly making you feel like victims and potentially at risk 24/7 from people outside the team.

When I applied for colleges, I was hoping for maximum financial aid and possibly scholarships - because of that, I was going to pay roughly the same wherever I went, so applied to the places that attracted me most. If that sounds like B’s situation, she could do the same?

Friends’ burgeoning filmmaker kid is going to my old college which now has an amazing film department 18yo me might’ve gravitated towards (or might’ve been terrified of having to compete with nepos to get a place on the course). My college educated plenty of successful filmmakers/showrunners before the programme became what it is today, many of whom were NOT producers’ children or wealthy to begin with. There are so many applied careers that originate in film studies; not everyone winds up a director because there are thousands of other jobs a film grad can do.

You can always pivot from a film degree to making horny vampire music like Boy Harsher.

Or you can become an editor, cinematographer, casting director, prop maker… anything, really.

Best boy

I studied english and I have had a lucrative enough 20+ year career in tech so I dismiss these "don't study english" canards. in fact I'd gather that it may be harder to land a job with a CS degree right now because you are competing against people with deeper career experience, a trillion other recent CS grads, and the desire to ship those jobs out of the US to keep costs low. people should study what they enjoy in college, I think.

fwiw, i was once in a lesbian group where one of the ladies was a cop. she said she got a _lot_ of hatred from queer people. personally i'm more opposed to the oppressive institution of policing than every single individual cop, but apparently a lot of gay people treat gay cops like shit.

my cousin is a cop and I'm very embarrassed about it. shit happens I guess

i'm more opposed to the oppressive institution of policing than every single individual cop

Agree but the way the oppressive institution exerts its power is through individuals so in real life it's pretty impossible to keep those separate.

The only way the institution really changes is if a wider range of people apply to become cops, and I guess you can take the pessimistic view that it doesn't matter, anyone who puts on the uniform becomes absorbed into the unchangeable institution, but I do not take the pessimistic view.

Or you can become an editor, cinematographer, casting director, prop maker… anything, really.

^^This. I just got back from a memorial for a mentor of mine who founded a film program at the CC I used to work at. It's highly likely that a substantial portion of any crew working productions in Houston in the past 20 years, from studio features and series down to commercials airing global to local, were trained in his academy.

Not to mention all the camera and sound people who work sporting events, big concerts, megachurches etc.

pretty well documented that 'good' reform-minded cops (in the NYPD, at the very least) are subject to the whole suppressive person package, up to and including 'accidental' death

reforming a gang from the bottom up is practically impossible

Xp akm did you read D Bond-Graham’s book about the Oakland PD? … I do not doubt there are worse police departments in the US, but ours (OPD) is historically awful and incompetent, which might make it worse than LAPD as a potential employee? Idk…

Forensic accounting usually requires an accounting degree or at least a lot of coursework in accounting from when I looked into it … there were multiple levels of prerequisites before they’d let you take the forensic accounting class ime

i think we need more english grads as cops and more cops as computer programmers and fewer philosophers as baristas

A journeyman’s ticket in a trade and 10 years’ experience on the jobsite before you’re allowed to start studying philosophy.

And that’s another part of the whole cost of education issue! Degree inflation. Probably millennial and younger are most effected, but genx and even boomers have been too… older people who change careers or move to other states, in some cases.

Like, getting needs based scholarships and grants for undergrad was possible (not saying everyone got all they needed) … tax credits are also fairly significant… but the increasing requirements of graduate degrees (Masters, MFA, MBA etc) for employment combined with next to no grant/scholarship assistance, only loans… I feel like a lot of recent labor organizing, specifically in the arts and academia, is spurred by all the debt the workers incurred to get these jobs that do little to repay the debt

I used to work at a museum for $18/hr… but I had no student debt. Someone who has $100k of student debt and is working for those wages (increased a bit since i left)… fuck yea they’re going to unionize and demand better pay

i think i am gonna keep talking about the police thing but i'm gonna do it over here:

Abolish the Police