Baby Boomers vs. Generation X vs. Millennials

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?