worst generation

The boomers who weren't "disillusioned" enough by sixties hopes to join Richard Perle and Krauthammer on FOX are the best sub-generation of all.

http://www.people-press.org/files/2011/11/11-3-11-17.png

Ugh god fuck my generation (labelled Reagan/Bush in iatee's graphic).

thank you for this thread iatee. i'm split between my true feeling (boomers are the worst) and my ilx spite which would force me to vote for gen x.

I barely have any concept of where the lines are being drawn between the generations. I know I'm at the tail-end of gen x, but after that I'm lost.</befuddledoldman>

Generation Z (also known as Generation M (for multitasking), Generation C (for Connected Generation), the Net Generation, or the Internet Generation) is a common name in the US and other Western nations for the group of people born from the early to mid 1990s to 2010, with the earliest date starting in 1991.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]

generally there's a new generation born every 20 years

Lost Generation: 1883-1900
Greatest Generation: 1901-1924
Silent Generation: 1925-1945
Boomers: 1946-1964
Gen X: 1965-~1970's
Gen Y: late ~1970's-2000
Generation Text: 2000-???

feel like they are g's for having so many wikipedia citations

this generation z thing sucks balls

Wait, so now I'm generation y?! Stop moving the goalposts, National Organization of Generational Delineation!

Ugh god fuck my generation (labelled Reagan/Bush in iatee's graphic).

Ugh. Seconded. No wonder I left the country.

I'm Gen X. Voted for Gen X coz fuck us guys.

amazed u could summon up such self-disapproval between the lank hair in your eyes and deafening droning guitar noise in the background

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eS6isp7Uao

also every baby boomer seduced a secretary in a motel room, whether they can remember or not

every generation z person sexted their teacher

any generation where you could kick a ball in the st can't be considered too bad, where's that shit on the graph?

Wait, so now I'm generation y?! Stop moving the goalposts, National Organization of Generational Delineation!

― Vaginal Meshes Of The Afternoon (Deric W. Haircare), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 11:21 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This. Back in the early 90s, the definition of Gen X was 1960s through the early 1980s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Emperor_Syndrome

What, 10-year-olds? I don't remember that (tho I am old)

Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door

I know that I'm a prisoner
To all my father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him
In the living years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOsNsOhyG8I

Boomers seem like such an obvious choice because there's never been a group of people who loved to talk about how wonderful they are as much as they continue to do.

generally there's a new generation born every 20 years

Lost Generation: 1883-1900
Greatest Generation: 1901-1924
Silent Generation: 1925-1945
Boomers: 1946-1964
Gen X: 1965-~1970's
Gen Y: late ~1970's-2000
Generation Text: 2000-???

'lost generation' surely only ever retrospective. also lol 'silent generation', what the fuck america

-

the 'president when you were eighteen' infogram is stupid, because (since we lack indisputable proof that eighteen is the year when political convictions were irrevocably formed, and has been this way the entire time anyone of voting age now has been alive) you could tell an entirely different story by shifting the goalposts - just take 'president when you were sixteen' or 'when you were twenty-one' as determining it instead

greatest generation is a really stupid term too, actually

no worst there is none

greatest generation is a really stupid term too, actually

Blame Brokaw.

i'm still in awe about the idiocy of the term 'silent generation', what on earth did the ppl born in those two decades think of being labeled with that

they kept schtum so we will never know

I voted millennials only for the reason that they're at that age when one begins publicly declaring one's gerneration exceptional. I don't actually have strong feelings about Gen Y, I just think discussions around generational taxonomy are insipid. Unfortunately, Gen Y are of the age that others are writing about them and they are writing about themselves.

i.e. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/generation-y-doesnt-exist-really-were-definitely-here/7106

this reminds me of this poll or article or something about 'the best footballers of the 2000s' which, unsurprisingly, was full of players born in the late 1970s who had their peak athletic years during the decade, but because of that happenstance they were especially great

the "silent generation" includes most of the countercultural artists the boomers think they're super revolutionary for having bought products by

Generation X/Y cusp here - October 1980. Most would probably put me in Y but I identify more with X. There's definitely a cultural/attitude shift in people only a year or two younger than me that I've noticed.

so i suppose this generational determinism is yet another boomer inanity -- by extrapolating from their own provenance in the immediate postwar, they force the young into procrustean categories even where no demographically epochal event exists

Generation Z (also known as Generation M (for multitasking), Generation C (for Connected Generation), the Net Generation, or the Internet Generation) is a common name in the US and other Western nations for the group of people born from the early to mid 1990s to 2010, with the earliest date starting in 1991.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]

― Ms Tum-Bla-Wi-Tee (nakhchivan), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 11:18 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i refuse to believe that any of these people exist

i object to the terminology "generation y" by the way

how long has this generation-naming business been in effect? this is a late-20th-century thing, right? there are thousands of generations that haven't been named yet.

Let's get to naming.

(obv, these are generations of americans we've been talking about, and the further back you go, the more divergent experiences become.)

i refuse to be labelled as "the generation after x"

'Silent generation' comes from Nixon referring to a silent majority who weren't screaming hippies or McGovernites.

so i suppose this generational determinism is yet another boomer inanity -- by extrapolating from their own provenance in the immediate postwar, they force the young into procrustean categories even where no demographically epochal event exists

― Ms Tum-Bla-Wi-Tee (nakhchivan), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 11:01 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

&

i refuse to believe that any of these people exist

― max, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 11:04 AM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

there was once a time in history when generations lasted the length of a monarch's reign. much preferable imho.

i won't let you fall
what you got to lose?
what you got to prove?
who you gonna screw down here?

i hate all of the generations

they force the young into procrustean categories even where no demographically epochal event exists

Tbf, their generation, esp during the 60's was pretty epochal.

To what extent do you think you fit in/identify w/your generation?

For all of their excesses, I have tremendous respect/love for so much art of the '60s that I could never be dismissive of boomers (realizing, I guess, that some of that art was created by people of the previous generation or two). I'm biased towards my own sub-generation, the very end of that spectrum (I was born in '61): old enough to have fallen in love with the Beatles before they broke up, but young enough to be completely in sync with the stupider aspects of the '70s in a way that someone five or ten years older might not have been.

epochal event refers to their parents not themselves

yet more boomer arrogation

but yeah, lumping people into generations always seems really bizarre to me. we should vote on which of the chinese year/animals is the worst. rooster, rooster, rooster!

the actually machers of the 1960s were not some twenty yr olds from liverpool or haight in any case

Like others here, I always thought I was generation X, but I guess I'm generation Y? I don't really know what that means - at least I can pinpoint what the press thought generation X was, even if it didn't really apply to that many people I knew...

no one is more infatuated with boomers than a boomer

lol @ iatee's graphic

if I'd answered that survey, the Reagan/Bush diagram would have a little asterisk on it that said "one respondent wrote in his father"

i wonder what sort of epochal event might have occurred in the early 2000s that might have defined the generation coming of age during that era, hmmmm

also super lolz at ppl itt discovering to their horror that they are the attention craving special snowflake brats they hate

wtc meant shit to most ppl outside of america

it isnt, in any case, an event of /demographic/ importance

How about Internet / collapse of world economy / rise of animal collective?

I think the boomers did have a sense of generational solidarity, though, and as procrustean as it may be to impose that on subsequent generations, perhaps they're either blind to following generations' having less of it or they don't approve of such anti-social tendencies. I definitely got a vibe from my dad in the 70's/80's that things had been more hopeful in the 60's and that the 70's had too many ppl just looking out for themselves w/o enough committment to social justice. Then Reagan got elected.

those were mostly the same people

i guess animal collective concerts/listservs might be demographically important, search census for ppl called 'noah lennox _____' born 2k4-2k9 or whenever

uh... aren't we talking about america itt?

u cannot trust anything a boomer says about boomers. If they thought we'd believe it they'd claim that everyone in the sixties exclusively ate harmony flowers, stopped violence with soulful vibrations and everyone loved one another w the heat of a thousand life giving suns

I think one of the stereotypes of millenials is they like their parents. I find that kind of cute tbh.

yeah well hopefully not just america, else u can all go talk about the grateful dead and spiro agnew's toilet routine

those were mostly the same people

Oh, absolutely!

I don't think the 20-year generations thing is going to work at all from the 1990s onward (and was obv problematic before). Kids born five years apart seem like they're going to have vastly different experiences.

I was born in '81 and I feel like while we were around the first to 'grow up with the Internet,' the technological pace was relatively slow and we had a lot of culture in common with people a few years older (esp. if we had older siblings or friends). Whereas now I'd be lumped into Gen Y and I am just utterly, massively confused by the experiences of anyone 5 years younger than me, much less 10-20.

The other 20 year problem is that ppl aren't having their kids at 20 in the same numbers they used to.

As a teenager I wrote and drew for the 'teen' section of the local paper (called ATTITUDE, a word that took up half the page like a WWII "WAR!" headline because they could never generate enough content). One of my teenaged peers, a redheaded Wiccan, wrote a column called THE VOICE OF X. This was 1998 or so, and she kept having to rebuff letters to the editor alleging she was too young to be a gen X'er. Seriously, half her columns were about trying to define generations in a way that justified the name of her column. It was pretty silly.

the 'president when you were eighteen' infogram is stupid, because (since we lack indisputable proof that eighteen is the year when political convictions were irrevocably formed, and has been this way the entire time anyone of voting age now has been alive) you could tell an entirely different story by shifting the goalposts - just take 'president when you were sixteen' or 'when you were twenty-one' as determining it instead

nah there is evidence that youthful political convictions generally stick but even if there weren't, the point is to observe a set group over time

To what extent do you think you fit in/identify w/your generation?

I straddle the line between fitting the stereotype and heavily relating to this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61AMJNM5BWL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Really, though, I don't know that any of this generational labeling is particularly meaningful in anything but the broadest sense (e.g. there are a lot of boomers, generation "text" or whatevs is probably gonna be more tech-savvy). If you think you've adequately summed up and/or are the voice of a particular generation, you're probably doing it wrong.

it occurs to me that the easiest way to read the top row is 'old people are racist'

xp

instead of being concerned with generations of the past I think we should think about generations of the future

for example:
the spacefaring generation
the exoplanet terraforming generation

i mean, i think the graph is interesting but i think that the goalposts are pretty arbitrary: they're assuming the weight of political consciousness falls the same way upon someone who turns eighteen the day of the new frontier speech as it does someone who turns eighteen the day they join a march yelling 'hey hey lbj etc'

i voted millenials haha suck it millenials

and i think the results for
'not yet eighteen when kennedy was shot'
'not yet eighteen during watergate'
'not yet eighteen during the iran hostage crisis'
'not yet eighteen when the berlin war fell'
'not yet eighteen for gulf war ii'
would probably confirm our biases just as effectively and yet they'd tell a pretty different story about 'generations'

oy, spot the error

http://workexposed.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/gen-y-10-charachteristics.jpg

who told them about our secret language

millenials seems the least skeptical of authority of anyone since them who fought in the great wars

People of Clemenza's generation do kind of interest me, those old enough to have soaked up the energy of the '60s and then experience the whiplash into the stupor of the '70s... perhaps it didn't actually feel like that in the moment but it certainly looks like that in (US-biased) retrospect.

The only time I remember that felt like a massive zeitgeist shift was around 1979-1981.

Side note: I seem to recall that when Douglas Coupland came out with the book Generation X the people in it were mostly born in the early 1960s, like Coupland himself. Somehow the Gen X boundary got shifted forward to 1965 and early '60s is now "late boomers." Which actually seems to make more sense to me.

http://leftoutside.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/us-population-pyramid.jpg

haha people who are zero whats up w/them

dayo, your hopes for the future are awfully sanguine. First there's going to be the drone gang war generation

generation Z (zero)

generation waterworld

voted for millenials because i hope for my son's sake that his generation is slightly less insufferable than the current young adult crowd

considering voting for gen z because they are the spawn of gen x

millenials seems the least skeptical of authority of anyone since them who fought in the great wars

I'm in that gray zone between X and Y and can't imagine anyone worse that my peers

i dunno man, do you think the kids 5 or 10 or 15 years younger than us are cooler? semi-serious question.

graph of shitty NYT op-ed writers by generation

thomas friedman (b. 1953) - baby boomer
ross douthat (b. 1979) - gen X
david brooks (b. 1961) - gen X
maureen dowd (b. 1952) - baby boomer

some other writers

jonah goldberg (b. 1969) - gen X
kathleen parker (b. 1951) - baby boomer
jennifer rubin (b. 1968) - gen X
kathryn jean lopez (b. 1976) - gen X

<drops mic>

I dunno man, that's the narrative but it seems like the Occupy movement was as millenial as it was any other generation.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 1:12 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there are literally thousands of millenials critical of the governments monetary policy, call in the paramilitaries

haha

http://www.people-press.org/files/2011/11/11-3-11-45.png

wow 64% of the silent generation is not very silent when it comes to answering poll questions

they just blink once for yes, twice for no

http://meyermktg.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/genx5.jpg

"we made it!! we're set for life!! I wish kurt cobain were around to see how far we've come..."

http://www.people-press.org/files/2011/11/11-3-11-61.png

wow 64% of the silent generation is not very silent when it comes to answering poll questions

― Neil Young’s social media channels (some dude), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 10:37 AM (12 minutes ago)

awww you're talking about my parents here!

lol silent generation is such a mean name

my dad always refers to his generation as war babies

guess thats a lil narrower window

i don't think it's that mean, there are definitely plenty of times when i wish my mom were more silent.

(xp to iatee) all that graph really says is that Gen Xers bought a ton of stupid mortgages

that's the only thing I wanted it to say

well then, success

i bought zero stupid mortgages but then i dont identify as genX im my own generation u cant define me

i only like pavement i dont love them

i bouht zero stupid mortgages because i am not a sell-out like those other people who were born around the same time i was.

I bought a stupid mortgage and Kurt Cobain is still dead!

you didn't think that would resurrect him?

I bought zero stupid mortgages because I did a ton of research before signing any papers

not a hard rule, but all this bloody internecine generational conflict on ilx makes me realize that the posters i really like tend to be members of my generational cohort.

hah i feel like im more down w/the millenials even tho i voted them the worst

mordy, iatee, lorax, frogbs

a special generation with a special acronym

is lorax a millennial?

he is now

he's not one of ours, that's for sure

i always through i was too young for x, too old for y

I came of age in 1999, fuck all yr generations

http://i.imgur.com/Q5nvd.jpg

looks p old

and yes despite hearing for ten years about scott weiland milarepa fund swingin on the flippity flop, every measure shows generation x to be shockingly conservative

SHOCKINGLY

I feel bad for generational tweeners

generation disney

i always through i was too young for x, too old for y

― goole, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 2:04 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya me too, like my older sister and her friends def fit the genX stereotype better

if you've ever worked in a video store, you're a Gen Xer

GENERATIONS AREN'T BUFFETS

too young for x, too old for y, too weird to live and too rare to die

yeah video store culture is one of those vanished cultures

every measure shows generation x to be shockingly conservative

Couldn't be a reaction, could it?

its almost as if these designations arent perfect

too young for electroclash, too old for vhs feather wave :(

video stores were p sweet *sigh*

of all the generations to be stuck between, I get gen x and millenials :(

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lynd1fY9ci1qzzh6g.jpg

'one day...I'll have a stupid mortgage'

of all the generations to be stuck between, I get gen x and millenials :(

lol, what would be preferable in your eyes?

if you've ever worked in a video store, you're a Gen Xer

Ha, I have one over on THE VOICE OF X.

every measure shows generation x to be shockingly conservative

― goole, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 11:05 AM (7 minutes ago)

nothing's shocking

a rock and a hard place, imo

It's funny when you think about Stein's meaning about the 'lost generation'. She was referring to all the dead and how hard it was to get a plumber or a mechanic or a builder and then on one side of the Atlantic you have America flexing its new global power and entering into an age of debauchery and growth and in France, you have all these artsy American emigrants playing at being louche or nihilistic.

nothing's shocking

I also blame Perry Farrell

if you've ever worked in a video store, you're a Gen Xer

Does working in a Netflix distribution center count?

i think i know why gen x'ers are so bitter

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FmXNbuJ3L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

And since these generations are largely bullshit, anyway, intended for book sales, PR and advertsing pitches, let's just go back and name the others. What's the generation that was born in 1840, generation blood?

I'm either x or y depending on whether 1976 counts as "late 70's" or "70's", shrug

really want to vote boomers almost entirely because The Big Chill and all that boomer bullshit. Fucking HATE that narrative of a bunch of luded out fuckups who blame their entire failure on the world and the war and oh we changed the world and now I just don't know how to deaaaaaaaal maaaaaan. generation of whiny emotional dropouts ignoring their children yay

barf

but millenials are just so fucking entitled

I'm v torn

maybe I should focus my rage on the silents.

I've seen a 1980 birthday cutoff for gen x before

yeah nobody who was born in 1976 is a millenial sorry grandma, you have this:

http://www.mrmediatraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/X-Factor.jpg

yeah i thought 80 was the generally agreed upon battle line

i agree that it's 1980. i was quoting wiki in my post way above. wiki is wrong tho.

wiki bullshit

Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western post–World War II baby boom ended. While there is no universally agreed upon time frame, the term generally includes people born from the early 1960s through the early 1980s, usually no later than 1981 or 1982.

Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation (or Millennials or the ME generation), Generation Next, the Net Generation the Echo Boomers are the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when the Millennial generation starts and ends, and commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, early or mid 1990s, or as late as the mid 2000s. Net Generation, The most common range reflects births from 1980-1999 giving a child born in 1980 time to grow into adulthood and be able to reproduce their own offspring at the turn of the millennium.

i worked at a video store

wait gen Y = millennials?

I thought there was a Gen Y THEN Millennials

ugh these definitions are so stupid

tbf unless you really connect well to only people younger or older there seems to be kind of a 1978ish-1983ish island of people who don't really identify as either

maybe we should call those of u straddling the gen x/millennial boundary "the ilx generation"

max, u are def gen Y

i worked at a video store

― max, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 2:24 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

generational traitor

I wore Doc Martens
is that a Gen X thing

Proud vote for boomers. It basically came down to the Osmonds vs. Sister Hazel--close, but the Osmonds won.

its NOT gen y

we are MILLENNIALS

Oops...I was voting for the best generation. Major error.

w/e

love it when boomers accidentally vote for the wrong candidate

Get off my lawn!

^loves all the money

gen x guide:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51vZwh7nfzL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-64,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

http://theslackerfactor.com/

giving a child born in 1980 time to grow into adulthood and be able to reproduce their own offspring

If they fail this requirement, actual speciation has occurred.

i did my part

of course my mommy + daddy called the hospital to talk the doctor who delivered my baby bc the doctor was just not listening to me and it was very frustrating and so i went to my calm place and played some xbox 360 while they handled all the logistics

Boomers worst.

ECHO BOOMERS

graph of shitty NYT op-ed writers by generation

thomas friedman (b. 1953) - baby boomer
ross douthat (b. 1979) - gen X
david brooks (b. 1961) - gen X
maureen dowd (b. 1952) - baby boomer

some other writers

jonah goldberg (b. 1969) - gen X
kathleen parker (b. 1951) - baby boomer
jennifer rubin (b. 1968) - gen X
kathryn jean lopez (b. 1976) - gen X

<drops mic>

― Mordy, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 12:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Mordy who are your favorite political writers under 30?

ezra klein, alex pareene

zizek's wife

Renata Salecl (b. 1962) - Generation X!

he's not married to her anymore

:'(

;_;

i am starting a millennial posting system on ilx for marginalized millennial ilxors. good - or even just mediocre - posts will now get a gold star. this will encourage everyone to post and we should praise ppl for posting. even if that particular post isn't very good, millennials need to know that just trying is good enough. also, participation trophies for everyone.

http://blog.wegohealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Gold-star-sticker.jpg

i'm a part of this "ILX generation," where are my entitlements.

if you get 5 gold stickers, you can pick any of the following bandaids from the bandaid drawer: powder puff girls, dinosaurs, adventure time

also free ipads

where are my entitlements.

http://www.wepostit4u.com/images/Auctions/powerpuffstickers112.JPG

you may have one. two if you ask nicely.

but if only some millennials get 5 gold stars and others only get 1 that will create resentment; everyone should get an equal allotment of gold stars

I DEMAND PARTICIPATORY STARS

is Draw Something the ultimate millennial game, since there's no actual competition?

students who fail to get five or more stars will get an extra ten minutes to work on their posts to make up for their specific posting challenges. they also now have access to the ilx remedial room (aka 77).

pretty sure millenials kick ass at competitive video games so that's maybe not the best road to walk down xp

draw something is pretty competitive! i feel like it could come to fisticuffs sometimes.

how is it competitive, tho? There's no winning or losing, the entire point of the game is to work together for your mutual benefit.

millenials realize that the only true competition is w/ yourself

arbitrary generational delineations are the new astrological signs, let's use them to make reductive characterizations of huge swathes of the population

I go up to people in parties and try and predict their gen

Silents: the path to riches will thwart you with good intentions. Avoid hats. Wednesday will bring a vacation.

Greatests: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Luck comes in sevens. Friday has a present for you.

Xers: Get up on the down stroke. Find pleasure in birds. There's a warm treasure on Saturday.

Millennials: be on the lookout for a swarthy gentleman bearing gifts on horseback. Avoid the color red. Find inner strength on Tuesdays.

i wanna hear more about this warm treasure awaiting Xers on Saturday

arbitrary generational delineations are the new astrological signs

New?

xpost the answer lies within you

Xers: The time to buy is now. What could go wrong? Aim for something as big as possible.

these all sound like alien races in some stargate knockoff. which generation is the new atlanteans and the bionoids?

I'm ready to get up on the down stroke

there seems to be kind of a 1978ish-1983ish island of people who don't really identify as either

hello!

born in 80, don't feel like Gen X (spent my teens reading abt Gen Xers who were twice my then-age), don't feel like a "millennial" either because all the articles I've read about millennials have been about recent college grads who had cellphones from their 10th birthday and Facebook accounts from 13 or w/e, which feels like a divide but that may be just the narcissism of minor diffs since I got my first dialup modem age 16 and joined an IRC teens channel, ahem

haha yes u are gen Y welcome here you go

http://blog.wegohealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Gold-star-sticker.jpg

also born in 80. i'd rather not belong to a generation. all of them seem pretty lame.

http://www.wstardesigns.com/Horoscopes/generations.html

omg generation uranus

surely that's millennials

hahahaha

Edited for clarity:

"The war babies," 1939-1946 (Uranus in Taurus/Gemini, trine Neptune in Virgo/Libra; Pluto in Leo) This group provided the leaders of the "60s generation." They are outspoken, visionary and unconventional, but they burned up much of their energy in their youth (Gemini). Impulsive, confident, spontaneous and restless, they are rebels with a cause and can become great leaders. But perhaps they have been too fickle or adaptable to remain true to the great ideals of their youth. This group and the next are very musically talented.

"The baby boomers," 1946-1956 (Uranus in late Gemini and Cancer, square Neptune in Libra; Pluto in Leo) This populous group is famous for its idealism and provided the "shock troops" for the sixties rebellions. These "flower children" are outgoing, warm, adventurous, confident, outspoken and exhibitionist; but less original than the war babies. Born to prosperous but uncertain times, they were called "spoiled" and "impatient;" yet although they dropped out as "hippies," they also became the first "yuppies" (young urban professionals). They insist on their creative autonomy (Leo), but also long for union with others (Libra); so some of them are emotionally insecure or inconsistent.

"The baby boomers, part two," 1957-62 (Uranus in Leo, Neptune in Scorpio, Pluto in Virgo) This group was too young for the sixties and so are more conventional in their approach to life. They are talented investigators or analysts and provide many of the "yuppie" computer professionals. Most in this group are self-contained, shrewd, secretive, careful, tenacious, calculating and capable. They are more thoughtful, hesitant, reflective and unsure than the elder boomers, but often no less outgoing and exhibitionist (since Uranus is in Leo). In fact, many in this group have already made quite an impression in the show business world.

"The techno-punks," 1963-1969 (Uranus conjunct Pluto in Virgo; Neptune in Scorpio) It was said that the "punks" were the hippies of the eighties. This group is free-wheeling, impulsive, clever and resourceful, but more hard-nosed and cynical than the baby boomers were. They grew up in a declining society with little moral direction, and so have been called "the new lost generation" (the old was the group of "seekers" born during the Neptune-Pluto conjunction). They were labeled "Generation X" because they were so unsure of their identity or purpose. Despite having to grow up as "brash, pragmatic, suspicious, skeptical, selfish, sharp-eyed survivalists," this group has enormous creative potential once they find something to believe in. The first children of the computer age, they will undergo many personal upheavals and changes. Great scientists, artists and revolutionary political leaders could emerge from this group.

"The mellow ones," 1970-1974 (Uranus in Libra, Neptune in Sagittarius, Pluto in Virgo/Libra) This is mostly a friendly, easy-going, confused, flabby, indolent group of "slackers," but it has great potential in music and diplomacy. Not so fanatical and less cynical than their elder brothers and sisters, they are often wise, generous and mature. This group needs to get off its duff and make up for its poor educational background. Once it does, some very talented artists, writers, philosophers and teachers may come from this sub-generation.

"The explorers," 1975-1981 (Uranus in Scorpio, Neptune in Sagittarius, Pluto in Libra) This group is more intense, exuberant, and disciplined than the previous one. They are "mellow," but also very cynical. Relationships and sex are important to this generation, like other recent ones. Many children of the seventies and eighties feel the need to fill the cultural void in their lives by exploring the unknown and traveling widely. They see the lurking danger to their future, so the best of them are driven to investigate the roots of our problems. But others may act out their alienation destructively.

"Explorers, part two," 1982-84 (Uranus and Neptune in Sagittarius, Pluto in Libra) Temperamentally this exuberant group is more like the "mellow ones," but they are also definitely "explorers." They are undisciplined and unfocused, but probably very positive and mature otherwise. This transitional sub-generation will be a great source of visionaries, adventurers, humorists, storytellers, writers and philosophers, but don't look for too many great political leaders.

"The benevolent entrepreneurs," 1984-88 (Uranus in Sagittarius, Neptune in Capricorn, Pluto in Scorpio) This is a more ambitious and well-disciplined group. It will include many far-seeing and important leaders and entrepreneurs. Though most will probably be on the conservative side, many will organize great projects for the public benefit. They feel a great duty to society and Humanity.

"The committed ones," 1988-1995 (Uranus conjunct Neptune in Capricorn, Pluto in Scorpio) This is a group with outstanding potential. It is a very precocious generation, but won't burn itself out in youth. They are steady, persistent, determined, ambitious and passionate. They have great talent in the arts, politics and organization, and they may be the great leaders who lay down lasting foundations for a new age of civilization. On the other hand, some might consider them too cold, calculating, rigid, worldly or obsessed with their own goals.

"The flame throwers," 1996-2003 (Uranus in Aquarius, Neptune in late Capricorn and Aquarius, Pluto in Sagittarius) This will be a very outgoing, irrepressible, exuberant generation, quick to question authority and convention. They will be brilliant intellectuals, inventors, reformers and propagandists.

"The universal free spirits," 2003-2010 (Uranus in Pisces, Neptune in Aquarius, Pluto in Sagittarius/early Capricorn) Their successors will be similar, but more easy-going, sensitive and poetic. They will follow the paths laid down by the previous two generations, but will show greater brilliance in the imaginative arts. As the first of Generation Z, they will teach compassion for Humanity as we all reach the "omega point" of universal human awareness after 2012.

my mistake: these aren't stargate races, these are D&D classes from some anime-based RPG

I am an explorer! acting out my alienation destructively itt

The mellow ones," 1970-1974 (Uranus in Libra, Neptune in Sagittarius, Pluto in Virgo/Libra) This is mostly a friendly, easy-going, confused, flabby, indolent group of "slackers," but it has great potential in music and diplomacy. Not so fanatical and less cynical than their elder brothers and sisters, they are often wise, generous and mature. This group needs to get off its duff and make up for its poor educational background. Once it does, some very talented artists, writers, philosophers and teachers may come from this sub-generation.

"flabby" is about the only part of this description that fits me.

xps clincher at the end there

as we all reach the "omega point" of universal human awareness after 2012.

so this is as good as it gets

are u aware

chaotic neutral gen-y explorer checking in

"techno-punk" sounds cooler, it's not fair

Techno-punk sounds awful!

techno punk sounds super lame

explorer is rad, we could be astronauts

Hmm...I'm an "Explorer, Part Two". Somehow it figures that I'm a sequel.

Explorer Part Two: The Mellowening

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61E7SJK44hL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

very ambivalent about technopunk
on the one hand:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9d/Electrocop_cover_art.jpg

on the other:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_b7lQNiW2GI8/R6MWRH3q8UI/AAAAAAAAAA8/k1-0Jw0YXRM/s320/wired.gif

technopunk makes me think of white zombie or something

If the 'greatest generation' hadn't been so racist, it would have been a pretty good generation.

As a boomer, I know we were hopelessly erratic and a sizeable herd of us stampeded into conservatism in the most mindless and reactionary sort of way. But we aren't ALL bad, y'know. Boomers revived feminism from dormancy. Boomer gays started gay lib. Boomers even changed the American diet away from hot dish and jello salad.

Not intimate with later generations, but from what I've seen of the younger generations, they were likeable enough. I got no beef with them and certainly have no desire to peg any of them as 'worst'.

I abstain.

that is the best opening to a post

Explorers, part two –––– I feel good about this

EXPLORERS, MOUNT UP

Boomers the worst

I like how TINY the window is for explorers pt 2 and how vague and uninspiring the description is:

They are undisciplined and unfocused, but probably very positive and mature otherwise.

probably

who knows, maybe

does anyone *really* ever know?

they suck but they're probably decent

I am an Explorer, except for the part where almost none of the Explorer description fits me. Except maybe the 'acting out on alienation destructively' part.

probably

They are "mellow," but also very cynical

the quotes confuse me

is he saying we're high? uptight?

yeah i'm an explorer part two, as well, i feel this justifies my m4riju4na intake. the thing with boomers is they have basically gotten away with making the stage play of their adolescence official history. it's more sad than anything. the whole narrative is what capitalism really needed to get where it is now imo. xp

What about the part where the "greatest generation" set up all this infrastructure that enabled the boomers to do all these horrible things?

Horrible things? Refrigerators and washing machines and transistor radios and hi-fi's and reel to reel and...?

h8 refrigerators

Regardless, it was the golden age of household appliances and consumer goods for the working class, finally

ppl of my generation cannot relate to all these 'quirky jokes' about hating refrigerators and shit

I've lived w/o a refrigerator before - in Paris with a lusty and lovely blonde. It was eminently do-able for me back then.

life - refrigerator + lusty lovely blonde + paris = doable

yep all checks out

also highways and SPACE TRAVEL

kinda love the Greatest Generation even though the name kind of makes me want to not like them at all

If you have a market within easy walking distance, refrigeration is less of a necessity I expect.

...depending on which generation you are from.

bring back the icebox

Bring back the iceman!

The Iceman Cometh Backeth

Am I a dick for not entirely buying the greatest generation thing? They didn't want war but they got it. They weren't exactly eager to join up and they got drafted. The economy finally recovered after 12 years and then they all moved to the 'burbs and started voting like a bunch of Republican dicks.

also most of them are dead

If you have a market within easy walking distance

We did. We also subsisted on l'amour et l'eau fraîche. Actually, we had pasteurised milk and butter fro breakfast that we kept on a ledge outside that was both pigeon-proof and got no sun. Other than that, we either ate out or only bought what we needed for lunch/dinner.

Three of my greatest gen grandparents are alive!

ur killing me w/this french butter on the windowsill imagery, feel like throwing my american refrigerator in the ocean

As a boomer I got a good look at the prior generation. They were my parents, my teachers, all the adults in my life as I grew up. They were mostly ok, except the rampant racism I mentioned above.

They were pretty thoroughly propagandized against the commies, too, but the commies mostly obliged them by being huge dicks and occupying eastern europe. Problem was, they had trouble distinguishing between commies and, say, civil rights advocates, or garden variety socialists.

Hard working people right across the board. Even the rottenest of capitalist pigs worked their tails off to amass their huge wealth and defend it.

In the morning we'd heat the milk, spread the butter on the baguette toast and then pour the milk in the coffee. It was '88, I think, and I was a little disconcerted by her love of Rick Astley; thorn on the rose, serpent in the garden, etc...

x-post

MW, have u read this? http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/witnessing-a-change-in-williamsburg-brooklyn

I have now but I'm not sure how it's germane to the thread or my little derail

snows of yesteryear sentiments?

The greatest generation came up with a lot of the modern conveniences we now take for granted due to the insanely rapid industrialization of the US in the postwar era. Not really their fault, but they also created a system of production that they later moved to other countries as soon as it proved profitable, privileged automobile traffic in all instances over rail, let the fear of communism drive voting and public policy for decades, and unironically accepted the "Leave it to Beaver" model of entertainment until the cynicism of "All in the Family". And as mentioned above, the racism and attitudes were such that my grandfather found Archie Bunker funny because he thought he was on-point!

i would like to hear someone from the silent generation critique the greatest generation and compare it to gen x talking about boomers

something something refrigerators something something war something something racism something something DADDY WAS MEAN

xp - pretty sure there were quite a few scenes of this in the first two seasons of Mad Men, Mordy

There's also that part where the greatest generation fought a "good war," then transitioned into the cold war, and sent their kids off to Vietnam.

no gen-x'ers really yet in mad men

i think the thread kinda touched on this earlier but how do these generation tropes travel outside the united states? i assume like uk probably shares a lot of similar ideas and maybe other english speaking countries too? do they exist at all in non-English speaking countries? are they replaced with totally different paradigms?

Baby boomers aren't just an idea, though - food rationing didn't end in England until 1954, for example.

I mean, we know what is signified by these terms, it's just that what's signified is americans.

European and South-Pacific trends

Many European countries, Australia and New Zealand also experienced a baby boom. In some cases the total fertility rate almost doubled. The American birth model, conceived by demographer Frank Notestein, was punctuated by an end to the upsurge in births and a return to pre-war levels. In many European countries the first year of the Post World War II baby boom was the year 1946, but in Germany the first year was the year 1955 in Finland the largest birth rate was in August and September 1945. Prior to World War II, fertility rates in Europe and America were on a general decline due to improved nutrition and medicine, and a surge in births were previously not experienced at such a large scale. Based on this model, baby boom years for other countries regarded for having a baby boom are as follows:[by whom?][citation needed]

Hungary's population pyramid in 1960 with boom generations
France 1946–1974
United Kingdom 1946–1974
Finland 1945–1950
Germany 1955-1967
Sweden 1946–1952
Denmark 1946–1950
Netherlands 1946–1972
Ireland 1946–1982
Hungary 1946-1957
Iceland 1946–1969
New Zealand 1946–1961
Australia 1946–1961
In some of these examples, an "echo boom" followed some time after as the offspring of the initial boom gave rise to a second increase, with a baby "bust" in between. The birth years of the baby boom as noted being both short and long lived, creates what many believe to be a myth to the notion of defining baby boomers as one "generation", as a unified concept is clearly not possible. Indeed, multiple generations may be present in a single country such as Ireland where the boom lasted 36 years. This overlapping effect of generations is not illuminated when considering crude fertility rates. The only common ground for the collective boom is the same approximate starting year. This example can be applied to each state in the United States on an individual basis. The states with a census in place in 1946 saw fertility rates drop to pre-war levels throughout the 1960s, with the average being in 1964.

ppl of my generation cannot relate to all these 'quirky jokes' about hating refrigerators and shit

Mindless facetiousness is definitely a generational marker.

Also, if you uptalk you're Gen X or later.

If you habitually use the vocal fry register you're Gen Y or later.

i think just different models of mindless facetiousness

the greatest generation/silent generation(?)/boomers are almost done screwing me now. it's these young hooses who want to take away all my hard-earned wages to fund oil can boyd.

joke's on them because i have no money to take away

actually that's not true re: the boomers

fortunately our american two-party system will show them what's what

man my refrigerator joke is universal

stare into this joke and see the cosmos youngins

Which generation does the guy in LMFAO with the funny red hair belong to? His is the best generation.

I really hate the Mexican War generation cept for Lincoln

whichever the OG handlebar mustache and pocketwatch generation is = my favorite generation

millenials seems the least skeptical of authority of anyone since them who fought in the great wars

I definitely think this is one side of the coin. There is a sizable number of them, for instance, involved in the Occupy movement on the other side of the coin, but these are kids who came of age in Bush II's America and for whom The Patriot Act has been a thing roughly forever (not to mention that No Child Left Behind probably hobbled a lot of critical faculties right out of the gate). A lot of that shit has, unfortunately, become pretty normalized. Like, I'll rant about stuff around my sister like Facebook's disregard for people's privacy, and she just could not give one solitary fuck. Actually, I could probably suss out a lot of the generational divide based on the stuff my sister and I wildly disagree about.

whichever the OG handlebar mustache and pocketwatch generation is = my favorite generation

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, May 2, 2012 4:45 AM (7 minutes ago)

this is like the generation that killed loads of people in the third world in the process of stealing their resources whilst failing to realize how much better wristwatches are than pocketwatches

Like, I'll rant about stuff around my sister like Facebook's disregard for people's privacy, and she just could not give one solitary fuck.

Lack of interest in privacy among the younger generations is a trend that should be lauded. A more open society is a better society.

Give people a bit of privacy and you don't know what they'll do with it.

not a more open society, a 24/7 communal shower society

It is a travesty that humans are allowed to bathe alone in any capacity.

Somebody get Tombot to weigh in on this

my answer is the boomers, naturally. handed the greatest society yet, and trashed it all.

banaka, we're working as hard as possible to attain singularity. plz, just a little patience.

boomers did okay. i don't think any single 20th century american generation deserves to be called the best or worst, except maybe gen exxors, who don't seem to have accomplished much but general apathy and the digitization of everything.

those are 2 p awesome accomplishments tho

xp - traitor!

hey, it's what we do

there's probably a douglas copeland book about it

Yeah, self-loathing is probably as endemic of gen x as self-satisfaction is of the millinnials.

have we ever discussed vocal fry on ilx? i don't see a thread for it..

we talked abt it somehwerrreee

oh my gawd

does lumpy space princess talk with a vocal fry?

I remember reading about it on here before but I have a feeling it may be lost in a general discussion thread...

oh my glob. what the lump?

Banaka showing up on a thread like this means I am going to have a great day.

i really love banaka

he should post here ray kurzweil's 'the singularity is near' & any other technological singularity-related books you might care about

it's a banaka blast

why DID the Boomers 'stampede into conservatism' as mentioned upthread? my parents are classic Boomers and my mum is classic Boomer-Conservative. i'm always baffled how that happened. is this a known 'thing' in the States?

yes. it's partially the neoconservative story too

people get older they get conservative ronald reagan blah blah

blah blah david mamet blah blah

Esp inasmuch as many of the founding neo-cons were liberals or fellow-travelers who crossed over to the dark side.

xxpost

why DID the Boomers 'stampede into conservatism' as mentioned upthread? my parents are classic Boomers and my mum is classic Boomer-Conservative. i'm always baffled how that happened. is this a known 'thing' in the States?

they weren't particularly liberal to begin w/

contrary to popular belief most 20 somethings were not living on haight st in 1969

*audible gasp*

mamet writes reviews like he writes dialogue:

"What can one say to the self-proclaimed 'independent' who never has nor ever will vote other than Democratic; or to the wise soul suggesting, of any conflict at all, "the truth must lie somewhere in between"? Mr. Goldberg reminds us that one must stand up and demand of the muddled and supine either an absolute declaration of their principles and acknowledgment of the results of actions having flowed therefrom or a straightforward admission of their intransigence in refusing a concise reply."

(-DAVID MAMET, bestselling author of The Secret Knowledge )

^mamet endorsing the tyrrany of cliches

http://i.imgur.com/3mQdc.png

xpost needs more swears imo

vocal fry was discussed in a thread - pretty sure La Lechera started it - could've been on the sandbox though

bitter millennial narrative re: reagan revolution is, the boomers had this big revolution where instead of being CONFORMIST DRONES they were going to BREAK FREE and SELF-ACTUALIZE and FIND THEMSELVES, which confused the corporations for about five minutes before they pulled themselves together and were like oh ok that's cool! hey you know a good way to find yourself? buy these sunglasses and vote against regulation. government's the problem!

do these speech patterns really span a generation or are they more region specific? can anyone give some examples of someone well known that speaks like this?

Iatee's explanation seems most convincing so far.

I had to immediately vote "Greatest Generation" just because, c'mon. Humility is very important to me.

Also, you effing nuked Japan. Assholes.

To be fair, they didn't nuke Japan. It's not like they voted on it.

the boomers had this big revolution where instead of being CONFORMIST DRONES they were going to BREAK FREE and SELF-ACTUALIZE and FIND THEMSELVES

what cartoon is this?

bitter millennial narrative re: reagan revolution

I remember when millenials were making this complaint back when they started punk rock

It's not like they voted on it.

Truman definitely Lost Generation

what cartoon is this?

I remember lots of ppl who had been vaguely non-conformist voting for Raygun in '84 - they had rediscovered money but they still wanted to be thought of as 'cool'.

"bitter millennial narrative" was just me full-disclosing, although to be fair the people who started punk rock hadn't actually grown up in the country the reagan revolution made

i guess Boomers aren't quite as bad as they've been made out to be, but they (and their culture/culture that panders to them) have been so omnipresent for so long that it's very tempting to vote for them b/c more than anything else i want that generation to just STFU already.

nah they're still bad it's just the simple narrative about them is kinda misleading

'they were all hippies! all them! then they were all reagan republicans! all of them!'

it's easier for me to be a tad more sympathetic to Boomers when i remember that the Greatest Generation right before them were a bunch of bigoted Don Drapers and Archie Bunkers whose attitudes and activities were partly responsible for the Boomer excesses and pretensions that drive Gen-Xers and Millenials so fucking crazy.

The youngest boomers were still in pre-school during Woodstock and were undergrads in the mid-80s, right?

Don Draper was a member of the Silent Generation was he not?

xpost to iatee
xpost to self!

i'll just be happy to not hear any more about the fucking Beatles or Woodstock.

i object to the terminology "generation y" by the way

― max, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 12:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

i don't really care about generational differences except when i do, i just hate how lazy "generation y" and "generation z" are as names. every other generation gets an actual name but whoever decides this shit got distracted by the letter x and suddenly all generations are just going to be listed by letter. step up your game, culture shitheads.

"generation why"

FUCK THAT SHIT

i'm generation pepsi

us Gen-Xers were called Slackers, roughly coterminous with the Gen-X tag. so that's something.

also i remember reading on wiki that some people want the generations after "z" to just go down the greek alphabet

The youngest boomers were still in pre-school during Woodstock and were undergrads in the mid-80s, right?

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, May 2, 2012 1:01 PM (4 minutes ago)

yes (born 1963, had just started 1st grade when Woodstock happened, undergrad 81-85)

i like "generation spongebob." it's malleable enough to fit people who watched spongebob as impressionable toddlers all the way up to stoned college-ers, as well as people who worked on the show like tom kinney and kaz. There's definitely some kind of divide between who 'get' spongebob on some level and people who don't.

it would explain certain sartorial choices for the Gen-Y/Millenial set, i agree:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/spongebob.jpeg

is that for gen y or z philip

(I mean, most of the credit for progressive measures in the 60s and 70s would seem to have to go to boomers' parents.)

the accelerated maturation colliding with prolonged infantilism really makes birthdate cutoffs less relevant than what nickelodeon tv show shapes your worldview.

It's funny that despite having the same mother, my older brother and I would be from different generations

the name is millennial

it is a fine name

xxp it's true, i still suffer from fear and anxiety when someone asks me something and I say, "I don't know."

And someone born in 1945 who had a kid in 1965 would be part of the same generation as their child.

xpost to Michael White

I'm actually really unclear on what I would be (b 1979). Wikipedia seems to put me near the tail end of Generation X but, like, I was 12 when the Coupland book came out (although I did read it at 13).

And someone born in 1945 who had a kid in 1965 would be part of the same generation as their child.

My mom was born in '44 and had my brother in '63.

are there really precise year cut-offs? that seems ridiculous

then again, i ask about the spongebob thing because it's only the younger millenials and the older gen zs that have been 'influenced' by it imo. in high school (i was born 88) everyone in my grade was pretty split on either indulging in spongebob or considering ourselves too old for it.

it IS an important touchstone tho, more than most pop culture of the time

The baby boom was a fairly clear-cut demographic phenomenon with agreed-upon cut-offs. It seems much less clearer for subsequent 'generations', which, afaict are made up by journalists and marketers.

"much less clear"

Eveningstar otm. The more you look into it, the more arbitrary all this is. That's why I started by just considering them as signifiers of decades.

spongebob is great and should not be sullied by association w human reproduction

you _do_ smoke a lot of weed don't you?

(I've never seen Spongebob so maybe that settles it?)

I smoke 0 weed and stand 100% in solidarity with contenderizer on this matter

tom kinney is probably gen x, and kaz is probably boomer, but i think their sponge-bobbiness cred is unimpeachable.

i'm not generation spongebob btw, i'm ren & stimpy reprazent, but i have no ill will towards generation spongebob like i do towards generation 12 oz mouse.

the list of cultural signifiers for millennials is probably this btw:

1. harry potter
2. spongebob

i agree that generations are pretty bullshit tho. it all basically amounts to journalists going "well let's just see how the white middle class was acting around this time and define the entire time period thusly"

Adam Bruneau otm, but I think we do generally see big cultural shifts every 10-15-20 years or so. That we think we "see" these things doesn't necessarily mean they're actually there, the generations we're so keen on naming could be artifacts of perception, but it still makes sense to construct and organize around conceptions like this. It's a big part of how we process the complexities of history and the ways in which the world changes around us. The shifts we're talking about are neither precisely decade-based nor generational, but i don't think there's anything really wrong with framing them as "Generation [whatever]".

Fwiw, "Generation X" always made good sense to me as a designation. The fact that my roughly generational culture was different than (and in many ways a reaction to) that of the Boomers before me seemed obvious at the time, and still does in retrospect. Since the postwar baby boom was so clearly distinct both demographically and culturally, and so insistent on memorializing their own importance, it was inevitable that some kind of oppositional "lost generation" type consciousness would arise on the far shore. Plus a refusal to join, to be pinned down or named was a big part of what made Gen X distinct, a predictable response to the efficiencies of "late capitalism".

Since this is all pretty arbitrary, I quibble with the idea that there have been two distinct generational eras since Generation X. "Generation Y" is mostly a myth afaic, the product of shortchanging Gen X and of failing to recognize the early signs of what would come next. IMO, Gen X covers a larger group and longer period than is generally acknowledged, trailing off into the late 80s. From the 90s on, we get what the first wave of what Mordy called "Generation Text", the children of video games, computers, cell phones and the internet.

you _do_ smoke a lot of weed don't you?

― sarahell, Wednesday, May 2, 2012 11:30 AM (30 minutes ago)

lol, well i used to. the damage is done, i guess. but i'm a drawer and a painter, and i've always loved cartoons, so...

Generations as descriptive are totally worthless, but examining generation paradigms as generative is really useful imo. Whether Lena is the voice of her generation is a totally uninteresting question, but I'm very interested in knowing how audiences in her age/economic/social groups feel about being 'represented' by her.

lol contenderizer you've just achieved MY GENERATION IS THE GREATEST GENERATION ALL THESE YOUNG PEOPLE AREN'T EVEN A REAL GENERATION status

yeah, i know, but it's hard to clearly identify "Generation Y" in a way that doesn't result in a half-assed mashup of traits that are commonly attributed to the much clearer Gen X and whatever we wanna call wired millennials. More than any other so called "generation", it seems the product of the need to come up with a new generational name every 15-20 years or so.

Strong and proud representatives of Generation Why may be inclined to disagree, of course...

also, given that people are having kids later in life these days, it perhaps makes sense to consider the length of a late 20th-century generation to be 25 years or so

thread reminds me of maybe my favorite fugazi lyric:

It's cold outside and my hands are dry
Skin is cracked and I realize
That I hate the sound of guitars
A thousand grudging young millionaires
Forcing silence sucking sound
Forced into this conversation
So i say shine let their planets collide
This is the darkening down of my mind
We could be making it oiling like crime
We could be making it staking last dimes
If you want to sieze the sound you don't need a reservation
The torch is pased it's yours to return
Lay at their feet now use it to burn
For marketing the use of the word generation
A false alliance of money persuading
Forcing silence sound sucking
Forced into this conversation
Now if you want to sieze the sound you don't need a reservation
So open so young so target I can smell your heart you're a target

i don't entirely disagree with you, but if anything there's a lot more that millennials have in common with gen z than they do with x. i've never interacted with gen xers or read about them and thought that they shared really anything in common with me or my friends or anyone in my school. the whole "raised entirely on internet" thing is lot less meaningful than older ppl seem to think too.

i just did the exact same thing you did fuck

ppl of my generation cannot relate to all these 'quirky jokes' about hating refrigerators and shit

I grant you that my mother spent her first decade in a house with no refrigerator, indoor toilet, or television, and here I am going "I grew up without Facebook, how about that"

what is the generational marker value of "and shit"? if I v occasionally finish a sentence "and shit" and immediately feel wildly selfconscious and await someone a year or two older making a hilarious faeces gag, what generation am I? (oh, just British I guess)

vocal fry was discussed on the sandbox girls thread, thought it was on a linguistics thread too but I can't find it in search

(all x billion xposts but I just read today's chunk o' thread)

why DID the Boomers 'stampede into conservatism' as mentioned upthread?

A while back, I felt like I finally "got" conservatism, or at least one train of thought which might lead to conservatism. It's essentially an appeal to pre-babelism: the imposition of order from a world where everyone is on wildly different pages. With respect to the boomers in particular, there was probably a lot of over-correction once they realized that the party couldn't continue indefinitely.

Also, Tom Kenny is totes pre-gen x. Dude started out as partners with Bobcat Goldthwait.

"imposition of order upon a world"

kurt cobain invented vocal fry on intro to lounge act never forget / kurt and courtney ain't love grand.

i've never interacted with gen xers or read about them and thought that they shared really anything in common with me or my friends or anyone in my school.

what would you say are the traits the define you & your peers, and when were you born (if you don't mind my asking)?

^ simple question i know...

personally i only hang out w/ ppl who have earned between 900-1500 gold stars in their academic careers. any more and they're suck-ups. any less and they're cads.

in my mind Gen X =

'* emphasis on the idea of outsider-y, "punk rock" coolness
'* resistance to labeling and marketing
'* anticapitalist and antigovernment attitudes, often absent a coherent political philosophy
'* inherited quasi-utopian idealism, often soured by apathy and a lack of faith in the possibility of positive change
'* obsession with pop culture
'* interest in the homemade & small-scale vs the mass-produced
'* deliberately scruffy bohemianism

now that i lay all that out, i suppose it's hard not to see a clear difference between gen exors and the much less conflicted, abercrombie-worshipping gen y that followed. ah well...

lol

• thought
• i
• had
• that
• down

i like your makeshift bullets better

do u get hot when u watch chasing amy? xxp

what would you say are the traits the define you & your peers, and when were you born (if you don't mind my asking)?

hard to define, but everything w millennials, the comfortable ones anyway, sort of has an undercurrent of naive and romantic idealism, even the cynical aspects. cliche, but: it can all basically be summed up by the phenomenon of arranging inspirational quotes in helvetica over images of foggy forests.

it's also why harry potter is the ultimate millennial thing, even though i think harry and friends are supposed to be on the verge of x/millennial. actually, because i'm on the subject, i might say that the books represent harry leaving his gen x reality (harsh, cruddy life with uncaring authority figures) and escaping into the millennial dream of magic and centaurs and friendship and loving authority figures.

wasn't england a bleak place before gen x

also lol at the whole 'harsh cruddly life' that was the 1990s

minus l

like, your list is such a transparent self-glorification predicated on cliches, generalities, and feel-good sentiments you must've picked up from such cinematic luminaries as kevin smith and john hughes. i could make a similar list about how gen y'ers are global, and technologically savvy, ambitious about the future, guardians of the environment and closer than ever to their families, masters of instantaneous communication with friends scattered throughout the world, ppl are closer than ever, the future is dawning, strong and resolute in the face of a crumbling world economy, blah blah blah. but it's nonsense, right?

that's xp to contenderizer

also lol at the whole 'harsh cruddly life' that was the 1990s

well, it was for harry potter

Mordy, your cliches, generalities and feel-good sentiments make your generation sound really lame, sorry.

that's exactly what a gen xer would think tho

Ditto the Gen X ones, sarahell. They only sound cool to you bc you're infatuated with them. Not bc they're actually cool or meaingful.

'* emphasis on the idea of outsider-y, "punk rock" coolness

punk rock coolness is no longer outsider-y but commodified, especially with the kids that are now in high school.

'* resistance to labeling and marketing
'* anticapitalist and antigovernment attitudes, often absent a coherent political philosophy

millennials have easier access to these kinds of ideas -- like every other kind of idea -- but we were still brought up with the apparent revolution in marketing-shit-to-kids. not just the huge late 90s trends, but especially them.

'* inherited quasi-utopian idealism, often soured by apathy and a lack of faith in the possibility of positive change

yeah millennials are often aware of that second part but openly resist it.

'* obsession with pop culture

think you can say this about every generation in some way

'* interest in the homemade & small-scale vs the mass-produced

nah we love mass produced shit, even if we're being self-aware about it.

'* deliberately scruffy bohemianism

also commodified

http://karisable.com/cobain6.jpg

I just can't handle being the most successful musician in america!!! </ gen x>

thing is, that doesn't really describe the entirety of my generation, just the "cool people"

resistance to labeling and marketing - yep, capitalism def came to a standstill while you consumer rebels were around

http://cloudfront.bostinno.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/02/whitney-houston-the-bodyguard.jpg

I just can't handle being the most successful musician in america!!! </ gen x>

like, your list is such a transparent self-glorification predicated on cliches, generalities, and feel-good sentiments you must've picked up from such cinematic luminaries as kevin smith and john hughes. i could make a similar list about how gen y'ers are global, and technologically savvy, ambitious about the future, guardians of the environment and closer than ever to their families, masters of instantaneous communication with friends scattered throughout the world, ppl are closer than ever, the future is dawning, strong and resolute in the face of a crumbling world economy, blah blah blah. but it's nonsense, right?

you mean that i delivered by necessarily rather general summary in the eeyoreish manner of my generation? sure. i won't quibble with that, and i agree that any attempt to sum up a generation in a nation as big and varied as the US is bound to failure. nevertheless, my sense of my cultural era is as valid as anyone else's, regardless of what film it might seem to resemble.

also lol at the whole 'harsh cruddly life' that was the 1990s

well the basic generalization i've always read about xers is that they hate the state of the country and blame boomers for all of it

contenderizer posts are like the portlandia 'dream of the 90s' song with zero irony

kurt cobain spoke for all gen xers when he killed himself because he was rich, he is the ideal gen xer

u guys are really making a bad case for Gen X with your unironic embrace of your own special snowflakedom

it's just a shame he wasn't around to buy a bubble house

re: kurt's t-shirt, it always bugged me that someone in marvel's legal dept was tuned in enough to some tiny band to sue captain america. are lawyers secretly the hippest people?

any attempt to sum up a generation in a nation as big and varied as the US is bound to failure

and yet here we are 400 posts later

kinda surprised anyone really wants to argue about this

eh, who cares anyway? participation trophies for everyone!

who said we were trying to make a good case for it!

u guys are really making a bad case for Gen X with your unironic embrace of your own special snowflakedom

resistance to labeling and marketing - yep, capitalism def came to a standstill while you consumer rebels were around

i'm not sure what your objection is, mordy. it seems to me that gen x's resistance to labels and marketing was itself predicated on a "cool stance" that was sold to us by MTV et al, and that it was quickly co-opted as a means of marketing to the supposedly market-resistance. it wound up having little political substance.

every generation in the 50s has been given such a hormonal bath of marketing/advertising/consumerism from birth that it's hard to separate out the definition of any "generation" from this, especially given that generationalism is itself a marketing tool

i think every generation thinks they have a special immunity to marketing.

i don't click on fb ads, i mute the tv during commercials, i am a marketers worst nightmare

the messages of the marketing/advertising/consumerism have shifted over time, though.

Hurting so otfm

I mean it's no coincidence that the first generation to "rebel" in mass against their parents was also the first generation told, in mass, from childhood, that their parents old fuddy duddy bullshit wasn't for them!

gen x's resistance to labels and marketing

I'm not sure why you're saying this is a given

re: bubble house, i think in the cobain diaries, there's a scrawled section that says "get into real estate!" not kidding. i think it was mostly commercial buildings though, so he would have done okay.

(above post should have been every generation "since" the 50s, not "in")

contenderizer posts are like the portlandia 'dream of the 90s' song with zero irony

well, they're based on living in seattle, portland and olympia in the 80s and 90s, so that shouldn't be too surprising. but i don't know where you get "unironic" from. i'm not particularly proud of any of the things i'm describing, and i view them all quite ironically. gen x was the flowering of a generation that had been feed a myth of specialness by boomer parents, and a myth of faux-punk hipster cool by MTV.

i took contenderizer's list to be what certain gen xers think of themselves not necessarily how it went down

xp - our parents were silent gen and early boomers though! the majority of the boomers had special snowflake millenial kids

iirc, and i do bc i can just scroll up the thread, he prefaced his list by saying, "what would you say are the traits the define you & your peers, and when were you born (if you don't mind my asking)?"

RE: Gen Y loving authority figures & consumerism. Is there any overwhelming evidence for this? Just curious. Personally my values and the values of my friends seem to be more in line with Gen X, but I feel like "Gen Y <3 consumerism!" could just be a nice way to market stuff via cultural narrative. Also I guess if you're writing an article about Gen Y and having a hard time coming up with something besides computers/internet, you can just pull this out of your ass as a way to contrast it with Gen X.

gen x was the flowering of a generation that had been feed a myth of specialness by boomer parents

quite the opposite -- I saw boomer parents hardening into Reaganites.

remember upthread where I showed that that is a sorta make believe narrative

if anything, i'm pretty sure Gen Y purchasing power is comparatively low bc of economic downturn and we will likely see less spending, more saving, less mortgages, more rentals, etc.

there are way more of you Gen Y-ers than there are of us.

like before "Generation X" was coined, ours was called the Baby Bust

This thread will be noted in the annals of history as the first shot fired in the Generational Wars. Which us gen x-ers will lose why because we're such slackers.

watching our mtvs

i think every generation thinks they have a special immunity to marketing.

― Mordy, Wednesday, May 2, 2012 1:01 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe, i dunno, but gen x was an attempted response to the way that beat freedom, hippie revolution and punk nihilism had been appropriated and turned into cartoons of themselves for marketing purposes. the idea that "you are a target market" was everywhere, as were naive attempts to construct cultural identities that might be resistant to this. it wasn't entirely new of course, but the dedication to keeping it small, keeping it homemade, keeping it unflashy & recycled & out of the camera eye were new-ish. resistance not through rebellion, but through disengagement, invisibility. of course this was a romantic attempt - it was dreamed up by kids. but i'm not romanticizing it.

wtf is w/ this "special snowflake" meme anyway? i mean, did you young 'uns go to "special snowflake" indoctrination camps or something?!?

yes, we did.

that would explain crabcore and twilight, at least.

http://catmacros.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/why_so_mean.jpg

xp to adam bruneau: well the gen y thing with consumerism isn't necessarily dealing with the same type of consumerism gen x was 'rebelling against'. and i'm obviously not saying it's a blanket generalization for everyone; i hardly buy anything ever except food and rent and i pirate my pop culture anyway. but there's a huge prevalence of product-love and brand-love and defining ourselves by the things we own and surround ourselves with.

ok i'm updating my list:

1. harry potter
2. spongebob
3. nutella

i took contenderizer's list to be what certain gen xers think of themselves not necessarily how it went down

― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Wednesday, May 2, 2012 1:03 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc, and i do bc i can just scroll up the thread, he prefaced his list by saying, "what would you say are the traits the define you & your peers, and when were you born (if you don't mind my asking)?"

― Mordy, Wednesday, May 2, 2012 1:05 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, my list is an attempt to describe the values and attitudes that got enshrined as representative of gen x. i don't think i'm bullshitting anyone or romanticizing anything in describing that. as seen from within, at least, these are the things that seemed to unify my peers.

I never felt any special connection to gen X.

xp - our parents were silent gen and early boomers though! the majority of the boomers had special snowflake millenial kids

― sarahell, Wednesday, May 2, 2012 1:04 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, good point. but all that "you are SPECIAL and everything you do is GREAT" shit was definitely part of how i was raised, both at home and in school.

the gen-x "rebellion" against marketing was really all about being sick of seeing beer commercials w/ Phil Collins and Steve Winwood ... Madison Avenue figured out that they should call cars "punk rock" and make raver-friendly clothes and make pets.com-style commercials, ergo problem solved!

yeah, p much

except i'd say that there was, underneath it, a deep unease about being commodified, about being sold ideas and things in a world constructed entirely of sellable ideas and things. this unease did not result in immunity, as many gen xors assumed, but no surprise there, right?

oh my god you guys did not invent unease with commodification!

nutella? nutella is pretty generation-neutral i think.
btw, if you did succumb to their marketing, you can get $4 for each nutella you ever bought, because they lied to you about health benefits of hazelnuts.
https://nutellaclassactionsettlement.com

Here, can I just real quick

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

gee, where have i heard this "i am deeply uneased about being commodified" before?

http://www.allenginsberg.org/uploads/images/chapman002.jpg

and even Ginsberg and the Beats were late to that party ... read one Karl Marx!

the dedication to keeping it small, keeping it homemade, keeping it unflashy & recycled & out of the camera eye were new-ish

no they were not

oh my god you guys did not invent unease with commodification!

next thing you'll know they'll claim they invented ice cream

like if you want to see some special snowflakeism, it's this idea that Gen X somehow had a novel take on capitalism

i feel like our generation was the first to grow up in an America in decline. Because there were fewer of us, things like school spending were deprioritized, so the shiny new playgrounds and schools that were built for the boomers were decaying when we were kids. But maybe that's just a California thing?

honestly, looking back, i think gen x (and gen x into gen y) was obsessed with marketing and commodification. we were horrified by the cruddiness of the tools that were supposed to convince us, but that only wound up making us suckers for better tools when they came along - notably when we started selling to ourselves. we wanted to be "outside the system", but only wound up expanding the system's playing field. steve jobs was a boomer, but in the long run, he sort of seems like the prototype for where gen x wound up - architects of superior marketing and commercial environments.

and growing up thinking America's in decline is healthy!

jobs is also the archetypal transformation from "work OUTSIDE the system" to "fuck you, I AM the system!"

it was a New Jersey thing, too, sarahell ... which prob means it was a nationwide thing!

i also feel like the kids who grew up while Clinton was President aren't Gen X.

like 1975 should be the cut-off.

Before the internet but after the fall of the big three TV channels to cable and the victory of FM radio was an interesting time media-wise, esp with the arrival of MTV, which was huge in its time. If anything I found the 80's more commodified but less earnest about it than the 70's. There was always a quiet desperation to the ironic retro chic of the 80s and it got worse over the course of the decade.

Gen X in a jpeg:

http://cdn100.iofferphoto.com/img/item/182/325/867/kennedy-alternative-nation-mtv-1995-rob-zombie-beck-2c2c5.jpg

gee, where have i heard this "i am deeply uneased about being commodified" before?

i never suggested that gen x was the first to be uneasy about being marketed to. i merely said that it had a distinct response to the unease, as observed at a particular point in time.

and yeah, the gen x "losercore" stance was prefigured in many ways by beats, hippies and punks, as i said upthread. in some ways, there are two parallel development and apotheosis periods there. beats were a relatively small-scale social phenomenon that flowered a few years later in mass culture hippiedom. punk (in america) was a small-scale social phenomenon that flowered a few years later in gen xor shit like nirvana.

No Logo sold more than the Beats tho - but less than Marx admittedly.

^ mass culture gen xor shit like nirvana, i mean (to my own xp)

being Gen-X prob has something to w/ liking or tolerating Pauly Shore. which makes about much sense as focusing on some alleged immunity to marketing hucksterism.

Yeah I remember when Pauly Shore was elected most popular something.

Pauly Shore was awful! Kennedy (the MTV chick) was awful!

But maybe that's just a California thing?

I feel this is ultimately an oil crisis, stagflation, Reagan recession thing but also, especially Prop 13. I don't know about gen y, but compared to the boomers, I felt like my generation was abandoned.

When Gen Y became school-age in California is when the state started passing increased school funding ballot measures. So yeah, Gen X was fiscally abandoned for sure.

oh my god you guys did not invent unease with commodification!

― Mordy, Wednesday, May 2, 2012 1:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is it that you see in gen x's self-identification an attempt to steal fire from somewhere else? cuz otherwise i don't get your objections. of course the "typical" gen x stance restated attitudes previous held by beats, hippies and punks, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't distinct in itself, just as those things were.

and there have been shitty comedies and comedians in every generation

tbf you guys were never got to get the kind of helicopter parenting that a generation of historically wealthy self-actualized boomers could provide for gen y. by comparison to us, you were abandoned. u might've made out better bc of it tho. xxp

MTV was awful w/in four years of starting for the most part; nothing but Madonna, MJ dance videos and hair metal.

was Prop 13 a Boomers-turning-Reaganite or Greatest Generation-being-their-cranky selves thing? or both?!?

Prop 13 was Greatest Gen and Silent Gen being their cranky selves, for the most part.

What's wrong w MJ dance videos?

it was essentially "kids get off my lawn" legislation

i kinda seriously think that Beavis & Butthead were the magical bridge b/w Gen-X and Millenials.

xp to contenderizer i think that Gen X is second only to boomers in terms of self-mythologization and i'm trying to point out how those myths are even present in this conversation. possibly bc of things like economic collapse, 9/11, two wars in the middle east, the housing bubble, massive unemployment, moving back home with parents bc we can't afford rent, gen Y is much more realistic than you and much more skeptical of this kind of mythology. this is itself a kind of self-mythologizing, but maybe it shows u what i'm responding to here.

What's wrong w MJ dance videos?

They made for somewhat predictable videos

xp - nah, it's cause you're not old enough yet!

it was essentially "kids get off my lawn" legislation

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K7KhAI3AnY4/TrcJBu9FCII/AAAAAAAAEcY/tAeZ55rxRKM/s1600/clint%2Beastwood%2Bgran%2Btorino%2Bgun.jpg

like it's so nice that you listened to punk music and watched clerks and wore ratty clothing and were really resisting the machine, man. a lot of my generation is living at home w/ parents under or unemployed and facing a world that looks very bleak. xxxp

Can we all just agree that nobody in any of the generations knows shit about dick?

who mythologizes pauly shore, though?

it was essentially "kids get off my lawn" legislation

Kind of. It was grandma's retiring and she can't afford to keep teaching your kids how to be communists

another gen x thing to be noted is that we were the last generation to grow up being constantly bombarded with the fear of imminent nuclear war. which now gets echoed in the fear of imminent terrorist attacks but it seemed weirder because yknow the dude that was going to kill you was prob your own stupid president.

i kinda seriously think that Beavis & Butthead were the magical bridge b/w Gen-X and Millenials.

With Beavis & Butthead and Sifl & Olly and Daria, I really wished when I was a teenager that I was a Gen-Xer. But i was born in 1981 and thus I love authority and sincerity, or something.

Ain't just your generation, Mordy.

a lot of my generation is living at home w/ parents under or unemployed and facing a world that looks very bleak.

we did this 20+ years ago.

my generation does have unprecedented student debt tho - see: limbo thread which is just too bleak for me to even read

life in the early 1990s wasn't a bowl of cherries, either. the whole "generation slacker" thing came up b/c b/w 1990-1993 there weren't any fucking jobs either!

Can we all just agree that nobody in any of the generations knows shit about dick?

I see you've visited the gay thread

jjjusten otm - and that stupid president suffered from Alzheimer's and was a former movie actor.

The time is ripe for Generation Banaka

Lost Generation: 1883-1900
Greatest Generation: 1901-1924
Silent Generation: 1925-1945
Boomers: 1946-1964
Gen X: 1965-~1970's
Gen Y: late ~1970's-2000
Generation Text: 2000-???

This whole notion of generations having specific start and end dates is so bonkers - as if someone born in 1965 has more in common with someone born 13 years later than 1 year earlier by dint of belonging to some predefined generation. The only legit defining generational marker in this list would be 1945 which is a clear delineation between eras, corresponding with the end of the second world war. But there's nothing that changed in the late 1970s that warrants a generational divide from those born before or after. Even the baby boom didn't end apruptly - indeed I've seen the end date for baby boomers listed as either 1965 or 1964.

And then there's those annoying monikers. The "lost generation" gave us air travel, affordable cars, and radio stations. The "greatest generation" certainly deserves credit for saving humanity from nazis and imperialists, but (in the US anyway) this same generation wouldn't let black people go to decent schools or live in some housing developments, relegated women to submissive roles, and imprisoned innocent US citizens for almost four years because their ancestors were Japanese.

And is text messaging really the defining characteristic of the current millenium? I recently read about this message being sent electronically: "WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH U?". An agitated teenager tapping away on an iPhone? No, a young wireless operator from 1912 responding to a distress call from the Titanic. Some things don't change as much as we'd like to think....

living at home w/ parents under or unemployed and facing a world that looks very bleak.

Wonder if we should look at ppl who were teenagers during rather good economic decades vs those who weren't.

every generation experiences recessions but you were in the workforce during one of our nation's biggest booms and we are looking for jobs in the midst of our second-biggest (or possibly biggest) depression.

where's iatee? this is his favorite topic. <shines iatee-symbol on metropolitan nightsky>

The "greatest generation" certainly deserves credit for saving humanity from nazis and imperialists

Wouldn't nazis and imperialists be members of the greatest generation?

yes, we had very gratifying jobs in retail and shitty corporate offices where we got paid shit and had a gazillion roommates.

I mean the thing about the boomers, esp the first ones, is that except for '57, most of their lives up until their late, late 20's was one of constant growth.

<spray paints over mordys skytracker, looks around nervously>

Wrt suspicion of marketing, gen x in the 90s seemed like the first time the powers today be were caught off guard since the 60s. But yeah,.said powers figured it out fast, but still,.concurrent wIth the rise of the internet, the system has pretty much been breaking apart since then.

i dunno. there's apparently a ninja turtle reboot directed by michael bay going on so i'd say the marketing machine is as healthy as ever.