worst generation

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