worst generation

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!