worst generation

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.