worst generation

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>