Gen X: The Generation That Never Existed

Post in this thread every time a poll, infographic, or news story about generations mentions every generation *except* Gen X.

To wit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/18/more-bad-news-survival-republican-party/

“More than eight-in-ten members of the Silent Generation (those born between 1928 and 1945) describe themselves as Christians (84%), as do three-quarters of Baby Boomers (76%). In stark contrast, only half of Millennials (49%) describe themselves as Christians; four-in-ten are religious ‘nones,’ and one-in-ten Millennials identify with non-Christian faiths.”

rip big gen, heaven needed millions of soul asylum fans

the real insult is when they work zoomers in there at the same time

Pssh. What do you even expect from the establishment, man? (returns to slacking)

There was some work-related training a while back about sensitivity wrt personality traits of coworkers, and there was a portion which attempted to paint the different generations in broad strokes and which I wanted to regard with sneering disdain but I have to say that their gen x description was pretty OTM re: me (snarky, skeptical, distrustful of authority, eats bowlfuls of cereal while watching terrible movies and wearing ripped flannels, etc.).

for real though, I feel like this happens a lot, like I'll see some poll about generational attitudes/party affiliation/income leveles etc. and Gen X won't even be on there

granted Rassmussen is generally shit but this gets at what I mean

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_ted_rall/the_disappearing_of_generation_x

differences between boomers and gen x so marginal that there's no point in putting both in?

Like hell!

that's like, so, you don't even know what you're talking about, man

whatever

I'll see some poll about generational attitudes/party affiliation/income leveles etc. and Gen X won't even be on there

dunno, Gen X being completely ignored by everyone seems very on brand

differences between boomers and gen x so marginal that there's no point in putting both in?

gtfo

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tr5EvZDjUFY/hqdefault.jpg

differences between boomers and gen x so marginal that there's no point in putting both in?

― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Friday, October 18, 2019 12:24 PM

lol yeah my parents and I have so much in common

lol jim

Respect to jim, that's how you lob a grenade into a discussion.

Generation Xers too consumed by their BBSes, their Crash Bandicoot, their Dishwalla

Boomers used to call us Gen Xers "lazy" "entitled" etc., but they seem to be labelling Millennials those things now.

I guess the old farts can only concentrate on unfairly criticising one generation at a time.

In my day, we couldn't just pick up a 'celled phone' and use the 'Tweeter' to insult the younger generation. We used to have a take a bus down to the Kinko's and print out another hundred copies of our zine to drop off at the anarchist bookstore.

They had to move on because:

Boomer: "When I was a kid I didn't have Facebook or cell phones"

Xer: "Bitch, neither did I."

Xpost Goddammit

xxp - damn, i remember when Kinko's was 24 hours ... actually, the coolest were the ppl that had shitty bullshit corporate temp office jobs that would just use their copiers for free.

though when I was in high school, my crush worked at Kinko's ...

a couple years back, I got to meet and hang with one of the people that started/wrote/edited Processed World magazine

Boomers used to call us Gen Xers "lazy" "entitled" etc., but they seem to be labelling Millennials those things now.

They also think Millennials are 15-20 years old.

haha there are more of us than u

that will be all, x'ers

haha there are more of us than u

― flappy bird, Friday, October 18, 2019 11:49 AM (fifty seconds ago)

And that's pretty awesome for us, we got into better colleges and got more scholarship money than u millenials because there were so few of us

Get off my lawn, you overly-confident whippersnappers.

Where my Oregon Trail Generation peeps at

they died of dysentery iirc?

the "x" is for xp, right? oh no, xp, xp, I can't keep up!

Zoomer/Millennial cuspers are going to be known as the Instagram Still Had A Linear Timeline Generation.

most discussion of generations is just simplistic bullshit, so i don't mind having mine left out

yeah I like lots of alt ish

afaict the most enduring feature of my gen x membership is my continued complete distrust/disgust at advertising and sales and being sold to and selling myself

other than that, my more positive attributes have been attributed to/absorbed by millennials so i no longer exist

considering that they've retconned Gen X to include people born in like 1978? ... yeah, it's bullshit

someone born in 1978 is definitely not a millennial tho

I thought it was the other way, I always knew X to end around '81-2 and then the millennials started creeping back and absorbing us.

gen xers = boomers with a smaller house and like 50% more likely to know how to access the contents of a zip file

Generations should last for ~5 years now, with the speed of technology and economic bubbles.

I vaguely identify with whichever generation is sandwiched between X and millennials.

afaict the most enduring feature of my gen x membership is my continued complete distrust/disgust at advertising and sales and being sold to and selling myself

lol my gen x signifiers are like: everything is just going to keep on decaying and getting stupider, I'm never going to become a "real adult" like my parents, and I still wear ironic t-shirts

boomers pay for winrar

I thought it was the other way, I always knew X to end around '81-2 and then the millennials started creeping back and absorbing us.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Friday, October 18, 2019 11:59 AM (two minutes ago)

If you look at the Gen X generational studies books that came out in the 90s, the tail end of Gen X was 1976 (maybe 1977). 1978 on were "Gen Y"

Must be nice to be able to afford that on top of everything else.

xp

As a X/Y cusper, the experiences of friends 5-6 years older and people 5-6 years younger are wildly different from my direct peers in terms of how the Internet shaped us but we got out of young adulthood before digital cameras could document every stupid moment of your young life.

we watched the space shuttle explode in school, because Christa McAuliffe was gonna be the first teacher in space! ... later the "what color were Christa McAuliffe's eyes? ... Blue!" joke got repurposed for Kurt Cobain

someone write all this down

Our jokes were about 'the last thing that went through his mind'

Major generational difference there.

no boomers i know used Napster

one blue left, and one blue right!! har de har har!

I still remember the day of that launch so vividly. So many of us kids watched those astronauts die on live TV, it was crazy!

McCauliffe, Henson, and Cobain were like the pivotal gen x deaths afaict.

I'm pretty sure I still have the Challenger explosion newspaper somewhere.

though we just saw a long shot of a thing exploding that we cognitively knew had people in it -- we didn't actually see the death. It kinda set things up for the 1st Gulf War, which was a lot of satellite images and explosions, but the visceral aspect of the death wasn't shown to us. .... It contrasted with the Boomer's experience of seeing the Vietnam body bags on TV. ... not to get all Baudrillard on this thread

McCauliffe, Henson, and Cobain were like the pivotal gen x deaths afaict.

dunno about Henson -- I think Reagan getting shot and not dying was more pivotal

Michael Jackson catching on fire in the Pepsi commercial had me way more shook than Reagan getting capped .

not to get all Baudrillard on this thread

no no no, please do

i was pretty upset when john lennon was killed
i was a preschool beatles freak and between him dying and reagan getting elected i was super bummed

Ian Bogost tweets about this a lot

If not Henson than perhaps Hooper.

Someone should really do an updated 'We Didn't Start the Fire' for the gen x set.

uh, we had It's the End of the World As We Know It?

I thought Michael Jackson's hair fire in the Pepsi commercial was funny. Reagan surviving ... was not a happy ending imo.

I don't know what sort of podunk schools y'all went to but the primary McAuliffe joke was "how did they know what brand of shampoo she used? they found her head and shoulders on a beach".

I went to a very podunk school

we did square dancing in P.E.
the school was surrounded by grazing land for horses and cows and some goats
to get there, you would drive past the egg ranch, and depending on the winds, sometimes the egg ranch smell wafted towards the school

My childhood joke collection is spotty because I went to a dozen different podunk schools (couldn't stop knifing teachers)

We did square dancing in PE too!

xps nice

back before millennials got rid of all smells because they are 'highly sensitive'

for the record, here's how Pew Research defines the generations

https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/FT_19.01.17_generations_2019.png?resize=640,347

we had square dancing in PE

My second high school is surrounded by cornfields for at least like a mile in every direction.

considering that they've retconned Gen X to include people born in like 1978? ... yeah, it's bullshit

― sarahell, Friday, October 18, 2019 11:58 AM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

someone born in 1978 is definitely not a millennial tho

― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Friday, October 18, 2019 11:58 AM (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was born in '78. Def don't feel like I belong with the millenials. But Gen X felt like my older sisters' generation. Doesn't matter tho cause I agree w/mookie for most part that generations are BS and too much is made of them as a legit sociological thing.

be we can all agree the boomers are the worst

We also had tanbark and dangerous playgrounds and played dodgeball

Square dancing in grade school. But in high school the boys didn't have to do it. The girls square danced with each other. Would pass by them doing it in a hallway when leaving lunchroom, and they looked absolutely fucking miserable.

They split PE by gender starting in junior high

we played Smear the Queer :-/

I remember the four deaths of Kurt Cobain, Ayrton Senna, John Smith and my cousin all coming quite close to each-other in 1994.

Playground at my grade school was soooo dangerous. They removed it cause multiple kids split their heads open. The worst part was a sort of jungle gym composed of 2 halves of a big metal sphere 10 feet in the air; the upper half was to the left, the lower half to the right, with metal ladders going up to the top of each. So the convex half you'd slip off of and tumble to the earth. The concave half you'd slip trying to get out of and slide back to the middle of it, where a ladder hole was. Apparently boomers gave all school and playground design contracts to sadists.

That stuff built character

I threatened to have my dad beat up my PE teacher in 5th grade.

My discipline was the teacher told me to flush the threatening letter down the toilet

the principle of my elementary school had a paddle and would beat kids with it . I assume parents had to sign off on that but idk

xp lol
and the metal was as hot as the sun in the summer
I just drove by that school when I was back home. The "new" (new when I was in 5th or 6th grade I think), enlightened-design playground had been ripped out. Even THAT was too dangerous for kids today.

I’m a 78 kid and I’m not a millennial, I’m comfortably late Gen X. I got into EDM before it was called EDM and all my young adult touchstones have been turned into t-shirts and movies e.g. http://www.roadkilltshirts.com/Assets/ProductImages/PS_0149_NEVER_FORGET.jpg

xp yep it had "Board of Education" written on it. I don't think it was ever used, but we of course heard stories that it was used often.

The vice principal Mr Mike (we couldn't pronounce his last name) must've had a side job as a swimming instructor. I only remember being held underwater by him as my dad watched. No biggie, just 2 male authority figures traumatizing me as standard practice. Still can't swim.

when men were men

No corporal punishment that I remember but there was a (male) third grade teacher who gave students birthday spankings. Full over his knee 9 spanks shit.

Last generation to grow up without internet & cell phones ubiquitous seems like a big deal. I'm hoping it's an asset, that we'll have better "people skills" & be valued for those. But it's prob gonna be that we're not quite computer savvy enough to be useful and will all be working as Walmart greeters til we're quietly exterminated.

when men were men

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Friday, October 18, 2019 3:22 PM (four minutes ago)

and as we know, boys were boys

those times actually sucked imo. not nostalgic for middle school/"growing up" whatsoever.

a thread on square dancing in schools, and white supremacy, and henry ford etc. etc.

Turns out, square dance is the official state dance of like, almost every state that has an official state dance. VERY STRANGE. https://t.co/MTnQ7XqOH0

— Robyn Pennacchia (@RobynElyse) December 7, 2017

(xp) this
I was born in 1974, the 80s were terrible. Actually had a discussion about it at work with two Millenial colleagues, sparked by one of them streaming an all-80s-all-the-time radio station on his mobile while he said "I like 80s music!".

y'all are just doing boomer memes now??

yeah I mean I was trolling but you're proving my disingenuous point

I love 80s music! My sis born in '74 does too.

I had a millennial co-host for my radio show who was into "80s cheese" - I failed to keep my mouth shut about how crap it was, that may be why he is no longer my co-host.

I was born in 1974, the 80s were terrible.

my daughter (who listens exclusively to the retro-80s radio station) has often expressed a desire to experience what it was like in the 80s and I feel sorta bad being like "I hate to burst your bubble but... the 80s really sucked"

that's literally what my mom told me when i said i wanted to live in the 1960s. she was like "actually you would have hated it, you would have had two career choices and you would have been miserable"

then she told me she wasn't allowed to wear pants when she started teaching and i did feel grateful that i was growing up in more enlightened times (even though they were not particularly enlightened by today's standards)

the 80s didn't suck. your 80s sucked.

haha yeah I had a similar 60s-obsession as a young 80s kid (and a similar reaction from my mom)

xps

she was like "you can wear the clothes and enjoy the music, but don't wish yourself back there; it sucked for us"

ok fine. if you were a scrawny nerdy Jewish kid in the whitebread conservative CA suburbs (yes, Virginia there did used to be such a thing!)...the 80s sucked

xp

"you mean you didn't spend all day in malls and going to night clubs dancing to Cameo?"

xp

same for me re 60s, and my mom and aunt kind of dumping on the idea

tbh though they were still really mad about "hippies" well into the late 80s, and how feminism and drugs (and *the blacks*) destroyed what was once a perfect pristine country thank you very much

I had a good 80s, Torville & Dean, Sam Fox, Geoff Capes, Shakin Stevens, Eddie The Eagle, good times all round.

tbh though they were still really mad about "hippies" well into the late 80s, and how feminism and drugs (and *the blacks*) destroyed what was once a perfect pristine country thank you very much

lol yeah my parents seemed insulted when I asked if they had been "hippies"

Every decade sucks.

The only cool thing about the 60s to me were some movies and tv shows and like radical leftists fucking with authority

I was born in 1979, and back in the '90s, when Generation X was a hip thing to talk about, I definitely wasn't part of it. IIRC back then Gen X was defined as those born between 1965 and 1975, i.e. folks who were voting age but younger than 30 in the first half of the 1990s. So basically those people who could relate to the protagonists of Reality Bites.

I remember wondering what my generation was then, and there were even attempts to give a name to the new generation of young people born after 1975, such as "Generation Z" or "Generation Q". So yeah, extending Gen X all the way to 1980 is definitely a retcon.

other than pop music on the radio & my walkman i was too young to properly enjoy what the 80s had to offer and it's probably for the best.

except for neil young's, maaan

I knew my dad wasn't a hippie, he looked like a big nerd that came out of the womb a Radio Shack manager.

My mom looked like Leslie Gore so I thought maybe she had been

Ehh I definitely remember X going through or past 1980 in some definitions even in the 90s. I remember arguing that I wasn't one and having people my age say they were and throwing articles at me.

My parents were flattered re being asked if they had been hippies... “We weren’t cool enough to be hippies” was the answer... my momz two younger sisters were both hippies

Totally does my head in thinking how "the 60s" were less than 20 yrs in the past when I was young yet were already so mythologized and seemed sooooo long ago.

came out of the womb a Radio Shack manager.

irl lol

yeah i can remember the fuss around sgt peppers' *20th* anniversary and thinking how ancient it was

^^christ yes

there was a PBS special about it

and an LA Times supplement (thx Robert Hillburn)

imo if Ghostbusters and Back to the Future were movies you saw when they were new, or you cared a lot about them, you're Gen X, if you saw them when they were old and didn't care about them you're a Millennial. If you have no memory of 9/11 you're a Zoomer.

Every decade sucks.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z),

What if you saw them a few years later on VHS, cos you were too young to see them when they were new, but you still loved them to death? That's the camp I fall into and I still don't feel like I ever was Gen X.

(xpost)

Even something like Saturday Night Fever seemed like an artifact from a time long long ago. It wasn't even 10 years old when I 1st saw (parts of) it. A lot of that is due to the disconnect of not having directly experienced the time, but idk I can't imagine something from like 2009 hitting kids today the same way.

sorry Tuomas if you like those movies you're gen x

Tuomas I will grant you honorary GenXhood if you can name the two co-leads of Lost Boys

if you have no memory of 9/11 you're a Zoomer.

lol isn't that a Connor Roy line from Successions

Tuomas you're only 1 yr younger than I am, and I saw both those movies in the theater.

i saw them in the theater and didn't care about them
what do i win

lol isn't that a Connor Roy line from Successions

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Friday, October 18, 2019 2:12 PM (eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk I've never watched it, I invented it several years ago so ™™™

LL you can take any prize from the dentist's treasure box

Born December 1971. My dad (born 1946 in rural California) was more into Fifties culture (vintage cars, doo-wop, etc. - his favorite song of all time was "The Ten Commandments Of Love") than anything Sixties, though he did own a bunch of Richard Brautigan books. My mom, born 1949 in New Jersey, was not a total hippie (she got an engineering degree before having me) but told me she went to some gatherings of Timothy Leary's League of Spiritual Discovery.

whoa

My dad is older than your dad and mom older than your mom, despite me being 7 yrs younger than you. Dad's fav musician to this day is Benny Goodman lol (he once met him at Disneyland, as Benny was walking to the bandshell to help set stuff up for a show); Mom got into the Beatles but as a teen fangirl. Ditched them when they went all hippie.

My parents are the same ages as unperson's parents. Granny, my mother was a Beatles fan who also dropped them, although she did so around 'Revolver', not even when they went full tilt hippie.

Aunt #1 did Summer of Love in 1967 San Francisco
Aunt #2 joined some commune when she was 16 that practiced war games for the overthrow of the capitalist pig government
Mom was a schoolteacher in an East Baltimore middle school then quit to move to Georgia when my dad got drafted and had to go to basic. I think mom worked as a diner waitress

My parents were ushers at Monterey Pop. Despite their interesting experiences in the 60s, all of them— parents and aunts— were super boring in the 80s

my mom had a copy of inna-gadda-da-vida on vinyl and a pink cassette of goats head soup for the stereo that stopped working when i was a child, that's as as cool as they ever got, unless you could the negative credit for my dad's moustache

"Tomorrow Never Knows" came on when my mom was in the car with me a lil while ago. She was saying how otherworldly it sounded when she 1st heard it*. But could def tell it was not her jam. I've never heard her mention or playing any post-Revolver Beatles.
*in a different way then the Beatles early stuff I guess, which she has also said left her completely gobsmacked when she 1st heard it at a friend's house. wtf is THIS???!!?? My opera-loving/singing grandparents hated it obv.

was aunt #2 in San Francisco too?

My mom kept up with music through my teenage years. We both liked Talking Heads and New Order, and she thought Iggy Pop had a pleasing baritone. A boyfriend (my parents divorced when I was 11 or 12) introduced her to reggae via WFMU. She and one of my aunts went with me to see Neil Young & Crazy Horse on the tour where Sonic Youth and Social Distortion opened. These days she mostly listens to classical or audiobooks, I think.

it's ok to say aunt #2 was part of the Manson family, we won't judge

Iggy Pop had a pleasing baritone

this is such a mom thing to say lol

lol my mom also had inna-gadda-da-vida, and same

Aunt #2 was not a manson girl lol. She might have been a trump voter tho

Aunt #1 was a Bernie supporter and now is either for Bernie or Warren
My parents are in the moderate “anyone but Trump” camp

My parents fave song was “Chances Are” by Johnny Mathis

The most “out there” they got was when my dad was in college at Davis he was in the concert band and they played a Stockhausen piece. “It was weird”

The first time I grew my hair out my mom was giving me shit for it, until my dad reminded her that when they met (ca. 1971) his hair was halfway down his back. My family was never much for sharing but from what I could gather he'd been some combo of hippie/greaser/jock (raced cars at Laguna Seca, long haired history major, but played college football too) in San Francisco and San Jose growing up.

dang it now these boomers got us remembering their past again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it never stops!

Parents age probably a better generational definition than anything else, though. If your parents were (literal postwar) baby boomers, you get lumped into Gen X even if you were born in the late 80s.

My mom was born in 1945 and my dad in 1946. Our first “family car” was a ford pinto

We had two different Pintos - a brown station wagon that my dad crashed with me in the passenger seat (he was a diabetic and passed out behind the wheel a few blocks from our house), replaced by a baby blue hatchback. When I was very little, we had a big Jaguar Mark IX that had no rear seat belts and wooden tray-tables (like on a plane) in the back of the front seats. Yeah, I slammed my head into the wood at least once and maybe more.

We had the brown wagon with the wood paneling! The previous car was an MG they had bought in the UK and shipped back to the states. They also watched American Graffiti every time it came on tv. My dad knew all the songs and my mom reminisced about the cars

My dad had a green MG and a Morgan three-wheel car (two up front, one in the back) before I was born. He also once told me that he'd owned a Jaguar E-type in the mid-60s and driven so fast between Los Angeles and Las Vegas that it took a state trooper ten miles to catch up to him.

Parents age probably a better generational definition than anything else, though. If your parents were (literal postwar) baby boomers, you get lumped into Gen X even if you were born in the late 80s.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Friday, October 18, 2019 3:01 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

nah my parents were born in 50/51 and I was 89, nobody'd call me a gen Xer

My parents would end up arguing about what car my dad’s parents let him drive when they were in high school. This is what adulthood was for me — you get married, have a kid, and have boring arguments with your partner about petty details of your youth. Was it a Buick or an Oldsmobile, who gives a fuck, adulthood was stupid and everything was just gonna get even dumber and duller

Repo Man was a great Gen X movie

TV Party — if you grew up watching those shows —> Gen X

I watched Repo Man so much in high school that I still have half the dialogue memorized.

Ha yeah! Put it on a plate, you’ll like it more!!

lattices of coincidence

They don’t make Chevy Malibus like that anymore

a couple years back, I got to meet and hang with one of the people that started/wrote/edited Processed World magazine

― sarahell,

M3d-0?

Chr1s C

i wrote a paper on that in lol college

My mom (born in '41) used to make fun of stuff like Johnny Mathis when I was a kid - that was her parents' music, and she hated it. I liked the grandparents' music, though. My parents were rock and rollers starting in the fifties, and one thing I remember from my inner suburb childhood was that not all parents their age had done the "rock and roll" thing. That confused me, because all my parents talked about was music. Then I'd go to my friends' houses, and their parents were the same age, but all of their records were easy listening / orchestral stuff and show tunes. I guess it used to be a thing with my mom's generation - the ones who had been "rock and rollers" bonded with each other and hung out together, but that bypassed a lot of other people their age. You wouldn't know that from just looking at articles and books.

Relevant:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/19/once-young-radical-now-auntie-disgusting

she was like "you can wear the clothes and enjoy the music, but don't wish yourself back there; it sucked for us"

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Friday, October 18, 2019 4:49 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

A few years ago, my mom and I were watching an episode of Man Men when a character made an anti-Semitic "joke." My mom said, "OK, see, that's why no one my age watches this show. We already went through all that shit; we don't need to see it again."

tarfumes' mom otm

that guardian article is hilarious -- it highlights one thing i def notice about people my age: that they think their opinion matters? and they are compelled to share it loudly and proudly even if it is very pointless (like, for example, what is and is not a sandwich) Who the f cares what you think about nut allergies? No one! When did anyone give a shit what you thought about nuts or nut allergies? Never! But we grew up without the opportunity to sound off about everything. Having "strong opinions" was a form of social currency that...definitely seems to have lost its value (imo).

Man Men!

I only do that on imago's poll bc <3.xp

Didn't make it more than a couple paragraphs into that Guardian article though.

But we grew up without the opportunity to sound off about everything.

hah, there are some general differences I notice in terms of social media self-presentation of Gen-X people vs. those who are younger. Though probably it's less a generational issue than a difference between people who care about their image on social media and those who don't.

I think probably gen x people are less invested in the idea of cultivating an image or a social media presence as a personal brand.

personal brand is definitely not a gen X concept

See: my ongoing and unabated disgust at selling in general. Selling myself as a brand makes me ill.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/eb2c459f4476af3bfeebf76afd92e814/tumblr_mzrpxwAllJ1qduh7lo1_500.jpg

The rest of the movie was true poisoned crap but that part confirmed my already strong belief that selling is gross. As I said, it’s my most enduring identifiable generational trait!

My experience is that this is nothing new, that nobody ever really bothered to listen to us and only acknowledged our existence under duress and, probably, a haze of boomer mockery. That the "slacker" stereotype was a deep malaise, was in many cases learned helplessness. There were more boomers with more money and they were the only ones who really counted anyway. And the other stereotype (thanks Doonesbury) was that we were incredibly rich and had made all sorts of money off the dotcom boom... in the latter half of the '90s though I was living with my mom, working part-time as a library clerk and "going to school" with my dad's GI Bill money. Some semesters I could get through the anxiety to catch the bus to class and pass some of them. Some semesters I just posted incoherent and hateful screeds to the Pink Floyd Usenet newsgroup, where everybody loved me.

I guess that's the thing about belonging to a Generation that never had a voice - at least I still get my own.

And yeah part of my marked lack of early-life success, beyond my own internalized self-loathing, was my horror and disgust at "selling" anything. One of the top reasons I didn't get into writing professionally (along with my growing belief that writing is, or was for the writers I liked, an emotionally and economically ruinous "career").

Some semesters I just posted incoherent and hateful screeds to the Pink Floyd Usenet newsgroup, where everybody loved me.

still do

awwww you're a sweetie mookieproof

I posted Fundamentalist Christian rants on Usenet when I was 16 under my real name. They still show up in Google searches.

I knew this thread would devolve into nostalgia.

[Looks into camera]

HENRY ROLLINS
You know? "Hill Street Blues" *was* a pretty good drama, for a bunch of pigs!

I think probably gen x people are less invested in the idea of cultivating an image or a social media presence as a personal brand.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Saturday, October 19, 2019 3:34 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
personal brand is definitely not a gen X concept

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie),

All this shit makes me gag

I don't know if this is part of my Gen X ness or not but for sure I experience a flannel shirt as the shirt equivalent of blue jeans, something utterly neutral that I can wear on any day in combination with any other garment.

part of my marked lack of early-life success, beyond my own internalized self-loathing, was my horror and disgust at "selling" anything. One of the top reasons I didn't get into writing professionally (along with my growing belief that writing is, or was for the writers I liked, an emotionally and economically ruinous "career").

otm. I experienced this generalized revulsion toward sales as a mid-late boomer. because a sales career is legit horrifying. also, I noticed that writing for popular consumption was confined to careers I knew I'd hate, like advertising/marketing and almost all of it was predicated on meeting such vague criteria that no one knew in advance whether your writing would satisfy their need to generate profits. Whatever you wrote, you were at the mercy of the wind. lastly, an academic was so hotly competed for, that the process of getting one was likely to drive me insane. so I punted.

I think none of these lame pieces about generational trends mention gen X because these days they're mostly written BY gen Xers, and thus gen X is the implied subject that is looking at and describing all other generations.

I think probably gen x people are less invested in the idea of cultivating an image or a social media presence as a personal brand.

See: my ongoing and unabated disgust at selling in general. Selling myself as a brand makes me ill.

I'm technically a millennial and I feel the same way. It's part of the reason I don't have any social media accounts (except ILX, I guess).

I'm an, errr, X-ennial and I feel the same way (I relate a lot to the intersection rushomancy pointed out between the slacker ethos and learned helplessness; that section of the Venn diagram is definitely my niche, sigh) - but that started becoming the accepted default when I was in my 20s and the earliest true millennials were barely in the workforce yet, so I'm not sure we can absolve our generation of blame for that

I think it was still in the Myspace era when a friend said that his band had had interest from record labels but they'd said they wouldn't sign him unless he could get n thousand Myspace friends and they'd need to see daily activity from him on there plugging his band and ~working the fanbase~? and I was just like, stop the world, I want to get off

I know I'm shooting myself in the foot professionally by not advertising a self-aggrandizing version of myself online but it's simply not going to happen. I'd rather abide in obscurity forever than relinquish the notion that what one makes is infinitely more valuable than its so-called maker.

First time I was aware that my generation was being moved on from was around 2008 when the singer from New Young Pony Club was asked in an interview how she felt about her song being used in an advert and she was very surprised at being asked, like of course, why wouldn't you do that?

1980 is X, right? Bc that's when Kim Kardashian was born.

mil-cusp/Xennial

but entertainers/pop figures are always weird because they mean the most to people a generation or half-generation below them (e.g. the beatles were not boomers). kardashian setting the tone for what social media branding would look like can also be read as, ppl born in 1990 eating it up and encouraging it.

McCauliffe, Henson, and Cobain were like the pivotal gen x deaths afaict.

― Go-Gurt Ops (Old Lunch), Friday, October 18, 2019 2:28 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I’m just a wee millennial, but what about Budd Dwyer?

I'm late gen x but only became aware of Dwyer via pop cultural associations.

All the talk about self-branding and sales seems like a v v good metric for sniffing out a gen x-er because, yeah, I hate all that shit with fiery intensity. This is why I have no money. But boy do I have my integrity, by gum.

god i wish someone would buy all my excess integrity

I'm extremely averse to branding/advertising/promotional/PR shit, but it's possible I was more influenced by boomers & gen Xers that other millennials were?

It's also possible that it is hard to make accurate generalizations about entire swaths of the population based on year of birth.

That's not what my horoscope said.

🤯

It's also possible that it is hard to make accurate generalizations about entire swaths of the population based on year of birth.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r)

And then again, it's possible that our unique shared experiences go beyond "We are the freakies and this is our freakies tree"

lol sez sund4r the 4v4nt g4rde c0mp0s3r and gui+4r t3ach3r yer such a gen-xer dude you can't hide your ~integrity~

gen-x betrayal!

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/nine-inch-nails-head-like-a-hole-anthem-900750/

But nobody could have predicted the song’s most recent iteration. On an episode of the anthology series Black Mirror, Miley Cyrus played the pop star Ashley O, whose biggest hit was “On a Roll,” a hilariously upbeat redux of “Head Like a Hole.” “I’m on a roll,” she sings over sleek pop production. “Riding so high/Achieving my goals.” Instead of “Bow down before the one you serve,” Cyrus sings, “I’m stoked on ambition and verve.” It’s such a magnificently perverse interpretation of the song that even Reznor approved of it, tweeting out “Feels like I’ve been here before” and even offering NIN–Ashley O crossover merch for sale.

Another 78'er here. I also abhor branding and selling. Although I am fine with making money.

personal branding is repulsive

Did wearing shirts/carrying bags with company logos skip Gen X? I wouldn't be caught dead wearing something that had words Supreme, The GAP, Hollister, etc, emblazoned on the front or a logo'd bag. I find it embarrassing but people actively seek this shit out.

what about hard rock café t-shirts

first time threadster was this done cause uh huh

One reason people my age get so bent out of shape about “generations” is that Gen X is the only one that fully KNOWS it sucks. Boomers and Millennials cry “Stop picking on us!” while Gen X has forty-five years of self-hatred cued up and ready to go! Stop ignoring us! WE’RE AWFUL!

— john roderick (@johnroderick) October 19, 2019

People my age did it back in the day but I'd bet dollars to donuts that those people would never have self-identified as gen x.

OMG, what if gen x is actually a form of self-selective branding, shoot me now.

xxpost

also there are those shirts that I think say stussy but until like 3 years ago I thought they said satanism. nb I am not very visually perceptive

Yeah my general irl steez is 'don't pay excessive attention to me' which is almost certainly rooted in some degree of free-floating self-loathing but I don't know if that widely applies to my age group.

Hard Rock Cafe gets a pass since it has a music link.

Skating and surf shirts get a pass too.

NOT SUPREME THOUGH.

Maybe I should make a powerpoint on this.

Did wearing shirts/carrying bags with company logos skip Gen X? I wouldn't be caught dead wearing something that had words Supreme, The GAP, Hollister, etc, emblazoned on the front or a logo'd bag. I find it embarrassing but people actively seek this shit out.

No, especially not if bands count as companies. But yeah, I've always found it strange when brand logos take over almost the entire surface of a garment. These days (say, the last 10-15 years) I prefer to wear logo-less clothing as much as possible. I make an exception for sneakers, because the ones I find comfortable - DC skate shoes, mostly - are heavily branded, but they do a pretty good job of making the logo a design element.

despite my sense that private property is the root of all evil I also wonder if I am a capitalist to my bones because I think Risky Business is the coolest movie ever, but maybe that's more a boomer flick than gen X? time of your life, huh, kid?

xpost I also completely hate attention but I have always really liked myself.

I have always really liked myself.

ILX post least likely to be cosigned since the site's inception.

I also really like myself and am mostly positive about attention, at least positive attention.

Omg I wouldn’t be caught dead in a branded t shirt — Hard Rock Cafe? Are you kidding? No. Absolutely not then and not now.

Like I said, this is the one thing I feel so strongly that I think it connects me to “a generation” whereas most other parts of my belief system remain relatively idiosyncratic.

I mean like corporate branded tees not band tees. Those are fine but within reason.

Yeah band t's or things for unique restaurants don't count. I completely don't understand a plain top that just has OLD NAVY or POLO on the front. Or those years that LV monogram bags were huge.

Omg I wouldn’t be caught dead in a branded t shirt — Hard Rock Cafe? Are you kidding? No. Absolutely not then and not now.

This is more aligned with cultural class than generation -- like Paul Fussell wrote about this at least as far back as 1980 -- he termed it "legibility" and it was a sign of the lower classes. According to Fussell, people from higher classes avoid and often abhor clothing and accessories that have visible branding. The next step down is very subtle branding.

Though not wearing visibly branded clothing because you are providing free advertising to shitty companies is not the same as not wearing visibly branded clothing because "it's tacky"

Though not wearing visibly branded clothing because you are providing free advertising to shitty companies is not the same as not wearing visibly branded clothing because "it's tacky"

I’m in box #1 — I fullyunderstand the cultural implications but for me it’s the free advertising I object to, not “it’s tacky”

I understand why people do it I just object to doing it myself.

agree with this assessment. feel like we have got to point where if u where anything heavily branded the autoresponse is “what does she mean by THAT”?

so im hip and wear things that say I REALLY DONT CARE DO YOU

Omg I wouldn’t be caught dead in a branded t shirt — Hard Rock Cafe? Are you kidding? No. Absolutely not then and not now.

Like I said, this is the one thing I feel so strongly that I think it connects me to “a generation” whereas most other parts of my belief system remain relatively idiosyncratic.

Not every Gen xer is or was a slacker anti corpratist. There were plenty of preps too! And what they'd call "basic" now. They wore this shit.

xpost LV monogram bags are still huge!

There was a time period in my genX suburban hell when Coca-Cola branded rugby-style shirts were a big thing. Awful.

Guess jeans. Reebok high-tops with the velcro closure. Branded items were certainly a Gen X thing.

I see a lot of people wearing that Obey and Pink garbage who seem old enough to know better

I am looking at the reeboks because I love velcro shoes and the 'Reebok' is very small?

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cf/49/1f/cf491f0156e53da2613507928bc3538c.jpg

that is definitely not an ironic Z Cavaricci shirt -- though we were also the ironic t-shirt generation

This is more aligned with cultural class than generation -- like Paul Fussell wrote about this at least as far back as 1980 -- he termed it "legibility" and it was a sign of the lower classes. According to Fussell, people from higher classes avoid and often abhor clothing and accessories that have visible branding. The next step down is very subtle branding.

I think Fussell is otm about that. In the early days of corporate-branded clothing you'd generally see items that made some kind of statement, like wearing an STP t-shirt said, "I'm good with cars" or an Adidas t-shirt said, "I'm sporty and I travel." As you go up the class ladder fewer people feel the need to make statements like that.

What blows my mind is the sports-branded clothes and the fact that nowadays a huge section of the spectating audience wouldn't think of going to a baseball, football, or even basketball game without wearing their official team replica jersey. As late as the early '80s, iirc, that wasn't even a thing, there was no such market for that. I don't see much evidence Xers have resisted that particular phenomenon.

are we talking jerseys specifically, or sports-branded clothing in general? I'm pretty sure I had a Raiders hoodie in the early 80s, and the team branded hats were prevalent then too ... I definitely remember people wearing Giants and Raiders shirts and jerseys in the mid 80s.

Jerseys, basically, the kind that enables the fan to essentially disguise him or herself as a member of the team, with the names of real players on the back. I do remember that kids could order jackets or obviously fake team jerseys from the Sears catalog back in the '70s, but then this whole different level of identifying with the team exploded at some recent point

ohhhhh ok! I feel like different pro sports had slightly different timelines .... like baseball was different than football or basketball, also the shirts were different material, idk whether the actual fabric/manufacturing was a part of this. But in terms of NFL and NBA -- I wanna say that the Chicago Bulls were definitely at the forefront of this. I could be totally wrong tho!

I agree with Steve Dahl who said that if you're old enough to be on the team, you shouldn't wear the actual jersey

what if you're too old?

idk i feel like the sports merch started earlier than what you're positing, but maybe that's because where I grew up our teams actually won shit, and people like being associated with winners, and also for a kid who wants to look badass ... the Raiders logo was like a skull and crossbones and their shit was black. Like some of these teams had really non-badass logos and mascots and colors.

relatedly, some teams were appropriated more by bangers than others -- I'm pretty sure at some point in time, certain clothing was actually prohibited at schools because of gang associations which administration believed would lead to violence. I forget when that started though -- wanna say late 80s at the earliest, but definitely 90s it was a thing.

people like being associated with winners

this is the key idea that also explains a lot of the corporate-branded clothing, since people think of successful corporations as winners as well

which brings us to .... Beck

I totally forgot about BUM equipment lol
https://d328c8xxrtt5uf.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/22200412/5b0477ba28cc6.jpg

I really like the term "basic" to describe a certain normative aesthetic ... like ^^^

so I went and looked through my books and the Strauss/Howe 13th Gen book (from the mid 90s) says Gen-X is 1961-1981; Shortly after that boomer-penned volume was published, there was Generation Ecch, which said Gen X was 1965-1977.

But I feel a real demarcation (in the US) is the sense that we are a nation in decline. Heroic figures like King and the Kennedys were killed -- a priori. Like, we don't remember that happening, it had happened. It was a historical fact. Nixon won. Then Nixon's corruption was revealed. Things still sucked. The recession, inflation, de-industrialization, the decaying infrastructure ... the cold war was still going on, but it was dumb. Our country spent a shit ton on nuclear weapons and de-funded schools and social safety nets. The Japanese made better cars. Our cars sucked and our space shuttle exploded. An actor was elected president ... twice. ... I feel like people born in the late 70s (and 1980/81) grew up with a bit more hope? Like people who were still in grade school when the Berlin Wall came down, and there was glasnost and were in middle school/high school when Clinton got elected to break the Republican decade ... people who could get jobs out of high school working for companies designing websites, etc. as opposed to the crappy retail / office jobs those who became adults earlier were more resigned to ...?

I think we were the first generation to be overeducated. ... but for the most part, college was a lot cheaper so we weren't as ridiculously in debt, as millenials, who, according to all the articles, believe they are the first overeducated generation.

yeah the best thing about being gen x was still getting a state school undergrad education for less than the cost of a compact car.

Yeah when I saw what my alma mater is charging these days I was truly shocked. I had a partial scholarship but tuition was so cheap my parents let me keep the scholarship checks as a reward.

1 yr tuition is now more than I paid for tuition plus room & board for 4 years ( 2 years in dorm, 2 years private housing). Where the fuck is all that "extra" money going????

yeah i mostly worked over the summers (valet, serving, etc) and made enough to cover most of tuition

I just looked up my tuition (UVA) and it was around $4500-$4800 for two semesters.

don't, stop, thinkin about tomooooroowwww ♫

The Coupland thing

Primary text

Yeah see while I am gen x I fucked around forever dipping in and out of school so I'm in the enviable position of still paying off millennial-level tuition debt. It's the best of both worlds, really.

1 yr tuition is now more than I paid for tuition plus room & board for 4 years ( 2 years in dorm, 2 years private housing). Where the fuck is all that "extra" money going????

Administration salaries and to make up funding that has been cut by states.

Healthcare and higher education graphs look very similar on the same late-90s to today x-axis in executive/admin cost increases.

coupland’s def of genx definitely skewed heavily into late babyboom, longing for spaceage culture, self-recognition of falsity of roots boomerism.

And then again, it's possible that our unique shared experiences go beyond "We are the freakies and this is our freakies tree"

Maybe. I think the fact that we are all ilx posters may be more significant when it comes to attitudes towards marketing and personal branding (especially since they do seem to be cutting across generational lines, the reason I posted in the first place). That said, I read Coupland's Generation X in Grade 8 and he remains one of my favourite authors so I may not be doing my case favours there.

Deja vu the song

I just had to do a "generational diversity" online lesson for work. Was not aware that there's now more millenials in the workforce then gen X (35% vs 33%). The examples of generational differences all focused on boomers vs millenials. I'm guessing it was mostly written by Gen Xers tho because it portrayed us as having some of the good qualities of all the other gens.

no one has good qualities.

especially not gen xers aka boomers-lite

gen xers are the only good coworkers to have because we are the only ones who understand we’re all shit coworkers

cf Office Space

I'm self-employed. I no longer have co-workers, only clients. I feel like we are the "customer service" generation.

that makes you like the youngins

My parents (born in 1943 and 1944) are VERY adamant about not being Boomers and not having been hippies. They identify as warbabies. My father thinks he was a Beatnik and my mother thinks she was, like, a boho folkie Joan Baez type. Whatever gets you through the night, as Bob Marley sang on Shaved Fish.

Me, born 1971: I think I ended up being exactly the right age for Pacman, Thriller, Duran Duran, Members Only. Also Little Creatures and maybe Green.

Not much else. I felt too young for some stuff (Residents), and too old for some other stuff (Nirvana). I went on lots of weird detours relative to my peers, and there were certainly things that I explored later and ended up liking in retrospect.

One way in which cultural thinking about "decades" sucks is that you often don't really know you're in them; they can only be understood in hindsight.

All that said 80s music formed me and it is still my bedrock.

the 90s tv/movie version of the 80s was so crazily inaccurate to me, but by 2005 the revision was the history. Its kinda like how by 1985 everyone in 1967 was hippie, or how 50s greasers were a dominant social group i guess.

it’s like by 2005 ppl acted like joy division and magazine and wire and foetus were what we ALL listened to, but man journey was huge.

My feeling is that there are certainly generational traits and difference but they are usually discussed in a pretty narrow way and *usually* mean a certain subset of middle class to upper middle class white people -- and ignore lots of those too. Like the 90s is the story of grunge and blah blah blah but is the real story me wearing my Beastie Boys Check Your Head ringer tee, or the other (much more numerous) kids at my school who turned Garth Brooks into the biggest act since the Beatles and still filling football stadiums to this day?

also I think that if you broke things down by race/socioeconomics etc I think you'd find many more commonalities than by generation. hanging out w/my sister's family, i'm struck by how much my nephews (14) have with my brother in law (46), like he complains about the rap they listen to (they do like Eazy E now though since the movie) but they share a lot, even culturally, and sports etc, and basically they all live in the same suburban world and I think they have more in common with each other than they do, for instance, a 14 year old Mexican kid their age living in L.A.

Like a lot of the stuff that is different is pretty superficial: fashion, haircuts, how skinny or not skinny their jeans are, music...but I think their worldview and values are in line and as they get older the superficial differences will fade too.

Are you saying that you and your family don’t have friends in low places?

Like YMP, my parents are pre-boomer (born a day apart in the same hospital in 1944) and were emphatically not hippies, as they did not go to college after graduation in 1962. They had 1950s childhoods. To them, hippies were collegy (both of my mother’s younger brothers went to college and both were kind of hippyish). My mother was a classy version of a hair-hopper and my dad was a jock who liked the blues. They met at Danceland when they were 17 and were pretty much scenesters but not beatniks. My mom loved Roy Orbison and Tina Turner, my dad Hank Williams and James Brown. Their last musical hurrah was seeing the Rolling Stones play to 200 people, and then they went onto the suburban conveyor belt and had two kids, yada yada...

Haha no my brother in law loves Garth

There was way more prominent Garth Brooks love at my high school than Nirvana/grunge, but maybe that changed in/after 1992? I was gone by then.

Definitely as many Skynyrd t-shirts as Depeche Mode t-shirts at my high school. As much love for NKOTB as OMD.

There really were multiple eightieses; different people could drift through that time in totally separate cultural universes with little awareness of one another.

I suspect that is true of all times and places - perhaps moreso now than ever.

I think there were maybe a dozen people at my high school (2000 students total) who had Depeche Mode tees. ... vs. the hundreds of Guns N Roses, Garth Brooks, and Metallica shirt wearers. Plenty of NKOTB, but I think the NKOTB shirt wearers were mostly freshman girls

hey 2000 students isn't very podunk!

My first entry in my long-dormant blog of random yearbook photos through the ages (I was very bored and into my scanner at the time) was my freshman hs yearbook 1989-1990 and the photos of the seniors illustrate a range of 80s to 90s transition. https://yearbookeditor.tumblr.com

for example https://yearbookeditor.tumblr.com/post/28058759438/four-female-seniors

hey 2000 students isn't very podunk!

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, October 22, 2019 11:39 AM (five minutes ago)

It was the only high school for the entire town. ... grades 9-12. ... except for the "continuation school" ... which is where the kids that got expelled for fighting and drugs got sent, along with the girls that had babbies.

But back to the t-shirts -- also a significant number of Iron Maiden and Misfits shirts, whether the wearers (mostly boys) were into those bands or were mostly about black t-shirts with skulls on them, idk, but really, the dominant graphic tee had the Raiders logo on it. Also black + skull

your school was five times bigger than mine

my state was probably five times bigger than yours, too!

over three times bigger, yes

My school was only high school for entire town too. Still is, tho the student body has more than doubled since I graduated. School is in new building too...with windows!
Sorry but I'm going to have to confiscate your podunk card.

y'all got some tiny states on yr side of the country!

def were still a good amount of metalhead burnouts in my hs

Sorry but I'm going to have to confiscate your podunk card.

I feel like I get podunk points for the fact that my hometown is only known for being where one specific food item is grown

and that all of the nearby towns also had their designated specific food item?

garlic vs. artichokes FITE

I don't think anyone would take away Castroville's podunk card ...

in terms of actual competition, it was garlic vs. lettuce

tho Salinas (lettuce) had two high schools

anyway it was a dumb place and I am glad I left

There really were multiple eightieses; different people could drift through that time in totally separate cultural universes with little awareness of one another.

This is the thing that really hit me maybe ten years ago when I first noticed that kids these days were wearing things that I remember actually owning or experiencing - seeing them combine clothing from groups who absolutely would never have hung out together or actively hated each other.

My high school (7-12 grades) had like 500 people total and were the really big school in the area. We had exactly one goth, maybe five skaters, and like a dozen metalheads total.

My feeling is that there are certainly generational traits and difference but they are usually discussed in a pretty narrow way and *usually* mean a certain subset of middle class to upper middle class white people -- and ignore lots of those too. Like the 90s is the story of grunge and blah blah blah but is the real story me wearing my Beastie Boys Check Your Head ringer tee, or the other (much more numerous) kids at my school who turned Garth Brooks into the biggest act since the Beatles and still filling football stadiums to this day?

also I think that if you broke things down by race/socioeconomics etc I think you'd find many more commonalities than by generation. hanging out w/my sister's family, i'm struck by how much my nephews (14) have with my brother in law (46), like he complains about the rap they listen to (they do like Eazy E now though since the movie) but they share a lot, even culturally, and sports etc, and basically they all live in the same suburban world and I think they have more in common with each other than they do, for instance, a 14 year old Mexican kid their age living in L.A.

Like a lot of the stuff that is different is pretty superficial: fashion, haircuts, how skinny or not skinny their jeans are, music...but I think their worldview and values are in line and as they get older the superficial differences will fade too.

OTM imo

whatever, millenial

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/gen-z-is-calling-gen-x-the-karen-generation

gen z aren't millennials

If I'm a boomer, they are millennials, case closed. Now get off my lawn!

ha at “ok edgelord”

i would find being called "karen" by a gen zer deeply funny so i'm in favor of it

im related to two boomer karen’s, this nameshamegame is obviously lame, get back in your lane shitstains.

for this Gen-Z-er, the name is permanently linked to the spoken-word bridge of "Steal My Sunshine"

or no wait i'm a millennial, i forgot again

Apostrphe

I know we been saying ok boomer but y’all can’t let Gen X get away with dumb shit either. They probably still hate gay people, are the generation where Karen’s exist, the ones who got mad about the Starbucks Xmas cup, and buy dumb shit like Hot Wheels edition Camaros lmao

— Edwin Mezantino (@mezzizle) November 6, 2019

I was going to point to Tunic (Song For Karen) as exhibit A in Gen X's embrace of Karens, only to learn that Kim Gordon is very much a Boomer.

Except the song is for Karen Carpenter.

http://static-cms.legacy.com/sites/default/files/styles/hero_detail/public/karen-carpenter-getty-hero_0.jpg

lol, suzy beat me to it

Lol, I'm aware of that

karen carpenter: famous to boomers, known to xers, unknown to millennials, mark of shame to zers

Fight this generation

ok imaginary generation

it's funny how all these descriptions are basically describing the same type of upper middle class white person at different ages hmmm

haha yeah this isn't a generational thing, it's a demographic thing

age is a demographic

age groups are demographics would be what i was meaning there

ok it's a non-age-specific demographic thing

lots of defensive boomers light in itt

ok zoomer

it's naht a zoomah

Lol, this whole Karen thing comes down to young people being unable to differentiate anyone over the age of 40 or describe them as anything other than old.

whatever KAREN

Go to the pub, TH.

ok zoomer

― pomenitul, Friday, November 15, 2019 10:45 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i wish i was this young

suzy i have been shanghaied into.... requirements which from which i hope to soon disentangle myself, don’t judge me

standard retort to a youngin trying to use "lol u old" as an insult: Some day you'll be old like me, but there'll never be a day where I'm as dumb as you.

I just want to state that I find the idea of allegedly woke young people calling me "Karen" so painfully on-brand with the baseline myopia and racism of humanity that I can't really do much more than sigh

lotsa ageism in this conversation
maligning the old for being their age isn't any more acceptable than maligning the young

look if you're gonna call me Karen, i'm gonna call you Caleb

Ok Brayden

like that's rude
i would never say that

this infighting is getting me down tbh

but I don't think it's "for being their age"; the generational signifier is shorthand for an objectionable perspective/attitude

deeply racist against a certain sino-tibetan language-speaking group resident near the thailand-myanmar border

a broad generational smear is an ageist smear by nature isn't it?

no offense but i'm not taking any of this at all seriously fwiw, that's the genx way

i was reading something in the ft a while back and it mentioned that intergenerational inequality (of the type "when my parents were my age they had x and y and i have a and b, i'll never have x and y") is actually felt more keenly by young people than contemporary inequality. i will never snipe at younger generations for their resentment of me, in 30 years time people will be thinking "fuck you you entitled millennial" and they will be right, because their lot will be even worse, and my generation has been almost as complacent as the ones that came before

honestly, young people have many more years of life ahead of them than I do, so, there's that. If they want to resent the fact that I (and my generation) had way less student loan debt than they do, they are welcome to it, but I can resent the fact that fewer of their peers are dying or dead.

Yeah sure but if they want to do so by calling me the name of the woman calling the cops on me, I reserve the right to throw some ‘bows

On December 7th, 2017, the subreddit /r/FuckYouKaren[1] was created, and has over 57,000 subscribers as of December 27th, 2018. The subreddit is devoted to mocking the character in jokes that characterize "Karen" as annoying.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karen#fn1

as in they secretly want to fuck Karen or ...?

lol a bunch of middle schoolers called me Karen repeatedly the other week. I stopped them from destroying school property and risking their safety by jumping off our shipping container onto our equipment which they were breaking. SUCH a buzzkill.

"That's school property and you can't be here. I'm gonna need you guys to get down from there and go home now."

"Okay, KAREN. Fine, KAREN. Whatever you say, KAREN."

I should have taken a pic and showed it to every principal in the district.

lol

it is, of course, not a coincidence that the symbol of ease and evil that everyone is okay using as a whipping post just happens to be a woman and the hate-it-because-i-can't-be-it unattainable alpha character is a guy named chad

There's a grim appeal to "well if you're gonna call me Karen, I'm gonna be the Karen-est Karen who ever Karen-ed" that I don't know I'd be able to successfully resist.

orbit it’s situations like that which are how you know you’re a grownup iirc. there is no way you can win. i was carrying an umbrella a couple of years ago, because it was raining, and a high schooler walked by me and smirked “nice umbrella” and immediately died laughing with his friend.

it was not a my little pony umbrella case you were wondering

i keep that one for special occasions

I'd be tempted to shout "nice pneumonia" at them

there is no way you can win.

otm. When two or more middle schoolers decide that some object or person is fit to be mocked, no power on earth can stop them from mocking it, whether or not the mockery makes sense to anyone else outside their tight little group. it is their version of using The Force.

tbf it's the only power they have

the funniest thing to do imo is to laugh along (the more uncomfortably the better) like you're in on the joke

the proper rejoinder is "When you are my age you will be one of two things: exactly like me or dead."

btw, NICE UMBRELLA KAREN

Chad isn’t the equivalent of Karen, it’s the harbinger of inchoate rage and destruction ‘Kyle.’

I thought the proper rejoinder was to shout SPINNING STAR KICK and then do your best Chun-Li impersonation

*this* karen's gonna go drink beer and get laid tonight; enjoy your videogames

i didn't think chad was the equivalent of karen, just making a point about gender presumptions

anyways, this karen is gonna enjoy videogames and get laid, you kids go drink beer

There's a grim appeal to "well if you're gonna call me Karen, I'm gonna be the Karen-est Karen who ever Karen-ed" that I don't know I'd be able to successfully resist.

― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, November 15, 2019 8:24 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

TOTALLY. I thanked them for leaving completely earnestly. I was like, welp I'm going to ride my motorcycle to the wine store and go home and do exactly what I want with no interference from anyone, which is get drunk and smoke cigarettes. But enjoy your mom telling you to do your homework.

I had to help one of them find a foothold because he couldn't get down from where they'd climbed to.

lol got em

i just want some affection

when you got it you it, karen.

i rarely wear my riding glasses without being in a doing-sportsy scene and costume, and at home i call them my “asshole dad” glasses, because that’s def a style, and not one i want on casual, (though sometimes i maybe can be an asshole who is also a dad).

So walking past a group of kids with my kid at his HS, one archly says “HEY NICE GLASSES SIR! MY DAD HAS THOSE!” and my 15 y/o glances to them, then ahead, and says sotto voce to me without looking “he must be a _real_ asshole then,” quality bonding moment.

I was like, welp I'm going to ride my motorcycle to the wine store and go home and do exactly what I want with no interference from anyone, which is get drunk and smoke cigarettes.

This the most Gen-X response ever. Love it. #realitybites

Is this Karen thing a goodfellas reference?

no

I've gotten called Karen, Cathy, Mary etc. because they are so similar to my name and people forget and I just respond to them anyway.

I do feel like 'Karens' have crossed several generations, though.

Yeah, it was a top 20 name from 1941 to 1971.

always makes me think of that “shes changing her name from kitty to karen” line in that cake song which seems pretty uber genx

i meant that the personality of a Karen crosses many generations.

The fucking list of accomplishments in this Kelly cartoon...

https://scontent.fewr1-5.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/72653164_10219100541960219_7641078189195788288_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_oc=AQlA6fRQ7rl2acZ1eN5S1tZqsKJe0lhrlZXeirn5_Rj_Rd6vIh5KzyLCWjWeUM0Gsvo&_nc_ht=scontent.fewr1-5.fna&oh=96d2f9a300e3fc18af3cbaaba8e5446b&oe=5E89311A

omg "Kennedy Assassination"

I am beside myself

"Space Shuttle Challenger" I can't breathe help

poll

the only thing in parenthese is skinny jeans?

"not starting the fire"

STILL NOT AT THE PUB

ah, I see now.

Some day you'll be old like me, but there'll never be a day where I'm as dumb as you.

"In the morning I shall be sober."

karen!

I LOVE YOU!!!!

The Voluptuous Horror of Being Called Karen

not a karen; the world

Rhonda?

accomplishing stuff is dumb. I just want to be shot out into space

- karen

was “bye Felicia” a thing before like 2 years ago? I didn’t even recognize what is was from until I had it explained to me. And I saw Friday like 20 times growing up. Were people “bye felicia-ing” each other in the 90s/00s? Sorry in advance.

I always put the bye felicia takeoff around the time of Vine.

If you ever owned a global hypercolour shirt then you are a gen Xer. There must be something crazy toxic in those because they seem to have been strangely resistant to being revived (also they were terrible).

yeah the bye felicia thing is def an internet-specific meme - it was not a thing in the 90s/00s

im pretty sure that’s british only, its right in the spelling

Nah that was briefly a thing in the US

🤔

it was a different time back then, we thought it was important for your clothes to tell other people how much you were sweating

it was spelled hypercolor. and it was an american company. it was huge for a few years in the cusp of the 80s and 90s. i had a t-shirt as a young kid

There are SHadOW ShiFteR shirts now.

it was a different time back then, we thought it was important for your clothes to tell other people how much you were sweating

https://i.imgur.com/cxWNJfS.jpg

I had a hyper colour Red Nose Day T-shirt. It stopped working (?) long before I stopped wearing it.

TS: Je suis Karen vs. We are all Karens now

This thread is much more fun than the “yo yo yo breakdancing ilxors in their thirties” one.

I’m much more chill at 40 than I was at 30

"If you look at the Gen X generational studies books that came out in the 90s, the tail end of Gen X was 1976 (maybe 1977). 1978 on were "Gen Y"""

I was born in 1976, and I always thought of Generation X as being ten years older than me, and American. They all had goatee beards and disliked working in an office. I like to think they were killed off by the dot.com boom, which made working in an office hip again. It pleases me to imagine fifty-something, sixty-something members of the Generation X race cycling around in the rain with Ocado delivery boxes on their backs. They had the opportunity to to work in an office and rejected it. Life in 2019 must be a paradise for them.

I think it's complicated by the fact that movies usually have actors who are older than the people they portray, so for example I have a mental image of Eric Stoltz as an archetypal Generation X person, but he was born in 1961, which makes him a member of the Blank Generation. Steve Buscemi was born in 1957, but he was always on the upper end of Generation X - he was Generation X's Yoda, its elder mentor figure.

Was David Lynch Generation X? He was born in 1946, during the baby boom, the same year as John Waters, and Oliver Stone, but he appealed to the Generation X market. Oliver Stone came across as someone who wanted to be Generation X but was not.

Steve Buscemi was 16 when Picasso died, which makes me wonder if the acid test is whether you coexisted with Pablo Picasso. I think the reason Generation X is overlooked today is that there are two Generation Xes - there's the media creation, which is overlooked because it is a dated relic of the 1990s, and the actual generation, who aren't really linked by anything. Also a lot of people in the media are of that generation, and from their point of view Generation X traits are "normal" and thus not worth writing about.

It pleases me to imagine fifty-something, sixty-something members of the Generation X race cycling around in the rain with Ocado delivery boxes on their backs. They had the opportunity to to work in an office and rejected it. Life in 2019 must be a paradise for them.


you seem like an asshole

bernie sanders is "silent generation" which nobody ever talks about maybe bc they're so silent

feel like there's been some interesting semantic drift on karen, which has gone from "white lady who will call the cops whenever she sees a black person" to "old person who will tell you to not litter". i'm very definitely the latter.

I am mostly conscious of the silent generation because my in-laws belong to it

One kind of demarcation is having come into pop consciousness during punk and its immediate aftermath. After ~1975 you may still nominally be gen x but will have had a different and arguably less vital set of formative cultural experiences.

Down the line that's the difference between being 11 and 16 when acid house is kicking off.

One kind of demarcation is having come into pop consciousness during punk and its immediate aftermath. After ~1975 you may still nominally be gen x but will have had a different and arguably less vital set of formative cultural experiences.

Down the line that's the difference between being 11 and 16 when acid house is kicking off.

― Noel Scott Emits (Noel Emits)

i'm going to guess you were born before 1975

when i was 16 i was listening to led zeppelin tapes and using a computer. i don't think what age i was when acid house kicked off made a lot of difference in my life, except insofar as acid house affected the demoscene.

...and it's not like i knew anyone who had an amiga so i never even saw "Jesus on E's"

But acid house / rave was driven by people who also would have been old enough to pick up on punk to some extent, more so than people who were 12 in 1987.

Not saying it's simply causal. But also it seems like if your first pop era starts after 1983 that's quite different to the period before.

People who lived in places where punk and acid house never “kicked off” don’t belong to any demographic

I always site Gen X people as born between 1961 (Douglas Coupland’s birth year) and 1979/80 (Thatcher/Reagan administrations begin).

But acid house / rave was driven by people who also would have been old enough to pick up on punk to some extent, more so than people who were 12 in 1987.

― Noel Scott Emits (Noel Emits)

I mean I grew up in suburban New Jersey. No, I didn't hear any punk rock, my parents wouldn't let me stay up late enough to watch Quincy. When I was 12 I was listening to "License to Ill" and "Raising Hell", if you want to argue my generation's cultural experiences are different and "arguably less vital" than yours be my guest. Nobody will listen to you, but given that we're both Generation X we're well used to that by now, aren't we?

I think of 1965-1975 as Strong-X, 1961-1964 and 1976-1980 as Weak-X, or transitional gens if you prefer. As a Strong-Xer I do notice stereotypical Millennial traits creeping in with that '76-'80 cohort, and I don't relate to them as much as I do the pre-'76ers as a rule.

i'm the Judean People's Front version of Gen X

Take it easy. I could have made it clearer but it should be obvious that I'm talking about a UK context of 70s punk (and the 80s pop fallout) and acid house as a pop phenom.

Yeah I could argue that the pop charts are less interesting in 1985 than in 1981, it's hardly a new claim. Don't take it personally - I was partly wondering why the 1976 guy above would set himself apart.

Please don't "U mad bro?" me, thanks.

...and it's not like i knew anyone who had an amiga so i never even saw "Jesus on E's"

...Second Reality?

(I didn't see Jesus on Es but I did grab the mod from aminet and then steal the breakbeat sample from it)

anyway generations are all very confusing but I resent this Karen thing without really knowing what it is or what it's a reference to, which I fully expect to be told is a very Karen thing to do, idk

xposts but aren't generational cultural touchstones always driven by people who were old enough to have picked up on the last generation's touchstones? I mean that time delay is kind of built in

I’ve encountered some older Gen X armchair punks who are extremely fucking reactionary. There’s a notorious Atlanta zine run by one of them that I pray to god gets washed away in a righteous Gen Z internet uprising sometime soon

basically white dudes who think their misogyny, homophobia, and racism means they’re sticking it to the establishment and thinking independently

Gen n: we have cultural touchstones you don’t ~understand~
Gen n+ 1: FUCK U, WE GET THEM, O BOY DO WE THEY SUCK AND EVEN U DONT GET THEM.

aren't generational cultural touchstones always driven by people who were old enough to have picked up on the last generation's touchstones? I mean that time delay is kind of built in

Well, exactly.

The point was simply that there's *one* difference (in the UK) between growing up 65-73, and after that.

Not a definer of an entire geberation and the suggestion that one is "arguably" better than the other was a little gentle retort to Ashley Pomeroy above. i.e. a joke.

yesterday a friends 14 year old daughter was telling me about karens (had never heard the term before).
in her world they are basically pushy mums who get their kids involved in every after school club etc.

Twenty-somethings I speak to all say that big Karen energy is wanting to speak to a manager, having highlights on a Rachel from Friends hairstyle variant they haven’t abandoned since the show was on broadcast, and calling other women ‘hunni’ on FB.

That, and she's an anti-vaxxer.

xp crut:
https://www.chunklet.com/
?

And in ref to the Gen-X subdivision -- this thread could serve as a demarcation line:

Here we post radio-slick, ultracompressed Modern Rock singles 1987-1990 w/ huge gated drums & lots of chorus! (youtube thread)

A few weeks ago I was arguing on fb w/a friend born in the mid-60s about when the Cure stopped being good in response to another friend who was born in the mid-60s earnestly trying to feel the love for the Disintegration album. Anyway, the latter friend just died a couple days ago.

xp not speaking for crut but I assumed he meant https://stompandstammer.com/

is there a non-US version of this generational warfare or

"...Second Reality?

(I didn't see Jesus on Es but I did grab the mod from aminet and then steal the breakbeat sample from it)

― a passing spacecadet"

of course, second reality rocked my world, fucking purple motion d00d

"basically white dudes who think their misogyny, homophobia, and racism means they’re sticking it to the establishment and thinking independently

― esempio (crüt)"

look i grew up on, like, fucking answer me! and bill hicks, i'm not going to say gen x is blameless. some of us have grown and learned since that time and some of us, well, still listen to whatever the fuck jim goad is saying these days.

"is there a non-US version of this generational warfare or

― deems of internment (darraghmac)"

it probably involves acid house deems?

sarahell - I know the band chunklet but am not familiar with the zine - I’m talking about st0mp and st4mm3r

chunklet is generally better known in gen-x circles tbh

Wow, I'd never even heard of that site (stomp etc.) before today. I read three articles (Charlie's Angels movie review, Taylor Swift album review, Orwells album review) quickly and will never be back.

ive never heard of it either and went to it after unpersons ref to see how anything current could sound so boring. I landed on a scots and beck splash page and the anachronistic whiplash severed my head from my body

Josefa at 10:41 16 Nov 19

I think of 1965-1975 as Strong-X, 1961-1964 and 1976-1980 as Weak-X, or transitional gens if you prefer. As a Strong-Xer I do notice stereotypical Millennial traits creeping in with that '76-'80 cohort, and I don't relate to them as much as I do the pre-'76ers as a rule.

eh I mean this just points out the silliness of this, I was born in 74 and definitely relate a hell of a lot more to my friends from HS and my own sister who were born in 76 than I do someone born in 65

I think there are mini generations, basically ppl that were like 2/3 years older than you in HS and to ppl that were 2/3 years younger

Is there any way to avoid repeating arguments about what years generations start and stop?

not that I know of

No

ILX is pretty much repeat the same argument over and over again on most topics.

I mean everybody in the world does that

even truthbombs are long forgotten when the Thread that gave them birth comes again

aw nice gonna go read wheel of time again now

anyway

strong gen x 76 urban wite guy has more or less in common with a weak gen x 78 urban black guy than a strong gen x 76 rural wite chick?

i just need to know before i finalise this card game im developing, thx

misread that as "unban"

if we are gonna just repeat the same arguments over and over again, we could always go back to who should be unbanned or why not

Do we ban Strong X or Weak X?

Generation X began on the day Malcolm X was assassinated and ended on the day Los Angekes by X was released.

every gen xer remembers where they were when they heard about the film jfk

I am my own generation and it is better than yours ✌︎('ω'✌︎ )

i always thought stomp and stammer guy was a youngish boomer but i guess he could be gen x? when i was like 13 or 14 i had an under-the-table part time job at the b00k n00k on buf0rd h1ghw4y, where he was like the music section guy....but my sense of how old "old" people were was probably pretty distorted

sheesh you really dont want them hunting u down for that back tax eh

xp i actually don't know for sure whether he's an old gen xer or a young boomer but i'm guessing he was born sometime in the 60s

xpost hahahahahaha

how gen x is this? i saw the chunklet guy front an mc5 cover band halloween night. i wore earplugs.

idk how "gen x" that is, but it does remind me of when we repeatedly argued about "what and who is a hipster"

RIP Carles

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoH8wx7VQAAwZZ5?format=jpg&name=4096x4096 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoH8x7wVQAEDDUv?format=jpg&name=large

Better than Girls of Grunge I guess

eXcite, eXpose and eXhilerate!