Gen X: The Generation That Never Existed

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

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!