Gen X: The Generation That Never Existed

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