Gen X: The Generation That Never Existed

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