Gen X: The Generation That Never Existed

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.