This essay would resonate with me more if presented in a distressed typewriter font with some ironically appropriated 50s clip art!
I sometimes find the emphasis on Kurt Cobain a little myopic since, honestly, more of my peers listened to Madonna than Nirvana. Listening to indie rock wasn't a rejection, that I could recall, of my parents and authority figures, but of my Color Me Badd loving classmates.
I don't personally have any beefs with the Millennials -- I work with three and they're all smart, talented and generally optimistic people. They don't speak in lolcat or mystify me with their fast adoption of technology. (I should say I think it's unfair to suggest Gen Xers aren't technology adopters like Millennials, since we were often accused of being too technophilic in the 90s. Oh no, we like computers and video games and the internet. WHERE IS THE HUMAN TOUCH? To recast Xers as the clueless parents who can't make the VCR stop blinking 12:00 is lazy and inaccurate.)
Boomers, though... sheesh. They weren't necessarily parents to Xers (even if they technically were) so much as cruel older brothers. When they weren't stomping around yelling about how great they are, they'd be slapping you in the face with your own hand and demanding you stop hitting yourself. Then they'd take your lunch money, use it to buy Twinkies, tell you they're going to share it, then shout "Psyche!" and force you to watch them eat both cakes.
I know I rant about them all the time, but they really need to... gah. I mean, look at Forrest Gump. That movie speaks the Boomer mythos louder than anything else I've ever seen: We changed the world just by EXISTING, man! Didn't fight? Didn't march? Didn't speak up? Didn't so much as think a progressive thought? Bravo anyway, Boomers.
The generation before them (and the one before that) did a pretty good job of fucking things up, too, though, so I shouldn't forget that. But they weren't trying to make you think they were cleaning up the world while taking a massive dump on it. They were just ignorant assholes.
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Date: 2011-10-20 04:10 am (UTC)I sometimes find the emphasis on Kurt Cobain a little myopic since, honestly, more of my peers listened to Madonna than Nirvana. Listening to indie rock wasn't a rejection, that I could recall, of my parents and authority figures, but of my Color Me Badd loving classmates.
I don't personally have any beefs with the Millennials -- I work with three and they're all smart, talented and generally optimistic people. They don't speak in lolcat or mystify me with their fast adoption of technology. (I should say I think it's unfair to suggest Gen Xers aren't technology adopters like Millennials, since we were often accused of being too technophilic in the 90s. Oh no, we like computers and video games and the internet. WHERE IS THE HUMAN TOUCH? To recast Xers as the clueless parents who can't make the VCR stop blinking 12:00 is lazy and inaccurate.)
Boomers, though... sheesh. They weren't necessarily parents to Xers (even if they technically were) so much as cruel older brothers. When they weren't stomping around yelling about how great they are, they'd be slapping you in the face with your own hand and demanding you stop hitting yourself. Then they'd take your lunch money, use it to buy Twinkies, tell you they're going to share it, then shout "Psyche!" and force you to watch them eat both cakes.
I know I rant about them all the time, but they really need to... gah. I mean, look at Forrest Gump. That movie speaks the Boomer mythos louder than anything else I've ever seen: We changed the world just by EXISTING, man! Didn't fight? Didn't march? Didn't speak up? Didn't so much as think a progressive thought? Bravo anyway, Boomers.
The generation before them (and the one before that) did a pretty good job of fucking things up, too, though, so I shouldn't forget that. But they weren't trying to make you think they were cleaning up the world while taking a massive dump on it. They were just ignorant assholes.