Talkin' 'bout my generation

[sabotabby]

Don't tell me I'm not X. I'm on the borderline between X and Y, but my mindset is pure X.

This rant is why.

Generation X is beyond all that bullshit now. It quit smoking and doing coke a long time ago. It has blood pressure issues and is heavier than it would like to be. It might still take some ecstasy, if it knew where to get some. But probably not. Generation X has to be up really early tomorrow morning.

Generation X is tired.

...

Generation X is used to disappointments. Generation X knows you didn’t even read the whole thing. It doesn’t want or expect your reblogs; it picked the wrong platform.

Generation X should have posted this to LiveJournal.

So I'm reblogging it on my LiveJournal. Hat tip to symbioid.

Comments

[misfratz.livejournal.com]

Going to join the critics, sorry. I think the whole 'generational' thing is not only false but classist. I was born in 1978, so I do vaguely remember some of the cultural references, though Nirvana were already old when you and I were teenagers, surely? But then, I didn't finish school until 1997, so I don't identify with the 'graduated university in the 90s when there were no jobs' thing- though there were few jobs, there were some, just shit ones and nothing permanent, and that's still the case now except for the privilieged few (guy I am 'seeing' is 8 years older, he's still on temporary contracts and looking for new jobs every 6 months or so at nearly 40, so actually that's true for genX classic definition too- they're not all now in work permanently, though I suppose America/Canada might be different in that respect). There hasn't really been a period of full employment in the UK since the 70s anyway, and since the 80s when thatcher fucked everything over, there have been no permanent jobs. So of course that's not new, but I don't think 20-year-olds are saying it is, they're just saying 'how fucking dare you call us slackers for not getting jobs when THERE AREN'T ANY?' Which is what my 'generation' should have been doing too, instead of being ok with it. Anyway, also the thing about GenX now having kids: well, if I am genX, I am young genX, and I've had a kid for 10 years now. So, this is the classist bit: poor people/working class people/underclass people have children in their late teens or early 20s. This is rational based on differential life expectancy and the increased health problems imposed on poor people by inequality, however much 'the state' might try to make out that it's a 'lifestyle choice'. So really, I can't identify with genX people who are just now having babies and going 'oh actually this is quite hard work' when I was doing that at 22 and they were all glowering at me because my toddler interrupted their listening to their ipod on the bus, or whatever. We didn't own a house then, either, and most poor people don't own houses or have secure jobs when they have kids. I really wish people who do this generational stuff, even though it's inevitably going to be cliched wank, would realise that actually not everyone lives the perfect linear school->university->job->marriage->mortgage->kids->retirement pattern of the upper middle classes. But mainly I'm just like 'eh' because how am I supposed to identify with any of this shit when none of it is about my life at all.

[sabotabby]

Well, any sort of broad generational sweeps are going to be classist (and racist and biased based on geography) because of the WEIRD factor.

Most folks I know my age are still not in permanent permanent jobs. Like the job that my mom has, and everyone of her generation expected and mostly got, and the job that I have. Even the people I know who get paid well are in contracts for one year or two years.