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

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

I almost reposted it myself, if only to relish that last line.

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this guy’s definitely angry at the right people. Damn those whiny Gen Yers and their silly desire for opportunity and justice.

I get why you’d identify with some parts of this rant, and rightly so, but there’s some messed up stuff in there...

[sabotabby]

That last line kills me.

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

I like that article! and if anyone's wondering, Idon't identify as either X or Y (or millennials, whatever). I'm also on the border between these.

[sabotabby]

I think it's less aimed at Y and more aimed at whatever came after. Millennials? Those guys. At any rate, it's entirely counterproductive to blame them—or even to blame the Boomers—but the rant is still quite cathartic.

[sabotabby]

I was born in '79. Coupland, who coined the term (I feel old—you know he's designing a line for Roots now?), set the cut-off at '80, but most media seems to put it earlier. At any rate, he was writing about people in their 20s when I was in my teens, but that's the generation I identify with.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

:)

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia seems to put it at '81-'82. I was born in '67, pretty clearly in Gen X.

And, yeah, LJ.

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

I was born the year after you! I just don't have the ennui and didn't identify with most of the media of my age group. I think I've seen end dates of 79-83 in different Gen X definitions.

LOL, I don't even know what the hell Roots is. I have always felt old before my time. Or just out of step. Maybe it's because my parents were born "before the boom" or the media thing.

I think it's fine to identify with whomever works best for you! Or not at all. I see those as somewhat arbitrary, although maybe more people feel togetherness than I do.

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

Y and Millennials are the same thing—roughly ’80s through ’90s. Generation Z is just children, high schoolers at the oldest, so the references to entitlement, graduating during a recession, and shitty jobs are aimed at Gen Y, my generation. It just bothered me because the assumptions behind that blame are so conservative.

[sabotabby]

Roots is a Canadian chain store. How do I describe it? It's such a weird phenomenon that I mostly identify with Jewish girls in the suburbs. When I was growing up, they sold sweatpants and sweatshirts with beavers on them that were more expensive than regular sweatpants and sweatshirts. Said suburban Jewish girls wore them to school (I have a strong opinion about wearing sweatpants out of the house unless one is headed for some form of exercise).

In more recent years, they have branched out into more acceptable outerwear that I kind of like, although it is still very Canadian and outdoorsy looking. I liked Coupland's line enough that I actually tried on one of his dresses, but the fabric was quite shit for what they were charging.

Hardly anyone would consider these clothes cool and trendy.

Generationally, I identify with curmudgeonly geezers, people roughly my age who act like curmudgeonly geezers, and teenagers. Pretty much everyone else can go fuck themselves.

[sabotabby]

Well, I listen to opera and Brecht/Weill cabaret songs. I didn't get it from my parents, either.

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

Absolutely, that’s very fair! That is when the ire is directed at society for taking so long to give a shit. It’s the attacks on the younger generation that bother me, since that’s not their fault, and people end up making points that amount to “I had(/have) to eat shit too, so if you say people shouldn’t have to eat shit, it’s just because you have an entitlement complex. Blah blah obligatory line about everyone getting a trophy because god forbid everyone should feel like they have value.” Which is pretty conservative if you ask me.

[sabotabby]

I've heard some but not all. I need to download the entire thing because that's about as up my alley as you can get.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I like the sound of those - Brecht/thingy/whatsit songs. May I have some nice links?

[lienne.livejournal.com]

<3

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

It is all completely alien to me because I haven't noticed the last 11 years passing due to traumatic shit, and have been on benefits most of my life anyway, never had a chance of a job or a house...but I have benefitted massively from decent(ish) welfare and the NHS.

I have found it all quite bewildering, the blame-tossing between generations. I always thought the people to blame were those of any generation who were into shit like jobs and home-ownership rather than a nice society with short working hours and lovely co-operatives and shared land, anyway.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I don't seem to have a generation at all - I was born in 1975. So I'm not x, but surely not Y ? Maybe I am non-existent because I have failed to have babies.

[sabotabby]

You were also born old, weren't you?

[sabotabby]

You are X like me. Social programs soften the blow, but don't do away with all of the ways in which one generation passes on its mistakes to the next.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

when I was fifteen in England with my mother some guy wouldn't give me a young-folks' discount on going up the tiny impossible tower stairs of this ancient little church because the cutoff age was sixteen and he thought I was twenty-two.

that's a yes.

[sabotabby]

ILU

[lienne.livejournal.com]

I was like "what are you"

Mom laughed

I think he caved eventually

XD

she, on the other hand, grew up young; she got carded at an R-rated movie once, when she was 42, because the guy thought she was a teenager. I was like "Did he not see the wrinkles?"

but that is just how unbelievably adorable my mother was.

[sabotabby]

Your mom sounds like the greatest ever.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

that is because she was.