The trend I find hilarious is when people come into these threads and start yelling at people about how wrong they are to generalize a generation, etc. Frankly, I can’t imagine why people feel the need to defend others over this, it’s weird–and I imagine that none of them complained when people complained about Millenials.
Yeah. We did. And we used the same argument. It’s stupid to generalize a generation. However, I can point out the mockery of “millennials” was lazy and juvenile as the prejudice was aimed at anyone younger than the speaker without care for the facts, and the antics by “millennials” that garnered derision were by far the minority. Whereas the boomers are by majority conservative and guilty of failing to understand modern living and the changing times. Because racism, conformity, and getting a good paying job out of high school were facts of life for most of them.
I recently decided it’s unfair to judge them for how well they’re handling change, when they’ve gone through the most change in history. My parents grew up in the mud and died on the Internet.
Not really, though, the Boomers were the generation OF change. They went from giant radios that ran on vaccuum tubes to portable transistor radios and people walking on the moon, all within the period of roughly 10 years. They are the generation that saw plastics replace other products. They are one the generations to see the Internet come into being.
Boomers were primed for change from birth and only showed a distaste for it once they became middle aged.
Sadly, my own parents had no understanding that the world had changed between 1975 and when I graduated in the 1990s. They really believed that everything was exactly the same and all I needed was to work really hard at a part time job for a while. In reality, it took me 20 years to get even an approximation of the middle class, but I don’t really consider myself middle class.
Took me a solid 25 to make it to middle class. Got one of those expensive degrees for an industry with “high average pay”, however they don’t tell you you’re working for peanuts until you make it. Of course, 9/11 and all the economic downturns/recessions didn’t help.
Just looked it up on Wikipedia. He’s not really a boomer, neither a Gen X. He’s in that transitional few years between generations. In any case, you can make a good argument that he is a baby boomer, depending on where the cutoff dates are.
So, basically the whole reason everyone hates boomers is just because of ronald reagan, right? Like, that’s pretty much it? That seems like it would be the common denominator. Which is weird, because, while the older portion of that generation seems to have a maybe majority which voted for reagan, the last 2 years of that generation wasn’t even allowed to vote in the first reagen election. The younger voters voted for carter, the middle of the generation was split, and then the older portion of the generation, which seems to make up a larger portion of the voters in said generation, voted for reagan, pretty standard stuff. The real weird thing is in the next election, where basically every age range voted for his re-election, which is strange and something I don’t really understand. It even had a higher percentage of young voters, compared to the previous election. Did everyone just hate mondale or what’s up with that?
Which is all to say, I dunno. As a zoomer, I’m kind of just waiting until all the millenials die, because they’re now getting up into their 30’s, and I want to stop hearing about radiohead and all these dumbass musical artists. and hearing all these napoleon dynamite references, and I think superbad references, wouldn’t know haven’t seen it. I dunno, me? I hate the millennials for uhhhh. microplastics. and mark zuckerberg. and also Ipad parenting. and uhhhhhhh. ooh, I have a good one. I hate millennials for blaming everyone in an age cohort for the faults of a system which we know to be very centralized in it’s power, when in reality they should just be blaming that system and the environments that cultivated those attitudes, and they should realistically just be blaming all of the things they mean to actually blame instead of just blaming a bunch of random old people. That’s what I hate specifically millennials as an age cohort for. That seems like an incredibly specific thing, and not something that you could maybe blow up to be a general human tendency, yup, that seems fair.
Hating on old people is some boomer shit bro, what do you think is gonna happen in 20 years when you’re all 50 year old freaks, and I’m probably dead?
Ronald Reagan campaigned, like Trump, on hate and discrimination. Reagan SWEPT the electoral college on his first election and was voted in by every Boomer and every surviving member of the Golden and Silent generations. Reagan destroyed this country and we’ve never recovered from it.
In the end, Reagan was just the sign of bigger problems going on, and is a very good exemplar for that time period.
Also, the whole “I’m Gen Z and hate Millenial stuff” sounds as fake as you can possibly get.
Also, the whole “I’m Gen Z and hate Millennial stuff” sounds as fake as you can possibly get.
that’s cause it was. I am a zoomer, but I just think millennials hating all the boomers just sounds like a bunch of people who hate their parents or grandparents or whatever. I don’t actually give a shit about millennials. I do hate the constant pop culture references to a cultural collective which I was doomed to not be a part of, as I had been born after it had almost finished dissolving, but that’s mostly just an annoying thing, and I don’t really attribute that specifically to millennials but kind of a broader cultural fuckery.
I’m bitter because I’m a child of the 2010’s and that decade was fucking rough for like, shit that was good. I was in my first year of middle school when fnaf came out. The transformers movies and twilight franchise were formative media for me, and not like, things that I was invested in as a youth culture. Which is maybe what I think was happening for millennials, I don’t really know, that might be kind of an inbetween era of media, too young for millenials, too old for zoomers. The millennials had pokemon and digimon, I had like, sillybandz and those weird bracelets that everyone was like, this shit is a holographic bracelet that makes you stronger and even at the age of 10 or whatever I was like that shit is fake as fuck man.
I was just trying to make a point about how, eventually, we will all be old. Well, most of us, and by most of us I mean some of us, I dunno if like half of gen alpha is gonna make it to old age, at the rate we’re headed.
Also side note but like, millennials were right at the very tail age range of reagan, right? so it’s just sort of like, he was the president when all the millennials were just like toddlers and babies, basically. So I doubly kind of don’t understand the hate, right, in terms of like. I get it historically, he was a bad president, dissolved all the mental asylums which everyone knows they sucked but then he didn’t replace it with anything, dissolved all the social programs and whatever, and then you look at the police recruitment before and after him and it sucks omega hard yadda yadda. But that’s all like, stuff that happened for millennials as very young kids. did the 90’s and early 2000’s suck that much, for all the millennials?
Because I’m assuming that this is kind of like firsthand motivation for everyone, and not just purely historical bitterness, since I see historical bitterness as kind of more disconnected, and dispassionate, capable of like, step back analysis, which maybe pins the blame on reagan as more of like, he was the slammer in pogs. like in pogs how you have the slammer that slams the pogs and then they flip. that’s a millennial thing, right? I dunno, I just don’t understand it. It’s sort of like. I dunno, hating ronald mcdonald reagan and then kind of by extension the boomers is sort of like hating the wind, or something. I understand being bitter about it since all the job prospects are gone and everyone’s just working minimum wage garbage labor and nobody has any long term future plans and rent prices are horrible and where I live at least all my friends can deal with that by legal weed, but it’s sort of like, I dunno, blaming that on some old freaks is just sort of the same to me as blaming it on like. the old freaks that preceded them. blaming it on grug for inventing fire, which certainly, a lot of people will do.
I think you misinterpret. Everyone has always hated the boomers. The Silent and Golden generations called them the “Me Generation” because they were thought to be horrifically selfish people. Gen Xers (I’m transitional between Gen X and Millenial) had to suffer their intolerance and lack of awareness that the world had changed since they were in high school. My own parents worked part time at Sears making minimum wage and were able to afford an apartment with roommates and all of their college tuition and expenses. The very week I graduated high school, my parents demandeed that I pay rent, even though they had literally done nothing to help me prepare for anything more than just a minimum wage job in the suburbs–that’s the sort of people they were–they really believed that nothing had changed since 1975. Then Baby Boomers began to constantly insult and demean Millenials–for not having cars and houses, fewer children, and obviously avocado toast somehow without understanding that Boomers are the cause of all of this.
So yes, you’re a Zoomer and are lucky that Boomers for you will always be grandparent types. The rest of us suffered their generational narcissism.
In regards to your comment on aging, I fully agree. You can age without getting old. Being old is a mindset more than anything.
I always thought that like every generation since we invented generations was labelled the “Me Generation”, except for Gen Xers, because nobody really even bothered to ever even name them, which is something I kind of find more interesting than the whole boomer-millennial hate boner, but nobody’s ever willing to talk about. but also
So yes, you’re a Zoomer and are lucky that Boomers for you will always be grandparent types. The rest of us suffered their generational narcissism.
I mean I have grandparents that were extremely shitty to my parents, you know, you can see how that has damaged a person, as their kid, but I also have another set of grandparents that are kind of chill and are. you know, I mean, they’re old still, grandpa’s maybe a little too proud that he’s not racist, but then I kind of get that, when like everyone his age is also pretty extremely racist. Actually I just talked myself kind of into hating old people again because a shit ton of them are super omega racist, even relative to like the normal liberal baseline, which is a really low bar to have somehow passed underneath. it’s like if you beat a game of limbo by flying to austrailia.
When I graduated high school, one of the promises I made to myself is that I wouldn’t let myself get out of touch with reality. Working at a large university leading teams of undergrads has really helped me to hold on to that goal.
As I mentioned before, you can age without getting old. That, for me, is the goal. I have brothers who are literally millenials (like right on the edge of 1980) and can’t stop complaining about millenials and becomes offended if you point out that he is one. This same brother wouldn’t watch cartoons as a 10 year old because, according to him, cartoons are for children. He was born old and lacks the ability to see that he’s making the same complaints that people made about him.
Hey maybe a bit close minded view there? I’m a millenial and I cheer for gen z (extinction rebellion, FFF) all the time. You have all the right to hate those who don’t see the multitude of extreme problems they left for you. I’m antinatalist, vegan and try to reduce, reuse, recycle. Degrowth all the way. Use my bike where I can. My car is barely moving now and I need to get rid of it. I listen to a lot of music from gen z artists. Since I’ve gone vegan my whole body is energized to the max and I’ll fight the cleptocracy on social networks where I can. I detest Zucks recent endeavours as a bull fharmer. Hang in there. We got your backs.
I wasn’t really directing anything at you, I was just sort of like, hating the world and shit, and specifically hating that subset of people that hate the boomers for boomering, because I see it as kind of just like. whining and bitching, kind of. like an unproductive thing. and then on social media, it tends to turn from potentially being like a therapeutic thing, right, where everyone is able to vent about how much things suck, and maybe come to a conclusion collectively about how to change it. and it changes from that into a kind of combination of a toxic echo chamber, where things get ramped up and everyone’s attention gets captured and directed towards some absolute nonsense, and also simultaneously you get some blowhard boomer who comes in and is like “what you say fuck me for fuck you guys” and then it turns into a pissing match where everyone tries to roast each other. I dunno I should probably not be posting when I’m hypercaffinated because it just ends up being me venting paragraphs at nobody in particular and doing the same shit I’m bitching at other people for doing.
I’m also like, shit man, I’m not sure you should have my generation’s backs. they’re just a bunch of dudes, I dunno. I’ve seen less victims of lead poisoning and horrible corporate propaganda for sure, compared to old people, they are more willing to be like. real and not horrible irony poisoned goblins, ironically. but I’ve also just seen a lot of chumps who are into like, basically white supremacist memes. I dunno the actual split on that though, it’s kind of hard to tell, I have some paragraph about that I could chunk up again for you.
It’s also fucking weird how I’m legally capable of drinking alcohol, right, but then some of my generation is apparently in like elementary school watching skibidi toilet and getting fucked up because the internet sucks now but the internet is also basically their parents since their parents are probably both at work full time and teachers are not on top of it. I’m like, those are just the kids bro, that’s gen alpha, “the culture” that doesn’t exist anymore is also just moving too fast for anyone to keep up with, the changes are too rapid, and you can’t really keep track of them with generational cohorts anymore, shit doesn’t work.
Crazy that you’re the only person I’ve found in the thread that realizes this. Generational theory largely accepts that the concept of monolithic generations is reductive. Yes, people born in and around the same time can have shared cultural experiences, but the idea that those are what purely shape you ideologically or that you behave as a component of a monolith are ludicrous. And then there’s subgenerations, microgenerations, etc. Just look at the sociological research of Karl Mannheim for a very complex discussion on the topic.
Generalizing is fine and a useful tool in certain situations. In others, it’s not, and can in fact be very harmful. It’s also sometimes good to explain why you support one versus the other in a particular scenario. Y’know…because that’s how conversations work.
My mother is pre-Boomer (born soon after the U.S. entered the war) and has been incredibly progressive her entire life. She has never voted for a Republican. She marched for civil rights. She wanted me to know that women and men are equal and that color and religion and ethnicity should not make you dislike someone. She taught me about sex (appropriately) when I asked about it at 3 or 4 years old rather than shielding me from it. My brother and I both have (had in my case, but that’s another story) gay best friends who were also best man at both of our weddings. She always welcomed them even though my brother and his friend became friends in the mid-1980s. I remember asking my mother what she would do if I was gay and she said she would love me no matter what I was. I don’t specifically know her politics, but my dad, born even earlier (1931) was mostly the same way. He definitely had his prejudices- although he would deny it- and he was a lot more sexist than he thought he was, but he was also an outspoken socialist until the dementia got too bad for him to be outspoken about it. One of the last things I was able to tell him before he was too far gone to understand was that Bernie was running for president.
I have certainly had a lot of issues with Boomers and people older than them, but it is far from universal, but I am really proud of my parents for always being progressive.
Again, my father was a socialist. He wrote a his dissertation on Shaw and the socialist aspects of one of his plays. He was British and said he was never more proud of his homeland then when he helped it usher in the National Health Service with his vote. When I moved here to Terre Haute, Indiana, he made sure to get me to take him to the Eugene V. Debs museum because of how much he admired debs. How does that make him an 80s liberal? Do please explain.
Again, my father was a socialist. He wrote a his dissertation on Shaw and the socialist aspects of one of his plays. He was British and said he was never more proud of his homeland then when he helped it usher in the National Health Service with his vote. When I moved here to Terre Haute, Indiana, he made sure to get me to take him to the Eugene V. Debs museum because of how much he admired debs. How does that make him an 80s liberal? Do please explain.
I was speaking of the word used as an identifier/label, ‘progressive’, vs ‘liberal’, and not the content of what was being said, at all. No disrespect was meant towards the comment, just a tongue-and-cheeck attempt at discussing the labels. As I mentioned before, concerning the content of your comment …
(BTW, your comment was a good read.)
When it comes to my comment discussing labels, today’s ‘liberal’ is considered a ‘centrist’ by today’s younger generations (which pisses me off to no end, but that’s another discussion for another time), and what they think of as liberal they call progressive, hence my comment.
And for the record (not trying to measure dicks here, but only because you quoted your dads history) I’m a Gen-Xer who was born/raised in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles in the 70’s/80’s, a perverbial “Valley Dude”, and lived ‘in the capital of Liberalism’ the vast majority of my life. Liberalism of that day is not what Progressivism is today. I feel that I could be considered a ‘subject expert’ in a court case when it came to Liberals and Liberalism of that time.
In what world is this kind of verbal policing useful?
No need to be hostile.
Concerning your question, at the very least, my world. But I suspect most people can recognize a conversation comment about how different generations see things and identify them, for its own sake. You know, Lemmy is about conversations about subjects.
It turns out that the media jumped all over things like Hippies and anti-war protests. In reality, the average person was just as conservative then as they were 10 - 20 years ago.
You have 4 people, 3 liberals and 1 conservative, graduating from high school at 18, 75% are liberal. When they are in their late 30s, one of the liberals dies, so 66% are liberals. Then at age 50 another liberal dies, so the group is 50% liberal. One year after retirement (65) the last liberal dies and now the entire cohort is conservative. Without looking at the size of the population, one would think that the group of 4 slowly became more conservative over time.
Death, not persuasion, causes the political leaning of the population to shift as they get older. It is the very concerns of those that are liberal which also lead to their earlier deaths. If you are less likely to die from something that can be fixed with politics, you are more likely to be conservative and not want to rock the boat.
They got more conservative as they got older. All those hippie kids who protested Vietnam and experimented with drugs and sex ended up voting for Reagan.
People seem to have this view that everyone in the '60s was a hippie but that’s just not true. Time Magazine put the number around 300,000. In a country of 200 million, that’s only 0.15% of the population. They were a counterculture not mainstream culture. The vast majority of kids did not become hippies, and many actively hated the hippies.
Uh huh. Here’s some historical views of the ‘yoot’.
“[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances… They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.” Rhetoric, Aristotle - 4th Century BC
“The beardless youth… does not foresee what is useful, squandering his money.” Horace - 1st Century BC
Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt. Book III of Odes, Horace - circa 20 BC
In all things I yearn for the past. Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased. I find that even among the splendid pieces of furniture built by our master cabinetmakers, those in the old forms are the most pleasing. And as for writing letters, surviving scraps from the past reveal how superb the phrasing used to be. The ordinary spoken language has also steadily coarsened. People used to say “raise the carriage shafts” or “trim the lamp wick,” but people today say “raise it” or “trim it.” When they should say, “Let the men of the palace staff stand forth!” they say, “Torches! Let’s have some light!” Instead of calling the place where the lectures on the Sutra of the Golden Light are delivered before the emperor “the Hall of the Imperial Lecture,” they shorten it to “the Lecture Hall,” a deplorable corruption, an old gentleman complained. Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), Yoshida Kenkō - 1330 - 1332
Youth were never more sawcie, yea never more savagely saucie . . . the ancient are scorned, the honourable are contemned, the magistrate is not dreaded. The Wise-Man’s Forecast against the Evill Time, Thomas Barnes - 1624
… I find by sad Experience how the Towns and Streets are filled with lewd wicked Children, and many Children as they have played about the Streets have been heard to curse and swear and call one another Nick-names, and it would grieve ones Heart to hear what bawdy and filthy Communications proceeds from the Mouths of such… A Little Book for Children and Youth, Robert Russel - 1695
“Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt…” Letter in Town and Country magazine republished in Paris Fashion: A Cultural History - 1771
The total neglect of this art [speaking] has been productive of the worst consequences…in the conduct of all affairs ecclesiastical and civil, in church, in parliament, courts of justice…the wretched state of elocution is apparent to persons of any discernment and taste… if something is not done to stop this growing evil …English is likely to become a mere jargon, which every one may pronounce as he pleases. A General Dictionary of the English Language, Thomas Sheridan - 1780
The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison? Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, Reverend Enos Hitchcock - 1790
We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced (we believe for the first time) at the English court on Friday last … it is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compressor on the bodies in their dance, to see that it is indeed far removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is attempted to be forced on the respectable classes of society by the civil examples of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion. The Times of London - Summer, 1816
…a fearful multitude of untutored savages… [boys] with dogs at their heels and other evidence of dissolute habits…[girls who] drive coal-carts, ride astride upon horses, drink, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody…the morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Speech to the House of Commons - February 28, 1843
… see the simpering little beau of ten gallanting home the little coquette of eight, each so full of self-conceit and admiration of their own dear self, as to have but little to spare for any one else… and confess that the sight is both ridiculous and distressing… the sweet simplicity and artlessness of childhood, which renders a true child so interesting, are gone (like the bloom of the peach rudely nipped off) never to return. “Children And Children’s Parties”, published in The Mothers’ Journal and Family Visitant, S.B.S. - 1853
Household luxuries, school-room steam-press systems, and, above all, the mad spirit of the times, have not come to us without a loss more than proportionate…[a young man] rushes headlong, with an impetuosity which strikes fire from the sharp flints under his tread…Occasionally, one of this class…amasses an estate, but at the expense of his peace, and often of his health. The lunatic asylum or the premature grave too frequently winds up his career…We expect each succeeding generation will grow “beautifully less.” “Degeneracy of Stature”, The National Era, Thrace Talmon - December 18, 1856
A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages…chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises–not this sort of mental gladiatorship. Scientific American - July, 1858
Why the fuck are you waiting on your opponents to die when it’ll be too late? Just do what you want and then fight or kill them if they try to stop you.
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