A thread for dumb articles. I’ll start with this dumb shit:
We’re on NOTICE now, fellows of the Gen X!!!
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Gen X:
- spent the 70s hearing about Three Mile Island and the Cold War
- spent the 80s listening to pop songs about nuclear war, science run amok, and war in general
- spent the 90s listening to the Pixies singing This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven while trying (and trying, and trying) to get a “real” job
- spent the 00s watching the fanatical horror of a post-9/11 world while struggling to hold on to a “real” job (or continuing to make do without one)
- are spending the 10s listening to Boomers gush about how great millennial youth are the future – a future we never got to have (whether the millennials have it either is debatable of course)
And now we’re supposed to be confronting death for the first time? Uh huh.
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Generation X still clings to the notion that we’re young and when you’re young, you believe you’ll live forever.
We are immune to health scares because we are still young, forever teenagers.
Sounds suspiciously like Boomer talk. Must not have been written by a Gen X?
When we were young we made fun of that nonsense when older people said it. As kids, we knew that WWIII was imminent, and we’d probably die during it - if the acid rain, stranger danger, or gang violence didn’t get us first. It was the old people who thought that eating more bran muffins would make them live forever. We were living in the moment because we knew full-well that we might not have many left. And we still live that way to some degree because we know our health is going to fail us soon.
By the time I started high school, my dad and two grandparents were gone. By the time I finished it one of my best friends had died, an acquaintance from school had been murdered, and I’d known 6 people who had committed murder. When I reached the age my dad had been when he died, my mom and other grandma died.
More bran muffins wouldn’t have saved any of them. Aside from the murders (we grew up in more violent times), all were due to common health issues that could strike any of us at any time.
I have my life insurance and contingency plan in good order (family knows how to get access to my accounts if necessary). Pretty sure I wrote my first will at 16. I’m well aware of my mortality, have been since a kid. Because I’m Gen-X.
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At the risk of doxxing him, when you google the author’s name, one of the first hits you get says:
Drew Weisholtz’s birthday is 12/05/1974…
Assuming it’s the same one.
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We’re beginning to reach ages when we really need to start taking care of ourselves,
I was diagnosed with diabetes in my late 20s, thanks
while the memory of carefree insolent youth hover over us like a mocking shadow.
As everyone has pointed out, our youth wasn’t exactly carefree.
Generation X still clings to the notion that we’re young
:cough: bullshit. I got something in the mail last week about my 30-year high school reunion.
While we are all transported back to our teen years when we even hear his name
He was on a TV show I didn’t watch and would never have enjoyed, which didn’t air until I had started college.
To Gen Xers, though, he will always be Dylan McKay from “Beverly Hills, 90210,”
This is literally the first time I’ve ever heard the character’s name.
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I am borderline hypochondriac thanks mostly to the cigarette related deaths of both of my parents at a relatively young age. I have no illusions that I am invincible. But if the author is just realizing that he is going to die someday, I regret his loss of innocence.
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I have to admit, I’m getting a picture of the author in my head.
In the 80s I would have called him a preppy. He would have called me a loser.
He probably watched Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous for life advice, and Family Ties for validation, and thought Reagan in the White House was a good thing.
So yeah, maybe he’s finally putting it all together.
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Guy claims he’s 44, so he’s certainly of the right age.
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Younger than me, so…
It’s probably more a sheltered class-ignorant thing where 90210 was significant to the writer because he was living vicariously through his television.
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I often think the whole generational generalisation thing is utter bullshit, tbh. I grew up with most of the problems and fears you grew up with - that’s purely a consequence of modern life, and the elements of that started slotting into place long before any of the current generations, including a class system that coddles certain people so that they lack an elementary clue.
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I think generational theory is part of that ideology, this idea that parents and children inherently are at odds and can’t understand one another. I think you’re right about modernity, too. I think there was probably some tensions that came between the boomers and their parents, primarily because of how rapid the changes during that period, with regards to our relationship with consumerism, but some of that was intensification of what had begun with the age of radio and the movies.
It’s still something to study and understand, though, as people act as if it’s more than a social construct (an age old pattern between parents and kids, when that’s not really the case at all).
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One thing I’ve noticed is that people about 10 years older than me (e.g., one of my siblings who’s ~75) seem to be more different from me than my parents were, who were 35 years older than me. It’s very strange. My parents and I were/are liberal; my older siblings are conservative as are a few other people their age I know. I wonder if this is a thing, or am I just noticing the ones who are different.
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Divide and conquer. The damnable thing is that I don’t think it was ever a deliberate stratagem, just people trying to justify the fact that “I’m all right, Jack. I got mine”, despite the compromises they made to get there.
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Being born at the cusp of two different generations is weird. I get two distinct streams of bullshit at any time about what cultural phenomena mean to me since articles always feel the need to compare Xers with Millennials and it’s a coin toss as to which I relate more to if either. I remember him as both characters, and I hated the shows though I don’t exactly remember why… I’m also down a body organ and very aware of my own mortality. It’s hard for me to imagine that too many people 1 to 15 years older than me have escaped the realization though that one can definitely die young of something besides suicide or homicide.
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Huh?
He’s a child of the 80s, not the 90s.
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As a woman and a POC who’s also a Gen Xer, I’d like a fucking word with that author regarding “not realizing I’m old” or that mortality is a real thing.
I’ve been watching my peers die off since I was 17, and I’ve already outlived countless people in my demographic.
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Mileage may vary. I’m guessing that those of us who were latchkey kids, who had to be cognizant of the family money situation (to keep from adding to parental stress), who had to care for younger siblings, or were insecure regarding food or safety, grew up somewhat differently.
I did wonder to myself, if this is what it’s like getting old, more contemporaries dying of strokes and other natural causes, rather that suicides and overdoses, but no galaxy brain realizations.
FTA:
“It is the first true sign that, no, we the children of the ‘90s are not invincible”
Well, the first time a contemporary of mine died, was in junior high. Then a good friend in high school. Frankly, it was pretty clear to me that we weren’t invincible, the whole fucking time, not even considering the threat of worldwide nuclear war.
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I see a lot of sexist and racist attitudes expressed by men ten years older than I (I’m a millenial!) as well as rising anti-equality sentiments from post-millenials.
Part of it, I think, has to do with geography - some of the most racist people I’ve ran into grew up in a time when the white hegemony was beginning to become threatened.
And it breaks my goddamn heart.
You don’t have to look far to see backlash from dudes in traditionally patriarchal societies - the men see their status as threatened and feel like they’re being unfairly denied the benefits older men got from systemic misogyny. Ditto with white people, who do benefit from systemic white supremacy but feel like their individual status is threatened by people of colour.
Some people are just dumb, spiteful, and don’t want to realize that the problems in society stem from systemic structures.
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Same. One of the boys I thought was cute died of an asthma attack when I was in Grade 10.
It happened at his after-school job, not the school, but an ambulance had to be called when the news got out because some of his close friends were fainting etc.
The author of this article either has led a very sheltered life, or was exaggerating. Maybe some of each.
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I think you nailed it, right there.
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