Ozzy Osbourne.
Funny thing is, he’s now a beloved grandfather on the history channel, and America’s Dad is now a convicted serial rapist and sex offender.
\,,/
I usually just throw this Socrates quote into the comments on facebook when I see people bitching about Millennials. Of course the baby boomer who ends up liking my comment is completely lost on the fact that it was said over two centuries ago and that their bitching just makes me laugh.
No jokes here, if you're going to push him into a smartphone (which he honestly probably doesn't need), get him to download and play Angry Birds. It teaches touch skills, like pinch zooming, swipe, and tap. It is actually very good for that.
As someone who works retail selling technology, it is terrible how often older people are pushed and badgered into getting smartphones that have absolutely no need for them, and are just more likely to fuck up their phone while also giving away enough personal info to have their identity stolen, and fall for ransomware attacks. I've 'upgraded' more than one older person to a flip phone, and made things so much better for it.
The generation above me is always harping about how technology is ruining society and making it worse and making kids worse. I have to laugh and remember the recorded words of ancient Greeks who said that new Greeks relied too much on books and written word instead of good old oral tradition. Old people will always be bitching about something stupid. Always.
I am in my mid 20's.
My grandma used to tell me how her mother and father would constantly hound her for all the time she spent reading, saying that her binges on literature were rotting her brain and distracting her from other duties she should be seeing to like housework and bearing children.
My mother told me my grandma used to criticize her for listening to music all the time and for not choosing a career in something honorable (she was a costume designer for a TV show).
And my mother always told me I was wasting too much time on TV and video games, not reading enough and messing around with digital entertainment more than I should.
Wonder what I'll complain about when I have kids.
Edit: Engrish
In the workplace, the Boomers looked at Gen X as a necessary evil trying to upset their comfortable routines. What really made it fun is that we were outnumbered three to one, and Boomers don't share well.
When I worked in the shop, we had this old woman who came in with this 20+ year old Mercury that we kept running for years; every time she needed a repair, she would cry about the cost and how she was living "on a fixed income" and everything was just so expensive. My boss used to cut prices for her all the time to try and help her out. Eventually, she bought a new car, and when she brought it in for some basic maintenance, she was talking about how the car salesman tried talking her into the financing but she was "too smart for that"; because that makes the car more expensive, so she just paid cash for it. It was like a $50,000 car...she just wrote a check for it. All of her repairs from then on were full price.
History is going to judge the Boomers very harshly. They inherited the spoils of a victorious America post WW2, secured by the blood of their fathers, and squandered almost everything. The fact that they make up the majority of Congress right now is extremely telling about how their mindset works.
They are.
"Americans only eat burgers/fast food" - The stereotype that Americans of all ages eat nothing but burgers, fast food, and bland home-cooked food, and therefore that's why they're fat, is alive and well all over the world. That generation did eat it more than we do now, younger people are more mindful of its negative health effects, and some of the fast food chains are trying to adapt to healthier millennial tastes.
"Ugly Americans" - the stereotype of the boorish, uncultured American traveler that peaked in the 80s or so. I've traveled around a lot and even people in this age group seem to be very mindful of their behavior and trying to explore new things when on vacation, not just checking out the McDonalds. I do have to give them credit for that.
> The fact that they make up the majority of Congress right now is extremely telling about how their mindset works.
Actually, it says a lot about how nobody wises up to how important voting is until they're damn near dead. The one truth about 'fucking lazy kids' is that young people don't ever vote enough.
I'm 32, so that makes me a mid-Millennial. The oddest criticism is how much Millennials *aren't* spending on stuff. For as entitled and materialistic as we're purported to be, we're also somehow ruining certain industries by not accumulating the amount of sheer crap that previous generations did. I love my family, but visiting my parents (early 60s) and my extended family that are 50+, and thinking back to when I was little and my parents were the age I am now, I'm struck by HOW MUCH CRAP just piled up. I don't mean trash, I mean nick-knacks, kitchen gadgets, electronics, weirdly specific tools that made household tasks *marginally* easier, stuff like that. I swear, I had more toys growing than I have stuff in general now.
My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year and I honestly struggled with it! I’m 33 and my place is small! I don’t want more things filling it up, I’m trying to get rid of things!
I'm your age. Finally convinced the parents & in-laws to not do any gift exchanging among the people over 18 a couple years ago. It's glorious. Although in a couple years I'm sure millenials will get blamed for killing Christmas.
My family mainly exchanges consumables now. I get my parents nice wine or food, they get me some whiskey or rum or beer, and in a few months it's all drank and we don't have extra clutter to show for it.
This is how I was taught about souvenirs when I lived in Japan. You don't want to buy an unnecessary item for a friend while on vacation, so you just buy them a snack local to the place you visited. Plus if they don't like it they can hand it off to someone that does.
You also don't want to be in a situation where you bring your chopstick collecting friend of the opposite sex a pair of beautiful chopsticks from where you vacationed only to find out that a gesture like that is exclusive for couples...
This omg. I had to have a talk with my parents about not buying me anymore more kitchen appliances because I don’t have space.
They bought me a toaster that’s specifically ONLY for hot dogs. You can toast two buns and two wieners, in the toaster like a normal one and it’s FUCKING RED. They will literally go to bed bath and beyond and be like oh this is cool and not that expensive we like that kind of food let’s get it and never use it. Omg i haaaate it.
I should mention I don’t even eat hot dogs! I’m a vegetarian!
Edit: I’m glad you guys are all able to understand this comment with all my typos. I was typing too quickly. I fixed it :)
I was born in the late 60s so I came of age in the 80s. Boomers looked at us as disloyal to a company and only in it for the money. We were the first to think more about what a job could enable us to do versus being the definition of who we are.
We were the first group that benefitted from being the children of the 50s economic boom, so many of us wanted for very little. This painted us as entitled, selfish and lazy. One of the reasons I laugh when people complain about millennials, etc. Y'all are the further products of us, so why are we bitching?
People just like to complain because they have lost sight of what it is to be young. There isn't a 50 yr old alive that his/her 15 yr old self would not have hated.
> Boomers looked at us as disloyal to a company and only in it for the money.
You were also one of the first generations to see less incentive to stay with the same company for 30+ years. I was born in the 80's and hear the "not loyal" spiel all the time. Loyalty in the 50's and 60's was borne out of the fact that you generally lost part/most/all of your pension and benefits if you left a company. Now that a person can take his/her 401(k) when he/she leaves a job, there is much less incentive to stay in one place if you are dissatisfied.
I'm amazed to hear from my older co-workers how much they used to get in benefits. They had several programs to earn extra time off, most of which didn't expire for years so you could literally work fairly hard for 5 years and then take an *entire* year off with full pay and benefits. When you retired it was at 70% of your last salary so people would routinely be bumped up a scale or two shortly before retirement. And if you stayed with the company for 5 years you'd get a month's salary as bonus, 1.5 months at 10 years, etc. My 5 year anniversary was this month, I didn't even get a cupcake.
> My 5 year anniversary was this month, I didn't even get a cupcake.
But I'm sure they sent out an impersonal email to all the employees congratulating you!
:(
Not to mention the fact that they will lay your ass off as soon as their EPS drops a couple of pennies. I enjoy being a mercenary, and loyalty is a 2 way street.
Ironically, the push for the 401k was made by businesses because they wanted defined contribution plans (in which their liability is fixed at contributing a set amount for each employee each month) instead of defined benefit plans (in which employees are guaranteed a certain amount of money when they retire for an unknown period of time). Businesses don’t like the latter because it’s impossible to tell how long they will be paying retirement benefits, so they pushed for the former in order to make their liabilities more easy to calculate. And then these same businesses bitch that the system of portable retirement that the my pushed for actually made employment more portable and made it easier for people to change jobs.
> You were also one of the first generations to see less incentive to stay with the same company for 30+ years.
Let's be honest. Even if you *wanted* to stay at the same company for 30 years, it's a guarantee that at some point in those 30 years the company is going to decide it doesn't need you anymore and lay you off. I got laid off after nearly 12 years with the same company. I would've been happy to work for them my whole life. Now I'm in a completely different field with much greater job stability.
I've never understood all this lamentation over the death of "company loyalty." No fucking *shit* we're in it for the money. That's literally what jobs are for, and what the companies exist to do in the first place. Businessmen typically don't found corporations because they're passionate about helping the little guy out.
The idea of being "loyal" to a company seems ridiculous, as if you’re expected to stick up for them in a fight or sing the Company Song with tears welling in your eyes when the banner is unfurled. Hail, hail, Prudential Financial, True I shall e’er be!
Death of comapany loyalty is a byproduct of bad corporate business theories from the 80s, (rank and stack, share holder supremacy, etc) and less from younger generations entering the work force.
Truer than you know. If you look at corporate annual reports from the 50's, they were all about their products, service to their customers, and doing right by their employees and their communities. Shareholders were never mentioned because legally they came dead last in the pecking order during a bankruptcy, and they knew the risks they were taking. Then along came the Reagan era with McKinsey and other consulting firms turning this model completely upside down. Now shareholders were the only constituency that mattered, and the stock price was the paramount measure of a company's success. With the invention of executive stock options, the way was open for management to focus only on rewarding themselves and the shareholders, as some sort of religious duty. All other constituencies, like employees, were expendable if that got the stock price up.
Especially when companies prove every single day they care about profit over people. Why is it too much for us to care about the money over the company in return?
And that's the whole difference. The boomers worked for companies that paid more for loyal, reliable workers. When they got too expensive for the few greedy folks at the top looking to expand their bonuses, they started to shit them out for someone younger they could pay less to do the same job - so out went the boomer, and in came the GenXer. Of course, when you were hired to a nice job right away for 'good money', but less than the person you were replacing, hmmm - now you see how dual income GenXers still struggle to become as affluent as their boomer predecessors?
>We were the first group that benefitted from being the children of the 50s economic boom, so many of us wanted for very little. This painted us as entitled, selfish and lazy.
I've always thought this was a pretty weird complaint for people to have. I personally don't want future generations to have to struggle as much as I did.
Lol yah. Have this coworker at a coffee shop who thinks good things will happen to them or something to that effect. She comes in early and doesn't change her schedule to reflect that.
She resents me for having a "I only work when I'm paid" attitude. I closely monitor my hours as a result (she's technically the location manager).
>She resents me for having a "I only work when I'm paid" attitude.
This is definitely an attitude I developed out of necessity. I've had employers and coworkers see that I'm willing to be helpful and do extra shit and suddenly I'm being expected to come in on days off and do extra work without extra pay. Not happening.
Thankfully, my current workplace is good about work/life balance.
Exactly. We fetishize the whole image of "hard work" and "struggling immigrants", and it's mind-boggling. My great-grandparents didn't come to America from Ireland hoping that their descendants would have to struggle as hard as they did.
> One of the reasons I laugh when people complain about millennials, etc. Y'all are the further products of us, so why are we bitching?
Exactly! Especially when they try to deride millennials about "participation trophies". Who do you think gave out the "trophies" in the first place, motherfucker?!
I definitely am not on the hate wagon...rather the opposite...I have respect for the millennials. They are *aware* of the bullshit that was fed to them...whereas us Gen-Xers ate it up.
Technically a Boomer here, but the birth dates of 1946-1964 are so far apart that the experiences were very different. The second half had very different experiences from the earlier ones, and girls very different from boys.
When you look at a population graph I'm the arm that's sticking out, and female. There were always too many of us, and still are. That has defined life for many of us.
We had comfortable childhoods for the most part because our dads always had work. Not our mothers. For girls, we were taught to set tables and not put ourselves forward too much or brag, skills useful for a wife but not for thriving in the workplace. Nothing prepared us for the workplace. My younger brother got an allowance but I didn't, because I wasn't going to need to know how to handle money. Same with many of the other things boys were taught - being handy, thinking you could be handy, speaking up - all things learned much later in life and not nearly as well. My mother truly believed until her dying day that my husband supported me and that I didn't have to work.
Being one of many defined my career. There were too many young people during the recession in the early 80s and people ten years older than us had all the best jobs. By the time I got out of marginal employment in my thirties I was suddenly too old. Younger workers were more in demand. I was told in my mid thirties that my best option was to ghost write for them.
I'm in my sixties now and there are still way too many of us. A lot had to take early retirement. And I have no idea what to do when I'm one of too many millions of really old people.
This gets at the heart of why I think generations should be shorter. I'm smack dab in the middle of "Millenial".
Millenials before me dropped out of college to go make millions taking the internet from a niche thing to something that's infiltrated every nook and cranny of our civilization. Millennials around my age and younger had our entire adolescence shaped by internet culture and the advent of social media.
How can these two groups really be considered the same generation when one of them played such a crucial role in the development of the other?
I think a lot of the internet culture and social media had a way of bringing the millennials and younger close to each other though. I'm around 30 and feel I have a lot more in common with my 20 year old co-workers than I do my 40 year old co-workers.
Thank you for your side, it sounds bleak. How do you see yourself on the political spectrum if I may ask? What do you think of things like welfare and subsidised health care and such?
Generation X- we were always too lazy, and too liberal. Also, we were hounded to have more kids. I think X is the first generation to not automatically have several kids by their mid 20s.
> I think X is the first generation to not automatically have several kids by their mid 20s.
Which is funny.....the generation raised by divorce was hesitant to get married & reproduce like bunnies....go figure. ;)
Gen X here: What I find funny is that I grew up with both parents and I thought that if you get married, you work on it. You only give up after trying to work through the problems and failing. I later learned way too many people just give up and don't want to try, they think relationships are supposed to be easy and if it is not a fairytale then it is a failure. I think I see the millennials understanding this more than the generation I was born into (as well as Gen Y).
Yep, Gen X here. Our music was 'shit' (grunge, punk) and we were told we wouldn't get jobs without a degree.
Now we're middle aged, stuck with debt from college and still listening to the same 'shit'.
We were also the first generation where getting a degree was considered mandatory for success. Of course we held off on having children, we were busy trying to build a career. Then we graduated college, into an economy that had no room for us, and had our grandparents asking when we were going to get married and have kids!
Well, grandma, I share an apartment with someone, and I'm working a part time job where 50% of my earnings go toward student loans. Not sure this is a situation to start popping out kids.
Now, that said, I recently told some people about moving into an apartment with my girlfriend, while making $480/month, and still managing to pay loans, food and rent. My apartment, in 2001, cost $300/month, and I paid half of that. I looked up the same exact apartment that's now renting for $825, and kids just out of school aren't making any more money, and in some cases less, than I was.
But it's worse ... like I said, I didn't have to move home after graduating because you could get a single room apartment and live in it for 40hrs of work. Sure, it was a far cry from buying a house with a high-school diploma and a factory job, but at least we weren't living with our parents.
> We were also the first generation where getting a degree was considered mandatory for success.
this x100000
falling back to the trades was a huge failure in life. (how dumb that seems now)
Even though I grew up in a rural farming community I was always encouraged to go to college and get a degree. Staying there wasn't even an option. Now I'm a mildly successful engineer that works about 55 hours a week, comes home, take the kids to , cook and eat dinner, clean up, watch a show on Netflix and start over. The kids keep things interesting bud damn... Sometimes I wish I would have just followed in my dad's footsteps and became a farmer. Dirt smells good.
You have no idea. People talk about boomers as if they all had their wild days where they chased a band and lived naked for a few months or whatever. The majority married young, got jobs, and started having kids. They held many, if not most of the same beliefs as their parents.
The idea that Gen X'ers couldn't care enough to be bothered by gays on television or unmarried couples living together drove a *lot* of boomers crazy.
We were the apathy generation. Who cares was our anthem. We didn't join civic clubs. We didn't try and impose a status quo on the people around us. We weren't trying to start some kind of revolution. We didn't care. You do you. I'll do me.
I think, in some ways, many Gen Xers understood on a very basic level that things weren't going well for underprivileged groups, but we didn't do a whole lot to expand beyond that- not the way that many millenials have made a conscious effort to be allies with the same underprivileged people.
Of course, these are big generalizations, and it's not a standard deal for everybody. I'm speaking a lot from personal experience. I distinctly remember my dad being floored that I didn't see anything wrong with an unmarried couple living together, or that Clinton shook the hand of Pedro Zamorra, and even championed him as a hero for homosexuals. Even now, I'm surprised to see how conscious so many people are of what is going on around them. It's enlightening and I think a lot of folks are wrongly criticized for it.
A lot of our view of Boomers is colored by the Counterculture and civil rights activists who were only ever a small part of it. On the whole they're a lot like their parents just more in favor of women having more independence and less racist.
Listen to a boomer some time, and you'll find out what real hidden prejudice is. They'll concede that overpopulation is a problem, and blame it on the 'poor, inner city people that have kids they can't afford'. Meanwhile, they'll moan that you haven't given them grandkids. Sorry Boomers, nobody can afford kids.
my father followed "the who" one summer in his volkswagon bus making money by selling pot and cheese sandwiches. Mom wore beaded bikini tops as a regular outfit and together they bought a sailboat and sailed "naked and on drugs" for weeks. Then they had kids and Dad was Mr. Corporate America and all of a sudden mom was a stepford wife and I got grounded for 3 months at 17 because they found two weed seeds and one empty Seagrams Wild Berry in my room. Wouldn't give a gerbil a buzz.
I always knew my mom was full of shit... but when my uncle, who was a firefighter, said to me one day "I use to hook your mom up to an IV to help her with her hangovers after a party"
I hate to generalize so much but with how often I've seen people of that age group acting like severely overgrown children at mild inconveniences (had to yell at a dude who was berating employees at an understaffed wendy's a few weeks ago), I do have to wonder if that kind of entitlement is a generational thing.
It also makes me wonder what my generation's gonna fuck up - these people were the "free love" generation but it turned out to be less "everything for everyone" and "everything for me." I'm leaning towards "move fast and break things" being the most twisted ethos of my own generation so far. Now that we're getting to be in charge of shit, we'll really see over the next decade or two.
I got my Masters degree in Marketing and I have a theory as to why the Baby Boomers act the way they do; for their entire existence, they have been the biggest market in America (by size), so they have grown accustomed to everything being tailored directly to them. When they were children, everything was made for kids, television was "The Howdy Doody Show", movies were sanitized, Disney was becoming big, etc. When they became teenagers, sex, drugs, and rock and roll became the norm; there were muscle cars, massive concert events (like Woodstock) and for a brief time, even the concept of porn becoming mainstream in movies was being floated (in 1969 the x-rated film "Midnight Cowboy" won best picture at the Oscars). When they reached middle age, everything became focused on making your home more comfortable, big TV's, high-quality home goods stores became a lot more common, etc. Now that the Boomers are getting older, marketers are starting to turn away from them as they are no longer the largest group to market to; the younger generations are becoming a bigger part of the market and for the first time in their lives, everything isn't focused on what the Boomers want, and they're not happy about it.
When I was younger, I worked a customer service position and the older customers were always the worst to deal with; they wanted everything done yesterday, and if the slightest thing wasn't perfect, they expected everything for free. The younger customers usually were much easier to deal with, and more understanding if something wasn't perfect.
Purely emotional reaction: Part of me is hoping that this is a generational artifact and not due to getting older because I don't wanna turn into 'that guy'.
To be fair, if you were born between the 80s and early 2000's, we are a generation the first of it's kind. Nothing like the internet has ever been available to people like it was as it developed over that time period. Kids born between 2005 and now probably won't turn out the same way because they didn't really see the internet grow like the people from the 80s and 90s could have. I think being the first people to have access to something like the internet.. It will either make us very egotistical \[as social media tends to reward being rather self-centered and bragging or sharing about literally anything you ever did\] or it will lead us to be a more understanding generation as it's a platform we can do things like we are doing now.. Discussing the issues of generations without, and maybe learning from them. It really is kind of interesting ebcause each generation is always going to be unique from one another, but the internet is a massive difference compared to the rest of history, barring things like the industrial revolution which also greatly changed America in a very short time frame.
> "The Baby Boomers were nicknamed the “Me Generation” due to their perceived narcissism. The “Me” generation in the United States is a term referring to the baby boomer generation and the self-involved qualities that some people associated with it."
Huh, today I learned.
I think people who rebel in the standard way that everyone around them is rebelling are also people who are extra concerned with being normal. So they grow up and try to fit the "normal" adult/parent role to a T too.
I think that sums up Baby Boomers really well. It's not that they cared so much about being wild and free. If they did, they'd be far less controlling and judgmental in their old age. They really just care about fitting in and keeping up appearances.
I think whether you did drugs or not, you're always going to protect your children from them because you don't trust them with drugs. Some parents are going to be more open minded than others but don't count on that.
Our generation will be the same.
"Drugs are bad (trust me I know from experience)"
Remember all the news stories in the 90s about how "pot today is 20x more powerful" or some such number? The message was that even parents who did pot in their youth could criticize kids today for partaking in such "dangerous activities."
> pot today is 20x more powerful
To be fair, if you haven't smoked in 30 years and try some dank top tier California dank weed with an insane THC content, you're gonna take one puff and ruminate (for 30 minutes) about the way you said hello to somebody 3 days ago and if it was weird.
I had one puff from a joint and it felt like someone was wiggling the earths center of gravity in different directions. That and it felt like my short term memory was resetting every 3 seconds.
The most common reaction is:
"Time passes very slowly."
I used to blaze up a fuckin storm in high school, but now THC gives me anxiety for some reason. One day it just started giving me panic attacks and now I can't tolerate it.
Maybe I'll try some high [CBD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol) weed one of these days. I'm more of a microdosing LSD guy when it comes to psychedelics.
You would not believe what a big deal long hair was. I mean, I lived through going from a crew cut in the 60s to long hair in the 70s and even I can't believe what a fuss that caused a lot of people.
It was pretty black and white too; having long hair meant you didn't agree with all the bullshit going on; Nam, Nixon, anti pot hysteria. It was an instant and obvious declaration.
Oh my god... K-VIII-lyn
Roman numerals for eight... in a name?
Sometimes I just want aliens to come and glass the entire fucking planet, because sometimes I just don't want humanity to tarnish the galaxy with all its stupid.
It's kind of like the people who say they are 90s kids when they were born in 1998. Hell I was born in 91 and I would say that I'm a 2000s kid. I barely remember like anything from the 90s.
We had wild ideas like civil rights and voting rights. We didn't appreciate the opportunity they gave us to go to Vietnam to blow people up and/or get blown up. And they were so upset about us smoking marijuana instead of drinking alcohol as God intended, they instituted a program to poison the marijuana. I figure they got that idea from when they were younger and alcohol was poisoned.
Nice to read this and look now and think, 'thank god you didn't back down on those issues', the world is still messed up in many ways but some good change has definitely become apparent over the years.
Holy fuck man I've heard so many old dudes saying how all you need to do to get a job is talk to the manager, tell him you'll work a day for free, boom, you've got a job.
I was 17 in 2008 when the recession was going down. I spent the entire summer handing out resumes, talking to managers and filling out applications. Didn't even get a single call back. The first job I was able to get (in 2010) was a full time construction labourer position that I got super lucky with because I knew the owner of the company. Finding work was hard as all fuck, and I'm assuming it still is.
> talk to the manager
Yup. after nine years I was laid off - three's company loyalty for you... I had to move back in with my parents. At age 35. I was unemployed for three years. Things got heated between me and my dad for that exact reason. He doesn't understand the fact that the person doing the hiring probably isn't even in the same building as the local listed office. There is no "manager." There are department heads and the doors are locked.
My dad did this to me as well, he went as far as saying that I should go down to a news station and offer to hold cables while they recorded to try and get a job at their IT dept. Even my mom saw how absolutely ridiculous he was being at that point. To humor him, I "Hit the pavement" like he suggested, and invited him along to see where that strategy got me. I was fresh out of college, just as the most recent major recession hit a few years back, and no one was hiring in my area, not even those with a fresh Bachelors degree.
I went down every strip mall for a few miles, walked into radio shack (back when they still existed), it was all smiles until I mentioned I wanted a job - that was they point where they visibly shut down on me, showed me the door, and said that they weren't allowed to hire, I had to apply online. The manager didn't even get a say in who was hired, he said he wanted n number of employees, and corporate sent it to them. All in all, I was rejected a little over 30 times in that one day. By the time we got home, he was fuming, visibly red, and panting with rage. I didn't say a word to him, he didnt say a word to me - we just walked back into the house, and he didn't speak to me for 2 weeks.
To a point, I was a sarcastic asshole about it too, he had been hounding me with equal sarcasm for a year. He had his entire worldview ground up into a fine paste and shoved down several orifices at once.
I just gave him a taste of what he'd been doing to me, while demonstrating how comprehensively and painfully, irrefutably wrong he was. After breaking a bit of furniture he swallowed his pride and apologized a few months later. He did change his thinking after that though, so he did more than most boomers in that regard.
That is so fucking true. I'm around your age, born in 1981, and the number of times it has been suggested that I show up in person to inquire about employment by my folks is insane. I think the one time I did that the receptionist just said "Did you submit your resume? Cause that's what you're supposed to do" and then I just fucked off.
I just turned thirty. Aside from a complete inability of my parents' generation to understand videogames, the biggest complaint seems to boil down to the idea that my generation *changes* things.
Part of that was down to a technological shift, I think -- there's the sense among a lot of people who are now in their fifties and sixties that computers make things more complicated, and that things were just *simpler* in the old days, even if it was a lot more time consuming and not as efficient -- but there's also the shift in social norms that's new for a lot of people. Society was how it was because that's how it had always been: grow up, get married, buy a house, have two kids, save for retirement, and then Goodnight, Vienna. Anything that questioned that -- even something like being gay -- was immediately suspect, and to an extent still is (although less so within the past ten years). The standard rallying cry of a lot of the older generation always seemed to be 'Why can't you be more like us?'. I don't think that's necessarily unique as generations go, but as the shifts in society and technology became faster and more widespread, the complaints seemed to get much louder.
In the sixties, you were considered rebellious and counterculture if you wanted to push for social change. Now, for a lot of people, that's just considered normal.
> 'Why can't you be more like us?'
I'm 34, I would tell every kid to learn from the mistakes that I make so that they don't have to. You do you bro, do what's best for you and makes you happy, fuck anyone who tries to tell you otherwise, they're just pissed because their lives suck. Be you, not someone else.
We were the despair of our parents. Didn't want to go to war. Weren't gonna let them draft us. Nobody liked Frank Sinatra. Our music was hideous. Our sexual behavior was worse - the pill banished all that fear and morality they tried to instill in the girls. (Boys were just dogs about sex - nothing you could do about it.)
We wore the wrong clothes. You would not BELIEVE the lengths schools went to prevent long hair and dress hems above the knee.
EVERYTHING fun was illegal. There are *so many* things people do now without a second thought that would've gotten you arrested in 1959. Checking into a hotel with someone not your spouse? You're under arrest. Dating a dark person while white? Never mind an arrest, the cop will take you speak with the KKK about it.
The further I get from the sixties, the more it seems like a sea change in America. During the change, everyone assured us that Youth *always* rebels - there was some quote of Pericles to that effect.
Nope. There was a huge change. America in 1960 was nothing like America in 1970.
Me, I think things got better. I think my parents would disagree.
We were the "Slacker Generation."
That's probably because the Boomers hung in like ticks, stuck to all of the good jobs, and when they were replaced by robots, left us with retail and service jobs... then complained when we didn't do as well as they did.
Now that the ticks dropping off, we're running into age discrimination. By Boomers. Who want to hire more millennials.
Generation X got fucked.
TBF they want to hire us because we entered the economy during a recession and most of us will actually answer the question "What did you make at your previous job" with the actual answer, instead of an "I am asking for X at this position" answer... basically my generation is getting fucked on wages, by and large, and that's why we're more hireable :(
The issue is less that one generation gets fucked more or less than the other, it continues to be that the rich fuck over the poor at every chance they get.
Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
~~Black~~ Red is grey and yellow white
But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion.
EDIT: Thank you Moody Blues for this classic poem.
I'm early Gen X, I think baby boomers would look at us (gen x) as somewhat lazy and self centered. I had an acting class in high school where 80% of us just all decided not to take our final and take a zero. The teacher went on about how shitty a generation we were.
I'm a filthy millennial (born in 91), and I work in construction. I always find it hilarious when the older dudes complain about people my age not wanting to work and being shitty workers. Then they do the classic "Oh except you, and the other 8 young guys who work here". It seems like some people are good workers and some people are lazy, just like every generation.
Most people can't afford to not work no matter what the media and older people think.
My job is full of young people coming in, they work just as hard as anybody else. We have lazy old people and lazy young people. For every 20something that slacks off I see a 50 year doing the same thing just not as apparent, they've finetuned the art of looking like they're working.
I wonder why there's a shortage of skilled trades people when the older guys are making fun of the younger guys for being lazy, using safety equipment, etc?
Actually also funny enough my hearing is pretty bad now because when I was really young and first started working, the old dudes basically laughed at me for asking if I should wear hearing protection while running the shitty old planer. I always wear hearing protection now.
Exactly this. My first job ever was in construction with my father. I got mocked for wearing ear protection. Well looks whos laughing now a decade later. My old man can't hear for shit and I still wear hearing protection when cutting the grass on my lawn mower.
Yeah, I'm also getting started in the trades (HVAC) and I'm not going to risk my health. I purchased top of the line boots, safety glasses, hearing protection, etc.
I couldn't play in the local parks because gangs actually did do drive by shootings at the park for target practice. The streets were super dangerous back in the 90s. Hell one gang even did a drive by shooting on cops and FBI agents at their own building as an initiation. I lived by Washington DC. People who lived in the city definitely saw some of that violence.
Boomers definitely hate gen x-er’s parenting. We don’t abuse our children and actually care about their safety and this offends them.
And they think we’re too politically correct and easily offended, when really, offending baby boomers is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Every generation and political leaning group is overly sensitive about their own topics, but loves to shit on other groups for the things they get offended over. I've never disagreed with mom and her husband (who is a sweetheart) about how my generation (millenials) can get overly sensitive, but dealing with them is it's own version of walking on eggshells. Her husband's mother is in remission now, but when she had cancer I offered to get her medical marijuana to help with nausea and appetite. You'd think I suggested a satanic ritual. There was gasping and clutching of pearls, followed by "she's a Christian woman, how can you even say that!?". What??? Older people get crazy about religion. That's why the war on Christmas narrative gets great ratings every year. Meanwhile, I haven't met a single millenial, including atheists, who doesn't love Christmas.
My older relatives are always posting pics of random older/outdated things with the caption, "WHO REMEMBERS THIS????"
For some reason, one of the things that got shared around in this fashion was a picture that said, "WHO REMEMBERS TOMATO SOUP AND GRILLED CHEESE?" My dad commented, ".....do they not make 'em anymore?"
I've actually asked my parents about this before, since they're both early Gen-X (born in 67 and 70). The biggest thing seemed to be the complaints about their generation being washed out, lazy, dope smoking burnouts with no ambition. Their parents were boomers but more of the blue collar "work is its own reward" type of boomer than the free love Woodstock kind. So they both got tons of shit growing up for not having their futures figured out at 18 and for that darn loud guitar music.
Parenting was also a thing. My mom was more laid back and followed the new ideas of Dr. Spock with the whole "timeout" thing. My dad was more old school in his belief and absolutely *could not* fathom raising a child without whoopings as punishments or instilling obedience as a core virtue. I don't know how much my grandparents really complained about how laid back my upbringing was but I know my mom got lots of scoffs and eye rolls when I would misbehave and wasn't given the belt. They probably thought I would grow up to be disrespectful and careless, but I was a petulant rule-follower and did infinity times less drugs than my parents did when they were growing up so HA!
And for an added bonus, I asked my stepdad this same question since he's a bit older and technically a late Boomer (born in 61). He said the chief complaint from his parents' generation was that kids his age were obsessed with the boob tube. They thought TV was going to ruin everybody by plopping in front of it for hours on end and just cause them to waste away. There may be some truth to this one because I swear that man's free time is structured around what is on TV at that moment.
I'm 30.
A little thing:
My folks complained my friends and I played too many video games. I remember during sleepovers, we tried to pull all-nighters playing rented Blockbuster/Hollywood Video PSX and N64 games. Parents occasionally interrupted us to tell us to stop playing games for so long - it's bad for us, that maybe we should watch a movie or TV show instead..
I still don't get it. Both require staring at a TV/Monitor, but one was active and the other passive entertainment. I guess gaming just wasn't normalized then.
Besides that, I didn't really get a lot of crap for "my generation" growing up. My folks, having been born and raised in the USSR, had to judge my upbringing as American quirks rather than Generational quirks. They saw a greater emphasis on preserving childhood innocence here - and that happiness/fun seemed more important than education and discipline. It's a balancing act, truly, and I think they overcompensated in a lot of ways. They thought we were significantly softer and naive and I heard a lot of cynicism from them. I get where they're coming from, but I still disagree with it.
Here's an observation and complaint I have about younger people. What the heck is happening with music?
This is where I'm sounding old - but when was growing up - each year, each new record was heavier and more subversive than the year before. Music didn't just hit me harder because I was 'at a certain age', it was actually harder. I heard all sorts of complaints - "your music is too loud!". In Rock, in Hip Hop. This seems to have peaked at a certain point.
A lot of new music today is just soft. I think we're the first generation to say "your music ain't fucking crazy enough!". Somehow Hip Hop became Disco. Somehow Rock became Country. Of course, I'm speaking in generalities. There's still new and exciting acts bubbling up through the surface - especially as home production becomes cheaper and more accessible. There's brilliant young musicians out there. Just fewer than I'd ever thought I'd see. It's a legit task searching for it.
Maybe it's social media and the increased pressure to be accepted. Maybe it's caused music to live closer to a common denominator. Maybe I'm just getting old. But, fucking, give it some more juice!
My kids are 21 and 18 and I'm 49. So gen-xer who has raised two post millenial kids. It is so strange to me that the music thing rings true. None of their music is offensive to me, and we share a lot of musical interests. I love to see them get into some older bands I liked, and we very often share music that we enjoy. I have just invited them to see a concert with me.
It's not something I did with my parents, although I did not *hate* Peter, Paul and Mary or Simon and Garfunkle. But they certainly had no interest in 80s music.
My dad is 62. And we still share a lot of musical interests - significantly more than between him and his dad.
Back in the USSR, he used to buy and trade bootleg black market records with his friends. Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, The Police, Zeppelin, etc. And I like all that too - we've gone to concerts together.
And now that I'm 30, I'm learning to really enjoy stuff like The Carpenters or Simon. There's a rooted sadness in those tones and voices that are harder to replicate today - either due to the recording process, or to the culture or.. abuse/drugs/etc.
Besides the "we need more harder music" rant, I actually love all genres for all different reasons. Nothing offends me, musically.
I just find it amusing that parents of the 70s kids threw out KISS records for being too Satanic - and parents of the future might throw out records for not being Satanic *enough*.
Yep. I'm 35. My mom, who has the tv on every moment she is awake in the house, complained recently that I play too many video games (30 minutes to 3 hours a day).
Edit: To clarify, I'm married with a kid and don't live with my mom. She is retired and has hobbies and also helps out with my son. She's just one of those who must have the TV on, even if she's not watching. I also go days at a time without playing a game, but it's my main hobby.
Gen Y here (late gen x pre millennial weird time frame).
I am so sick of all the “participation trophy” BS people complain about, when it was our parents that gave them out. They created the situation and then blame us about it.
Or how we are lazy and entitled, yet we were encouraged to go to college and study whatever you like so you can get a good job. Just ignore the fact they could support a family, own a house and two cars with their salary from working at the factory.
Love the participation trophy part. I hated getting trophies every year in rec sports leagues when my team lost in the tournament. Like why do i get a trophy for losing? I always complained about it until the year my basketball team won and I actually valued the trophy I got that year. It was the people in charge who believed kids couldn't handle it. There might have been some kids that would have cried, but most of that was because their parents taught them that they were so star spangled awesome that not getting a trophy was actually a hostile act
Ha! I'm a boomer. According to my parents and their friends, we kids were lazy, entitled, rebellious and disrespectful. The music we listened to was gauche; nothing but a bunch of screaming and yelling. The movies we liked were tasteless, artless, shameful and disgusting. In short, all the same things boomers whine about GenX and Millennials. Back then it was called the "generation gap." Today it's called "culture wars." The pissing and moaning about youth by old fucks is magnified today because of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, just like the pissing and moaning about everything else.
You want to feel better about yourself and the world? Stop watching the fucking news.
I'm an old millennial - I can't really say much about GenX-ers, because I'm so close to them in age, it's mix and match - some are just really close to me in mentality, while some are not.
With my parents' generation, I'd say:
- difference in work/life balance. My dad was an utter workaholic who made good money, while I'd take less pay if it meant more free time and meaningful work. My parents generations calls this "lazy" and "having no ambition", while I call it "having a life".
- less optimistic life view which is not irrational, but older generatons criticize because "you need to be more positive".
- the fact that, in my case at least, we didn't "fall in line" and went for the marriage/kids thing.
- the fact that we didn't get more consevative with agen, as they did. I'm more "left" now than at 20.
Gen Z here, I haven't recieved too much flak from millenials at all. Millenials are really nice and understanding, even the "old" millenials. Only shit we get is for our memes that can be outlandish I admit and our heavy usage of tech.
I grew up in the 50s and 60s My father hated rock and roll. He called the Rolling Stones "screamin' niggers" I replied .. They're white Englishmen
But in truth, the Rolling Stones are white Englishmen who model their music after Black Americans singing the blues.
Ozzy Osbourne. Funny thing is, he’s now a beloved grandfather on the history channel, and America’s Dad is now a convicted serial rapist and sex offender. \,,/
Hey old man, they have an emoji for that now:🤘
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I usually just throw this Socrates quote into the comments on facebook when I see people bitching about Millennials. Of course the baby boomer who ends up liking my comment is completely lost on the fact that it was said over two centuries ago and that their bitching just makes me laugh.
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Damn millenniums
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Damned if you do, and damned if you don't
thats in regards to marriage. in regards to politics, "freedom must be bought at the price of blood" or something like that.
The tree of liberty must be regularly watered with the blood of patriots or something
The blood of patriots AND TYRANTS. You left out the best part.
Interesting. Previous generations rebelled by listening to slightly different rock music than their parents.
"We don't want actual change, just the appearance of it."
But aren't you rebelling against rebelling by being docile? Counter counter culture...
Cause without a rebel
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I don't know about hate, but they were definitely jealous of our abilities to program the VCR and use computers.
My Dad is 72 and is finally upgrading to a smartphone today. He's asked me to teach him how to use it. I'm concerned for both of us.
Teach him how to find porn on it. He'll learn quickly from there.
Eh, he's too conservative for that. I'll teach him how to find and post right wing memes so he can terrorize Facebook.
Conservative doesn't mean he wouldn't enjoy porn, it just means he won't talk about it!
Trust me, he's very anti porn. He's a retired Baptist preacher with extremely old fashioned views.
No jokes here, if you're going to push him into a smartphone (which he honestly probably doesn't need), get him to download and play Angry Birds. It teaches touch skills, like pinch zooming, swipe, and tap. It is actually very good for that. As someone who works retail selling technology, it is terrible how often older people are pushed and badgered into getting smartphones that have absolutely no need for them, and are just more likely to fuck up their phone while also giving away enough personal info to have their identity stolen, and fall for ransomware attacks. I've 'upgraded' more than one older person to a flip phone, and made things so much better for it.
The generation above me is always harping about how technology is ruining society and making it worse and making kids worse. I have to laugh and remember the recorded words of ancient Greeks who said that new Greeks relied too much on books and written word instead of good old oral tradition. Old people will always be bitching about something stupid. Always.
I am in my mid 20's. My grandma used to tell me how her mother and father would constantly hound her for all the time she spent reading, saying that her binges on literature were rotting her brain and distracting her from other duties she should be seeing to like housework and bearing children. My mother told me my grandma used to criticize her for listening to music all the time and for not choosing a career in something honorable (she was a costume designer for a TV show). And my mother always told me I was wasting too much time on TV and video games, not reading enough and messing around with digital entertainment more than I should. Wonder what I'll complain about when I have kids. Edit: Engrish
Let me guess...Get off the Hyper realistic VR Brain 3000 interface...there's a real world outside!!
Lol, I’d do that just so I can get my turn.
In the workplace, the Boomers looked at Gen X as a necessary evil trying to upset their comfortable routines. What really made it fun is that we were outnumbered three to one, and Boomers don't share well.
"It's not fair that we got ours, and now others want theirs. Why can't we get ours, *and* theirs, and they get *nothing*?"
I have 3 kids and no money. Why couldn't I have had no kids and 3 money?
I have no kids and no money....
Millennial?
I just want my brother to envy my money, but he's got that hair. Why can't I have hair and money and him nothing?
I'm Oscar... dot com
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When I worked in the shop, we had this old woman who came in with this 20+ year old Mercury that we kept running for years; every time she needed a repair, she would cry about the cost and how she was living "on a fixed income" and everything was just so expensive. My boss used to cut prices for her all the time to try and help her out. Eventually, she bought a new car, and when she brought it in for some basic maintenance, she was talking about how the car salesman tried talking her into the financing but she was "too smart for that"; because that makes the car more expensive, so she just paid cash for it. It was like a $50,000 car...she just wrote a check for it. All of her repairs from then on were full price.
History is going to judge the Boomers very harshly. They inherited the spoils of a victorious America post WW2, secured by the blood of their fathers, and squandered almost everything. The fact that they make up the majority of Congress right now is extremely telling about how their mindset works.
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They are. "Americans only eat burgers/fast food" - The stereotype that Americans of all ages eat nothing but burgers, fast food, and bland home-cooked food, and therefore that's why they're fat, is alive and well all over the world. That generation did eat it more than we do now, younger people are more mindful of its negative health effects, and some of the fast food chains are trying to adapt to healthier millennial tastes. "Ugly Americans" - the stereotype of the boorish, uncultured American traveler that peaked in the 80s or so. I've traveled around a lot and even people in this age group seem to be very mindful of their behavior and trying to explore new things when on vacation, not just checking out the McDonalds. I do have to give them credit for that.
> The fact that they make up the majority of Congress right now is extremely telling about how their mindset works. Actually, it says a lot about how nobody wises up to how important voting is until they're damn near dead. The one truth about 'fucking lazy kids' is that young people don't ever vote enough.
"Shipmaster, we're outnumbered, 3 to 1." "Then it is a fair fight"
I'm 32, so that makes me a mid-Millennial. The oddest criticism is how much Millennials *aren't* spending on stuff. For as entitled and materialistic as we're purported to be, we're also somehow ruining certain industries by not accumulating the amount of sheer crap that previous generations did. I love my family, but visiting my parents (early 60s) and my extended family that are 50+, and thinking back to when I was little and my parents were the age I am now, I'm struck by HOW MUCH CRAP just piled up. I don't mean trash, I mean nick-knacks, kitchen gadgets, electronics, weirdly specific tools that made household tasks *marginally* easier, stuff like that. I swear, I had more toys growing than I have stuff in general now.
My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year and I honestly struggled with it! I’m 33 and my place is small! I don’t want more things filling it up, I’m trying to get rid of things!
I'm your age. Finally convinced the parents & in-laws to not do any gift exchanging among the people over 18 a couple years ago. It's glorious. Although in a couple years I'm sure millenials will get blamed for killing Christmas.
My family mainly exchanges consumables now. I get my parents nice wine or food, they get me some whiskey or rum or beer, and in a few months it's all drank and we don't have extra clutter to show for it.
This is how I was taught about souvenirs when I lived in Japan. You don't want to buy an unnecessary item for a friend while on vacation, so you just buy them a snack local to the place you visited. Plus if they don't like it they can hand it off to someone that does. You also don't want to be in a situation where you bring your chopstick collecting friend of the opposite sex a pair of beautiful chopsticks from where you vacationed only to find out that a gesture like that is exclusive for couples...
This omg. I had to have a talk with my parents about not buying me anymore more kitchen appliances because I don’t have space. They bought me a toaster that’s specifically ONLY for hot dogs. You can toast two buns and two wieners, in the toaster like a normal one and it’s FUCKING RED. They will literally go to bed bath and beyond and be like oh this is cool and not that expensive we like that kind of food let’s get it and never use it. Omg i haaaate it. I should mention I don’t even eat hot dogs! I’m a vegetarian! Edit: I’m glad you guys are all able to understand this comment with all my typos. I was typing too quickly. I fixed it :)
Omg that last part 🤣
I was born in the late 60s so I came of age in the 80s. Boomers looked at us as disloyal to a company and only in it for the money. We were the first to think more about what a job could enable us to do versus being the definition of who we are. We were the first group that benefitted from being the children of the 50s economic boom, so many of us wanted for very little. This painted us as entitled, selfish and lazy. One of the reasons I laugh when people complain about millennials, etc. Y'all are the further products of us, so why are we bitching? People just like to complain because they have lost sight of what it is to be young. There isn't a 50 yr old alive that his/her 15 yr old self would not have hated.
> Boomers looked at us as disloyal to a company and only in it for the money. You were also one of the first generations to see less incentive to stay with the same company for 30+ years. I was born in the 80's and hear the "not loyal" spiel all the time. Loyalty in the 50's and 60's was borne out of the fact that you generally lost part/most/all of your pension and benefits if you left a company. Now that a person can take his/her 401(k) when he/she leaves a job, there is much less incentive to stay in one place if you are dissatisfied.
I'm amazed to hear from my older co-workers how much they used to get in benefits. They had several programs to earn extra time off, most of which didn't expire for years so you could literally work fairly hard for 5 years and then take an *entire* year off with full pay and benefits. When you retired it was at 70% of your last salary so people would routinely be bumped up a scale or two shortly before retirement. And if you stayed with the company for 5 years you'd get a month's salary as bonus, 1.5 months at 10 years, etc. My 5 year anniversary was this month, I didn't even get a cupcake.
> My 5 year anniversary was this month, I didn't even get a cupcake. But I'm sure they sent out an impersonal email to all the employees congratulating you! :(
Not to mention the fact that they will lay your ass off as soon as their EPS drops a couple of pennies. I enjoy being a mercenary, and loyalty is a 2 way street.
Ironically, the push for the 401k was made by businesses because they wanted defined contribution plans (in which their liability is fixed at contributing a set amount for each employee each month) instead of defined benefit plans (in which employees are guaranteed a certain amount of money when they retire for an unknown period of time). Businesses don’t like the latter because it’s impossible to tell how long they will be paying retirement benefits, so they pushed for the former in order to make their liabilities more easy to calculate. And then these same businesses bitch that the system of portable retirement that the my pushed for actually made employment more portable and made it easier for people to change jobs.
> You were also one of the first generations to see less incentive to stay with the same company for 30+ years. Let's be honest. Even if you *wanted* to stay at the same company for 30 years, it's a guarantee that at some point in those 30 years the company is going to decide it doesn't need you anymore and lay you off. I got laid off after nearly 12 years with the same company. I would've been happy to work for them my whole life. Now I'm in a completely different field with much greater job stability.
I've never understood all this lamentation over the death of "company loyalty." No fucking *shit* we're in it for the money. That's literally what jobs are for, and what the companies exist to do in the first place. Businessmen typically don't found corporations because they're passionate about helping the little guy out. The idea of being "loyal" to a company seems ridiculous, as if you’re expected to stick up for them in a fight or sing the Company Song with tears welling in your eyes when the banner is unfurled. Hail, hail, Prudential Financial, True I shall e’er be!
Death of comapany loyalty is a byproduct of bad corporate business theories from the 80s, (rank and stack, share holder supremacy, etc) and less from younger generations entering the work force.
Truer than you know. If you look at corporate annual reports from the 50's, they were all about their products, service to their customers, and doing right by their employees and their communities. Shareholders were never mentioned because legally they came dead last in the pecking order during a bankruptcy, and they knew the risks they were taking. Then along came the Reagan era with McKinsey and other consulting firms turning this model completely upside down. Now shareholders were the only constituency that mattered, and the stock price was the paramount measure of a company's success. With the invention of executive stock options, the way was open for management to focus only on rewarding themselves and the shareholders, as some sort of religious duty. All other constituencies, like employees, were expendable if that got the stock price up.
Especially when companies prove every single day they care about profit over people. Why is it too much for us to care about the money over the company in return?
And that's the whole difference. The boomers worked for companies that paid more for loyal, reliable workers. When they got too expensive for the few greedy folks at the top looking to expand their bonuses, they started to shit them out for someone younger they could pay less to do the same job - so out went the boomer, and in came the GenXer. Of course, when you were hired to a nice job right away for 'good money', but less than the person you were replacing, hmmm - now you see how dual income GenXers still struggle to become as affluent as their boomer predecessors?
Exactly. I have 35 people working for me and I constantly harp on work life balance. I love hard workers, but you work to live, not live to work.
You are the exception, not the norm unfortunately. What kinda work you do? Give me a job!
>We were the first group that benefitted from being the children of the 50s economic boom, so many of us wanted for very little. This painted us as entitled, selfish and lazy. I've always thought this was a pretty weird complaint for people to have. I personally don't want future generations to have to struggle as much as I did.
I was told I was entitled because I asked to get paid for time worked. People are fucked.
Lol yah. Have this coworker at a coffee shop who thinks good things will happen to them or something to that effect. She comes in early and doesn't change her schedule to reflect that. She resents me for having a "I only work when I'm paid" attitude. I closely monitor my hours as a result (she's technically the location manager).
>She resents me for having a "I only work when I'm paid" attitude. This is definitely an attitude I developed out of necessity. I've had employers and coworkers see that I'm willing to be helpful and do extra shit and suddenly I'm being expected to come in on days off and do extra work without extra pay. Not happening. Thankfully, my current workplace is good about work/life balance.
Exactly. We fetishize the whole image of "hard work" and "struggling immigrants", and it's mind-boggling. My great-grandparents didn't come to America from Ireland hoping that their descendants would have to struggle as hard as they did.
"I've come to the land of opportunities and fortune but I hope those entitled grandkids don't get either."
Yo, I have a PS4 and homebrew my own beer. 15 year old me would love this guy!
Haha, party on, Garth. We're still cool, right?
> One of the reasons I laugh when people complain about millennials, etc. Y'all are the further products of us, so why are we bitching? Exactly! Especially when they try to deride millennials about "participation trophies". Who do you think gave out the "trophies" in the first place, motherfucker?! I definitely am not on the hate wagon...rather the opposite...I have respect for the millennials. They are *aware* of the bullshit that was fed to them...whereas us Gen-Xers ate it up.
ITT Boomers hate everyone.
Yeah, I was hoping for posts by Boomers about what their parents hated.
Technically a Boomer here, but the birth dates of 1946-1964 are so far apart that the experiences were very different. The second half had very different experiences from the earlier ones, and girls very different from boys. When you look at a population graph I'm the arm that's sticking out, and female. There were always too many of us, and still are. That has defined life for many of us. We had comfortable childhoods for the most part because our dads always had work. Not our mothers. For girls, we were taught to set tables and not put ourselves forward too much or brag, skills useful for a wife but not for thriving in the workplace. Nothing prepared us for the workplace. My younger brother got an allowance but I didn't, because I wasn't going to need to know how to handle money. Same with many of the other things boys were taught - being handy, thinking you could be handy, speaking up - all things learned much later in life and not nearly as well. My mother truly believed until her dying day that my husband supported me and that I didn't have to work. Being one of many defined my career. There were too many young people during the recession in the early 80s and people ten years older than us had all the best jobs. By the time I got out of marginal employment in my thirties I was suddenly too old. Younger workers were more in demand. I was told in my mid thirties that my best option was to ghost write for them. I'm in my sixties now and there are still way too many of us. A lot had to take early retirement. And I have no idea what to do when I'm one of too many millions of really old people.
Please, keep writing about it. I never really thought about the boomer experience from your perspective and it was refreshing.
This gets at the heart of why I think generations should be shorter. I'm smack dab in the middle of "Millenial". Millenials before me dropped out of college to go make millions taking the internet from a niche thing to something that's infiltrated every nook and cranny of our civilization. Millennials around my age and younger had our entire adolescence shaped by internet culture and the advent of social media. How can these two groups really be considered the same generation when one of them played such a crucial role in the development of the other?
I think a lot of the internet culture and social media had a way of bringing the millennials and younger close to each other though. I'm around 30 and feel I have a lot more in common with my 20 year old co-workers than I do my 40 year old co-workers.
Thank you for your side, it sounds bleak. How do you see yourself on the political spectrum if I may ask? What do you think of things like welfare and subsidised health care and such?
Generation X- we were always too lazy, and too liberal. Also, we were hounded to have more kids. I think X is the first generation to not automatically have several kids by their mid 20s.
> I think X is the first generation to not automatically have several kids by their mid 20s. Which is funny.....the generation raised by divorce was hesitant to get married & reproduce like bunnies....go figure. ;)
Gen X here: What I find funny is that I grew up with both parents and I thought that if you get married, you work on it. You only give up after trying to work through the problems and failing. I later learned way too many people just give up and don't want to try, they think relationships are supposed to be easy and if it is not a fairytale then it is a failure. I think I see the millennials understanding this more than the generation I was born into (as well as Gen Y).
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As a millenial... I'm not a young adult anymore??? :'(
The future is now, old man. -Gen Z
I got a colonoscopy at 18. I've been an old man since I was young.
I just feel sorry for you, dude.
It's okay, I had an endoscopy a few months later. Having a camera shoved in both ends cancels it out.
Yep, Gen X here. Our music was 'shit' (grunge, punk) and we were told we wouldn't get jobs without a degree. Now we're middle aged, stuck with debt from college and still listening to the same 'shit'.
We were also the first generation where getting a degree was considered mandatory for success. Of course we held off on having children, we were busy trying to build a career. Then we graduated college, into an economy that had no room for us, and had our grandparents asking when we were going to get married and have kids! Well, grandma, I share an apartment with someone, and I'm working a part time job where 50% of my earnings go toward student loans. Not sure this is a situation to start popping out kids. Now, that said, I recently told some people about moving into an apartment with my girlfriend, while making $480/month, and still managing to pay loans, food and rent. My apartment, in 2001, cost $300/month, and I paid half of that. I looked up the same exact apartment that's now renting for $825, and kids just out of school aren't making any more money, and in some cases less, than I was.
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But it's worse ... like I said, I didn't have to move home after graduating because you could get a single room apartment and live in it for 40hrs of work. Sure, it was a far cry from buying a house with a high-school diploma and a factory job, but at least we weren't living with our parents.
> We were also the first generation where getting a degree was considered mandatory for success. this x100000 falling back to the trades was a huge failure in life. (how dumb that seems now)
Even though I grew up in a rural farming community I was always encouraged to go to college and get a degree. Staying there wasn't even an option. Now I'm a mildly successful engineer that works about 55 hours a week, comes home, take the kids to, cook and eat dinner, clean up, watch a show on Netflix and start over. The kids keep things interesting bud damn... Sometimes I wish I would have just followed in my dad's footsteps and became a farmer. Dirt smells good.
Gen X was once considered too liberal? Well damn, that really puts things in perspective...
You have no idea. People talk about boomers as if they all had their wild days where they chased a band and lived naked for a few months or whatever. The majority married young, got jobs, and started having kids. They held many, if not most of the same beliefs as their parents. The idea that Gen X'ers couldn't care enough to be bothered by gays on television or unmarried couples living together drove a *lot* of boomers crazy. We were the apathy generation. Who cares was our anthem. We didn't join civic clubs. We didn't try and impose a status quo on the people around us. We weren't trying to start some kind of revolution. We didn't care. You do you. I'll do me. I think, in some ways, many Gen Xers understood on a very basic level that things weren't going well for underprivileged groups, but we didn't do a whole lot to expand beyond that- not the way that many millenials have made a conscious effort to be allies with the same underprivileged people. Of course, these are big generalizations, and it's not a standard deal for everybody. I'm speaking a lot from personal experience. I distinctly remember my dad being floored that I didn't see anything wrong with an unmarried couple living together, or that Clinton shook the hand of Pedro Zamorra, and even championed him as a hero for homosexuals. Even now, I'm surprised to see how conscious so many people are of what is going on around them. It's enlightening and I think a lot of folks are wrongly criticized for it.
> Clinton shook the hand of Pedro Zamorra or Princess Diane *touching* someone with HIV.
A lot of our view of Boomers is colored by the Counterculture and civil rights activists who were only ever a small part of it. On the whole they're a lot like their parents just more in favor of women having more independence and less racist.
Listen to a boomer some time, and you'll find out what real hidden prejudice is. They'll concede that overpopulation is a problem, and blame it on the 'poor, inner city people that have kids they can't afford'. Meanwhile, they'll moan that you haven't given them grandkids. Sorry Boomers, nobody can afford kids.
Baby boomers spent my entire childhood bragging about all their drugs and orgies of the 60’s then got upset when gen x tried pot.
my father followed "the who" one summer in his volkswagon bus making money by selling pot and cheese sandwiches. Mom wore beaded bikini tops as a regular outfit and together they bought a sailboat and sailed "naked and on drugs" for weeks. Then they had kids and Dad was Mr. Corporate America and all of a sudden mom was a stepford wife and I got grounded for 3 months at 17 because they found two weed seeds and one empty Seagrams Wild Berry in my room. Wouldn't give a gerbil a buzz.
You’ve summed up a whole generation so neatly.
I always knew my mom was full of shit... but when my uncle, who was a firefighter, said to me one day "I use to hook your mom up to an IV to help her with her hangovers after a party"
Boy howdy did I misread that one for a second.
You read the incest part of his uncle hooking up with his mum as well?
You can have uncles from either side of the family, but it is a slightly jarring sentence
A generation built upon "do as I say, not as I do."
I hate to generalize so much but with how often I've seen people of that age group acting like severely overgrown children at mild inconveniences (had to yell at a dude who was berating employees at an understaffed wendy's a few weeks ago), I do have to wonder if that kind of entitlement is a generational thing. It also makes me wonder what my generation's gonna fuck up - these people were the "free love" generation but it turned out to be less "everything for everyone" and "everything for me." I'm leaning towards "move fast and break things" being the most twisted ethos of my own generation so far. Now that we're getting to be in charge of shit, we'll really see over the next decade or two.
I got my Masters degree in Marketing and I have a theory as to why the Baby Boomers act the way they do; for their entire existence, they have been the biggest market in America (by size), so they have grown accustomed to everything being tailored directly to them. When they were children, everything was made for kids, television was "The Howdy Doody Show", movies were sanitized, Disney was becoming big, etc. When they became teenagers, sex, drugs, and rock and roll became the norm; there were muscle cars, massive concert events (like Woodstock) and for a brief time, even the concept of porn becoming mainstream in movies was being floated (in 1969 the x-rated film "Midnight Cowboy" won best picture at the Oscars). When they reached middle age, everything became focused on making your home more comfortable, big TV's, high-quality home goods stores became a lot more common, etc. Now that the Boomers are getting older, marketers are starting to turn away from them as they are no longer the largest group to market to; the younger generations are becoming a bigger part of the market and for the first time in their lives, everything isn't focused on what the Boomers want, and they're not happy about it. When I was younger, I worked a customer service position and the older customers were always the worst to deal with; they wanted everything done yesterday, and if the slightest thing wasn't perfect, they expected everything for free. The younger customers usually were much easier to deal with, and more understanding if something wasn't perfect.
Purely emotional reaction: Part of me is hoping that this is a generational artifact and not due to getting older because I don't wanna turn into 'that guy'.
To be fair, if you were born between the 80s and early 2000's, we are a generation the first of it's kind. Nothing like the internet has ever been available to people like it was as it developed over that time period. Kids born between 2005 and now probably won't turn out the same way because they didn't really see the internet grow like the people from the 80s and 90s could have. I think being the first people to have access to something like the internet.. It will either make us very egotistical \[as social media tends to reward being rather self-centered and bragging or sharing about literally anything you ever did\] or it will lead us to be a more understanding generation as it's a platform we can do things like we are doing now.. Discussing the issues of generations without, and maybe learning from them. It really is kind of interesting ebcause each generation is always going to be unique from one another, but the internet is a massive difference compared to the rest of history, barring things like the industrial revolution which also greatly changed America in a very short time frame.
The baby boomers were also called the "me" generation, don't forget.
> "The Baby Boomers were nicknamed the “Me Generation” due to their perceived narcissism. The “Me” generation in the United States is a term referring to the baby boomer generation and the self-involved qualities that some people associated with it." Huh, today I learned.
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I think people who rebel in the standard way that everyone around them is rebelling are also people who are extra concerned with being normal. So they grow up and try to fit the "normal" adult/parent role to a T too.
I think that sums up Baby Boomers really well. It's not that they cared so much about being wild and free. If they did, they'd be far less controlling and judgmental in their old age. They really just care about fitting in and keeping up appearances.
I think whether you did drugs or not, you're always going to protect your children from them because you don't trust them with drugs. Some parents are going to be more open minded than others but don't count on that. Our generation will be the same. "Drugs are bad (trust me I know from experience)"
Remember all the news stories in the 90s about how "pot today is 20x more powerful" or some such number? The message was that even parents who did pot in their youth could criticize kids today for partaking in such "dangerous activities."
> pot today is 20x more powerful To be fair, if you haven't smoked in 30 years and try some dank top tier California dank weed with an insane THC content, you're gonna take one puff and ruminate (for 30 minutes) about the way you said hello to somebody 3 days ago and if it was weird.
Wowowow. Two danks in one sentence? Dare I say double dank kush?
It was actually an editing error. I did not intentionally double dank.
You’re a double danker! You danked, you bit, you danked again!
I had one puff from a joint and it felt like someone was wiggling the earths center of gravity in different directions. That and it felt like my short term memory was resetting every 3 seconds.
The most common reaction is: "Time passes very slowly." I used to blaze up a fuckin storm in high school, but now THC gives me anxiety for some reason. One day it just started giving me panic attacks and now I can't tolerate it. Maybe I'll try some high [CBD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol) weed one of these days. I'm more of a microdosing LSD guy when it comes to psychedelics.
You would not believe what a big deal long hair was. I mean, I lived through going from a crew cut in the 60s to long hair in the 70s and even I can't believe what a fuss that caused a lot of people. It was pretty black and white too; having long hair meant you didn't agree with all the bullshit going on; Nam, Nixon, anti pot hysteria. It was an instant and obvious declaration.
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I’m a millennial, but the older generations don’t realize that they don’t like the generation below me.
OMG my facebook right now "Michkayla is such a Millenial!" She is 10 years old Lindsay, you are the millennial! AH!
>Michkayla I weep, but not as bad as Kviiilyn
How does one pronounce that. .... Wait .... is it Kaitlin? NO!
Yep. And her younger siblings, Jeahxzyn, Zheahkeuriye, and Mhehkhayeighlagh.
How long before we just give up and just randomly mash the keyboard to create baby names?
Use a hash table, your baby's name will be much more secure that way.
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I know you are exaggerating, but those seriously aren’t far off from what kids names are looking like.
Yeah I encountered that ages ago in an old thread and kept saying it as "Kuh-Villain". Took me a bit to realise how it was pronounced.
Oh my god... K-VIII-lyn Roman numerals for eight... in a name? Sometimes I just want aliens to come and glass the entire fucking planet, because sometimes I just don't want humanity to tarnish the galaxy with all its stupid.
It's kind of like the people who say they are 90s kids when they were born in 1998. Hell I was born in 91 and I would say that I'm a 2000s kid. I barely remember like anything from the 90s.
I agree. I can say I’m a 90’s kid, I was born in 1982. I was a preteen and teenager during the 90’s. Those are the ages where we really come of age.
We had wild ideas like civil rights and voting rights. We didn't appreciate the opportunity they gave us to go to Vietnam to blow people up and/or get blown up. And they were so upset about us smoking marijuana instead of drinking alcohol as God intended, they instituted a program to poison the marijuana. I figure they got that idea from when they were younger and alcohol was poisoned.
I am slightly pre-baby boomer and I agree with the above wholeheartedly.
Nice to read this and look now and think, 'thank god you didn't back down on those issues', the world is still messed up in many ways but some good change has definitely become apparent over the years.
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Holy fuck man I've heard so many old dudes saying how all you need to do to get a job is talk to the manager, tell him you'll work a day for free, boom, you've got a job. I was 17 in 2008 when the recession was going down. I spent the entire summer handing out resumes, talking to managers and filling out applications. Didn't even get a single call back. The first job I was able to get (in 2010) was a full time construction labourer position that I got super lucky with because I knew the owner of the company. Finding work was hard as all fuck, and I'm assuming it still is.
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> talk to the manager Yup. after nine years I was laid off - three's company loyalty for you... I had to move back in with my parents. At age 35. I was unemployed for three years. Things got heated between me and my dad for that exact reason. He doesn't understand the fact that the person doing the hiring probably isn't even in the same building as the local listed office. There is no "manager." There are department heads and the doors are locked.
My dad did this to me as well, he went as far as saying that I should go down to a news station and offer to hold cables while they recorded to try and get a job at their IT dept. Even my mom saw how absolutely ridiculous he was being at that point. To humor him, I "Hit the pavement" like he suggested, and invited him along to see where that strategy got me. I was fresh out of college, just as the most recent major recession hit a few years back, and no one was hiring in my area, not even those with a fresh Bachelors degree. I went down every strip mall for a few miles, walked into radio shack (back when they still existed), it was all smiles until I mentioned I wanted a job - that was they point where they visibly shut down on me, showed me the door, and said that they weren't allowed to hire, I had to apply online. The manager didn't even get a say in who was hired, he said he wanted n number of employees, and corporate sent it to them. All in all, I was rejected a little over 30 times in that one day. By the time we got home, he was fuming, visibly red, and panting with rage. I didn't say a word to him, he didnt say a word to me - we just walked back into the house, and he didn't speak to me for 2 weeks.
Wait, he saw he was wrong and he’s the one who didn’t speak to you??
Yep, that fact pissed him off.
And that is the entitlement showing lol
To a point, I was a sarcastic asshole about it too, he had been hounding me with equal sarcasm for a year. He had his entire worldview ground up into a fine paste and shoved down several orifices at once. I just gave him a taste of what he'd been doing to me, while demonstrating how comprehensively and painfully, irrefutably wrong he was. After breaking a bit of furniture he swallowed his pride and apologized a few months later. He did change his thinking after that though, so he did more than most boomers in that regard.
That is so fucking true. I'm around your age, born in 1981, and the number of times it has been suggested that I show up in person to inquire about employment by my folks is insane. I think the one time I did that the receptionist just said "Did you submit your resume? Cause that's what you're supposed to do" and then I just fucked off.
This is the first time I’ve heard the term “Oregon Trail generation.” It’s perfect!
I just turned thirty. Aside from a complete inability of my parents' generation to understand videogames, the biggest complaint seems to boil down to the idea that my generation *changes* things. Part of that was down to a technological shift, I think -- there's the sense among a lot of people who are now in their fifties and sixties that computers make things more complicated, and that things were just *simpler* in the old days, even if it was a lot more time consuming and not as efficient -- but there's also the shift in social norms that's new for a lot of people. Society was how it was because that's how it had always been: grow up, get married, buy a house, have two kids, save for retirement, and then Goodnight, Vienna. Anything that questioned that -- even something like being gay -- was immediately suspect, and to an extent still is (although less so within the past ten years). The standard rallying cry of a lot of the older generation always seemed to be 'Why can't you be more like us?'. I don't think that's necessarily unique as generations go, but as the shifts in society and technology became faster and more widespread, the complaints seemed to get much louder. In the sixties, you were considered rebellious and counterculture if you wanted to push for social change. Now, for a lot of people, that's just considered normal.
> 'Why can't you be more like us?' I'm 34, I would tell every kid to learn from the mistakes that I make so that they don't have to. You do you bro, do what's best for you and makes you happy, fuck anyone who tries to tell you otherwise, they're just pissed because their lives suck. Be you, not someone else.
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I'm 30 & British. That sounds pretty fucking spot on.
We were the despair of our parents. Didn't want to go to war. Weren't gonna let them draft us. Nobody liked Frank Sinatra. Our music was hideous. Our sexual behavior was worse - the pill banished all that fear and morality they tried to instill in the girls. (Boys were just dogs about sex - nothing you could do about it.) We wore the wrong clothes. You would not BELIEVE the lengths schools went to prevent long hair and dress hems above the knee. EVERYTHING fun was illegal. There are *so many* things people do now without a second thought that would've gotten you arrested in 1959. Checking into a hotel with someone not your spouse? You're under arrest. Dating a dark person while white? Never mind an arrest, the cop will take you speak with the KKK about it. The further I get from the sixties, the more it seems like a sea change in America. During the change, everyone assured us that Youth *always* rebels - there was some quote of Pericles to that effect. Nope. There was a huge change. America in 1960 was nothing like America in 1970. Me, I think things got better. I think my parents would disagree.
We were the "Slacker Generation." That's probably because the Boomers hung in like ticks, stuck to all of the good jobs, and when they were replaced by robots, left us with retail and service jobs... then complained when we didn't do as well as they did. Now that the ticks dropping off, we're running into age discrimination. By Boomers. Who want to hire more millennials. Generation X got fucked.
TBF they want to hire us because we entered the economy during a recession and most of us will actually answer the question "What did you make at your previous job" with the actual answer, instead of an "I am asking for X at this position" answer... basically my generation is getting fucked on wages, by and large, and that's why we're more hireable :( The issue is less that one generation gets fucked more or less than the other, it continues to be that the rich fuck over the poor at every chance they get.
Well we were spoiled at not having to go to war. Then Vietnam happened, so I guess we were not spoiled any more.
Color television. "When I was a kid we only had two colors!" "And one of them was extremely more prejudiced towards the other."
Cold hearted orb that rules the night Removes the colors from our sight ~~Black~~ Red is grey and yellow white But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion. EDIT: Thank you Moody Blues for this classic poem.
Gen X. We were too lazy and didnt care about anything, and didnt work hard enough. Sound familiar?
I'm early Gen X, I think baby boomers would look at us (gen x) as somewhat lazy and self centered. I had an acting class in high school where 80% of us just all decided not to take our final and take a zero. The teacher went on about how shitty a generation we were.
I'm a filthy millennial (born in 91), and I work in construction. I always find it hilarious when the older dudes complain about people my age not wanting to work and being shitty workers. Then they do the classic "Oh except you, and the other 8 young guys who work here". It seems like some people are good workers and some people are lazy, just like every generation.
Most people can't afford to not work no matter what the media and older people think. My job is full of young people coming in, they work just as hard as anybody else. We have lazy old people and lazy young people. For every 20something that slacks off I see a 50 year doing the same thing just not as apparent, they've finetuned the art of looking like they're working.
I wonder why there's a shortage of skilled trades people when the older guys are making fun of the younger guys for being lazy, using safety equipment, etc?
Actually also funny enough my hearing is pretty bad now because when I was really young and first started working, the old dudes basically laughed at me for asking if I should wear hearing protection while running the shitty old planer. I always wear hearing protection now.
Exactly this. My first job ever was in construction with my father. I got mocked for wearing ear protection. Well looks whos laughing now a decade later. My old man can't hear for shit and I still wear hearing protection when cutting the grass on my lawn mower.
Yeah, I'm also getting started in the trades (HVAC) and I'm not going to risk my health. I purchased top of the line boots, safety glasses, hearing protection, etc.
Late Gen x. I don’t think boomers thought much. They were too obsessed over their own lives and collecting as much possessions as possible.
**GANGS**!*!*! Everyone in the early nineties was in a gang and we were going to drug drive by a baby *to death*!
I couldn't play in the local parks because gangs actually did do drive by shootings at the park for target practice. The streets were super dangerous back in the 90s. Hell one gang even did a drive by shooting on cops and FBI agents at their own building as an initiation. I lived by Washington DC. People who lived in the city definitely saw some of that violence.
Boomers definitely hate gen x-er’s parenting. We don’t abuse our children and actually care about their safety and this offends them. And they think we’re too politically correct and easily offended, when really, offending baby boomers is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Every generation and political leaning group is overly sensitive about their own topics, but loves to shit on other groups for the things they get offended over. I've never disagreed with mom and her husband (who is a sweetheart) about how my generation (millenials) can get overly sensitive, but dealing with them is it's own version of walking on eggshells. Her husband's mother is in remission now, but when she had cancer I offered to get her medical marijuana to help with nausea and appetite. You'd think I suggested a satanic ritual. There was gasping and clutching of pearls, followed by "she's a Christian woman, how can you even say that!?". What??? Older people get crazy about religion. That's why the war on Christmas narrative gets great ratings every year. Meanwhile, I haven't met a single millenial, including atheists, who doesn't love Christmas.
Boomers get offended over people getting offended its quite ironic really
So entertaining, though! Oh, and they think their generation was the only one to have a good childhood
My older relatives are always posting pics of random older/outdated things with the caption, "WHO REMEMBERS THIS????" For some reason, one of the things that got shared around in this fashion was a picture that said, "WHO REMEMBERS TOMATO SOUP AND GRILLED CHEESE?" My dad commented, ".....do they not make 'em anymore?"
My dad (a late Boomer) is this type of person. He goes on about how "spoiled" young people are for not liking garbage candy like Tootsie Rolls.
That's such a weird thing to be mad about lmao. Tootsie Rolls are just vaguely chocolate-flavored wax.
I've actually asked my parents about this before, since they're both early Gen-X (born in 67 and 70). The biggest thing seemed to be the complaints about their generation being washed out, lazy, dope smoking burnouts with no ambition. Their parents were boomers but more of the blue collar "work is its own reward" type of boomer than the free love Woodstock kind. So they both got tons of shit growing up for not having their futures figured out at 18 and for that darn loud guitar music. Parenting was also a thing. My mom was more laid back and followed the new ideas of Dr. Spock with the whole "timeout" thing. My dad was more old school in his belief and absolutely *could not* fathom raising a child without whoopings as punishments or instilling obedience as a core virtue. I don't know how much my grandparents really complained about how laid back my upbringing was but I know my mom got lots of scoffs and eye rolls when I would misbehave and wasn't given the belt. They probably thought I would grow up to be disrespectful and careless, but I was a petulant rule-follower and did infinity times less drugs than my parents did when they were growing up so HA! And for an added bonus, I asked my stepdad this same question since he's a bit older and technically a late Boomer (born in 61). He said the chief complaint from his parents' generation was that kids his age were obsessed with the boob tube. They thought TV was going to ruin everybody by plopping in front of it for hours on end and just cause them to waste away. There may be some truth to this one because I swear that man's free time is structured around what is on TV at that moment.
I'm 30. A little thing: My folks complained my friends and I played too many video games. I remember during sleepovers, we tried to pull all-nighters playing rented Blockbuster/Hollywood Video PSX and N64 games. Parents occasionally interrupted us to tell us to stop playing games for so long - it's bad for us, that maybe we should watch a movie or TV show instead.. I still don't get it. Both require staring at a TV/Monitor, but one was active and the other passive entertainment. I guess gaming just wasn't normalized then. Besides that, I didn't really get a lot of crap for "my generation" growing up. My folks, having been born and raised in the USSR, had to judge my upbringing as American quirks rather than Generational quirks. They saw a greater emphasis on preserving childhood innocence here - and that happiness/fun seemed more important than education and discipline. It's a balancing act, truly, and I think they overcompensated in a lot of ways. They thought we were significantly softer and naive and I heard a lot of cynicism from them. I get where they're coming from, but I still disagree with it. Here's an observation and complaint I have about younger people. What the heck is happening with music? This is where I'm sounding old - but when was growing up - each year, each new record was heavier and more subversive than the year before. Music didn't just hit me harder because I was 'at a certain age', it was actually harder. I heard all sorts of complaints - "your music is too loud!". In Rock, in Hip Hop. This seems to have peaked at a certain point. A lot of new music today is just soft. I think we're the first generation to say "your music ain't fucking crazy enough!". Somehow Hip Hop became Disco. Somehow Rock became Country. Of course, I'm speaking in generalities. There's still new and exciting acts bubbling up through the surface - especially as home production becomes cheaper and more accessible. There's brilliant young musicians out there. Just fewer than I'd ever thought I'd see. It's a legit task searching for it. Maybe it's social media and the increased pressure to be accepted. Maybe it's caused music to live closer to a common denominator. Maybe I'm just getting old. But, fucking, give it some more juice!
Thats actually quite a good point about us seeing new music as 'not crazy enough' for the first time. Never thought about it like that
My kids are 21 and 18 and I'm 49. So gen-xer who has raised two post millenial kids. It is so strange to me that the music thing rings true. None of their music is offensive to me, and we share a lot of musical interests. I love to see them get into some older bands I liked, and we very often share music that we enjoy. I have just invited them to see a concert with me. It's not something I did with my parents, although I did not *hate* Peter, Paul and Mary or Simon and Garfunkle. But they certainly had no interest in 80s music.
My dad is 62. And we still share a lot of musical interests - significantly more than between him and his dad. Back in the USSR, he used to buy and trade bootleg black market records with his friends. Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, The Police, Zeppelin, etc. And I like all that too - we've gone to concerts together. And now that I'm 30, I'm learning to really enjoy stuff like The Carpenters or Simon. There's a rooted sadness in those tones and voices that are harder to replicate today - either due to the recording process, or to the culture or.. abuse/drugs/etc. Besides the "we need more harder music" rant, I actually love all genres for all different reasons. Nothing offends me, musically. I just find it amusing that parents of the 70s kids threw out KISS records for being too Satanic - and parents of the future might throw out records for not being Satanic *enough*.
Idk we kinda had Dubstep there for a while
Yep. I'm 35. My mom, who has the tv on every moment she is awake in the house, complained recently that I play too many video games (30 minutes to 3 hours a day). Edit: To clarify, I'm married with a kid and don't live with my mom. She is retired and has hobbies and also helps out with my son. She's just one of those who must have the TV on, even if she's not watching. I also go days at a time without playing a game, but it's my main hobby.
We spent all our time at those darn video arcades, rotting our brains with Pacman, Centipede, and Donkey Kong. And some of us smoked POT.
Gen Y here (late gen x pre millennial weird time frame). I am so sick of all the “participation trophy” BS people complain about, when it was our parents that gave them out. They created the situation and then blame us about it. Or how we are lazy and entitled, yet we were encouraged to go to college and study whatever you like so you can get a good job. Just ignore the fact they could support a family, own a house and two cars with their salary from working at the factory.
Love the participation trophy part. I hated getting trophies every year in rec sports leagues when my team lost in the tournament. Like why do i get a trophy for losing? I always complained about it until the year my basketball team won and I actually valued the trophy I got that year. It was the people in charge who believed kids couldn't handle it. There might have been some kids that would have cried, but most of that was because their parents taught them that they were so star spangled awesome that not getting a trophy was actually a hostile act
Ha! I'm a boomer. According to my parents and their friends, we kids were lazy, entitled, rebellious and disrespectful. The music we listened to was gauche; nothing but a bunch of screaming and yelling. The movies we liked were tasteless, artless, shameful and disgusting. In short, all the same things boomers whine about GenX and Millennials. Back then it was called the "generation gap." Today it's called "culture wars." The pissing and moaning about youth by old fucks is magnified today because of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, just like the pissing and moaning about everything else. You want to feel better about yourself and the world? Stop watching the fucking news.
[удалено]
***WONDER IF VILOD IS STILL MAKING THAT MEAD WITH JUNIPER BERRIES MIXED IN***
Todd you did it again
I'm an old millennial - I can't really say much about GenX-ers, because I'm so close to them in age, it's mix and match - some are just really close to me in mentality, while some are not. With my parents' generation, I'd say: - difference in work/life balance. My dad was an utter workaholic who made good money, while I'd take less pay if it meant more free time and meaningful work. My parents generations calls this "lazy" and "having no ambition", while I call it "having a life". - less optimistic life view which is not irrational, but older generatons criticize because "you need to be more positive". - the fact that, in my case at least, we didn't "fall in line" and went for the marriage/kids thing. - the fact that we didn't get more consevative with agen, as they did. I'm more "left" now than at 20.
Gen Z here, I haven't recieved too much flak from millenials at all. Millenials are really nice and understanding, even the "old" millenials. Only shit we get is for our memes that can be outlandish I admit and our heavy usage of tech.
I"m an old millenial. I like the memes. Imgur is like watching a Robitussin soaked fever-dream stream across my phone.