… statistically, real generations are about 30 years apart — most people are not 16 years younger than their parents
These “Gens” that we’ve all been assigned to are more like half-generations 
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We’re not talking about generations of a single family, though. We’re talking about age cohorts within the overall population.
… yes please explain more words to me 
Same as it ever was:
In 1968, 63 year old director Otto Preminger is fascinated with the summer of lover, and the drug culture, and makes his summer of love, acid dropping movie, Skidoo. It has an all-star cast; Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Frank Gorshin, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney and Groucho Marx.
Among the highlights, Jackie Gleason dropping acid in prison. Groucho Marx plays a character named God.
It is a bizarre and terrible film you absolutely should watch if that sounds like the jam you keep in your wheelhouse. Truly one of the best Hello Fellow Kids moments of all time.
Compare and contrast with The Monkees’ film Head (also 1968). They were, the story goes, so fed up with being the Corporate Boyband that when asked to make a movie, agreed, on the condition they had complete creative control, after which they set about creating a movie that would destroy The Monkees.
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They are still an artificial imposition similar in ways to those marketing social categories of ABCD social classes, except it’s based simply on the year you were born, without any reference to different life circumstances.
A great way for pundits to waffle and make generalised pronouncements.
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I am strangely happy with slang I don’t understand. The whole point is that it’s their in joke, I’m not expected to get it. No prob.
I think a lot of slang anxiety comes from the slow realization that one is getting old, that the days of being the up and coming youngster are never coming back once they are lost. Well, I was never cool to begin with, so I can accept my grey beard and bald head. I’ve even accepted that Gen X are also “Boomers” to our kids, unlearning that the Boomers were the “cool” teens and twentysomethings when I was a kid.
So yeah, nice to know, but I’ll still assume I’m not supposed to know. Which, sneaky old man that I am, is even more fun.
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Sweet, now I be both old and pedantic and correct them with “It’s actually pronounced ‘skibitumi’.”
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I (boomer) asked my (zoomer) daughter. She is vaguely aware of the term as one of those kind of playground slang things kids invent which become a brief fad and then die away. She doesn’t know what it means.
I think social media amplifies stuff because old media is desperate to latch onto social media to show it’s down with the kids.
A good example is today’s BBC article about junior TikTok political influencers racking up millions of views (by accident, while less than 50% of 18-24 year olds vote.)
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Skiddy-mer-rink-a-dink-a-boomp, skiddy-mer-rink-a-doo,
Means I love you.
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But to us olds “bad” can also mean “cool”… so that doesn’t really clarify things much.
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That’s sick.
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My folks played their albums a lot when I was a little one. They would inadvertently curse me with that song on repeat in my head for about 3 weeks while I was working in the Far North.
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Yeah I’ve been very skeptical of the “short attention span” narrative. Look at web novels. They come out in short episodes not because it’s all the reader wants, but because it’s all the writer can get out fast enough. The readers then happily bing 500 chapters and complain they have to wait for more.
I live both sides of this dynamic.
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We were those parents, our daughter was born in '85 but VHS was was our friend.
I think that’s a bit chicken and egg. Writers of short form web novels surely are supplying a market which consumes short form episodic fiction. There are plenty of long novels on the market, which you binge and don’t have to wait for the next episode.
Is skibidi to flibberity, as toilet is to gibbet?
(upon researching flibbertigibbet, that word is way older than I had assumed)
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I have a hard time believing anyone has ever really used the alleged word “skibidi” unironically.
As a fellow old (also Gen X), I can confirm that nobody considers us anything at all. And I’m still fine with that.
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