Dinosaurs did it first.
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Those were their eggs. But now we’re getting symbolic.
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Love my mixtapes from the 80’s.
But there was the original PlayLiszt.
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clears throat
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We didn’t have emojis, but we did have emoticons. Frankly, emojis feel a little like cheating.
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I remember taping stuff I was playing on the stereo with my good old Norelco cassette recorder in 1970. So this claim is definitely overblown.
If you mean “mixtapes that actually preserve stereo”, then okay, 1975 or so. Still not “invented by Gen X”.
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The comparison to emojis misses it, doesn’t do mixtapes justice. Nobody constructs an emoji string. Mixtapes were ‘built’, demanding thoughtful choices. Often a platonic or romantic love letter.
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I used to use these TDK metal tapes for all my dubbing on a Sony high speed dual deck home stereo system. I think I paid like $10 for a 3 pack back in the late 80’s / early 90’s. I think I could have had a nice side business just selling these as original unopened stock.
My Walkman Sport had a metal setting (along with the Sony dubber). It is amazing what kind of fidelity you could get dubbing from a CD to a mix tape with the right kind of setup.
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Leads to a bio-modem – which is confusing.
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Absolutely. While I had a little cassette recorder/player, and a record player in the 70’s, attempting to make a mixtape was really difficult to do, for a variety of reasons. Once I bought the various components to build a separates system, in particular a quality tape deck with dual heads, which allowed monitoring of the recording while setting levels and being able to cue up tracks from vinyl albums, building a great mixtape from vinyl 7” and 12” singles and album tracks was not just fairly simple to do, but great fun! Time consuming, though, because you’re doing it in real time - a C90 mixtape took three to four hours, an entire evening.
I’ve still got most of mine, some on very expensive Metal tapes, most were on Chrome tapes. Playing them now, though, isn’t really possible, my Aiwa deck needs a service, and that’s not an easy thing to get done.
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I’m impressed yet usurprised that, once again, Gen Xers are being blamed for something the Boomers did. I am surprised to see it here at BoingBoing.
I’m not talking about the mixtape, though frankly, that also goes to the Boomers. I’m talking about the opening paragraphs.
Xers did not create the toxic culture of the 1980s. The absolute oldest Xers–if we use the reasonable 1964-1982 definition–were high school sophomores in 1980; the youngest of us were not yet conceived. We made up perhaps 10% of the electorate in 1988, and none of us reached anything like influence in a large company before maybe 1995.
The cocaine-fueled economic excesses, the deliberate lack of preparation for climate change, the wars of imperialism–that was all Boomers. Don’t try to skive that fuckery off onto Gen X.
And it’s not like Gen X is even in power now. There are 27 Gen Xers in the US Senate (and 5 pre-Boomers (no, I won’t call them “Greatest,” fuck that noise)). The House is a bit less gerontocracy; 201 Boomers and pre-Boomers there. Of course there are only 198 Xers, with the remainder being Millennials.
And almost all the senior positions in both houses are held by Boomers.
Our government is literally run by Boomers, our corporations are mostly run by Boomers, but yeah, sure, fine, Gen X caused the problems of the 1980s when we were twelve. Great job, author. Just… fucking impressive.
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Speaking as a Gen xer: we did make cynicism highly fashionable…
There is no ONE generation to pin the blame on for our current state of affairs. We’ve all contributed to some degree to this fucking mess we’re in and we all need to do our share to fix it.
Blaming other generations as solely responsible seems totally on brand for Generation snark, though. Although it also feels like quite a boomer move too…
Also… quite a few of the insurrectionists were Gen Xers… just sayin’…
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I thought having your boomer parents worst shame and embarrassment projected onto you was the part that makes it gen x? Or is that millennials? Or maybe that’s timeless…
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I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea that Gen-X are an existential threat to the earth. I assume that fat block of text explaining WHY came from somewhere.
Gen-X are the SMALLEST generational cohort BY FAR, and we were fucking TEENAGERS in the 80s. Reagan’s re-election in 1984 was the first chance for the OLDEST of GenX to cast a ballot. And you want to blame us for this shit?
There has never been a Gen-X president, and there likely never will be (if GenXer, Ron DeSantis gets elected, you can blame every fucking thing on us. Someone probably gave him a swirlied his ass in the bathroom of the arcade and made him the asshat that he is.)
Shit, maybe it was better to just be forgotten
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I can see both sides:
Lauding an earlier generation for inventing and proceeding with a process even though it was laborious and time-consuming.
Lauding a later generation for carrying that process even further… although helped along by the much greater ease afforded them by the technological efforts put in by an earlier generation.
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Doesn’t mean we don’t have an impact on the planet and to society.
We’re a small generation not an invisible one.
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Yes, large and small.
Russia’s definitely shrinking generation has a major impact – now and into the future.
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