Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/26/how-a-quirky-finnish-comic-cam.html
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Yeah, that comic sounds about right. Curiously enough, I have a Finnish (2nd?) nephew named Matti.
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So glad to see BoingBoing has caught on to Sixth Tone. They publish some good stuff.
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I clicked on one of the links to try and see more toons. This must have been a Chinese site because the tab said “Sina Visitor System” with a Burning Eye Of Sauron logo. It stayed up for maybe ten seconds before they put me through to the site.
Sauron may have been big on central planning, was strong on law and order, and ran a tight ship; while the fellowship were a load of amateurs who made it up as they went along. But, he was still a bad guy, right?
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KALSARIKÄNNIT
The feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear – with no intention of going out.
A drink. At home. In your underwear. And there is a word for it. Kalsarikännit.
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Hey, BB editors, any chance of substituting the term “millennials” with the more accurate “people under forty”?
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Sure, as soon as Millennials stop calling people over 40 “Boomers.” Gen Xers don’t like being lumped in with Boomers, in the way Gen Z doesn’t like being lumped in with Millennials. STOP THE HATE
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I love learning culture-specific words! Thanks!
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We don’t call you boomers, that’s your name for yourselves. We just call you old people.
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Ha! The reason Gen Xers are so sarcastic and dark is that we were rebelling against the Baby Boomer ethos, that Steve Jobs-ish hippie-dippie capitalism. Then our shitty generation begat an even shittier generation! All I can say is thank the bejesus for Gen Z, as I am sure they will be, like, totally rad and not beaucoup bogus.
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Not everyone under 40 is a millennial.
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No. It’s not. I’m not a boomer, my parents are. I’m a Gen Xer. Very different and distinct cohort.
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jingfen without the sisu means not Finnish.
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Well yes, 39-year-olds are gen-x, and presumably there’s a younger generation who haven’t been assigned a name or set of vices yet, not to mention the pointlessness of saying that “if you’re born in 19XX then you’re this generation, but if you’re born a month later you’re that generation and thus totally different people”.
I wasn’t trying to be precise, it was more a cry of annoyance that ‘millennials’ is usually used as shorthand for “foolish callow youth”. ‘Rebranding’ (if you will) to “people under forty” is an effective way of pointing out that we’re not all so young any more (possibly still foolish and callow of course, but no generation has a monopoly on that).
It’s largely about cultural phenomenon and common experiences more than anything else, I’d argue. I think we can safely say that anyone who waxes poetically about how impactful seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan was as kids is probably a boomer, just like how events like the Challenger disaster, the rise of MTV, video games, or the election of Reagan (and for some people seeing the Watergate hearing as kids) was a key feature for many Gen Xers. 9/11 and the war on terror most certainly looms large for Millennials and Gen Zers. There is also how people understand themselves and categorize themselves. Plenty of people embrace these labels, and others don’t.
Sure, but it’s not unique discourse to millennials, though, it’s just the new iteration for your age group. They said the same about “gen x slackers” and “dirty hippies” even those callow and wanton “flappers.” civilization coming to an end due to the wayward youth has been a common trope in the age of mass media and mass consumption.
And as a Gen Xer, let me say, at least you’re not in a generation that is actively being erased from popular memory! Since the Boomers and the Millennials were both such large cohorts, they have more political and culture power than Gen X does. You both get all the attention in the media when it comes to generations. Boomers are still largely in political and economic control, while Millennials are starting to come into their own as a generation.
Seems like they’re going with Gen Z (my daughter’s generation and the generation of most of my undergraduates at this point). That may change.
Overall, “generations” and young people conflicting with older generations is a rather modern notion that ties in with the rise of the consumer economy, as young people over the course of the 20th century had ever greater consuming power. In the end, it’s a set of ideas that are only as real as we make them.
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I am aiming to become a genX’er when I grow up.
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Adulting is hard! Let’s just avoid it and be the slackers god intended! 
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But I don’t belong.
I mean, that is one feature of the genX’ers, but I don’t belong!
Just FTR, Sandoz, Challenger and Tchernobyl were formative, but I fucking fought instead of “slacking”. Now I’m a nobody on the internet, stopped my NGO work out of frustration and am trying to find a permanent position, with permanent meaning permanent as in permanent. I might have arrived at slacking, did I?
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