[quote=“ugh, post:77, topic:124304, full:true”]
However, it should be noted that Gen X appears to straddle a major social divide, when looking at the recent US Presidential election. A majority of voters over 45 (which includes older Gen Xers) voted for Trump, while a majority of voters 44 and under (which includes younger Gen Xers) did not vote for Trump. [/quote]
Added the emphasis because
When you look at the 45+ numbers, the trickle of GenX at the beginning can’t even move the needle on the cohort. More thinly sliced polls seem to show that the few GenXers who bother to respond to polls have retained whatever political outlook they had back when Kurt was still alive.
We might be better off but these are the definitions we’re stuck with. Given that, there’s a lot of evidence that the Boomers aren’t nearly so wonderful as they like to think (the leaders of the anti-Vietnam and Civil Rights movements were Silents if not Greatests) and also that as a demographic voting bloc that in large part sold out the ideals of their youth they’re responsible for 35+ years of increasingly destructive neoliberal economic policies that are now endangering the futures of their own kids.
Yeah I’ve always found it odd that Boomers get the credit for the Civil Rights movement when it’s luminaries like MLK were definitely not Boomers. Boomers were just there in enough numbers for a relatively smaller and less powerful generation to sway one way or another. Hmmmmm… probably similar to the way that many people my age and younger have a lot they could thank Gen X for actually.
I think the Chinese zodiac might be more coherent and useful.
Generational labels have some rough applicability at the macro scale, mainly for looking at trends in demographics and economics.
The concept starts to break down when we get into cultural stereotypes, and crumbles to little pieces at the individual level. IMO the age, class and background of our parents and extended family are much more profound influences on the adults we became than the culture at large or our particular birth year.
I mean, good on the Boomers who were foot soldiers. Not so good on the subset who later decided to be yuppies for Reagan (all the while preserving their “authenticity” via conspicuous consumption and self-help trends).
There are lots of great Boomers out there who stayed true, of course, but for the most part they haven’t been the ones who’ve had influence in corporate and political America (like whichever smug Boomer came up with this promotion).
I’ve always gone out of my way to show Millenials how to subvert the rigged system their parents perpetuated. Very satisfying and rewarding.
They should most certainly thank us for both hip hop and punk, as we made those commercially viable (and then took the genres of new directions). Also, they can thank us for Con culture, the popularization of different kinds of gaming (especially role playing), and independent cultural production. I would say that we were the first to really engage with internet culture, but the boomers were there as well (such as with the WELL). But I think we contributed a fair amount to computer and internet developments that other generations often get credit for. We certainly the first generation online in very large numbers.
As a GenXer I’m too lazy to go look it up to confirm, but I’m pretty sure that one reason our cohort is smaller in number is that the average age of parents was rising. Boomers’ parents were generally late teens, where ours had reached their 20s. So you could either be the younger sibling of a Boomer or the older child of one and still be counted as GenX (lucky you!).
I’d go even deeper than that actually, it’s really Gen X that encouraged independent thinking and questioning authority for those of us who grew up in a time when those traits would have otherwise been completely quashed. Boomers would like to take credit for that, and for some (like my mother) it’s true that they encouraged skepticism and independent thinking, but by in large it was not the status quo to be raised with those values when I compare myself to other people my age. Gen X made quick use of the new technology available to influence online culture, which turned out to be a pretty profound kind of influence.
Definitely. Gen X is responsible for the Triumph of the Geeks. Most of the Happy Mutants who run this very site stand as proof.
I was on the WELL early on but found the attitude of the Boomers there typically condescending despite their being liberal and progressive. The first dotcom boom was, for better or worse, driven by Gen Xers.
I don’t know… I think a lot of that does come from the 60s generation, at least those involved in the countercultures of that time. I do think that it was not as large a number of people from that generation who were involved with the counterculture (and plenty made up the foot soldiers of the growing right wing), but because the generation was so large and go to much coverage, it seemed like everyone was a hippie or held those values. It made our countercultural/subcultural rebellion seem much smaller. But I’ve seen plenty enough cross over of ideas between the boomers and gen xers involved in counterculture to see more continuity than difference.
I think that’s true. Many boomers think that cultural rebellion began and ended with them, and that our generation didn’t do anything worthwhile in those regards, but I think we took what they were doing in the 60s and refined it even more into a workable set of solutions about our collective social/cultural problems.
Well, you’re (we’re) older than the world wide web, but the internet has been around much longer - packet switching was developed in the 60s, with all the ARPANET research.
But it wasn’t actually implemented stably until 1969. Which is within the older boundary of GenX.
Most of the cheap labor that implemented the Web was GenX. It’s almost as if some older generation keeps clinging to the higher-paid, decision-making jobs and finding new batches of younger people to overwork and underpay.
100% without a doubt many of them have done that. Some people who were hippies embraced the Reagan revolution and didn’t look back, seeing any of their time indulging in the countercultural lifestyle as “misspent, but fun” youth, and that embracing conservativism was them “growing up.” In reality, it was them rejecting the values of an open and free society that we COULD have built, had we continued with some of the major social changes of that generation. But that generation was also very much about themselves and their own self-fulfillment and soon found doing the hard work of cultural change to be too much of an infringement on their individual rights. They didn’t see how the freedom struggle for oppressed classes would benefit them in the long run.
True enough! I take it you were born prior to that. Though I consider the mid-60s to be the boundary for GenX.
I’m aware.
True in academia, too. They all got tenure track jobs and now are quite content to abandon the tenure system for cheaper disposable lecturer and adjunct positions.
Both are true, although some people haven’t realised that yet. Millennials were born from 1980ish to 2000ish, with some ambiguity at the boundaries.
I don’t think the generation haters have realised that the first people from Gen Z will be allowed to vote in the US elections in November, and they are showing signs of being a very politically active generation. Expect the hating to get worse as they realise that they are starting to lose.
On participation ribbons: I’m a GenXer, born 1971. I played many seasons of YMCA soccer in the 70s-80s, and at the end of every season, every kid on every team got a trophy. I had all my participation trophies lined up on a bookshelf in my room.
First of all, kids aren’t idiots. We all knew the trophies didn’t mean we had won anything. It was just a marker of a complete season.
Second and more importantly, we all turned out fine.
I know a few people who were confused about Scottish Junior Football for the same reason.
Their cup final was on my local television channel about 20-25 years ago, and there were a lot of disappointed people who hoped to watch the next generation of footballing talent, but got a bunch of 30 year olds playing amateur level football instead.
