Woohoo! Only good things come when different generations fight each other. It makes us forget who the real enemies are…foreigners.
I’d bet that the vast majority of Monopoly games sold these days are either licensed tie ins (“Simpsons Monopoly”) or college/city souvenirs (“Yale Monopoly”) that people play once, remember how crappy and boring Monopoly is no matter what the art looks like, and put on the shelf while they play something actually fun.
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And that’s fine. But in large part what we can learn by unpacking these cohorts is in examining how they don’t work, why people accept them anyway. And what damage they cause along the way. Because they really aren’t genuine demographic or historical events.
Almost certainly. But based on the way we’ve arbitrarily marked Gen X, when you do a bunch of math on impact over time. Particularly on politics, and it looks like there’s not much going on there.
We went right from boomers make up the largest piece of the electorate to millennials make up the biggest piece. Skipped Gen X entirely. But if you bracket Gen X five more years in either direction. Which would make as much sense from a cultural standpoint as what we do now. And that looks very different. Gen X would probably be the big one right now.
And that’s part of the problem. Apart from the start of the baby boom, which is an identifiable population evenyt. None of this stuff even has much in the way of a clear definition.
We have at least 3 cohorts that are in whole or in part the children of those commonly labeled Boomers. Later boomers, GenX, and a big chunk of millennials. Friend of mine, my age so resolutly a millennial by nearly every definition, had a kid in highschool. That kid falls into the youngest couple of years for millennials by most definitions. So they’re both millennials. Should we really assume that these two shared the same definitive cultural experiences? A 35 year old woman and her 19 year old daughter?
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I wouldn’t suggest otherwise. That’s good history, right there.
I’m going to argue that they are genuine historical events, because people have treated them as real things, so they have power in the world.
First gen x was a smaller cohort, and many of that generation graduated into not so favorable economic conditions. There are gen x politicians (both Paul Ryan and Beto O’Rourke qualify), too, but not a ton, because of being a smaller generation and of the refusal/inability of the boomers to step out of politics/jobs. They (boomers) dominate positions of power in fields that are critical to our cultural understand (politics, culture industries, academia, etc).
I’d argue the definition is in part made in the debate, though. I’d also guess that far from being settled, what it means to be a boomer is also contentious, because it’s more than just a demographic event - it was a social and cultural event, as well. Those are real things that are complicated and hard to pin down, but no less important for all that.
Well, I have cousins that are born into 2 generations, too - gen x and millennials, and my youngest aunt could be considered as gen xer too, because she was born so much later than her siblings (9 years younger than my uncle). Honestly, if this stuff was easy to define, they wouldn’t be nearly as important a category to interrogate.
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Why yes, yes it is.
Might as well embrace and laugh at your generation’s lazy stereotypes, you’re going to be living with them a long time. Signed,
-Gen Xer, who grew up with “60s day” where everyone would wear tie dye and try to look like a hippie 
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It is. I’ve played it. A friend of my girlfriend had it for some reason (I can’t remember if he just collects board games), and we played a round. It really destroys any illusion you might have that the Libertarian mindset can ever be benign. Even the art style is almost fascistic. It’s more classist than racist, IIRC, though it’s absolutely both. I think there were a few times where someone would be like, “Wow… I’m not going to say that. You can read it.”
About the only actually genuinely funny thing that happened was that a bag of game pieces that were actually babies fell into my girlfriend’s purse (because one of the game mechanics was that having babies made you more money). We couldn’t find the bag when putting everything away. When she realized it after getting home, she immediately texted her friend, “Dylan, I had all your babies.” Many other such jokes ensued. (You might have had to be there.)
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The oldest millennials are at most 38 at this point, given the generally accepted 1980 start. Yes, old enough to be retired military (going in at 18), but grandparents? I mean, technically biologically possible I suppose, but really.
I did point out several examples of grandparents that young after that statement. The point is that continually portraying many milenials who are certainly adults and at peaks in their careers as kids is both false and not without political consequences.
Also:
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But it wasn’t even considered that until boomers themselves developed the idea of a cultural cohort, labeled it, and described the baby boom generation in almost entirely positive terms. And looking at the vast spread there’s more than one “cultural event” as described contained within it. That’s why I called it horoscope.
It’s not for nothing that nearly every other cohort we describe is defined in relation to the boomers. The Greatest Generation are their parents. And Gen X and millennials are thier children. All cohorts that have followed them are near universally described in negative comparisons to boomers.
In so far as there is a real demographic trend here. What your looking at is the group of whites who experienced the largest and longest period of middle class wealth accumulation in US (or even world) history. Attempting to justify and rationalize their own position as some how intrinsic to themselves. Apparent from the mess on either side of them.
So there’s a claim of cultural continuity, across multiple groups that are only loosely related. Claims of importance and causation around “culture” or inherent nature, rather than policy or historical and ecconomic events. And excusing of the problems people have experienced since the stage that allowed their own success expired.
Along with a willingness to and active intetest in removing the very policies that engendered that class mobility and ecconomic rise.
I mean I’m basically doing what your saying should be done with concept. I just think it’s important to stress that it’s borderline useless in itself.
I am a bit suprised no-one came up with
Monopoly - Occupy Wallstreet edition in this topic.
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If my generation is going to have lazy stereotypes, can they at least not be recycled from Nathan Barley, which was about Gen-Xers?
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It looks like they still have the JAIL space, probably because its presence is mandated by whatever corporate standard has been established for Monopoly games. Now, if they’d made it a FOMO space, that would be something.
Perhaps instead of the good ol’ Street Repairs card, they’ve got a Crippling Existential Crisis?
And now, my favorite episode of Dinosaur Comics again.
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But historically, it kind of goes back to the rise of teenagers more generally, at least in terms of seeing the teen years as a time of conflict between the parents and youths (which goes back to the 50s, which includes lots of people born before WW2. But the language of generational conflict is already there. And yes, they defined and described it, because they both experienced that historical shift and went to college in every larger numbers, including getting graduate degrees. That still makes it a historically significant event, as it shaped their experiences and informed how they wrote about those experiences.
Yes, civil rights and various other right movements, youth revolt, the anti-war movement, the rise of rock to the center of the music industry, the end of the liberal consensus, etc… lots of things happening, but that’s true of any point in history.
Often, but not always. Their parents and the media at the time did very similar things to the boomers as well. Moral panics over rock, comic books, the hippie movement, drugs, among many other things.
True, but the postwar expansion was actually pretty widely shared, despite discrimination and segregation. Even African Americans, who had serious limits on their opportunities due to segregation, saw an economic expansion, generally speaking. Did whites attempt to keep them out? No doubt, but some joined in with the civil rights movement as well, especially white, northern, liberal boomers. Prior to that, the most active whites in working with the civil rights movement were white radicals.
And right there is why i’m arguing for its significance. Because it was understood and acted on as if it was a real social force, we should attend to that and not just say it’s useless.
But here we are, getting a good historical conversation out of it. We can better understand how generational theory fit into this historical period and how it shaped people’s behaviors. Historical significance is still important, even if we decide that a particular concept isn’t a great way to organize our society.
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One of the interesting things about Romeo and Juliet is that it, almost by accident, depicts one of the earliest identifiable youth cultures. A rather specific group of teen children of affluent merchant and low noble class residents of Italian city states. Likewise the concept of teens and the rise of even American teens and youth culture in the 20th century has multiple earlier examples including the Flappers and other youth movements that preceded them in the 10’s. The 50’s youth cultural boom and “rise of teens” is largely notable because of its size, and the spending power associated with them. Artifacts of the population dynamics, and ecconomic growth respectively.
But why do we call out that particular step as the step. As the important one. As the one the defines a whole generation. And defines the entire concept of teens. When the trend has a long, cumulative history that develops in lock step with economic factors? And when multiple earlier examples were more influential?
I wasn’t talking about that sort of cultural event. Shift your time bracket a decade or two in either direction and you’ll end up containing just as many cultural and historical events as the ones included in the baby boom generation.
I was trying to say that, if we accept the idea of cohorts. There’s clearly 2 or more cohorts in “boomers” that are as distinct as Boomers are from GenXers. Or GenXers are from Millennials. Except in that we created the entire idea of cohorts around boomers. So maybe there should be 2 or 3 more brackets in GenX or Millenial.
Immediately preceding that there were multiple moral panics over various types of Jazz. Roughly in sequence Jazz Crooners like Sinatra and Nat King Cole, Big Band, Jazz Pop Groups like the Ink spots, Just Jazz in general. Before that there was a moral panic over Negro Music as opposed to Old Timey Music. All figured as parents and moral authorities (Churches, media, politicians) judging rising youth culture.
Never mind that many baby boomers didn’t experience that. Given the bulk of them were born in the 50’s and thus wouldn’t have been teens till well after this happened. But instead experienced later moral panics after rock and roll was already the dominate mass market music. First over British Invasion Bands. Then over Pyschedelic Bands. Then over the rise of Hard Rock and “Satanist” music. Some of those moral panics lead by earlier Baby Boomers.
Why is that early (in the Boomer span) culture clash pegged as the important one? Or even the definitive one for boomers? Why is Rock and Roll even considered the major, definitive thing about that moment in music? When after a couple more decades R&B and Blues of the same era has turned out to be at least as influential in determining the course of modern music? And was just as influential to the Rock music of the big important Boomer decade of the 60’s?
The answer is because that’s the Boomers favored music. Just like the youth culture boom of the 50’s is the important youth culture boom because its the one Boomers think fondly of. Its backwards. We’ve arbitrarily defined this chunk of people, who must be interrelated and similar because we’ve arbitrarily defined them. And if we’ve identified them they must be important. So we look back and exaggerate the importance of certain things, and divorce them from their context, through that same groups own nostalgic lens.
Not what I was saying. If you look at the dominating cultural experiences that we build our idea of Boomers around. A lot of them were definitely white culture. Historical events are historical events and they have their impacts. But do you really think the Beatles were as foundational a cultural reference point for Black America as for White America? Is Woodstock vs Altamont really a sensible way to break down the ins and out of the 60’s for every American? Even for the big geopolitical stuff? Does the death of JFK really mean the same thing to Blacks as Whites? Vietnam certainly means something very different. And again both the earliest and the later boomers didn’t experience that one directly or at the same purportedly important age.
We’ve got this idea that cohorts matter and mean something. So we go in after the fact an warp a bunch of stuff to underline the cohorts we’ve selected. But we end up not seeing a bunch of important things because of it. Where as if we started from the historical events or demographics themselves, and built out. We’d see all sorts of interesting things you’re not sick of hearing your uncle drone on and on about at Thanksgiving (I’m really sick of hearing about The Beatles.)
“the economy” is doing better than ever, oddly
almost as if what’s good for IT is not necessarily good for US
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By which metrics? Wages continue to stagnate for the most part. Economic mobility is still a thing of the past. And we’re still looking at the worst wealth disparity we’ve seen since the days of Laissez Faire.
Almost as if choosing metrics that narrowly focus on the well being of very specific people to the exclusion of everyone else isn’t necessarily good for us.
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One of the interesting things about Romeo and Juliet is that it, almost by accident, depicts one of the earliest identifiable youth cultures. A rather specific group of *teen* children of affluent merchant and low noble class residents of Italian city states
How would Shakespeare know about this culture even if it existed? Looking for fact in Shakespeare is foolhardy. His work contains obvious historical falsehood (Richard III) and a careless disregard for facts (clocks striking three in Julius Caesar).
Edit: I have no idea why this is shown as replying to FGD135 and not Ryuthrowsstuff.
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But saying the economy is weak would be wrong, it’s just that the strong economy is purposefully not benefiting the people that made it.
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Because Shakespeare was just after the time period in question in Italy. At a time when Europe was increasingly cosmopolitan. The same period across Europe saw the rise of professional classes and landed sub nobles (of which Shakespeare was a part) and the earliest intimations of what would eventually become the Middle Class.
What you saw in Italy (before it was Italy) was the sons of the banking and merchant class. Often without a job or a profession because they were already wealthy. In their teens and 20’s. Basically wrapped themselves up into what we’d now call street gangs. Adopting specific kind of dress, even weapons, involving themselves in inter familial rivalries and obsessing over duels. Its usually pegged as one of the earliest examples of a distinct youth culture.
This was around the same time that those same classes in other parts of Europe began to travel a lot. For business and eventually for pleasure. Including, and maybe especially to Italy. So the whole fancily dressed, lay about, Italian street tough thing was pretty known. And became a trope in fiction.
Shakespeare wasn’t the only one to write about it. There was a century or more of books, plays, songs and scaremongering news paper articles about it. First in Italian, and later all over Europe. It was sort of a trope with English playwrights around Shakespeare’s time. Been a while since I dug into it but think it was Marlow who wrote multiple plays in that setting.
So Shakespeare didn’t need any specific knowledge of it. He was working off a trope that was then current for Englishmen. He didn’t say “I’m going to write a play about Italian Youth Culture from a century before I was born”. He said “Imma write one of those Italian plays!”.
So no its not accurate. And I don’t even think its set at the appropriate time period. That’s why I said almost accidentally.
I would say the economy is big but it is not good.
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