I think I’m among the oldest of millennials. I’m 37. I definitely don’t relate to my twenties anymore, but maybe a lot of us seem younger because we’re doing things like buying houses much later if at all. Or maybe older people just want to believe we’re all in our twenties so they don’t feel so old themselves. I don’t think I could have swung being a grandparent by now, didn’t even make it to parent… but I’ve put 15 years in my career.
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I definitely didn’t relate to my 20s by that age as well. It was early my 30s for home ownership (at the time we had a windfall to help with the down payment) as renting a 2+ bedroom was not that much cheaper than mortgage on a 3 bedroom house and we were DINKs.
I don’t need you young uns to feel old. Getting up at 2am to go pee and take an Ibuprofen do that quite nicely already.
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You know, what were the stereotypes of Gen X? I only remember them as the cool older kids I never got to be in the same class with and Winona Ryder. I really wanted to grow up to be Winona Ryder…
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Slackers. And they liked coffee, fancy coffee.
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I did wonder.
The twitter image of the boardgame was literally blocked with a message “This may be offensive to some users”. Oh, the irony.
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Slackers, cynical, unengaged, unambitious, etc. The movies Reality Bites and Single and Clerks will give you an idea.
Underlying the stereotypes were the anxiety of Boomers and older that we American Gen Xers were not sufficiently interested in being good little human resources/consumers (reality: most of us were unemployed or underemployed), that we were questioning the party establishment duopoly system that we knew would screw us over (reality: the age demographic didn’t have electoral clout), and that we weren’t sufficiently respectful of our elders (reality: we regularly mocked the “lemme tell you about the 60s, man” Boomers, especially the yuppie sellouts).
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So like you literally were the cool kids then. Also I really liked slackers and reality bites, I was actually around when Slackers was filmed because I grew up in Austin… but I was also like 9 so I didn’t end up being an extra or anything. I also passed up the chance to skip school to see Eliott Smith at a local record store. Regrets…
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Sure, if “cool” is a word you wanna use, man.
Seriously, we were almost as screwed as the Millenials are. The difference was that we didn’t have Boomer parents and pundits and politicians constantly lying to us as kids that everything was going to work out fine. One of the reasons Sanders had so much traction with young people is that he was a Silent generation crabby grampa who told them the truth.
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Hey you guys made good movies and you didn’t conform for the sake avoiding trouble. That will always be my definition of cool! Also I really vibe with the coffee thing.
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But they aren’t teens, per se…
But people didn’t call them teenagers. It was a youth culture, for sure, and Jon Savage does a masterful job discussing this in his book Teenage. It should be noted that the kids in Verona in Romeo and Juliet and the Flappers were pretty much restricted to the upper classes. Although flappers certainly influenced styles among women more broadly, being a flapper was not something everyone did, while the rise of rock culture in the postwar period was far more universal. Besides that, the depression sort of put the brakes on many people participating in that sort of leisure based culture, because they had to work for a living then. The postwar period saw near universal public school attendance by American children, a higher standard of living, with kids being able to keep extra money they earned instead of turning it back into the family account, and starting to spend far more time with their peers instead of their parents and family. A distinct, broadbased mass culture formed around this, with teen boys and girls being heavily marketed to by the culture industries.
Because from at this point in history is seems like THE step, with regards to changing consuming habits, not just for teens, but for the entire globe almost. It’s an identifiable social change tied to economic and cultural factors as well. Later on, that narrative arc might change, as new evidence might come to light. But right now, the culture shifts of the postwar period are where we focus our studies when it comes to cultural consumption. A fair amount of that has to do with the old Cultural Studies Program out of Birmingham in the UK. Much of the stuff they wrote about the rise of teen culture and various sub and counter cultures of the postwar period (in the UK and here) set the tone for how scholars today think about the rise of youth culture - with many people both challenging and accepting their arguments about it. And yes, some of that has to do with boomers joining academia in relatively large numbers in the 60s and wanting to talk about the things that matter to them, that shaped their lives. Their predecessors did this as well. That’s what people do.
Which is what I’m arguing for here. That may change in the future, but the material conditions in the immediate postwar period changed dramatically for enough people across the board, that it had a profound social and cultural impact.
Yes, I’m aware. Many Gen Xers remember where they were when they heard that Kurt Cobain died, or they remember the shuttle disaster in 86, or watching Thriller for the first time on MTV or getting an Atari. Older Gen Xers remember watching the watergate hearings or the election of Jimmy Carter…
Indeed. The majority of people listening to jazz who were white, in a way we’d recognize as forming a subculture was far less broadbased than those that loved rock, though. I’d argue that they didn’t have quite the same impact as some of the post-50s moral panics. You also had moral panics over hollywood.
In large part because it came to dominate the music industry. It made it a much bigger industry that anyone could have imagined.
I agree, but rock came to squeeze out other genres and to incorporate those genres into how they work. How people came to consume, talk about, and engage with rock music came to dominate the industry, including other genres of music. Because it had a material impact that we shouldn’t just dismiss because we think it’s based on something that’s as insubstantial as generational cohort.
Are you denying that there were real material changes to our engagement with mass culture in the postwar period?
Rock wasn’t. It was certainly appropriated by whites, but it was not a white phenomenon intially.
Did I say that? None the less, the success of the Beatles and white artists from the UK did raise the profile of lots of classic bluesmen. Elijah Wald describes that aptly in this book:
I’m well aware that not everyone had the same experiences, I’m arguing that these social changes had material effects on ALL of us, regardless. Just because people had a very different engagement with them does not mean they are not materially critical to understanding the period. You can even see the generational split in the civil rights movement, when younger people embrace the views of Malcolm X and shift to black empowerment. That was led primarily by young black men and women, not by the mainstream groups like the NAACP or SCLC, which was dominated in the leadership by Silents and early boomers.
They do, because they have a material impact. That doesn’t mean they are all positive or good, just that they existed as concepts that shaped peoples mental understanding of reality.
Or we’re attending to real historical events that are shaped by the idea of generational conflict. The split was real and it happened, it created a new idea about how parents and children interact during the teen years, which is generally thought of as one in constant conflict with each other. Additionally, that’s continued on down the years through new generations. It’s shaped how we think about pop culture, as a means of helping us to find ourselves and find our social community. Yes, these ideas of ephemeral, slippery, and prone to divisive understanding, but it’s a powerful means of understanding our world, much like capitalism, fiat currency, a belief in god/higher power, racial categories, whatever…
And yet, we can’t really think about the history of postwar popular music… funny that. Personally, give me the Velvet Underground any day instead… Lou Reed’s style of songwriting is much more my jam then Lennon or McCartney.
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And still are really
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Slacker, as @Ryuthrowsstuff noted… coffee shops… new wave and grunge music, and hip hop and punk on the more underground side (almost all punks I knew/know have a pretty deep love of hip hop along with punk rock). Gen Xers built up an underground network of independent labels and a distribution chain that existed outside of the mainstream music industry. We listened to lots of college radio (some of us, at least). We lived through the Reagan era and were some of the first serious gamers. Became some of the first fans of table top gaming (D&D was big in the 70s and 80s). Started attending conventions in larger and larger numbers, which helped make that a bonfide cultural phenomenon by the late 90s/early 2000s (goes back to boomers and Star Trek in the 70s, though). I’d also argue that we became some of the earliest consumers of independent films in large numbers and helped to get genre film taken much more seriously.
But mostly, we were just slackers who never did anything for anyone… lazy, lazy, slackers…
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Meh and apparently I’m actively destroying this country by preferring to spend money on some of the things created or pioneered by Gen X rather than the older things that never adapted and now some more established brands and manufacturers are shocked that they’re selling things that fewer and fewer people want or can afford. Somebody stop us, we’re just not willing to go into massive debt to have a big wedding and worse yet we’re not buying diamonds much at all. Sounds like during the seminal parts of most Gen X folks life a lot of older people just refused to recognize the changes around them and now that there’s a LOT of people that already live in that changed culture leaving some poorly adapted folks to be damned mad about it. Oh well… literally not my problem, they can be mad as much as they want. Won’t change a thing though, just makes things harder for everyone. I suppose I’ll just sit tight and wait for the day I get to start shitting on Gen Z but honestly that day will probably never come. Aside from the literal Nazis… the kids are alright. Even the little fascistlings I have some hope for because they’re sooo young… there’s time for them to grow up some still and high opportunity for it too.
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And some of us contributed without even realizing it, sometimes.
My nephew, who hates his Trump-loving father as much as I do, became an activist and spokesman for the Democratic Socialists of America, saying I was his influence. I don’t really know that I did much, besides speak my mind.
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Just to be clear, I wasn’t snarking at you or millennails in the least. I think every generation has some important contribution to our culture, not just mine or my parents or grandparents. My daughter’s generation, Gen Z, will do the same, I believe. You’re right that these kids are pretty alright, except for the little fascist wing…
And keep in mind, they said the same shit about Gen X, too, ignoring the fact that the landscape for us and millennials were entirely different, coming after the Nixon stagflation period, the 70s oil shocks, the rise of Reaganomics, and the rightward shift of the democratic party with bipartisan support for starting to dismantle the New Deal… not to mention fear of nuclear annihilation (which, the baby boomers ignored the fact that many Gen Xers marched against, along with apartheid in South Africa, which they just ignored when they proclaimed us lazy slackers that never did any social work at all), oh, and events like the war in Yugoslavia, which put such a dark shadow over the end of the Cold War. They also sneered at us for the same things as they do millennials - not buying a house, getting a good job, etc, when we had serious economic limitations, and some rising student debt (not nearly as bad as today, but it started in the 90s, I think).
I do see the development as part of a larger process that each generation has contributed to, though. If hardcore punks pioneered fanzines and tape trading networks, millennials took that model to the internet and ran with it.
I think that’s largely the case, yeah.
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Sometimes, that’s enough.
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Or cars. That’s a constant whinge from Boomers who see them as status symbols and evidence of adulthood rather than as rapidly depreciating debt-financed assets that are the scene of commuter misery for most of the 10% of the time they’re not sitting parked somewhere. I know a few Millenials who’ve decided to follow my Xer example in this regard and say “forget that noise!”
The Boomers were under the impression that the post-war economic anomaly and its attendant culture would go on forever, even as they voted for Reaganite politicians who were destroying the middle class. Then many of them got screwed out of their retirement funds during the 2007-08 crisis.
Meanwhile, from the time we were teenagers Xers knew from the start that Reaganism/Thatcherism would be bad for us. So many of us opted out to one degree or another, whether it was a slacker deciding ambition wasn’t worth it or a dot-com founder saying “screw suit-and-tie dress codes”. Boomers really rejected those attitudes and doubled-down on the conservative “traditional values” BS that right-wing politicians use to push neoliberal fundie policies.
Often it’s just setting an example by how you choose to live and being honest and frank about the realities of the world. For all that we Xers are less economically comfortable than Boomers, to their Millenial kids we seem happier as a generation.
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Cars definitely cars. I get extremely lush and expensive mailed advertisements for cars all of the time. Recently I threw away a posterboard folio with a fake Audi key that lit up with led’s. Even if I wanted one the fact of the matter is that the only savings or retirement funds I’ll ever have are the ones I save now… why the hell would I waste the chance to see 50k grow into more over the next 20 years just to have a fucking car to drive to the five or six places I still can’t get to easily without a car. I’d prefer it if I had 100% alternative options so we could cut down to 1 or zero cars. Cars were, it seems, a real sign of freedom to people my mother’s age but to me they are an expensive burden and a poor solution compared to mass transit and more bike/pedestrian friendly roads. I see this in pretty much all of my peers with even the more well-off ones opting for economy cars, electric cars, or at the very least used cars.
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I am just old enough too see both sides. We definitely use the car but I don’t use it to commute as Seattle has decent transit options and it used to be much nicer but they cut a lot back to pay for light rail. If I started work at 6am (no transit options that early) or I didn’t get a pass provided by work I would drive as it would be $10+ a day in fares vs $2 in gas and a bit for wear and tear taking the car.
If I lived out in the exurbs or bedroom towns like a lot of my coworkers driving would be the only option to get to work.
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