#generation gap

[prokopetz]

I just don't think the generation that made the Spongmonkeys an overnight viral sensation has any room to speak critically about how incomprehensibly weird the stuff kids these days are into is.

[lawfulgoodness]

Shoutout to the Elder Millennial at the table next to me at the gaming bar, whose barbarian just charged into battle shouting "LEEEEROYYYY JENKINS!!!!"

and then had to stop and sheepishly explain a World of Warcraft meme to his genZ GM.

[wubomei]

I would really appreciate if my small number of followers reposts this, please.

[taee]

a happy accident

[morlock-holmes]

Maybe this is appropriate for September, but I watched this joke when it first aired:

And as I approach late middle age I'm struggling to deal with the question not of how I deal with the fact that it happened, but with the fact that it didn't.

You just are never going to convince me that I'm as culturally different from the Zoomers as the baby boomers were from their WWII-era parents, and you aren't going to convince me of it because it is so incredibly, self-evidently untrue.

The reason I say this is appropriate for September is that after the 9/11 attacks some people tried to talk about the cultural death of irony and its replacement by the New Sincerity, which I now take to be an attempt to convince ourselves that the pace of cultural change wasn't slacking, but there was no New Sincerity, and the irony of the 90s continues unabated to this day.

After that Bush II created the disgusting morass of the Iraq war, and people said, "Well, at least we'll get some great protest art and comedy out of this".

I remember Jon Stewart talking about how it was fundamentally unserious to even suggest that the moral horrors of the 00s were worth it because we might get some good comedy out of it, and while that was a good point it kind of overshadowed the fact that, for the most part, the biting satire and artistically vital protest art didn't actually materialize at all.

Now we're trying to gin up this generation gap nonsense and we are on at least the third attempt of my life to cargo cult the moral and artistic vitality of the 60s back into existence.

But man, like, that radio tower is just a stack of bamboo and that headset is made of coconuts.

[dollmaidcrystal]

This week, Mistress was informed by her doctor’s office that her lifestyle makes the office staff uncomfortable, and they will no longer be accepting her as a patient. I was ready to give some judgemental old churchgoing busybody a piece of my mind, but, after investigating, it wasn’t the old ladies at reception at all. Old ladies handling medical admissions have seen it all, and aren’t phased by anything.

It was the youngins.

The office had hired some kids fresh out of high school to do admissions. One of them asked Mistress about her recent sexual history. To put it mildly, he wasn’t ready for anything other than a yes or no answer. A whisper campaign later, every employee under the drinking age filed simultaneous sexual harassment complaints against Mistress for making them feel uncomfortable. That got HR involved, and now Mistress is seeking a new primary care physician.

Asking around, it turns out that this kind of experience is becoming common. Apparently, sex positivity peaked with Millennials, and we're just starting to notice now that Gen Z is entering the workplace.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with that knowledge. I'm worried that those kinds of hangups are going to be hard to overcome now that Gen Z is also reaching the age where they are entering the kink scene. I want them to be able to feel comfortable enough with themselves that they're able to explore and form meaningful connections there. That's not going to be easy if their vanilla lives really have been so chaste.

[daaft-prick-69]

[oldshowbiz]

1969.

[dragonagitator]

So many of the newer House MD fans are shocked by House's casual racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. remarks and microagressions, and all I can think is... did y'all forget that House is literally a Baby Boomer?

I know that you are seeing a 45-year-old man on your screen, but you should not expect Xennial values and behaviors from that man because the show is 20 years old. House was born in 1959. He would be 65 now.

So yeah, next time House shocks you by saying something offensive or making a joke that really didn't age well, just think "okay boomer" and move on. No need to twist yourself up in knots trying to analyze or explain it away -- his generation was just Like That.

[prokopetz]

I won't deny that there are things about contemporary web media I don't fully understand, but I find that the specific examples folks like to gesture toward as evidence of a growing generation gap just... aren't that hard to figure out? Like, I remember when Macromedia Flash going free-to-use was big news, and the stuff people did with it over the next couple of years was every bit was unhinged as anything you'll find on YouTube today. If you don't "get" Skibidi Toilet in 2023, you probably wouldn't have understood animutations or Joe Cartoon in 1998, either. It's not a generational thing – you're just boring.

[hyperlexichypatia]

I know I write all the time about ageism and age discourse and generation discourse etc., but my only contribution to "We shouldn't be hating on Gen Alpha" is "We shouldn't be saying anything about Gen Alpha, because it's too soon. They're babies."

A generation is supposed to last twenty (20) years. Two decades. That's because it's a very rough shorthand for the turnaround, on a population-wide level, between being born and starting to have one's own kids.

If anything, the fact that in recent decades, people are having children later than in the past should have meant that we started making "a generation" longer.

But no! People are listing "generations" that are less than 10 years apart! And it's all microdemographics and telescoping and rapid turnaround and artificial cultural obsolescence and even though generational cohort and age group are two different things, it feels thematically connected to "A 21 year old and a 25 year old are somehow meaningfully different life stages" bullshit, and and and... I hate it.

And yeah, it's always been vague around the edges, and broad generalizations, and it's not like someone born in 1978 is meaningfully generationally different from someone born in 1982, but the point is, a generational cohort has to span about 20 years to be at all meaningful!

If Gen Z began in ~2000, then it ended in ~2019, and the oldest Alphas are no older than 6 in 2024. They're not teens or even tweens yet! "And whatever is coming up after Alpha --" The kids who will start being born in about 15 years? Let's not worry about them yet!

I know, I know, being irrationally annoyed that a fake, artificially constructed concept of discrete "generations" is being misused is, well, irrational. But you're making an already fake thing faker! Stop letting marketers fragment people into even smaller microdemographics!

[taee]

jin never misses a chance

[bisexualseraphim]

People around my age thinking being 30+ is “old” or “cringe” is whacky to me because like… I for one actually can’t wait to be in my 30s.

My experience of being in my 20s hasn’t been the most pleasant. Due to circumstances out of my control, primarily brought on by the pandemic, I haven’t made it as far in life at my age as many of my peers. I finished college, had the odd temporary job or apprenticeship and then… that’s kind of been it. I haven’t been in work or education for the last almost 4 years and I feel like total shit for it. I also don’t really enjoy clubbing or getting drunk, and I find that many people I try to make friends or get into relationships with have no sense of commitment or permanence. Everyone my own age wants everything to go FAST FAST FAST and you’re looked down upon if you just want to relax and slow down for a minute. Your 20s are supposed to be for getting ahead and being a dumb youth after all!

People in their 30s and older, however (and I hope I don’t sound like I’m indirectly calling them old here lol) tend to be a bit more relaxed about these kinds of things. Chances are they’ve had some actual life experience that has made them more mature, and they’ve realised that there’s no need to rush anything. You’re going to (hopefully) live for 70 years or so; what’s the rush to get everything done right now? At 30 and older, maybe you’ve gone through a couple of jobs, experienced living alone, made and lost a few friends, had a relationship or two, maybe you’ve even gone back to school just because you can — and even if you haven’t, who fucking cares? Life isn’t a competition. Trying to rush anything is only going to guarantee that you have regrets.

As such, I don’t feel as much social pressure, if any at all, around people aged 30+. They don’t look down on me for not having made as much progress as I wanted to. All they tell me is “you’ll get there when you get there, there’s no rush or pressure to do anything” and that is honestly so much more freeing than hanging around people younger than me who have already had 3 jobs, 2 houses and a date for their wedding. I love having friends in their 30s and 40s. They make me feel safe and content with myself.

This isn’t me trying to be like “I’m not like other kids in their 20s… I hate anyone born after 1995 😎” I just mean that shitting on people older than you simply for being “old” is the REAL cringe lol seeing as they’ve been your age and likely know a thing or two about life better than you do. They could help guide you through your obstacles and instead you’re teasing them for idk, using the 😂 emoji or something. Not to mention the fact 30 is considered “old” now is highly concerning…

All I mean is, yes, you do owe other people the absolute most bare minimum kindness and respect and that does, in fact, include your elders. Stop calling people who are still pretty young “old” please

[rtfics]

Generation Gap.

20-Something guy on the bus, seeing my Beetlejuice 1988 wedding t-shirt: "Have you seen the sequel?" Said with an air of someone who feels slightly superior to the graying-hair old lady across the aisle.

Me, sitting with my best friend/housemate: "Just saw it for the third time."

Guy: "Is it necessary to see it or a waste?"

Me: "For fans it's necessary. I've been a Beetlebabe since 1988."

Guy, obviously having no clue what a Beetlebabe is: "I want to see it, but can't afford it right now."

Me: "See it at the Riverview. Matinees are 5 dollars."

Guy: "Yeeaah . . . I'm not familiar with that phrase."

Me, after trying to process this: "A matinee is any show before the evening ones."

Guy, with compete lack of comprehension: "Oh."

I mean, seriously . . . . he didn't know what a matinee is? Is this an extinct term now? Known only by theater kids and movie fans?

[oldshowbiz]

Katharine Hepburn: Naked People Are Pigs.

[dragonagitator]

One of the more interesting time-travel-related wrinkles I've been thinking about a lot for my House MD isekai fanfic is about how both House and the author self-insert OC will be 45 years old, but House is a Boomer and my OC is a time-travelling Xennial / geriatric Millennial. (While most demographers would place me in Gen X, culturally I've always been much closer to Millennials -- being raised by a software engineer meant I've always had a home computer, and have been on the internet since I was 12 -- and I'll be writing my OC like that too.)

So there's going to be a weird dynamic where they'll have all the usual Boomer/Millennial generation gap issues despite being the exact same age. That's going to be a lot of fun to write (my OC will be introducing the phrase "okay boomer" to the team's toolkit for dealing with House's microaggressions), especially when the slow burn starts heating up.

Boomers were the last generation to be raised with the norms "you HAVE to get married" and "it's normal to hate your spouse" and thus they tend have a lot of really awful beliefs about love, romantic relationships, marriage, etc. that younger generations find super weird and sad. You can track this generational attitude change pretty closely in comedy and television. "I hate my wife" jokes used to be a staple for stand-up comedians, but you almost never hear them anymore because modern audiences don't find them relatable or funny. The "spouses who hate each other" trope used to be incredibly common in sitcoms, but now you usually only see it in dramas where everyone is awful anyway. Even cop shows and other murder mysteries are having fewer and fewer "the spouse did it" culprits.

House's cynicism about love and marriage is pretty typical for his generation. For a guy who prides himself on rejecting social programming, he actually absorbed almost all the standard Boomer norms about marriage except the very last one -- he believes, like most Boomers, that marriage is awful, it is normal to hate your spouse, etc., and his only deviation from the norm is deciding "well then I just won't get married."

My OC pointing out that it's possible to simply... marry someone you actually like... might be the first time he really hears and absorbs something like that coming from someone whom he can't just write off as young, naive, inexperienced, etc. I'm happily married IRL and my OC will have been happily married back in her own timeline, too. (One of the reasons the slow burn will be so slow is that she'll be grieving her husband for a while.) So she actually objectively knows more about it than he does and will not hesitate to rub that in his face.

It won't be enough to completely change his views (the Boomer brainwashing is strong), but he'll be slightly less resentful about it when the two of them have to get married to avoid being forced to testify against each other in court.

(House and my OC are going to commit SO MANY CRIMES, you guys. One of the ways I'm working through the "this kinda feels like cheating" discomfort of being happily married IRL but shipping my author self-insert OC with another man is by making my story a bit of a cautionary tale about what I might get up to without my IRL husband's good influence and constant admonishments of "no murder!" My OC is going to commit AT LEAST three murders in her efforts to change the timeline.)