#so your parents are boomers

[ryan-sometimes]

Is it just me or is Gen Z losing some respect for Millennials because of the way they’re raising Gen Alpha? Like we are constantly seeing stuff about how Gen Alpha is being raised as “iPad kids” and how detrimental it’s becoming to their education, and it’s coming with some resentment towards Millennials

[rowanisawriter]

most of all i hate the govt for letting everyone in our parents generation drink lead contaminated water so that i (uncontaminated) have to deal with my parents and in laws completely insane unhinged detached from reality decision making and thought processes

[morgana-ren]

You ever see a piece of media that is very blatantly meant for adult consumption but for some reason, the fan base around it is ultimately comprised of packs of rabid 12 year olds who shouldn't be indulging in the media in the first place and utterly lack critical thinking or comprehension and couldn't understand nuance or perspective if you gave them baby's first homework assignment on it?

[maybeicanbesaved]

got into yet another fight with my mom, again about voting/the election, she said that she’s only voted once in her life and never cares to again because she ‘doesn’t care about politics’, saying that shit almost proudly?? and it set me off for obvious reasons, then she got mad at me for saying it’s because she’s privileged and ‘most’ shit doesn’t affect her directly so she can afford ‘not to care’

[philsmeatylegss]

Glass child on the internet: “I have experienced profound emotional neglect throughout my childhood due to the pressure and unmet emotional and sometimes physical needs forced upon me since my parents were very busy taking care of my disabled sibling. Thus leaving me with severe emotional scars that I deal with to this day and it’s very invalidating and triggering when people don’t listen to my perspective or understand the gravity of my situation.”

People who put “neurodivergent” in their bio and self diagnosed with seven different disorders: “IT’S NOT THE SIBLINGS FAULT!!!!!!”

Glass child: “I never said it was—”

People who think they have autism because they are very interested in something and sometimes get overwhelmed: “Oh, so you’re ableist? You should probably just kill yourself. No, you definitely should kill yourself. Like, actually do that. Stop crying because mommy and daddy didn’t pay attention to you. Yeah, you’re a lost cause. Kill yourself pls”

[i-am-going-to-skream]

Did y’all know that I’ve been suffering from sleep problems since day one?

Like I literally popped out of the womb and never slept right. Like im not joking. Never in my life have i had a single restful night.

I got insomnia, occasional narcolepsy, and zero internal clock. Im pulling all nighters at least once every other week. And thats if im lucky!

What im saying is, if anyone ever tries to gatekeep your exhaustion, tell them to go fuck themselves bc I’ve gotten far less sleep than they did and i say you’re allowed to be tired!

[flightlessinsect]

D*m is such a questionable, shady person that sometimes I genuinely fear that Tom, someone who respects and admires him a lot, is actually just like him.

[10holmes]

Had a really cool day.

Until I just received a mail from my boss aka head teacher forwarding me an angry-parent email in which a Karen complained about her daughter being confused about me wanting to be addressed as "teacher" instead of Mr/Ms and how I dared, as a teacher, to bring my gender identity into the classroom...

As if like every other fucking teacher that goes by Mr or Ms doesn't bring their gender identity to the classroom??!!!!

But yeah, of course, because I'm enby and boomers can't wrap their pea-sized heads around the concept of just using a gender neutral address I'm at fault...

To make matters worse I dared show the students the short animation "my shadow is pink" to question gender norms and teach them that it's okay - especially for boys - to be who they are and wear what they want and not be fcking ridiculed and shamed for it...

But yeah apparently that was too woke and too much diversity and tolerance I brought to the classroom and now I have to write a formal statement to my head teacher about the "incident" justifying myself...

Precious time and emotional energy of may day wasted that could have been avoided if people in this world were just fcking kind and accepting and didn't make problems out of stuff that does not negatively effect their daily life... (but what they make into a problem and struggle for other people in their daily life...)

I'm so sick and tired of this.

[keepinventory]

generational politics continues to be the dumbest invention ever. you're having an existential crisis over people continuing to have kids after you were born? did you think you were the last child ever. be honest

[girlwiththegreenhat]

high school graduations suck but the valedictorian doing a speech about how corporations are killing the planet and we should be more conscious about our waste and consumerism for the betterment the future of our planet and children, pissing off every idiot conservative on the crowd including my dad, carried the entire thing for me

[boomstab-papa]

there are children in the reviews of CD player listings, upset because there is no speaker in the CD player, and they are being forced to wear earphones to listen to the CD

and im

[steal-this-idea]

I wonder if these changes are permanent? Like how do these laws/policies get unmade without it becoming an opportunity by opponents to claim one is "soft on crime" or some other bullshit?

I think of an old jokey apocryphal how a temporary ban on bottomless dancers would, in truth, be a permanent ban because no politician could ever craft a way to be in favor of repealing such a needless ban without incurring the opportunistic wrath of moral crusaders

So how do we let kids be free again? Because I used to walk home from school starting in the 3rd grade. I was eight. I would even sometimes go home for lunch (and no one was home either...I was just doing it because other kids got to do it so why not me? I only stopped when my teacher noticed that when I left, no one picked me up and I didn't want her to tell my Mom)

It never a big deal

One Summer, my brother and me with our downstairs neighbor (none of us older than 12) went exploring a culvert that ran under a parking lot (bunch of eels down there). It was one of the coolest things I remember doing as a kid. No one knew where we were. No supervision and most importantly, no cops were called on us (because I can't imagine we were super quiet during all this). Now you can't even cut across the parking lot without some asshole in security questioning what you're doing. (what do you think I'm doing? I'm cutting a quarter mile or more off my journey like every other pedestrian resident in this town since this place was built in the 1940s)

I think it bothers me even more because these laws were clearly created by the very same people who have fond, cherished memories of hanging around with friends/family in their childhoods, playing stickball in the streets, riding bikes several town over, playing in playgrounds without any adults around, going into corner stores to buy candy/soda, etc. Like, no one gave a fuck we were doing these things and then, suddenly, they did.

Can it be attributed to anything because it surely can't be crime. The things I just mentioned all took place during peak crime in America (the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s). Is this something else we blame on landlords or perhaps capitalism more broadly? Public spaces and good-natured fun being effectively outlawed because the "powers that be" deemed we weren't making them enough money when we "wasted" our time by simply spending it together?

Was it mostly liberal or conservative politics that brought us these lack of public spaces? Or was this one of those rare bipartisan fuckings over?

Cuz I'm tired of it

It's hard to be a civil society when our basic social nature is legislated against

[cats-in-the-clouds]

my sister got engaged and we’re all really happy for her but my bitter rain cloud of a dad (who naturally she told last) is giving her a bit of passive aggressive grief about it despite her boyfriend being like the best man of our generation (presumably either because he’s not catholic or because my dad sees them as young dumb unemployed people who aren’t ready for marriage or because he’s mad he barely has any real love with his own wife or something). so like pray for us? i wish i knew what to do

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[soft-girl-musings]

i'm wondering how bad things will have to get at work for my dad to clock that i'm not currently okay

[queenofthedorks]

2022 was not particularly kind to my family and friends. We suddenly lost my cousin's dad, followed by one of my aunts, my bestie's husband, and then my cousin's father-in-law. We're all Xennial/millennials so these are the first deaths we've been in charge of resolving, and on top of that, at least one of them had made no arrangements. So I can now write chapters on what to do when your parents/aunts and uncles die.

Here's a list of things that were generally useful:

Food

Stuff that requires zero effort, especially if the person having to deal with everything is also a caretaker for a child, or adult who's otherwise incapacitated. My aunt is in the early stages of dementia. She can feed herself if she has easy to grab things. While we were scrambling around dealing with my cousin's dad, we were having issues making sure that she had food/her needs were seen to. A friend came to the rescue and made an enormous pasta salad and brought a box of uncrustables. I'm pretty sure we all lived on that for a while.

If you're not local, arrange for food to show up. When my bestie's husband died, it was impossible for me to get to her because I didn't have a current passport. But, I could switch to Amazon Canada, order gift cards to food places and ensure that food showed up.

Show up and help clean

My cousin's father-in-law passed about four days before Christmas. He had a sudden heart attack and they called the paramedics. The paramedics made a MESS--a mess. This kind of aftermath is something they never show on TV, and didn't even occur to me. After they pronounced him dead at the hospital, my cousin called and gave me the garage code to her Mother-in-law's house and said can you please go clean this up, so we don't have to walk into this.

When my cousin's dad died he was--we'll say, a known herbal American. He also owned firearms and lived in a rough neighborhood. One of the first things we did the day he died was go to his apartment and dispose of anything that should not be there, and move the firearms to a safe place.

Those are kind of extreme cases, but it can be as simple as bestie's mom lived alone and now there's a wave of family coming in so I can go clean and dust the house so it's one less thing they have to deal with.

Help contact people

Having to contact family and friends and tell them someone is dead is like reliving the trauma over and fucking over. If you're their bestie, but y'all share a friend group, then offer to tell the friend group and then coordinate that friend group on how best they can help. When my aunt died, my cousins asked for help contacting some of the farther-flung members of the immediate family before they put the announcement on social media to take care of the rest of the family.

Offer to contact places on behalf of the family. This really only works if you are particularly close, but it can be helpful. Lie about your connection if you need to. No seriously. My cousin's dad is not my uncle, because my uncle was in a long-term relationship with my aunt, my cousin's mother, but when J died with no arrangements, we spent a lot of time on the phone just trying to sort things out. And people were more willing to talk to me if I said I was his niece or his daughter versus the complicated relationship that we actually had. I didn't handle anything with legal ramifications, but my handling of things cleared the way so that his actual daughters could handle the legal things.

Outside of even contacting the family, there are SO FREAKING MANY places and things that have to be contacted when someone dies. You're probably not going to be able to take care of them all, but calling around to funeral homes and getting price quotes on cremation services is something anyone can do and it was helpful.

Take the dog out, distract the kids, or run interference.

Friends and family groups can be messy. Everyone is stressed. Sometimes funerals need an enforcer.

Above all else, find something, even if it's small, that you can do and be proactive about doing it.

Saying, "If there's anything I can do, let me know," is very well-meaning, but it puts the burden of deciding how you should help on the person who's already dealing with so many things. It's okay to be respectful of someone's privacy and not want to insert yourself into the middle of what everything, but if you leave it at "let me know" there's a real chance they're not going to reach out because they are too busy coping with the loss and literally everything that comes after it.

hey since i’m occasionally giving out adult advice. anyone wanna know my very adult and very boring and very sensible suggestion for grief gifts for friends and family when someone close to them dies