What the Fuck happened with Gen X?
What the Fuck happened with Gen X?
All I hear about is "boomers" this, "Millennials" that, "Gen Z" that, etc.
Why no one talk about Gen X? What happened to them? They just vanished like in Infinity War? Or are we mistaken Gen Z by Boomers?
Ronald Reagan happened to GenX.
Worse than an H Bomb
Nah we are here, just staying out of the drama I guess. Busy working. My guess is we aren't enough of a market - not the desirable-to-marketers 18-30 age group, and not a huge group with money like the boomers. So we are not targeted as much.
That sounds very plausible
"The forgotten generation" strikes again!
Love y'all, but on bluesky gen X has been behaving like boomers more and more often. Maybe it has to do with hitting a certain age and becoming "get of my lawn"?
The last lawn generation
Generational Theory refers to them as a "Nomad" generation, analagous to the more literally named "Lost Generation" one sacculum prior.
Generational theory is not scientific, but the patterns it identifies are certainly interesting. It's held up over the last 30 years, and seems to be continuing.
At least according to Wikipedia, Generation X is the generation referred to as "the forgotten generation".
We are just living our lives. We don't care about you or your opinions so we usually dont speak to you. You want to waste your lives complaining and whining them good luck with that. No one cares.
There's no need to be rude, fella. Hope life keeps treating you well though.
We took the brunt of everything the Boomers could throw at us. You're welcome. Its your turn now, we're tired.
What the hell are Boomers? Some kind of Dark souls boss? We are the Third generation they fuck up!
They got a college education for about $1000 in today money, bought property and homes for $20k today money, and are clinging to power rather than letting anyone younger have a seat at the table. They were born on third base and think they hit a triple. Every other generation is too "lazy" to do what they did, so it must be correct that they hold onto power because we'd just fuck it all up.
The world got handed to them in post-WWII USA while Europe and Asia were rebuilding and they fail to recognize that they were born into an unprecedented situation that is unlikely to repeat. That's why they're selfish assholes.
A lot of gen x got theirs. College was paid for and was cheap, lots of opportunities while they were young, got a house, a family and are just living. They will get a fair inheritance if their parents die on time, but they are also the first to see that huge nest egg disappear to the current healthcare system.
Their vote never counted. Too many boomers.
They were the first to figure out their parents had it incredibly easy, although it took them a long time. Sometimes they didn’t see it until their own kids struggled with costs and employment.
A lot are conservative but probably because they have assets and don’t like social welfare taking from them, even though their parents set it up for them to lose.
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
I'm GenX. If you ask my group of friends "who here has built their own PC from components?" every hand is going to go up. Including the teacher, the administrator and the financier.
Ask a group of Millennials who knows what the command line is for and see what reaction you get.
GenX is the generation that does tech support for its parents and its children.
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
We built the tech. I was there, three decades ago.
I bought a 386 motherboard that needed a patch. Not software, but by soldering a wire between two pads. You just basically figure it out and went from there with a soldering iron.
Build the computer from parts? Sure. Soldered it like it came as discrete components? Also sure.
Tech savvy is often in context of when you were learning in your teens to early twenties and then what of that skill set is still applicable today.
I disagree that they aren't as tech savvy as Millennials. I would say on average its younger GenX and older Millennials that have the highest tech skills, with GenX probably ahead. That's referring to percentage, not total numbers.
Yes, “xennials” probably have their own generation because of this, but I have met a lot more millennials that can manage UI changes over genx.
Switch a genx from windows to Mac and they are lost. Switch a millennial and they seem to be fine. I’ve seen this with phones, TVs, websites, etc.
Genx were young during “dumb” tech. VCR, digital phones, etc. millennials were learning the internet as it was moving from a hobby to its own platform, cellphones as they were first widely available then as they went “smart”, and a lot of other examples.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of knowledge was lost along the way like manual categorical systems including tabulation machines, phone books, Thomas Guides, even cabinet filing systems/card catslogs. Genx handles these things a lot better than the more recent generations.
Gen X here, can confirm that's a pretty accurate take
Wow, that a very insightful and concise description, really. Now I understand more. Thank you.
Gen X said "fuck it" quickly and lived relatively comfy, selfish lives from their boomer parents funding trips to Woodstock '99 - where they feigned a rebellion, but always with a credit card they didn't pay for in their pockets and the rent paid.
They pretended to be above or "so over" politics, but in reality that was just a way to forgive themselves the burden of maintaining a decent society. So they willingly let the fire burn and grow out of control so that the millenials would have to deal with it.
After being hit with one life altering tragedy after the next during their prime earning years, many millenials realized they would need to be the sacrificial bridge generation. They resigned to delay or deny a lot of personal happiness/excitement so that they could do everything they could to oppose the second bush (who isn't actually a nice, harmless man with candy) and get Obama elected.
As the millenials can't afford homes or children of their own (part of that mentioned sacrifice), the X parents then have the kids that are gen Z later in life. Those Z kids weren't given any civic direction, personal values or responsibility to community from their perpetually checked out and selfish X parents. So without any tools to build meaningful resistance or any need to serve other humans, they then dropped the ball this election (the ball that the millenials were sacrificing their own fulfilling lives to be able to hand off to them).
Z was handed the blueprint on a silver platter, so they could literally fix shit by just showing up and acknowledging that nazis are both real and bad. There was actually a point where republicans wouldn't have won another presidency around 2009 (and they were freaking the fuck out with changing demographic trends forecasted) - never again without a "trump" chaos desperation play emerging to lower the bar, shift the Overton window and generally suck the value out of words, concepts and law.
The Republicans are ultimately ever-hungry scoundrels and religious zealots though, they want it more, but really that's because some will literally go to prison if they aren't governing. Also, a successful left will never have that same ruthless hunger, but that's really just because the definition of the left's vision of success is that you should actually be able to slow down, enjoy living and let your guard down a bit, or else what's the fucking point? The Republicans are perpetual losers, but even when they "win" they don't. They aren't happy and all that means they are never slowed by legality or morality. So they got to work in earnest starting in 2010 (go watch a film called "slaying the dragon") and here we are.
Edit: Ha! Scrolled down and saw someone posted a comic that says about exactly what I was expressing, except the Z kid would need to be falling on his face.
I want to make abundantly that Gen Z did not fumble the election, the Democrats did. The Democratic party analyzed the situation much the same way you did, and realized that there was no way the Republicans would ever win over Gen Z, so they took that as opportunity to move further right than Reagan and expose the entire two party system as one large fascist bloc with 2 different sheep dogs.
And Gen Z correctly saw electoralism as a dead end and are actively exploring alternatives.
This is all beautifully stated.
Gen X is the end of SLC Punk. "I'm not selling out, I'm buying in."
(the ball that the millennials were sacrificing their own fulfilling lives to be able to hand off to them)
OOF. Hits hard.
For those who don't know, SLC Punk is a movie worth your time, especially at a certain time in life. The spirit is great, but... Stevo is an Xer who ultimately did go to Harvard and dad and mom are boomers (The boomers turned from hippies to yuppies in the 80s).
We're just chilling watching the show...
I sit at the tail end of it, or as I've seen it described 'xenials', wishing things would start to make sense again one day.
You realize that that comic is a pretty strong indictment of gen X though, yes?
It's not noble or otherwise admirable to sit down and eat that popcorn.
Here's the funny thing with that. We watched things like Bill Nye and Captain Planet as kids. We've been aware of the evidence of science and the needs to change our society since a very young age. For many years we where told 'use plastic so they don't cut down trees' only to realize later that was wrong. All through it we where telling the parent and the grandparents that things needed to change and the future wasn't looking great.
Not one fuck was given.
So when it came time to be the parents and the mundane middle life drones many simply said hold onto what scraps you can and hope for the future, but in the meantime I just want to sit down for a bit. It's draining as hell to spend decades of your life being ignored, it's not a wonder we get called the forgotten generation.
1977 here, we had to be raised by the boomers alone - with no Internet, mobile phones, and left outside all summer until it was dark (which wasn't that bad mostly).
What we were sold on growing up and what actually happened when we became adults was very different.
were the hidden generation, hiding in plain sight between 2 larger messes.
In other words, you coasted off of the luxuries afforded you by the previous generation and enjoyed selfish, fully funded indulgences themed as rebellion (while understanding that that wealth funding you was always ill gotten and at the expense of exploited and abused minority groups) and then, because you took a generation off, left a fully unmanaged mess festering to inevitably implode the generation after you?
And then today, even with the wisdom of time, you live with the hubris to call that generation, that you passively destroyed, "a mess". Respectfully, I'm not sure you realize it, you piece of shit, but you're actually a piece of shit.
not that you understand the the subtlety of words, the implication is that all generations are messes, genx is just, in volume, less human beings.
but go on over-reacting. it really shows what kind of person you are.
the middle child generation.
I was about to take umbrage with that on behalf of millennials, but tbh we are a mess—not entirely through our own doing, of course—but definitely a mess.
Classic Gen X: "It's not my problem."
Cool, thanks for all the help guys. No wonder you get called fucking Boomers. You could have appended "other people aren't my responsibility" and really nailed down why people stopped giving a fuck about a generation that never gave a fuck about themselves or others.
genx took learys 'turn on, tune in, drop out' as literal instruction
Unhappily, my explanations of this sequence of personal development are often misinterpreted to mean "Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity".
The younger people call them boomers. Hell, gen Z and gen alpha call millenials boomers. Everyone who is "old" is a boomer now.
The older people only seem to be talking about millenials and younger, usually in the form of rage bait internet articles.
The concept of generations is completely arbitrary. They used to be named after important changes in the age distribution of western populations, but after the boomers they just became "the next one" because nothing really happened. Older gen X behaves the same as younger boomers, and millenials range from "owns a house, has four kids, are starting to plan their retirement" to "just finished their education", and I haven't yet found a reason why gen alpha and gen z differ at all (at least the millenials could be tied to 9/11?).
Now, nobody worth our time will take any of it seriously.
Everyone who is “old” is a boomer now.
And "millennial" just means "child." People born in 1990 have sneered the word at 12-year-olds with zero self-recognition.
We all went for a bike-ride, and when we got home just played some Atari.
Still playing Atari...
Ngl That's kinda Badass
"Boomers" has been misappropriated by younger generations to mean anything from older people they disagree with, older people they feel have undue privileges they don't have, or older people who were born before the internet became widespread.
The scapegoating mostly points at gen-X'ers though, not true boomers. The boomers are hitting the retirement homes at this point.
Boomers are generally tech illiterate, gen-x grew up with consoles, the commodore 64 and then the web and the mobile era then smartphones and withspread internet and so on and on. We were there when things started.
Elon Musk & Sergei Brin are Gen X, but Bezos, Gates, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak, and most of the people who built the technology GenX grew up with are Boomers. Zuck is a Millenial, but just barely. You could make a decent start of life as GenX knowing nothing about the technology, but they were still young enough to learn new developments easily.
X as a population is a birth low like the silent generation and since both are adjacent to the baby boom, which is one of the largest generations, their relative pull during their time is muted. basically the silent generation was sorta crowded out by the large incoming one and Xers were to small to effect the new crowd size much. Then also millenials are technically a boom but really just a drop in the bucket compared to the baby boom before. They are the little peak in the early 90's in this graph where the orange is the boom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom#/media/File:US_Birth_Rates.svg . Combined with this is that X was known as the slackers and they were not big joiners. Don't get me wrong im in the gen and I know plenty of folks that do things in their lives like reduce, reuse, recycle but not many part of an org or something around it (not all good things btw of course but im giving the perspective of my crowd). It still sorta cracks me up as I live near my high school and they put all the accomplishments along the fence and it starts in like the 60's. Newer ones are in the school but as new ones come in the old ones are hung on the outside fence. Well there is this big gap in the 80's. literally stuff into the late 70's and then suddenly stuff from the early 90's. No club or sport or anything got any significant win or award or whatevr in the 80's.
hear about
Something is only talked about if talking about it accomplishes something. Gen X doesn't raise any strong feelings with anyone, so they're not talked about. They're still there obviously.
The reason why is complex, and I'm no expert myself. However, from what I gathered about recent history, what seems most likely to me is that the time gen x'ers grew up in was very stable in the sense that economy was good, no major wars were happening, the cold war was "ending". So the only thing gen x'ers had to worry about was themselves. So they did. And you don't really need to talk about someone that just keeps to themself. They cause you no issues.
Another theory of mine is very simple: humanity changes over time. The larger the time, the larger the change. Differences between humans breeds conflict as their interests collide. Since boomers are the current oldest larger impactful generation, and gen z are the youngest, the difference between them are greatest. Thus the conflict between them is highest, thus there are a lot of people talking about those problems. I've been hearing less about millennials as well.
That is tbh a very US centric perspective. The decade Gen X grown up - youth in the 80ties and young adulthood in 90ties - is known for the break up of the Sovjetbloc. If that isn’t a big shake in life, I don’t know what else might have such an impact on lifestyle, thoughts, ownerships and behaviors.
The longtail effects had disruptions to other regions in the world with unrest and uprisings for independence.
And sure there have been conflicts as well. E.g. the North Ireland conflict with bombing in the UK. And there was the first nuclear disaster of Tschernobyl in 1986 causing angst in Europe.
But at all, I‘d say these days were characterized by a positive mood and the feeling that people can change things.
Musk is Gen X. Ron DeSantis is Gen X. Josh Hawley is Gen X. Paul Ryan, Gen X, claimed Rage Against the Machine was a favorite band despite being a fucking Republican.
Sounds to me like they're pretty loud and fucking shit up just as bad as the Boomers, no offense.
I don't have good memories of Gen X, just memories as assholes older than me who judged everyone based on what music they listened to and were absolutely assholes if your music wasn't cool enough.
Am I shocked most of them grew up to be conservative fuckholes? No, no I am not.
Anyway they mostly just get lumped in with Boomers, but Musk is Gen X and I think he's sadly pretty representative of it.
Over half of men (52%) aged 45+ voted for Trump and 44 is the youngest Gen X.
He's the one who likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along and he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means
Knows not what it means, and I say
He's the one who likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along and he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means, knows not what it means, and I say, "Yeah"
I don’t have good memories of Gen X, just memories as assholes older than me who judged everyone based on what music they listened to and were absolutely assholes if your music wasn’t cool enough.
And you base your opinion of an entire generation on that?
There are good people and bad people in all generations alike. One day you too will be older, and you'll be at the receiving end of undeserved criticism for things you've never said or done because some young dude met someone else the same age as you they didn't like.
Just under half of men aged 18-29 voted for Trump, and who knows how bad that number would be if young people actually bothered to vote. The idea that conservatives are just old people who got theirs is just a skewed view from young progressives with conservative parents.
Gen X was the age of hippies, protesting the Vietnam war, anti nuclear protests, and so on. In many ways they were more progressive than the current young generations.
Millenials are growing up to be just as conservative as gen x. Gen z is already turning towards conservatism (probably because progressives really suck at social media which is shaping young minds to an extreme extent). The only difference between gen x/y/z/alpha is that x and y have had more time to accumulate wealth and therefore possess more power.
Don't blame society's issues on people because of something simple like their age or their race. No problem is as simple as that.
I do have to say that most of the bullies and assholes I have known have been gen X.
We're here, frantically paddling to keep up.
but you fuckers still got a boat though, even if it is leaking a little...
Probably still outside drinking water from the garden hose.
Never upgraded; decided to stay Gen-Twitter.
These whole rather arbitrary ages used are quite silly. Do you really think someone who is, for example, 45 will have a very different outlook than a 42 year old just because of the year they were born? There are decent people and wankers in every generation.
Proper zodiac it is
Asshats who use the term "Boomer" don't seem to understand that it means people born about 10 years after WWII and use it for anyone older than they are, so MTV term "genX" gets swamped.
Boomer is a frame of mind and enough Gen Xers fit that frame of mind to get the label.
You wouldn't be catching strays if Musk wasn't Gen X, some of the worst people in our congress were Gen X like Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, and outside of congress idiots like Governor Ron DeSantis are Gen X. Gen X is nearly 40% of the House Representatives and a quarter of the Senate.
Some of the most fucked up assholes on the political landscape today are Gen X so they deserve the "Boomer" label.
No, they are not their parents. Asshole or not.
The rapture came and took them away
We're right here: https://beatleader.com/clan/GENX
Gen X is essentially just "boomer lite." So might as well lump them into boomers. That's been my experience working with many many gen x'ers over the years. They're similar in my opinion.
There is a Segway between boomer and Gen X but every generation has an overlap. I'm a Gen X. It is a small generation that lived through the creation of the internet society. We were also responsible for 90s independent music labels and the production of the greatest music since the 60s (you are welcome btw). Boomers are post war nationalists that stopped learning anything new after their 18th birthday.
