I'm definitely too old, but as a Millennial I love Gen Z. They got their funny internet things, their doom memes, their music, and I say go for it. They're picking up and running with the rights for all, they're more open than we even are, and it's just awesome to see. People love to make fun of the younger generation but are so quick to forget what we were actually like back then.
You didn't have to say you were a millennial. The Weeds meme was enough.
Millenial representative #2: Completely agree. Gen Z is so sensitive, smart and respectful, I love them. I run a lot of tabletop RPGs like D&D and had an all-Gen Z group back in 2021. My favorite memory is them explaining the Ohio meme to me. The kids are alright.
Can confirm. Fight the power, fuck the system and all that jazz. I was told it was my "maximalism of the youth", a phase that would pass, but I only become more and more radical in my views as I mature, so that was a fucking lie.
Aye. I’m almost 30 now and I feel like I’ve gotten more radical rather than less.
Makes sense though. In the 30 years I’ve been around I can tangibly see ecosystems failing and the climate going haywire. And for what? Wealth inequality has gotten worse and the idea of owning a house is almost a pipe dream.
Meanwhile everyone’s getting more hateful. LGBTQ people, women, and minorities are having rights scrutinised and stripped away.
There’s war in Europe again. The gerontocracies are still going hard. The oceans are dying. The mummies are melting along the permafrost.
We lived through a pandemic, companies made record breaking profits, yet none went to workers. Everything is turning into subscriptions, we’re literally fighting to get to repair stuff we’ve bought. We are to own nothing and be happy about it.
Humanity, society… it’s all bullshit. Everything is bullshit.
I'm over 60 and not at all represented by these old motherfuckers. It's partly their age and partly their wealth -- they can't represent people who actually work for a living.
There are various theories of how age and term limits could limit this.
Here's my fantasy, which is just that.
Set up an AI unit that's been programmed to a 90 IQ level. If these assholes can't beat it in chess three times out of five -- or checkers for that matter -- enjoy the rest of your life on the porch.
Just a fantasy.
I love boomers shitting on boomers. Gives me hope
It was never about age, that was just another distraction. If old people, trans people, gay people, black people, Mexican people, democratic people, and all the rest are responsible, you won't have any attention left to pay the rich guy who's fault this actually is.
Yup, I’m 41 and I haven’t gotten less radical, just more detail-oriented in how we make it a reality.
I'm a liberal progressive GenXer and my workplace is full of MAGA millenials. I thought I would be OK when the boomers started to die off from heart disease, but here we are.
Millennials skew more left than previous generations. Unfortunately there's still plenty of brainwashed MAGATs in every generation.
Burn the place down and when the cops ask say it was infested with spiders.
Gen Z's biggest problem (which spawns all the other problems) is being constantly online, but it's hardly their fault. The older generations (which I'm part of) founded the internet, molded it into digital heroin, and then went ahead and purchased the kids their devices that had mostly no restrictions or protections.
It perfectly fits the Who Killed Hannibal meme.
Internet through the 90s and smartphone adoption in the late 00s-early 2010s changed so much about how people interacted. I was part of the last generation to adopt the internet growing up and can remember not having it.
Boomers get shit on but they at least had some fulfillments of their generational ideals, they probably changed their own world more than any other generation by their own will so far. They had civil rights and strong unions which counts for something. They couldn't escape the apparatus that sustained them and will always be defined by it, all the rock and roll in the world cant bring down the institutions, they merely adopted it for themselves.
GenX was the exact opposite, the notion of authenticity going back to the boomers reached it's apex at the exact time economic conditions stripped away any meaning and relevance of it. They both had the dream and saw it dismantled, got the first popular reactions towards the coming climate doom, with the backdrop of impending nuclear apocalypse. At least they could ride on the coattails of the post-war economy, and benefitted from the 90s.
GenZ actually has it the worst so far, they never had the dream GenX did. With internet and smartphones they now see themselves at all times from the perspective of how other's see them, they exist fully saturated in this hyperreal space of endless consumption. They don't have the economic benefits of previous generations, and their GenX parents probably need their retirement money. GenZ is experiencing the strain of the empire, the degradation of social services, the weight of the impending climate catastrophe, meaningless politics and all routes for change blocked off. They have the fake world to escape to and can experience anything they want at almost any time. They are self-aware of this though, at least the smart ones are, they know it's bullshit but they don't think that matters, and they're absolutely right.
Something about the demise of 3rd spaces (ie public parks) also plays a role. Just yesterday was told we couldn't have a library in our neighborhood because of lack of surface level parking.
Pretty much, most of the gen x I work with are indistinguishable from boomers at this point.
kids don't want to work these days
people need to just save more money
immigrants are taking all the jobs
[2hrs of scrolling]
I was in a "generational diversity" course at work recently where we would break apart and talk about what behaviors are common among each generation and why, and how to be good leaders for each generation. We started with the "greatest" generation and the "silent" generation and worked our way down in age. Everything started so respectful and nice for the old folks, even excusing their shortcomings when one was actually brought up due to how they were raised and the tough circumstances they grew up under. By the time we got to millennial and gen z, things took a turn. Even the instructor was laying on the judgement pretty thick. "They have had everything handed to them growing up so they don't appreciate hard work", "[...] participation trophies [...]", etc
That sounds... like a judgement your class was meant to learn to avoid...
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I am a geriatric millenial and watching gen Z grow up has actually been incredible. It is a generation that has more compassion and self-awareness than the ones that came before them. I am proud of these kids (even though most of them aren't even kids anymore).
It’s OK, GenX is used to being forgotten or misunderstood.
Lots of Millenials can’t tell the difference from a Boomer.
As a gen X it's just nice to be remembered that I exist.
Still, I own my own home without my parents having to die, so I'll rub that in your faces if you try to make me feel old.
I don't understand why this whole generation concept is so popular these days. I don't think it helps anyone if it's just used for sensationalistic general statements that pit one group against the other. This is the same unthinking logic that racism operates on. I cannot see that this way of thinking would in any way help to find solutions to the real problems or even to identify the actors who are responsible for today's ills. On the contrary, it only helps irresponsible profiteers to continue their greed for profit at the expense of the general public by placing the blame on an anonymous group rather than on the individuals who are actually responsible.
Because the baby boom that created the boomers was an actual generational cohort that shared a TON of similarities and had a huge impact as being the largest slice of the male population as so many died in the two World Wars. That lead demographers into thinking all generations worked like this and it took time to have other generations to compare them to.
Pew just announced recently they are moving away from generational cohorts because while someone born in 1979 is technically gen x they have a lot more in common with millennials born in 1985 than a fellow gen x er born in 1967
What's wrong with gen x? I remember being repeatedly told growing up that we were the first generation for which things were gonna be worse than the previous. Lo and fucking behold.
Millenials were the original "avocado toast" generation targeted by boomers. We've been conditioned to protect our young from the real babies in these older generations. But there are good ones and bad ones in every generation.
AFAICT Gen X should really just be split into Boomers and early millennials.
I'm a late gen X (1978) and do not associate with boomers at all.
We're basically millennials before the internet.
That is what I think about when thinking about Gen X. I have clear examples because I'm myself in the millennial range, my (much) older brother is Gen X and my parents are boomers. I'd never lump my bro with the boomers and I consider gen X as a whole pretty chill. They're all the bands I grew up listening to and carried the bulk of what made the 90s great. Boomers have fine individuals but as a whole they're nasty.
I wonder if in the future, millennials and gen z will become the new boomers and gen X.
That will make me kinda sad. I just hope we don't go down the same path...
I don't think so. Generations that actually struggle end up being good to the next generation. IE the greatest generation
It's the entitled cunts that got everything handed to them that turn into massive assholes. IE Boomers
Nice theory, but as the parent of a teenager, younger generations don't tend to think highly of their elders no matter what. It's kind of human nature. I predict that Millennials and Gen Z will absolutely be disliked by the generations afterwards, just as Boomers and Gen X are disliked by Millennials and Gen Z. For that matter, love Gen Z all you want, Millennials, just don't expect it to return the favor. Every generation thinks it's better than the ones that came before. Ever heard of hippies? Yeah, they were gonna save the world from everyone over 30. Now we just call them Boomers.
I don't know, I'm an X, we don't really exist anywhere, we are transparent and ignored in societies.
Sorry but those broccoli haircuts are a deal breaker for me. Sucks about global warming and all though, yall got the short end of the stick
Gen X here. Full support to my Milennial and Zoomer homies.
https://www.pewresearch.org/topic/generations-age/
Demography is moving away from generational studies because aside from Boomers they do not indicate much
It's basically just fun to group people by cultural trends that defined the decades they grew up in.
But why only millennials that seem to get shitted on by every other gen?
No you won't, you'll just yell at them anonymously online. We know your tricks!