#generation jones

[rebel-heart-gypsysoul]

[marjoree]

Landlord on the right, next door neighbor on the left. Both named David so they call themselves The Daves of our Lives. Clever, huh?

[frances-kafka]

Am actually really beginning to analyze Gen Jones as having its own generational cultural microclimate that is absolutely NOT Boomer but at the same time isn't Gen X either The big place you really see this, is when you understand how much of the Dating Industrial Complex (workshops, self help books, singles' orgs, matchmaking stuff), including that book "The Rules," was very very specific to Gen Jones. And hugely ignored by Gen X. (I actually am starting to analyze Gen X as a generation that dated in ways more familiar to Europeans than Americans. Almost no "formal" dating culture except among semi trad turbonormies, hanging out in groups of friends, couples forming and decoupling and remaining friends, etc. Actually you could say that Gen Xrs as "permateens" were adults who continued to socialize and date like teenagers.) Jones are at a weird inflection point where: Men: * Only one type of man is marriageable. Economic conditions mean that a broad swath of "normal" men are now unviable marriage partners, so we have a vast range of women across social classes who are gunning for the successful salesmen and or the professional types. Virtually every average-educated Gen Jones woman is dating massively out of her league. * Cultural upbringing is still a bit "Old School" on top of that.

Women: * Great Secretary Massacre starts showing up here. All but college-educated women become much more financially precarious

The college educated women are likely feminist, and raised with completely incompatible social values to the average men around them

Everyone: Jones is a broad *normie* culture with almost no casual social norms outside of work networking. It's worse than Greatest and Silent, who had adult hobby clubs and pastimes, and Boomer, who remain social into old age. For Jones, you are supposed to stop going to the club at a certain age. You're supposed to be in career shit and self-improvement workshops.

This is a Perfect Storm of fucked dating norms where the fucked up genderpol actually resembles the Postwar a little, but with way fewer options for Normal People. The big tradeoff from Postwar is that at least Gen Jones women have more actual rights.

(It is actually much BETTER for Boomers. Nobody ever had it as good as Boomers did in this department, or ever will again. I will write a whole post deconstructing Boomer dating norms. And actually, Gen X is in a long tail, culturally, of subcultural Boomer norms. There just weren't enough of us to sustain it forever.)

[posttexasstressdisorder]

What did being 13 in 1972 mean? It meant being the starry-eyed Grand Romantic and Tolkien buff...it meant being emo before emo was emo. The long version of the Moody Blues' "Nights In White Satin" was The Greatest Song Ever Written. It meant LOVING Emerson Lake & Palmer's LUCKY MAN...UNIRONICALLY! And then it meant Layla. And Chicago's singles. And WAR! All Day Music! and Summer "Ridin' 'round town with all the windows down...8-track playin' all your fav'rite sounds, it's summer...summer time is here..." and it means Madman Across the Water and Honky Chateau...and it means you will forever resonate with Dr. John's "Right Place, Wrong Time"...which, when you think about it, is our generation's theme song.

[retropopcult]

"Mr. Jones" is a song by American rock band Counting Crows.  It was released as the lead single from their debut album, August and Everything After (1993) and was the band's first radio hit.  It broke into the Billboard Hot 100 chart on February 26, 1994 and would eventually peak in the US at number five.

The song is about struggling musicians (Duritz and bassist Marty Jones of The Himalayans) who "want to be big stars," believing that "when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely." But not long after the song broke into the top ten, Duritz began to recant these values; this was due to the suicide of Kurt Cobain, which left Duritz deeply shaken. "We heard that, that [Kurt] had shot himself. And it really scared the hell out of me because I thought, these things in my life are getting so out of control."  In concert appearances, the group began to play “Mr Jones” in a sad, subdued acoustic style, and then eventually rarely at all.  Cobain’s death and all the events and feelings around the band’s concurrent success were the basis for "Catapult", the first track of their next album, Recovering the Satellites.

[divisioninwarsaw]

[gehayi]

You mentioned “generation jones” in your description- who exactly is the Jones that it’s referring to?

It’s not a who. According to Wikipedia, “[t]he name "Generation Jones" has several connotations, including a large anonymous generation, a "keeping up with the Joneses" competitiveness[,] and the slang word "jones" or "jonesing", meaning a yearning or craving.” Jonesers were raised with the same expectations of employability and financial success as boomers, but got hit with masses of business closings, layoffs, and widespread unemployment as we came of age, not to mention killer recessions and, for many of us, homelessness. 

All of the craving for the rosy future of the boomers, but none of the reality. 

[stopmakingliberalslookbad]

Let’s talk about generations

Because so many people on Tumblr are grossly informed on who is a part of what generation (eg. the prevailing mentality of “Everybody who is over forty is an icky, mean Baby Boomer!“), I thought that I’d provide a handy cheat sheet of all of the generations that include currently living people, along with a couple of micro generations.

The Greatest Generation/G.I. Generation (birth years range from early 1900s to mid/late 1920s)

The youngest members of this generation are roughly 88 to 90 years old as of August 2017, so there are still plenty of them still alive and kicking. They grew up during the Great Depression and served in World War 2. Even people who didn't serve were profoundly impacted by the war. Their relationship with Baby Boomers is a mirror image of the Baby Boomers’ relationship with Millennials.

The Silent Generation (birth years range from late 1920s/early 1930s to early 1940s)

The oldest members of this generation are in their late 80s and the youngest are in their early to mid 70s as of August 2017. They tend to get lost in the shuffle between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers. A lot of the so-called Baby Boomers that you all complain about are actually a part of this generation.

Baby Boomers (birth years range from roughly 1945 to 1964)

Be prepared for a longer blurb and a lot of me defending this group. The oldest members of this generation are roughly 72 years old and the youngest are 52. Contrary to popular belief, most of their offspring are Gen Xers or Xennials. This generation is defined by social and cultural upheaval. The civil rights movement, Summer of Love, second wave feminism, sexual liberation, black power movements, and the Vietnam War shaped this group’s identity. They are responsible for society's major steps in becoming more progressive and liberal, so think about that when you accuse them of adhering to “traditional” values or being responsible for enacting laws that they were too young to enact in the first place. The Greatest Generation gave them a lot of grief for being absorbed in technology (said technology being television, as they were the first generation to be raised on it from childhood) and wrote them off as being entitled and “soft”. Sound familiar? Like a lot of people, some did become more conservative as they aged, but this will happen with each coming generation.

Generation Jones (birth years range from roughly 1958 to 1964)

A subgeneration of Baby Boomers consisting of people that were really too young to fully experience the upheaval of the 60s. They didn’t reach teenagehood until the 1970s.

Generation X (birth years range from roughly 1966 to sometime in the early 80s)

Now here’s where the generations start having less defined starting and ending ranges. The media has put the ending birth year as early as 1977 and as late as 1985. But overall, the oldest members of this generation are roughly 51 and the youngest are in their mid 30s. A lot of your parents are actually part of this generation and not Baby Boomers, as you’ve been led to believe. They’re often known as the “slacker” generation and defined by their cynicism. For some reason, they’re escaping blame for all of the criticism hurled towards how Millennials were raised, despite being primarily responsible for parenting them.

Xennials (birth years range from sometime in the late 1970s to roughly 1985)

A new term that has started to gain more steam recently and also the microgeneration that yours truly is a part of, so this might be a lengthier entry. Xennials are in their 30s as of August 2017 and reached teenagehood at some point during the 90s (sorry late 80s babies, you can’t sit with us). We have a blend of Gen X cynicism and Millennial optimism. Our lives are basically summed up as analog childhoods and teenage years and digital adulthoods. As an example, we’re the only group of people that went from records to cassettes to CDs to digital music formats within the first eighteen years of our lives (though some of us embraced digital music a bit later). Cell phones and social media didn’t become part of most of our lives until we became adults. We remember what life without the internet was like. We tend to be extremely hard on Millennials, probably because we’re often lumped in with them and some of us hate that.

Millennials (birth years range from sometime in the 1980s to early 2000s)

This generation’s starting and ending birth year ranges is even harder to pinpoint. The media has placed the starting years as early as 1978 and as late as 1986 and nobody can seem to agree on whether or not the ending range is the late 90s or early 2000s. Overall, if you were born between 1986 and 2001, or are between 30 and 15 as of August 2017, you are pretty firmly in the Millennial camp, although you 2000s babies might be on the cusp, especially if you were born after 9/11. Most of you reading this are probably Millennials, so I don’t need to explain what defines your generation, other than the fact that you and the Baby Boomers are basically clones of each other and both generations refuse to admit it.

Generation Z (birth year ranging from the early 2000s to present)

Today’s youth. This generation doesn’t have many defining traits yet, other than the fact that they were born after 9/11.

Generation ??

The generation after Generation Z. Nothing is known about this unborn generation, although their relationship with Millennials will almost certainly mirror Millennials’ relationship with Baby Boomers.