#generational stuff

[coelii]

I find it wild that my son’s generation (z/α) prefers phone calls and cold facetime and will talk for hours and hours upon end exactly the way my mom (x) and grandmother (boomer) used to and I (millennial) am too scared to call and order a pizza and will order from the less superior pizza place simply bc they have online ordering

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[photo from flickr :: creative commons :: Brad Choi]

* * * *

“For the ambitious children of the bourgeoisie, high achievers raised on Adderall, Xanax, and a raft of discreet legal narcotics, drugs are the norm just to get to sleep, to deal with anxiety, to avoid crushing bouts of abjection and the relentless pressures to exceed and excel. In the hood, promethazine, the syrup of Houston, became the fashionable coping agent for those living in the free-fire zones of America, where turf wars regulated with cheap handguns cut down lives in a vicious spiral. From so many points of view, then, one looks out into the Trump era with a prevailing numbness, nihilism, cruelty, ambient anxiety, disarticulation seeping in from all sides. The music records all this. It sounds like this. Future’s lyrics are mocked for their lack of sophistication, but the veritable pharmacopeia in his verses is not dishonest or inarticulate about an affect that is pervasive, or its origins… A preoccupation with depression, mental health, a confused and terrible desire for dissociation: this is a fundamental sensibility shared by a generation.”

— Jesse McCarthy, Notes on Trap

[brasskingfisher]

"OK boomer" and survivorship bias

Now, what with American conservatives losing their shit and demanding the voting age be raised because *gasp* young people are voting for progressive candidates!!!!! I think it's important to talk about how this mythic idea that older people are always more conservative, rather than conservatives just happen to live longer. Boomers are a great example of this (particularly in America) as they're currently fighting against equality despite being the generation behind the civil rights movement, and who created gay liberation and feminism. So, why and how are they now so staunchly opposed to those ideas and the principles behind them? Well, look at who's survived from that generation.

A significant number of gay and bi men from the baby boomer generation were killed by the aids epidemic. Likewise a huge number of the trans and GNC people would have been killed by the lack of access to gender affirming care (for example up until the mid to late 1980s gender reassignment surgery was only avaliable privately in a handful of European countries). Most of the POC (certainly in the US) were trapped in poverty and denied the means to improve their lives (financially and or socially) and so died much younger than their white counterparts. Add into that the social pressures of society. In hetronormative world without the internet where could a young queer person find the information or opportunity to explore their sexuality? Let alone other people who felt similar way to offer guidance and or support? So, that means you can remove a lot of the queer people from the equation (certainly those who were out because of being ostracised and losing any kind of support network even if they weren't the victims of violence). Don't forget as well the ingrained prejudices of society and the risks that posed to non conformists. Lynchings remained de riguer in the south into the 60s, and of course bigots didn't just target POC and queer people, anyone openly supporting or aiding them ran the risk of being attacked.

So, put it all together and that means we're left with a group of people who are overwhelmingly white, rich and cishet. And since contempary conservativism is all about preserving the power and privilege of rich, white cishet men, its easy to see why they're so vehemently opposed to progressive policies.

[alliluyevas]

I saw some post on here that was like “it saddens and disgusts me that millennials have such strong nostalgic associations with ads from our childhoods and that instead of doing wholesome stuff like playing outdoors we were being spoon-fed television and corporate advertising” and while I do think there is a valid point there 

a) ironically for a website that in general seems to think neurotic centrist boomer helicopter moms are the absolute worst kind of evil that’s kind of exactly what you sound like 

b) if you think that’s an exclusive experience of people born in the 1990s, I would love to introduce you to my 62 year old father who frequently and nostalgically references his favorite television ads from his childhood

[cyrelia-j]

So here's a fun exercise I thought of since there's been some brief discussion on generational names. What would some of the different ST generations be called then? And where would the cut off be?

I could see there being a "First Contact" generation or a "Kirk" generation or something equally silly. I'm curious what everyone else comes up with

[eirashimizu]

Nothing I do will ever be good enough for you. And honestly? That’s your problem now. If you think I don’t work, if you think all my problems would be solved by doing myself up more, that’s not something I can fix for you.

You can choose to take me as the trophy child, or the lack-of-trophy child, or the one who can always shoulder a bit more pressure so she can bring home one more medal. Or the thing you can project your anxieties on and vent your frustrations to. I’m not sure what you really take me as sometimes, and to be frank with you, I don’t really care to figure out.

You can choose not to be happy for me.

I will still be happy for myself.

[mashcore]