I remember once reading a Frank Miller rant in one of the Sin City comics, where he was describing boomers as being overly liberal, like “social justice warriors”, referencing what boomers represented in American universities. I was reading it some 20 years after the comic was released, and it was quite funny because by then boomers were associated with being overly conservative and greedy real estate hoarders and short-term-profit CEOs, with complete disregard for everything else (not that this was anything new, it just felt like they had doubled down on the worst features of the previous generation).
I always viewed Gen X as a mix of cynicism and pop culture, and in those battles that arose online, mainly between Boomers and Millennials, Gen X was the “chill” gen. However, now that the majority of CEOs are Gen X, we are seeing an unprecedented mass surveillance and data-collection economy, like fucking Gen Xers want complete control over everyone. And yeah, I hope Gen X is remembered for that, just as Boomers are being remembered as completely out-of-touch greedy conservatives with consolidate wealth instead of for the cultural changes they led in the 60s and 70s.
It seems that in early Web 2.0, Millennials were associated with “social justice warriors”. Inclusivity and visibility seemed like very Millennial concerns, but when I see places like 4chan and 9gag, I realize it’s not kids there, it’s a bunch o resented people in their 30s and 40s, the Culture War is a very Millennial thing, it was industrialized, became a performance, and when in power, that generation will probably be remembered for hate.
It seems like we are not remembered for when our generation was the opposition, but for what it did when it became the establishment. What do you think?
It always kinda amazes me how little interaction there is across generations.
The hippies and such that were part of the pre-eighties boomer counterculture movements are still there. Most of those don’t look the part, but still hold the same beliefs.
Some just grew the fuck up, had families, and no longer had the energy to sustain a life of protest. A lot of what drove that era’s visible counterculture was youthful energy. Young idealists eventually hit a wall where no matter what their beliefs are, they’re limited by reality in how much time, effort, and resources they can put towards their cause.
But there’s also the fact that every generation is diverse. You’ll have the edges, where you find the most vehement people, but the majority are going to just not give a fuck as long as they can live with acceptable levels of hassle. In that laundry majority, you’ll find the folks that agree with a given principle, but can’t/won’t do anything about it. They will, however, give lip service.
That’s boomers, Xers, millennials, Z, Alpha, whatever age range you want to point at. You’ll still have the vehement and loud, but as they age up, there’s less of their age peers jumping on the bandwagon.
Then, the next age group comes along and wants an enemy. That enemy is going to be the establishment because establishment is the thing we all are forced to live in. It’s the default, the status quo. And that means the previous generations that are in that majority that are just trying to live and survive are part of that establishment. So you get the bullshit generational warfare. Which, once you live long enough, and/or look back at history enough, you discover happens every generation. There’s always a struggle of some kind because there’s always some degree of power imbalance created just by surviving long enough to accrue knowledge/resources.
This is phenomenon relied on by power brokers. The 1%, if you want to look at it that way. The folks that have control of enough resources that they essentially control everyone’s lives.
As a Millennial, I lost all faith in protest after millions and millions across the globe rose up to protest the WoT and inequality and were brushed aside.
I only have middle-age rage now.
Don’t worry, by the time you hit fifty-ish, you won’t have energy for rage any more lol.