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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?

169 comments
  • We’re still being forgotten.

    The boomers held on to power for such a long time that X never really got a generational chance to change things or sit in the driver’s seat. They were left waiting in the wings for their turn. The millennials were pretty pissed off for a lot of reasons and made a lot of noise, so they overshadowed X, and they’ve been maneuvering for their opportunities in the driver’s seat.

    So basically X got mostly left out. Doesn’t mean we couldn’t fuck things up, though. We were the biggest trump voters by generation.

  • 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"

  • 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.

  • For some reason, the internet has mistaken gen X for boomers with the "ok boomer" meme. Anyone over 40 is a boomer to the young. Completely unbeknownst to the fact that real baby boomers are literal senior home elderly people

    • Not really. 60 is the youngest boomer. People in their 60s are still on the workforce.

  • There is another theory I've heard that I like:

    1. The parents of the millenials were the boomers. The parents of gen z was gen X. Millenials and boomers are fairly equally disliked, and gen alpha seems to be shaping up to follow that trend.
    2. If you have been paying attention to legitimate complaints about each generation, you'll notice similarities between the kids and their parents. Both millenials and boomers get hate for being terrible parents and workaholics, and the hate gen z is currently getting for having no work ethic sounds very similar to the hate gen X got back when they were in their 20s for being supposedly lazy and stupid becuase of MTV.
    3. This implies that we are seeing not one pendulum of overractions to generational trauma, but two. The Millenials and the Baby Boomers, if you trace it back, descended from the humbly named Greatest Generation which fought in WWII and set the wheels of modern American culture into their current tracks. Gen Z and Gen X descend from the Silent Generation, who were best known for being conformist and pretty much nothing else.

    Here's the conjecture part of the theory: the Boomer lineage has been taught that what matters is what you do and if you don't achieve you have no value, whereas the Silent Generation lineage has been taught that good people are good to their family and community and being a workaholic is bad for that. The poop-throwing you're seeing online is simply an expression of a conflict between opposing values.

  • 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.

  • Gen X here, we're labeled the invisible generation for a reason.

    That said I don't really give enough fuks to be involved, the real fight is inequality, not age.

169 comments