this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
134 points (89.9% liked)

Asklemmy

46321 readers
1048 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[โ€“] eli@lemmings.world 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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

[โ€“] Putykat@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

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

We're still here.

Generation discourse honestly panders to the lowest common denominator intellect. People who constantly talk about boomers or millennials are usually pretty dumb.

The reason you don't hear much about Gen X is "we" didn't cause anything culturally significant in an enduring when "we" were in our 20s.

[โ€“] Pumafred9@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Probably still outside drinking water from the garden hose.

[โ€“] Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We're here, frantically paddling to keep up.

[โ€“] technomad@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

but you fuckers still got a boat though, even if it is leaking a little...

load more comments (1 replies)

Nothing happened. The generational war another facet of culture war. It doesn't make sense because you have to ask what the fuck happened to Gen X? Why don't they fit into the picture? Why doesn't the data add up? That should tell you something. Your experiment is flawed. The culture war doesn't make sense.

[โ€“] Diddlydee@feddit.uk 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

These whole rather arbitrary ages used are quite silly. Do you really think someone who is, for example, 45 will have a very different outlook than a 42 year old just because of the year they were born? There are decent people and wankers in every generation.

[โ€“] limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago

Proper zodiac it is

[โ€“] random_character_a@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Asshats who use the term "Boomer" don't seem to understand that it means people born about 10 years after WWII and use it for anyone older than they are, so MTV term "genX" gets swamped.

load more comments (3 replies)
[โ€“] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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.

[โ€“] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

Millennials were definitely called entitled and lazy.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[โ€“] Marthirial@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Never upgraded; decided to stay Gen-Twitter.

[โ€“] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Being a "late" Boomer, I see gen x having a lot of similarities with me. Running loose in the neighborhood, doing stupid shit that probably should have killed us, absent parents who just wanted us independent and out of their hair.

We remember old shit (music, phones, computers) transitioning into new shit. I think it's a spectrum Boomer->Gen x. A lot of similarities.

[โ€“] Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Man, it's always weird hearing this, because as a millenial this sounds exactly like my experience growing up.

[โ€“] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's a spectrum. Lots of parents in millennial days were doing the same s***, but I think it was more in a rural setting.

Back in Gen x and Boomer days this was suburbia.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: โ€น prev next โ€บ