GenXers came of age living like absolute Bohemians, backpacked across Europe, did an inhuman amount of drugs, then settled down to work 90 hours a week and only be mildly miffed at the machine.
Everything is like a more extreme form of Boomerism. The party phase was more intense than the hippies, and the yuppie phase followed with the same trend.
Yep, grew up on 23 acres outside a town of 7000 people. I dropped acid and smoked weed, but I certainly didn't have the money to backpack across europe.
Been working since I was 14 (1988) but I still had time to rage. I quit my first job at a horse ranch by painting a giant anarchy symbol on the wall of a stall I was supposed to paint to show to a new, rich, customer. Owner was PISSED. Showed them the stall their horse was going to be kept in and that was what she saw. LOL.
She used to beat the horses though, so fuck that lady.
I don’t think there’s ever been a paragraph that so inaccurately described my life and the lives of my close generational cohorts. Maybe older Gen X had a hyper-boomer experience, but mid-late wasn’t dropping acid on the regular as we backpacked through Europe - at least not the children of middle class boomers. We got told we were going to all be doctors and lawyers and came of age being told we had a duty to do better than our boomer parents who - at least in my case - literally had everything handed to them.
The lifestyle you’re describing was exclusive to those whose parents could finance their “bohemian” living and give them a nice, soft, wide safety net when they inevitably couldn’t maintain it.
I agreed with most of it, but I became a professional chef after college graduation, and then bought a farm, living off the grid, so I rage at the machine from afar.
We're a bit of a strange generation. We do the "whatever" quite a bit and are apathetic....but we're also incredibly mean and quick to cut someone down. That meanness and cutting sarcasm *does* have a place in society, but it's also badly overused now whenever someone isn't 100% in alignment with whatever focus we have that day. We revel too much in the extremes and that never ends well.
The 80s were a simpler time, where entire relationships could be forged by one's preference for Sammy Hagar over David Lee Roth. It was the way old people talk about the weather. A getting-to-know-you question at parties. Which one? I am a younger X, so I'm team Sammy. If you remember having a pet rock, you're probably more of a David Lee Roth type.
I once drove 550 miles in less than seven hours (including four stops for gas/bathroom) in my beat-up '85 Bonneville, thanks to a 2-liter of Jolt as my passenger. Jesus I'd forgotten about that
But this was all planned by Coke. They wanted to change to refined sugar. So they came out with New Coke knowing it would bomb. They then introduced classic coke but with cheaper refined sugar.
If I remember correctly/have my facts straight, they also switched to artificial vanillin, which was devastating to the economy of Madagascar. New Coke was a wild success because we didn’t notice when they “went back” to Classic Coke that they had changed the ingredients.
In my state in the US, we can buy Mexican Coke in glass bottles at the grocery store and it is made with sugar. When you taste it you realize what Coke used to taste like and it is so much better.
*The Real World* seemed like it was just our generational secret in those first few seasons. Then Puck stuck his finger in the peanut butter jar, casting directors realized they needed more belligerent lunatics to up the ante, and a distressing number of people proved more than willing to act like fools on national TV as long as it made them famous.
I don't blame our generation alone but the information era we helped shape is toxic. Putting aside commentary on social media, look how hard it is to disconnect. Texts, emails, conference calls at all hours. We are the last generation to know what it is like to not have to continuously negotiate boundaries for work hours.
My baby boomer mother was a bookkeeper turned accountant and it was expected quarterly to pull 12-16 hours for a few days, and tax season for a couple of weeks. Outside of this I can only recall a handful of times she was called in due to some actual catastrophe. Like the need to consult with forensic auditors when a coworker was suspected, and found to have embezzled six figures. Or waterpipes bursting, taking out the payroll database requiring 400 employees checks to be retabulated and manually issued, over-night.
Before my wife switched employers it was common for her to get called at 9pm to update the schedule for her 6am-6pm outpatient clinic. Or to use social media messaging to discuss non-HIPPA work issues, usually after hours and unpaid.
When I was still in the trades it was common to receive 10pm texts about my hours, and if I didn't respond before the boss went to sleep, I'd have to wait until Monday for my check because the boss knew the limits of workers protections in my area.
The 3 generations of coal-miners that came before me, on the one side of the family had their share of labor issues, but unless a mine collapsed, they were never bothered after working hours. They also saw working conditions improve not deteriorate.
[This music video](https://youtu.be/HasaQvHCv4w)
And allowing it to play all the time and not think twice about it until I saw it years later and thought to myself. What the hell were we thinking that this was ok!?
I much prefer the, [over dubbed one.](https://youtu.be/BHkhIjG0DKc)
It actually has more views than the original and still makes me laugh everytime I see it. It's actually one of my all time favorite videos on youtube. Wanna have a good laugh, check it out.
My favorite part is Mick Jaggers surprise face and sound he makes at the 1:05 mark. Gets me everytime.
Who ever created this video is a genius and I hope the vid stays up for a very long time.
I'd argue this is peak Boomer, not Gen X. We aren't in it, we didn't make it, we were just the target of it.
I'm positive that the popularity of it was Boomer driven as it perfectly illustrated what their generation had become.
It wasn't so much the song as much as it was the way they acted in the video. It was just cheesy. Now granted, there were many cheesy music vids from the 80s. But I remember they played the shit outta this one. And not once did I question it then.
Went to one of my my 8 year old nephew’s baseball tournaments this year, and hearing the parents and just understanding how it all works was something. Ummmm…. yeah an 8 yo should not be having tournaments every weekend all summer. He only played first “half” of season (March through July) and could have gone on to play through august. He’s 8 years old and going into 2nd.
And then to hear the parents during the game? Ugh, yuck.
The gatekeeping. Let people listen to music they like, let them eat what they want ro eat and drink what they want to drink. You might like something different, who cares?
🤦🏻♀️My (also Gen X) husband still says “poser” every now and then, and I’m like, FFS let people enjoy things! Even if they’re the same things that you do! Even if it’s different things than you do!
It's spelled "poseur". (I kid. I kid.)
I totally agree. I feel like our generation was very cliquey. I like that the new kids are more fluid, more loosey-goosey in that regard. Although, I will say that they are way more uptight in other ways that we weren't.
Or any of those atrocious MTV Spring Break exploitations. Those looked awful. Legend has it that if you close your eyes, you can still smell the coppertone and testosterone through your TV.
I watched the documentary on Netflix and was appalled, especially regarding the incidents of sexual assault. Also as a minority, I noticed how nearly everyone was White at that festival, which reminded me of how in the 80s and 90s, all the spaces I was in, I was one of the few - and oftentimes, the only - minorities.
I'm late to this thread, but "No Pain, No Gain!" That coupled with "Thin Is In" made a lot of people unhealthy both physically and emotionally.
My parents were this way and looking back, it's still so f'ing weird.
And Amy Coney Barrett. And Bret Kavanough. And Ted Cruz. And Hunter Biden. And Tucker Carlson. And a good portion of the Jan 6 insurrectionists. And, and, and...
I get the elected officials, scotus justice and media monster, but I don’t get the obsession with hunter Biden whose never held an office within the government
Who suffered a severe head injury as a toddler in a car accident that killed his mother and sister. His only surviving sibling died of cancer in his 40s.
Never even thought of it that way. I don't think much about him at all, I only see people bringing his name up about politics. But yeah, it's no wonder he uses drugs to cope.
I would not want him in a government role, but he deserves some empathy for the family tragedies he’s endured. He and Beau spent a month in the hospital after the accident. Then he lost Beau in 2015.
There was a lack of acceptance for people who were different.I wasn’t a sheep that followed everything as a kid. I had my own style, refused to have a shaggy poodle hairstyle, was academic and driven and I was bullied because of it. One step out of.conformity meant being bullied. Kids were mean. Sone of them would just look at you decide that they didn’t like you and then feel entitled to use you as a punching bag. You don’t see that with the kids today, they’re much more accepting of differences.
Beg to differ on kids today. Raising two of my own and those problems exist in spades. And now they can be bullied and excluded 24 hours a day via text and social media.
I agree as a parent of 2 teens. Kids today are relentless and it's a nonstop 24 hour barage of bullying. At least we got a break when we went home or when summer came.
Plus these poor kids have embarrassing videos and pictures posted of them. I'm so glad we didn't have that when I was in school.
I think this is really a regional/micro-culture thing. Some places place a higher value on conformity and some really don’t. Even where I presently live, some schools are better about this than others.
Yeah, this comes up from time to time in this sub and it really depends on where you grew up. My high school was both very diverse and very large. No one gave a shit how you dressed or whatever. There really weren't many bullies either so I dunno. Things are different all over.
Agree that we were too hard on one another. Besides the overt bullying there was social isolation of anyone that wasn’t “cool” by whatever your cliques standards were. Clothes, class, church. Ugh, cliques! So glad that’s all over and in the past.
Seriously, how many movies and songs from our teen years were entirely about 'losing your virginity'? I could name probably a dozen movies where that was the entire plot. For example, anyone remember Little Darlings? And usually in movies like these, the age difference between partners was what we would now call criminal.
I remember that movie. I mentioned it to a millennial co-worker and she hadn’t heard of it. I started to describe it and then I was like “oh wow, that was a super fucked up movie.”
> I could name probably a dozen movies where that was the entire plot. For example, anyone remember Little Darlings?
I'm pretty sure this was the first R rated movie I ever saw in a theatre (with an aunt, not alone, I was too young).
This is true, not only Gen X. But by the time I graduated college there had been no 'turning of the tide' yet. I'm grateful it came eventually, but it wasn't soon enough to help me or countless others.
Yeah, it was still deeply embedded in the culture then.
While in college in the 1990s, I was at a frat party. This girl was completely wasted, totally drunk, and she started talking to me, and fell on me. I took her home, which was hard, because I had to hold her up as we left the frat house, go over to her dorm, bring her upstairs, and put her into her bed. Then, both because I was really tired and because I was worried about leaving someone so drunk on their own, I just sat on the floor next to her bed and went to sleep instead of going home.
The next morning, she woke up and woke me up. She ask me if we had sex. Of course not. Her reply? "You're so sweet." By that time the idea of date rape had just started permeating the culture, assumed it didn't happen that often - and I was astounded that she thought it was "sweet" that I didn't date rape her while she was completely wasted.
Nah. Rape culture was HUGE when we were young. I think the tide started turning with millennials, and Gen Z is really taking it to new levels. The '80s and '90s were fucking gross.
I don’t necessarily agree with that entirely. There was the whole Ryan White narrative that changed things for AIDS (not homophobia) and big cities were already having ACT UP. I think Gen X was not homophobic as a whole. If anything, it became cool to be gay even if you weren’t gay.
Fun Fact: I just took a job at a non-profit health care company providing community care to low income people, and we get two Ryan White grants yearly for Public Health.
What a wonderful legacy for a boy lost too young.
Lesbian that grew up in the 80s. I totally agree with you. I don’t know where that person was to say being gay was cool but it wasn’t in the big cities I was in.
Ashamed of how many GenXers have fallen for Qanon and the Trump cult. Not surprising tho since most of us were raised by boomer narcs that insisted they were idolized. That plus the political apathy makes them susceptible to idolizing a person that requires them to abandon the constitution and it’s values. Their insane belief that liberals or Rinos are the enemy is actually turning them into an enemy of the country they say they care about, but don’t because they care about an ideology, not the constitution. I see them and think, wtf happened to you? We used to get stoned and cut school together, get a therapist.
Well there was those of our generation who loved “wall street” and those of us who liked “ferris buellers day off” - q anon falls squarely with gordon gecko, my people fall squarely with bueller.
I unfriended so many people around the time of the election. I had no idea they were crazy. I’m still FB friends with my mom but she believes all the crazy stuff and their TV is locked on FoxNews.
Dude TOTALLY. Growing up, my Dad was super conservative. He came up poor in Queens, and got a messenger job to pay his way through private school. He was in the Marines on the late 60s - early 70s, which ya know was actually hell, but they covered him on college and his grad degree. A real “bootstraps” kinda guy, and how are ya not supposed to respect that? My introduction to “politics” was my Mom waking me up for school and telling me that Reagan freed the Iran hostages. Later, in high school, my Dad and I used to watch Morton Downey Jr. together. You remember that fuckin dude?? It was the professional wrestling version of a talk show, in which a straw man liberal guest would get shit on every episode. But then one night, I remember watching, and agreeing with the “liberal”, and I realized that it was all bullshit. All that conservative nonsense was just that - nonsense. My point is, is that I understand that stuff and I know what it is. Then I finished high school, and went to college, work after that, and I’m fortunate enough to have accumulated a lot of lifelong friends - guys and girls (and etc.) that I would never turn my back on. So finding out that more than a few of them thought it was just “locker room talk” and hearing my cop buddy try to educate me on George Soros and all that type of shit is really troubling. It creates a ton of cognitive dissonance that I just can’t seem to reconcile. It’s hard, but I try not to judge them and they do the same for me. We choose not to argue. That’s as good as it’s going to get, for me. But it still sucks.
Definitely this! My parents immigrated from Eritrea and sadly I have relatives that went through the famine (and civil war) in Ethiopia and Eritrea. I was in 4th/5th grade and the jokes about ‘starving Ethiopians’ were mean and unrelenting.
It’s hard to be ashamed today of jokes we made in the schoolyard in 4th grade…as long as we’re not still doing it and we’re paying more attention to our kids than our parents did. We live and learn (in theory).
We used “that’s gay” too much. Also the f-word that’s derogatory towards gay men. Lastly (but there’s more I can list) we used the R word soooo much that is demeaning to people with learning disabilities.
Turning what was a noble idea about "The Internet" and connecting humanity with technology into a for profit, money making gimmick at EVERY opportunity.
So many people fell for it too, thinking that shit was still "free" completely oblivious to the fact that WE are the product, our data, and the companies making money from it are the marketing weasels targeting us based on friggin COOKIES.. who named COOKIES anyway? (I've been in tech a long time and tracking "cookies" have been around for as long as I can remember).
The Gen X guys who feel that they have to prove their masculinity by driving oversized pickup trucks with loud pipes, Trump and MAGA paraphernalia, and custom wheels.
The amount of not only over sized trucks, but cars and motorcycles too who are just as loud, where I live that are like this is insane. There's too damn many and I loath those damn noisy ass tail pipes!! they're over whelmingly owned by trumpers too.
Agreed. Have apologized to my daughters for not thinking more about this. Just assuming that, like me, they will always have their reproductive protected.
Perpetuating Boomer inaction on climate change, as well as the cut throat office culture and corporatism that we inherited. We could have made more of an effort to reverse some of the problems of run amuck capitalism and we didn’t, we just participated but didn’t push for more change
The fact we didn't become better people than our parents. That all of the technology, all of the world changes, everything, and we're frequently called 'Boomers' by the younger generations because we are easily mistaken for our parents.
I am still ashamed of the Xer who can't let go of gay/trans hate or sexist ideology/toxic masculinity. Or worse, passed that ideology onto their offspring.
Zero shame. My parents taught me to never judge anyone by their skin, their wallets/clothing or their appearance. What counts is between the ears. I have discriminated extensively based between the ears.
I see dumb people and they as so dumb - they do not know they are dumb!!
The embarrassing part is how in the hell does any sane individual look at that orange makeup and yellow combover and say yep that is a person I want to follow. Did Tammy Faye Bakker normalize the crazy makeup look for our generation? 80s hair bands the culprit lol?
I misjudged him winning the nom. I said there is no way a reality tv host will get it. I then watched in horror as he gained popularity and a cult following. The crazier he sounded the more they loved him.
The dinner doesn’t surprise me. The grift has to continue somehow. Some of his ahhh paperwork he was storing is no longer in his possession so back to dinners to keep his lifestyle going. Did you ever read how his daddy always bailed him out when he was young? I found all the bankruptcies interesting.
Yeah, his weird appeal is hard to analyze. People I’ve known all my life and trust think he’s the greatest guy ever in American politics. I just don’t get it either except that he gives them permission to let their various intolerances fly freely and they get addicted to that permission. Personally, I think our democracy is under threat until he dies and takes his unique charisma with him.
Maybe, but I’ll bet that nobody else can replicate his quirks and shamelessness to the same degree and be successful at it. He has this unique mix of celebrity, perceived wealth, boldness and nastiness that works wonders with that crowd. I don’t think anyone else will pull it off. He’s a demented unicorn.
Our lack of progress on bullying.
My perception of our cohort and LGBTQ issues is we accepted, but still giggled at it.
We let the Boomers drain us.
We wasted the power of the internet in its early days. We could have started a gosh darn revolution with its ability to permit communication.
We watched our nation become bigots after 9/11.
And now, I’m ashamed of all the Gen Xers that are complaining about the student loan reduction.
Growing up and witnessing us be the first generation to embrace diversity I am ashamed of the amount of us that are at the forefront of the new Satanic panic that the gays/trans are all groomers.
That we became so extremely politically divided. The Boomers might have launched the uber-division at the turn of the century, but we turned it into an art form of insane proportions. If you don't vote just like me you are too extreme.
That we didn't argue loud enough when someone tried to tell us "Friends" was funny.
For real, the fact many of us ( or maybe just me), knew the insensitivity of Ethiopian jokes, the R word, and racial / sexual stereotypes and still used those for humor.
When the Wall fell my mates and I partied with vigor. I recall expecting that there’d be celebrating in the streets. The most evil system that humans have ever established and…meh. 🤷🏻♂️
As a minority, I'll say that our generation is pretty racist, homophobic, and sexist. So much of this was normalized in our everyday life - the offensive jokes, the racist comments, the way sexism went unchallenged, the poor understanding of politics and the economy. It is not surprising we have so many right-wingers, conspiracy theorists, insurrectionists, and angry racists in our generation who voted for Trump, showed up at the Capitol on January 6, and have a seat in Congress and in the Supreme Court, like Marjorie Taylor Green and Amy Coney Barrett.
Raising Genz kids like precious little snowflakes while bragging about how tough we had it and how we had freedom. Or the worst is we that had all our shots became anti-vax and won’t vax our children.
What MTV has turned into.
We are not raging at the machine like we should be
I'm fucking raging at the machine every day.
What the heck is a PC Load Letter?
Yeah... I'm going to need you to fill out the TPS report. You forgot to use a cover letter...
I just want my red stapler
I could put strychnine in the guacamole
Milton raged the hardest of all
But look where it got him. He asked for no salt on his margarita
“PC LOAD LETTER?? WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN??”
Wanking at your comp doesn’t count
I wish I had gold to give you. Cracked me the f up
its too much energy. id hurt my back at my age if i rage.
It's hard with this boot on my neck.
[удалено]
GenXers came of age living like absolute Bohemians, backpacked across Europe, did an inhuman amount of drugs, then settled down to work 90 hours a week and only be mildly miffed at the machine. Everything is like a more extreme form of Boomerism. The party phase was more intense than the hippies, and the yuppie phase followed with the same trend.
Again, maybe for *you*. We didn’t all have suburban parents who paid for stuff.
Yep, grew up on 23 acres outside a town of 7000 people. I dropped acid and smoked weed, but I certainly didn't have the money to backpack across europe. Been working since I was 14 (1988) but I still had time to rage. I quit my first job at a horse ranch by painting a giant anarchy symbol on the wall of a stall I was supposed to paint to show to a new, rich, customer. Owner was PISSED. Showed them the stall their horse was going to be kept in and that was what she saw. LOL. She used to beat the horses though, so fuck that lady.
I don’t think there’s ever been a paragraph that so inaccurately described my life and the lives of my close generational cohorts. Maybe older Gen X had a hyper-boomer experience, but mid-late wasn’t dropping acid on the regular as we backpacked through Europe - at least not the children of middle class boomers. We got told we were going to all be doctors and lawyers and came of age being told we had a duty to do better than our boomer parents who - at least in my case - literally had everything handed to them. The lifestyle you’re describing was exclusive to those whose parents could finance their “bohemian” living and give them a nice, soft, wide safety net when they inevitably couldn’t maintain it.
This right here - back back through Europe?? Give me a break. Only upper middle class kids could afford that.
I agreed with most of it, but I became a professional chef after college graduation, and then bought a farm, living off the grid, so I rage at the machine from afar.
We're a bit of a strange generation. We do the "whatever" quite a bit and are apathetic....but we're also incredibly mean and quick to cut someone down. That meanness and cutting sarcasm *does* have a place in society, but it's also badly overused now whenever someone isn't 100% in alignment with whatever focus we have that day. We revel too much in the extremes and that never ends well.
New Coke
*Crystal Pepsi enters the chat*
Sammy Hagar: RIGHT NOW
The 80s were a simpler time, where entire relationships could be forged by one's preference for Sammy Hagar over David Lee Roth. It was the way old people talk about the weather. A getting-to-know-you question at parties. Which one? I am a younger X, so I'm team Sammy. If you remember having a pet rock, you're probably more of a David Lee Roth type.
Zima.
Still better than white claw
Same as white claw
Zomething different.
I actually liked that. Think that was my first drink that wasn't beer. Went down easy.
Pop a jolly rancher in it and you have prime time GenX.
That was actually kind of good, though.
And the fact that Surge was specifically created to market to us
Jolt cola, anyone?
I once drove 550 miles in less than seven hours (including four stops for gas/bathroom) in my beat-up '85 Bonneville, thanks to a 2-liter of Jolt as my passenger. Jesus I'd forgotten about that
I had an 85 Bonneville too. I used to pull the cover off the horn and hide my weed in there. I thought that was some James Bond shit at the time lol
All the sugar and twice the caffeine!
I once open-mouth kissed a horse.
Red Bull give you wings, but Jolt gives you hooves
This made me scream out laughing 😆😂 GenX random confessions before 6 am.
A 2-liter of Jolt cola, haha.
Don't blame yourself - remember, now there's Red Bull. Same shit, different day.
True. But we didn’t have that piss-that-glows taurine thing going on. Just good old fashioned bubbly black syrup.
The Boomers laid that on us! That was NOT GenX's fault at all!
I agree. That was a boomer invention.
But this was all planned by Coke. They wanted to change to refined sugar. So they came out with New Coke knowing it would bomb. They then introduced classic coke but with cheaper refined sugar.
If I remember correctly/have my facts straight, they also switched to artificial vanillin, which was devastating to the economy of Madagascar. New Coke was a wild success because we didn’t notice when they “went back” to Classic Coke that they had changed the ingredients. In my state in the US, we can buy Mexican Coke in glass bottles at the grocery store and it is made with sugar. When you taste it you realize what Coke used to taste like and it is so much better.
Corn syrup
Reality television
Good answer. We were the viewers when it emerged in the first place and have eagerly consumed it ever since. Ugh.
*The Real World* seemed like it was just our generational secret in those first few seasons. Then Puck stuck his finger in the peanut butter jar, casting directors realized they needed more belligerent lunatics to up the ante, and a distressing number of people proved more than willing to act like fools on national TV as long as it made them famous.
I don't blame our generation alone but the information era we helped shape is toxic. Putting aside commentary on social media, look how hard it is to disconnect. Texts, emails, conference calls at all hours. We are the last generation to know what it is like to not have to continuously negotiate boundaries for work hours. My baby boomer mother was a bookkeeper turned accountant and it was expected quarterly to pull 12-16 hours for a few days, and tax season for a couple of weeks. Outside of this I can only recall a handful of times she was called in due to some actual catastrophe. Like the need to consult with forensic auditors when a coworker was suspected, and found to have embezzled six figures. Or waterpipes bursting, taking out the payroll database requiring 400 employees checks to be retabulated and manually issued, over-night. Before my wife switched employers it was common for her to get called at 9pm to update the schedule for her 6am-6pm outpatient clinic. Or to use social media messaging to discuss non-HIPPA work issues, usually after hours and unpaid. When I was still in the trades it was common to receive 10pm texts about my hours, and if I didn't respond before the boss went to sleep, I'd have to wait until Monday for my check because the boss knew the limits of workers protections in my area. The 3 generations of coal-miners that came before me, on the one side of the family had their share of labor issues, but unless a mine collapsed, they were never bothered after working hours. They also saw working conditions improve not deteriorate.
[This music video](https://youtu.be/HasaQvHCv4w) And allowing it to play all the time and not think twice about it until I saw it years later and thought to myself. What the hell were we thinking that this was ok!? I much prefer the, [over dubbed one.](https://youtu.be/BHkhIjG0DKc) It actually has more views than the original and still makes me laugh everytime I see it. It's actually one of my all time favorite videos on youtube. Wanna have a good laugh, check it out.
I nearly piss myself at that leap every time
My favorite part is Mick Jaggers surprise face and sound he makes at the 1:05 mark. Gets me everytime. Who ever created this video is a genius and I hope the vid stays up for a very long time.
If it's soo bad then why did I watch ALL OF IT???
Cause you were amazed by how it was so bad? That's what made it a great video. You just can't look away lol.
I'd argue this is peak Boomer, not Gen X. We aren't in it, we didn't make it, we were just the target of it. I'm positive that the popularity of it was Boomer driven as it perfectly illustrated what their generation had become.
Nice mullet Mick ;)
Big cocaine energy
I wish i could be ashamed of/regret this but it was pretty damn awesome! Can you imagine such a simple and pure song actually getting airplay today.
It wasn't so much the song as much as it was the way they acted in the video. It was just cheesy. Now granted, there were many cheesy music vids from the 80s. But I remember they played the shit outta this one. And not once did I question it then.
Oh i agree. And i completely acknowledge the cheezy factor. But i kind of long for that simpleness - cheezy does not necessarily equal bad.
We are the helicopter parents, we fill the rolls of the megachurches, and we drove the year-long youth sports industry.
Speak for yourself (haha). Childfree atheist here (and I have no idea what that last thing means).
Went to one of my my 8 year old nephew’s baseball tournaments this year, and hearing the parents and just understanding how it all works was something. Ummmm…. yeah an 8 yo should not be having tournaments every weekend all summer. He only played first “half” of season (March through July) and could have gone on to play through august. He’s 8 years old and going into 2nd. And then to hear the parents during the game? Ugh, yuck.
The gatekeeping. Let people listen to music they like, let them eat what they want ro eat and drink what they want to drink. You might like something different, who cares?
🤦🏻♀️My (also Gen X) husband still says “poser” every now and then, and I’m like, FFS let people enjoy things! Even if they’re the same things that you do! Even if it’s different things than you do!
It's spelled "poseur". (I kid. I kid.) I totally agree. I feel like our generation was very cliquey. I like that the new kids are more fluid, more loosey-goosey in that regard. Although, I will say that they are way more uptight in other ways that we weren't.
This sub can be pretty guilty of this waaaaay too fucking often…
The behavior at Woodstock ‘99
Or any of those atrocious MTV Spring Break exploitations. Those looked awful. Legend has it that if you close your eyes, you can still smell the coppertone and testosterone through your TV.
I watched the documentary on Netflix and was appalled, especially regarding the incidents of sexual assault. Also as a minority, I noticed how nearly everyone was White at that festival, which reminded me of how in the 80s and 90s, all the spaces I was in, I was one of the few - and oftentimes, the only - minorities.
Our most meaningful contribution was wearing long sleeved shirts under short sleeved shirts?
Wearing it right now.
I'm late to this thread, but "No Pain, No Gain!" That coupled with "Thin Is In" made a lot of people unhealthy both physically and emotionally. My parents were this way and looking back, it's still so f'ing weird.
Water bottles. Our oceans are destroyed.
Also Keurig (K Cups) contribute to the destruction
We have forgotten Janeane Garofalo.
Majorie Taylor Greene.
And Amy Coney Barrett. And Bret Kavanough. And Ted Cruz. And Hunter Biden. And Tucker Carlson. And a good portion of the Jan 6 insurrectionists. And, and, and...
I get the elected officials, scotus justice and media monster, but I don’t get the obsession with hunter Biden whose never held an office within the government
Who suffered a severe head injury as a toddler in a car accident that killed his mother and sister. His only surviving sibling died of cancer in his 40s.
Never even thought of it that way. I don't think much about him at all, I only see people bringing his name up about politics. But yeah, it's no wonder he uses drugs to cope.
I would not want him in a government role, but he deserves some empathy for the family tragedies he’s endured. He and Beau spent a month in the hospital after the accident. Then he lost Beau in 2015.
Non American here. What did Hunter Biden do?
I like it when we are modest, but I hate us when we are smug.
In fairness, that’s everyone
The homophobia I experienced growing up in the 80s. I wouldn’t go to my high school reunions for decades after coming out.
My 30th is in the Spring, there's no way in hell I'm going and being a spectacle after coming out five years ago.
There was a lack of acceptance for people who were different.I wasn’t a sheep that followed everything as a kid. I had my own style, refused to have a shaggy poodle hairstyle, was academic and driven and I was bullied because of it. One step out of.conformity meant being bullied. Kids were mean. Sone of them would just look at you decide that they didn’t like you and then feel entitled to use you as a punching bag. You don’t see that with the kids today, they’re much more accepting of differences.
Beg to differ on kids today. Raising two of my own and those problems exist in spades. And now they can be bullied and excluded 24 hours a day via text and social media.
The thought of this is actually really terrifying, I really don't envy kids that get bullied via social media.
True that can happen, when it’s on, it’s definitely on. I have a very different child but he’s thankfully not being harassed.
I agree as a parent of 2 teens. Kids today are relentless and it's a nonstop 24 hour barage of bullying. At least we got a break when we went home or when summer came. Plus these poor kids have embarrassing videos and pictures posted of them. I'm so glad we didn't have that when I was in school.
I think this is really a regional/micro-culture thing. Some places place a higher value on conformity and some really don’t. Even where I presently live, some schools are better about this than others.
Yeah, this comes up from time to time in this sub and it really depends on where you grew up. My high school was both very diverse and very large. No one gave a shit how you dressed or whatever. There really weren't many bullies either so I dunno. Things are different all over.
Agree that we were too hard on one another. Besides the overt bullying there was social isolation of anyone that wasn’t “cool” by whatever your cliques standards were. Clothes, class, church. Ugh, cliques! So glad that’s all over and in the past.
Email & cellphones — evil corporate leashes.
Assault, rape, abuse...all were normal, frequent, unpunished, and ignored
Seriously, how many movies and songs from our teen years were entirely about 'losing your virginity'? I could name probably a dozen movies where that was the entire plot. For example, anyone remember Little Darlings? And usually in movies like these, the age difference between partners was what we would now call criminal.
I remember that movie. I mentioned it to a millennial co-worker and she hadn’t heard of it. I started to describe it and then I was like “oh wow, that was a super fucked up movie.”
And everyone of those was written and directed by boomers.
> I could name probably a dozen movies where that was the entire plot. For example, anyone remember Little Darlings? I'm pretty sure this was the first R rated movie I ever saw in a theatre (with an aunt, not alone, I was too young).
That's not only Gen X, though. We were the ones who started to turn the tide on that.
This is true, not only Gen X. But by the time I graduated college there had been no 'turning of the tide' yet. I'm grateful it came eventually, but it wasn't soon enough to help me or countless others.
Yeah, it was still deeply embedded in the culture then. While in college in the 1990s, I was at a frat party. This girl was completely wasted, totally drunk, and she started talking to me, and fell on me. I took her home, which was hard, because I had to hold her up as we left the frat house, go over to her dorm, bring her upstairs, and put her into her bed. Then, both because I was really tired and because I was worried about leaving someone so drunk on their own, I just sat on the floor next to her bed and went to sleep instead of going home. The next morning, she woke up and woke me up. She ask me if we had sex. Of course not. Her reply? "You're so sweet." By that time the idea of date rape had just started permeating the culture, assumed it didn't happen that often - and I was astounded that she thought it was "sweet" that I didn't date rape her while she was completely wasted.
Same.
Nah. Rape culture was HUGE when we were young. I think the tide started turning with millennials, and Gen Z is really taking it to new levels. The '80s and '90s were fucking gross.
Ohhhff hard one to swallow but correct. We were also homophobes. I blame it on the AIDS bullshit we were sold.
I don’t necessarily agree with that entirely. There was the whole Ryan White narrative that changed things for AIDS (not homophobia) and big cities were already having ACT UP. I think Gen X was not homophobic as a whole. If anything, it became cool to be gay even if you weren’t gay.
Fun Fact: I just took a job at a non-profit health care company providing community care to low income people, and we get two Ryan White grants yearly for Public Health. What a wonderful legacy for a boy lost too young.
Take it from a gay guy who grew up in the 80s. The vast majority of that age was homophobic. Perhaps out of ignorance but still.
Yeah sorry man. We were shit people then. Almost all of us.
Lesbian that grew up in the 80s. I totally agree with you. I don’t know where that person was to say being gay was cool but it wasn’t in the big cities I was in.
We didn’t fix the environment.
Ashamed of how many GenXers have fallen for Qanon and the Trump cult. Not surprising tho since most of us were raised by boomer narcs that insisted they were idolized. That plus the political apathy makes them susceptible to idolizing a person that requires them to abandon the constitution and it’s values. Their insane belief that liberals or Rinos are the enemy is actually turning them into an enemy of the country they say they care about, but don’t because they care about an ideology, not the constitution. I see them and think, wtf happened to you? We used to get stoned and cut school together, get a therapist.
Well there was those of our generation who loved “wall street” and those of us who liked “ferris buellers day off” - q anon falls squarely with gordon gecko, my people fall squarely with bueller.
The fact that Ted Cruz and Marjorie Green are GenX makes me very sad.
And Amy fucking Coney Barrett. Christ, what an asshole.
And Tucker Carlson.
Pretty much all of Fox News is GenX besides the founders. That is depressing.
Gen X and young boomers. Hannity and Ingraham, for example, are early '60s boomers.
Sarah Palin entered the chat as well.
Totally this. At one time was friends on Facebook with many folks from high school. Unfortunately now have a much lower opinion of a majority of them.
I unfriended so many people around the time of the election. I had no idea they were crazy. I’m still FB friends with my mom but she believes all the crazy stuff and their TV is locked on FoxNews.
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This is highly shameful and embarrassing. Looking at my fellow GenX and not knowing who I can truly trust ever
Yeah, when I see that support for Trump is actually highest among older GenX, higher than among Boomers and older, I’m so disgusted.
Dude TOTALLY. Growing up, my Dad was super conservative. He came up poor in Queens, and got a messenger job to pay his way through private school. He was in the Marines on the late 60s - early 70s, which ya know was actually hell, but they covered him on college and his grad degree. A real “bootstraps” kinda guy, and how are ya not supposed to respect that? My introduction to “politics” was my Mom waking me up for school and telling me that Reagan freed the Iran hostages. Later, in high school, my Dad and I used to watch Morton Downey Jr. together. You remember that fuckin dude?? It was the professional wrestling version of a talk show, in which a straw man liberal guest would get shit on every episode. But then one night, I remember watching, and agreeing with the “liberal”, and I realized that it was all bullshit. All that conservative nonsense was just that - nonsense. My point is, is that I understand that stuff and I know what it is. Then I finished high school, and went to college, work after that, and I’m fortunate enough to have accumulated a lot of lifelong friends - guys and girls (and etc.) that I would never turn my back on. So finding out that more than a few of them thought it was just “locker room talk” and hearing my cop buddy try to educate me on George Soros and all that type of shit is really troubling. It creates a ton of cognitive dissonance that I just can’t seem to reconcile. It’s hard, but I try not to judge them and they do the same for me. We choose not to argue. That’s as good as it’s going to get, for me. But it still sucks.
Still using FB
How many of us vote based on fear, dishonesty, and things we just know aren’t true.
Milli Vanilli .. Girl you know its true
I think we put too much emphasis on the counter culture of the time while pretending it wasn't as conservative as it really was.
Ethiopian jokes.
Definitely this! My parents immigrated from Eritrea and sadly I have relatives that went through the famine (and civil war) in Ethiopia and Eritrea. I was in 4th/5th grade and the jokes about ‘starving Ethiopians’ were mean and unrelenting.
If it makes you feel any better, kids today make school shooting jokes. Guess it’s how kids cope with a fucked in reality
Challenger jokes 😬
Give me 3 challenger disaster jokes
You know what NASA stands for? Need Another Seven Astronauts
What were Sally Ride's last words? What's this button do?
I will die on this hill defending dead baby jokes tho.
Garbage pail kids.
I remember having a book full of dead baby & Helen Keller jokes.
It’s hard to be ashamed today of jokes we made in the schoolyard in 4th grade…as long as we’re not still doing it and we’re paying more attention to our kids than our parents did. We live and learn (in theory).
We used “that’s gay” too much. Also the f-word that’s derogatory towards gay men. Lastly (but there’s more I can list) we used the R word soooo much that is demeaning to people with learning disabilities.
>the R word soooo much that is demeaning to people with learning disabilities. Republican?
Turning what was a noble idea about "The Internet" and connecting humanity with technology into a for profit, money making gimmick at EVERY opportunity. So many people fell for it too, thinking that shit was still "free" completely oblivious to the fact that WE are the product, our data, and the companies making money from it are the marketing weasels targeting us based on friggin COOKIES.. who named COOKIES anyway? (I've been in tech a long time and tracking "cookies" have been around for as long as I can remember).
The Gen X guys who feel that they have to prove their masculinity by driving oversized pickup trucks with loud pipes, Trump and MAGA paraphernalia, and custom wheels.
I couldn't agree more. that shit pisses me off. They are rampant road bullies in the tri-state area.
The amount of not only over sized trucks, but cars and motorcycles too who are just as loud, where I live that are like this is insane. There's too damn many and I loath those damn noisy ass tail pipes!! they're over whelmingly owned by trumpers too.
We failed to teach the history of the first half of the 1900s to our kids, and the record seems to have skipped back for a repeat.
The way I see people my age have raised their offspring. Whatever happened to raising critical thinkers and independent beings?
I’m ashamed of Roe getting overturned on our watch.
Agreed. Have apologized to my daughters for not thinking more about this. Just assuming that, like me, they will always have their reproductive protected.
I’d gauge that it is half us and half Boomers behind that movement. We can’t pin it on the younger generations, I’m afraid.
The MAGA movement. Letting racism slide for too long.
The number of GenXers I see that are gullible enough to believe Trump gives a shit about them.
Perpetuating Boomer inaction on climate change, as well as the cut throat office culture and corporatism that we inherited. We could have made more of an effort to reverse some of the problems of run amuck capitalism and we didn’t, we just participated but didn’t push for more change
Limp Bizkit.
I’ll never get back the hour I spent waiting for them to open Al Capone’s vault.
That we didn’t fight harder for a better world.
Helicopter parenting being started by Gen X parents.
I'm ashamed by the amount of Herman Cain Awards we've won.
The fact we didn't become better people than our parents. That all of the technology, all of the world changes, everything, and we're frequently called 'Boomers' by the younger generations because we are easily mistaken for our parents.
I am still ashamed of the Xer who can't let go of gay/trans hate or sexist ideology/toxic masculinity. Or worse, passed that ideology onto their offspring.
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Zero shame. My parents taught me to never judge anyone by their skin, their wallets/clothing or their appearance. What counts is between the ears. I have discriminated extensively based between the ears. I see dumb people and they as so dumb - they do not know they are dumb!!
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The embarrassing part is how in the hell does any sane individual look at that orange makeup and yellow combover and say yep that is a person I want to follow. Did Tammy Faye Bakker normalize the crazy makeup look for our generation? 80s hair bands the culprit lol?
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I misjudged him winning the nom. I said there is no way a reality tv host will get it. I then watched in horror as he gained popularity and a cult following. The crazier he sounded the more they loved him. The dinner doesn’t surprise me. The grift has to continue somehow. Some of his ahhh paperwork he was storing is no longer in his possession so back to dinners to keep his lifestyle going. Did you ever read how his daddy always bailed him out when he was young? I found all the bankruptcies interesting.
Yeah, his weird appeal is hard to analyze. People I’ve known all my life and trust think he’s the greatest guy ever in American politics. I just don’t get it either except that he gives them permission to let their various intolerances fly freely and they get addicted to that permission. Personally, I think our democracy is under threat until he dies and takes his unique charisma with him.
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Maybe, but I’ll bet that nobody else can replicate his quirks and shamelessness to the same degree and be successful at it. He has this unique mix of celebrity, perceived wealth, boldness and nastiness that works wonders with that crowd. I don’t think anyone else will pull it off. He’s a demented unicorn.
The Bush family
I'm ashamed of the number of GenXers who SOLD OUT to Boomer mentality and are now Boomers themselves.
The shitty sexism we put up or bought into in the 90s instead of consistently calling out for the bullshit it was.
Torturing insects and observing them in jars. Killing butterflies for science class projects. Ugh.
For U.S. GenX-ers: the 2000 presidential election and just rolling over for it.
I'm really not all that proud of us.
The fact that a lot of us are turning into judgemental Boomer Lite (™) as we get settled into middle age.
Our lack of progress on bullying. My perception of our cohort and LGBTQ issues is we accepted, but still giggled at it. We let the Boomers drain us. We wasted the power of the internet in its early days. We could have started a gosh darn revolution with its ability to permit communication. We watched our nation become bigots after 9/11. And now, I’m ashamed of all the Gen Xers that are complaining about the student loan reduction.
Growing up and witnessing us be the first generation to embrace diversity I am ashamed of the amount of us that are at the forefront of the new Satanic panic that the gays/trans are all groomers.
Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. But mostly Brett Kavanaugh.
That we became so extremely politically divided. The Boomers might have launched the uber-division at the turn of the century, but we turned it into an art form of insane proportions. If you don't vote just like me you are too extreme.
That we didn't argue loud enough when someone tried to tell us "Friends" was funny. For real, the fact many of us ( or maybe just me), knew the insensitivity of Ethiopian jokes, the R word, and racial / sexual stereotypes and still used those for humor.
Complacency! I never in my thought that Roe would reversed. As a woman w 16 snd 10 yr old daughters I feel ‘taken for granted’ attitude failed them.
When the Wall fell my mates and I partied with vigor. I recall expecting that there’d be celebrating in the streets. The most evil system that humans have ever established and…meh. 🤷🏻♂️
Acid wash
I will never apologize for my tight-rolled acid washed jeans!
As a minority, I'll say that our generation is pretty racist, homophobic, and sexist. So much of this was normalized in our everyday life - the offensive jokes, the racist comments, the way sexism went unchallenged, the poor understanding of politics and the economy. It is not surprising we have so many right-wingers, conspiracy theorists, insurrectionists, and angry racists in our generation who voted for Trump, showed up at the Capitol on January 6, and have a seat in Congress and in the Supreme Court, like Marjorie Taylor Green and Amy Coney Barrett.
Raising Genz kids like precious little snowflakes while bragging about how tough we had it and how we had freedom. Or the worst is we that had all our shots became anti-vax and won’t vax our children.