First off, generational naming is stupid. How are a 40 yo white hetero Des Moines man and a 40 yo half-black/half-Cuban lesbian Miami woman more alike than others fitting the exact same description 20 years older or younger 20 years younger? If age is the only difference?
I mean, come on, even advertisers know that the three white dudes of different ages in Iowa are more alike than their age equivalents in Florida.
I'd also guess those white men would find it easy to slip into white life in Florida whereas the women from Florida would find it almost impossible to fit into any Iowa life, black, brown, white ...
So it's obviously a multitude of different factors making up personal identity. Advertisers, schools, reporters, and political blowhard talking heads, they just keep pushing this bullshit down our throats, selling us our identities as white, black, Mexican, straight, gay, trans, Gen X, Gen Z, educated, uneducated, Californian, Iowan, Floridian.
As you can tell, at this moment I am sick of the bullshit. I'm not going to pretend this shit is okay any more. And I don't mean any of you. Not a single poster here -- unless any of you are in the fields I mentioned earlier, actively contributing to clickbait, video advertising, etc.
It's so insidious, hiding in plain sight. The millennials were the first generation to be brought up with a marketing name slapped on them that was accepted and parroted by everyone. And everyone under 40 here seems to cling to their generational identities. And baby boomers are apparently so narcissistic that they have pride in their generational designation.
I don't know when my age cohort first heard the term Gen X, but I don't remember hearing it until Nirvana broke big. Thats why Gen X is identified as slackers. Idiot baby boomer marketers thought we all listened to the same music and that one band (Nirvana) and one scene (grunge) defined us.
Most people my age cohort that I've met knew even in the 90s that Gen X was a bullshit meaningless term that only political campaigns and advertisers gave a shit about. Even the people who were grunge -- especially them! -- knew it was manipulative bullshit.
That's why you rarely see any Gen X related feuds with other generations. It seems like everyone except those born in the late 60s and the entirety of the 70s accept their generational name tag as part of who they are.
If grunge ever had a voice in this country, it was similar to punk. It was, "**** you, you manipulative prick. I know your ****ing games, man. I know you better than you know yourself. The reason I know is because if you were at all self-aware you would blow your ****ing brains out because you are completely hollow, an empty vessel, a vacuum paradoxically existing, a nightmare you don't realize you're having, endlessly vomiting your deviousness and telling everyone it's virtue. FVCK YOU!"
That is grunge, in case anyone was wondering. Grunge felt pretty strongly it was hopeless. And if it hadn't been for the Internet, it probably would have been. There was an awareness of how powerless we were to accomplish much of anything as an age group. Our age group didn't really have connections with each other that were substantive. If my age cohort is anything like me, anyway. The country was drying up. Without the Internet, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, the whole Midwest would have relocated. Without agriculture and factories? That was the economy.
This sort of history I'm laying out here is more truthful than the bullshit the generational labelers are selling the public. We need to reject that shit. People identifying as millennials and baby boomers talking shit all the time?
It's funny as shit in and of itself, but the way the country is divided? We are being divided by marketing and public relations scientists and artists in spreading this crap for them, labeling each other and adopting the labels others put on us. Obviously not just these generational labels, but I feel like the generational labels are the most artificially meaningless except for branding purposes on merchandise and fashion or whatever makes people feel like they belong to their peers-in-age.
It's really subtle shit that just creeps in under the door of our minds like an odorless poison gas. For example, baby boomers didn't exist as baby boomers until the 80s. That was when the term became widespread.
I first encountered it on a TV show in the mid-to-late 80s, a show about two narcissists working in ad agency, used-to-be-hippies who self-loathe as sellouts who get therapy (they made therapy mainstream, those baby boomers everyone hates; it was entirely taboo before some point in the 80s). They whined and groaned about being in their 30s, how their bodies were changing, how theyre tired all the time, they have no time for anyone in their families, they try desperately to be more loving than their parents, but they fvck it up by buying shit for them instead of giving affection, VCRs, video games, cars, whatever.
Everything in the 80s was about "making it," being "better-than-you." Boomers we're hyper-competitive. They started this hellish rat race we've been on.
But little of what I've written about the baby boomers here is true of very many baby boomers. Most of that age cohort was like every generation: no real power, just trying to get by and make the best out of a life that has little range socioeconomically except over the entirety of a lifetime. They may be the last generation with such widespread pensions and 401ks.
But you poor yunguns under 40. They labeled millennials basically at the same time that they labeled Gen X. About half of millennials weren't even born at the time of the designation. None of Gen Z was born before their label was being tossed around.
But Gen X, the older half for sure, was old enough to know that word had nothing to do with their childhood. I remember in my late teens, thinking something like, "What is this Gen X? It sounds fun and cool. Id like to join. Where do I sign up? What? I'm already a member? What are the benefits of membership? Nothing? Oh, yeah, let me adopt that identity for you right away. Fvck you."
You were labeled in your infancy, though, Gen Z and many of you millennials. A horrible burden, a yoke around your neck from birth, chained to people you don't know, everyone telling you everyone your age is just like you, and then you wonder "Why in the hell aren't things like they said they'd be?"
Hate to say it, but you've been indoctrinated and fvcked up in ways previous generations weren't. But you've had it materially and technologically better than everyone over 40 over your entire life. But is even that true? Like all else, some shit is true about the generational differences, but a lot of the stuff floating in the ether is crap. Even digital shit has an odor.
I wasn't online on a message board until my early 30s. I think. I don't know for sure because I didn't spend half my day taking photos of myself and texting every two minutes back then so I'd have a record of every moment of my life (nah, you're not narcissists! lol).
But you under 40 (especially under 20)? You've been truly fuvked. You've never known what it is to be unavailable to others and the freedom that allows. No one with a camera out to capture every little thing you do, never alone, never without digital eyes on you. Oh, and no way for your parents to get ahold of you or know where you are through a tracker on your phone.
You know nothing about actual privacy so you're not even aware what you experience as private now is nothing like what privacy used to be.
And just to show you how conformist and blind you are to how easy it is to manipulate many who grew up online, you're doing the exact same things every young generation has done post-World War II: You believe you are anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, and environmentalist in ways no previous generation ever was, and yet the "Okay Boomer" merchandise industry is worth tens of millions of dollars and who knows how much pollution from manufacturing the goods.
This is not my opinion of young people, honestly; this is what the advertisers and talking heads tell me millennials and Gen Z are all about, and yet I see young people working for paychecks in every business within capitalism. You're not hypocrites, right? So they must be lying about most of you.
Imagine if I actually believed that stuff about you. You'd hate me and have a good reason to. Truth is, you've been shit on and told that the shit is part of who you are. It's not right. Don't accept the labels. You're much better than they're saying you are.
I know, I know. tldr. No worries. I know your lives are shit and you have neither the time nor patience to read -- so many options, who knows where to look for knowledge or wisdom? Porn is easy to find so you've got that going for you.
I mean, come on, even advertisers know that the three white dudes of different ages in Iowa are more alike than their age equivalents in Florida.
I'd also guess those white men would find it easy to slip into white life in Florida whereas the women from Florida would find it almost impossible to fit into any Iowa life, black, brown, white ...
So it's obviously a multitude of different factors making up personal identity. Advertisers, schools, reporters, and political blowhard talking heads, they just keep pushing this bullshit down our throats, selling us our identities as white, black, Mexican, straight, gay, trans, Gen X, Gen Z, educated, uneducated, Californian, Iowan, Floridian.
As you can tell, at this moment I am sick of the bullshit. I'm not going to pretend this shit is okay any more. And I don't mean any of you. Not a single poster here -- unless any of you are in the fields I mentioned earlier, actively contributing to clickbait, video advertising, etc.
It's so insidious, hiding in plain sight. The millennials were the first generation to be brought up with a marketing name slapped on them that was accepted and parroted by everyone. And everyone under 40 here seems to cling to their generational identities. And baby boomers are apparently so narcissistic that they have pride in their generational designation.
I don't know when my age cohort first heard the term Gen X, but I don't remember hearing it until Nirvana broke big. Thats why Gen X is identified as slackers. Idiot baby boomer marketers thought we all listened to the same music and that one band (Nirvana) and one scene (grunge) defined us.
Most people my age cohort that I've met knew even in the 90s that Gen X was a bullshit meaningless term that only political campaigns and advertisers gave a shit about. Even the people who were grunge -- especially them! -- knew it was manipulative bullshit.
That's why you rarely see any Gen X related feuds with other generations. It seems like everyone except those born in the late 60s and the entirety of the 70s accept their generational name tag as part of who they are.
If grunge ever had a voice in this country, it was similar to punk. It was, "**** you, you manipulative prick. I know your ****ing games, man. I know you better than you know yourself. The reason I know is because if you were at all self-aware you would blow your ****ing brains out because you are completely hollow, an empty vessel, a vacuum paradoxically existing, a nightmare you don't realize you're having, endlessly vomiting your deviousness and telling everyone it's virtue. FVCK YOU!"
That is grunge, in case anyone was wondering. Grunge felt pretty strongly it was hopeless. And if it hadn't been for the Internet, it probably would have been. There was an awareness of how powerless we were to accomplish much of anything as an age group. Our age group didn't really have connections with each other that were substantive. If my age cohort is anything like me, anyway. The country was drying up. Without the Internet, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, the whole Midwest would have relocated. Without agriculture and factories? That was the economy.
This sort of history I'm laying out here is more truthful than the bullshit the generational labelers are selling the public. We need to reject that shit. People identifying as millennials and baby boomers talking shit all the time?
It's funny as shit in and of itself, but the way the country is divided? We are being divided by marketing and public relations scientists and artists in spreading this crap for them, labeling each other and adopting the labels others put on us. Obviously not just these generational labels, but I feel like the generational labels are the most artificially meaningless except for branding purposes on merchandise and fashion or whatever makes people feel like they belong to their peers-in-age.
It's really subtle shit that just creeps in under the door of our minds like an odorless poison gas. For example, baby boomers didn't exist as baby boomers until the 80s. That was when the term became widespread.
I first encountered it on a TV show in the mid-to-late 80s, a show about two narcissists working in ad agency, used-to-be-hippies who self-loathe as sellouts who get therapy (they made therapy mainstream, those baby boomers everyone hates; it was entirely taboo before some point in the 80s). They whined and groaned about being in their 30s, how their bodies were changing, how theyre tired all the time, they have no time for anyone in their families, they try desperately to be more loving than their parents, but they fvck it up by buying shit for them instead of giving affection, VCRs, video games, cars, whatever.
Everything in the 80s was about "making it," being "better-than-you." Boomers we're hyper-competitive. They started this hellish rat race we've been on.
But little of what I've written about the baby boomers here is true of very many baby boomers. Most of that age cohort was like every generation: no real power, just trying to get by and make the best out of a life that has little range socioeconomically except over the entirety of a lifetime. They may be the last generation with such widespread pensions and 401ks.
But you poor yunguns under 40. They labeled millennials basically at the same time that they labeled Gen X. About half of millennials weren't even born at the time of the designation. None of Gen Z was born before their label was being tossed around.
But Gen X, the older half for sure, was old enough to know that word had nothing to do with their childhood. I remember in my late teens, thinking something like, "What is this Gen X? It sounds fun and cool. Id like to join. Where do I sign up? What? I'm already a member? What are the benefits of membership? Nothing? Oh, yeah, let me adopt that identity for you right away. Fvck you."
You were labeled in your infancy, though, Gen Z and many of you millennials. A horrible burden, a yoke around your neck from birth, chained to people you don't know, everyone telling you everyone your age is just like you, and then you wonder "Why in the hell aren't things like they said they'd be?"
Hate to say it, but you've been indoctrinated and fvcked up in ways previous generations weren't. But you've had it materially and technologically better than everyone over 40 over your entire life. But is even that true? Like all else, some shit is true about the generational differences, but a lot of the stuff floating in the ether is crap. Even digital shit has an odor.
I wasn't online on a message board until my early 30s. I think. I don't know for sure because I didn't spend half my day taking photos of myself and texting every two minutes back then so I'd have a record of every moment of my life (nah, you're not narcissists! lol).
But you under 40 (especially under 20)? You've been truly fuvked. You've never known what it is to be unavailable to others and the freedom that allows. No one with a camera out to capture every little thing you do, never alone, never without digital eyes on you. Oh, and no way for your parents to get ahold of you or know where you are through a tracker on your phone.
You know nothing about actual privacy so you're not even aware what you experience as private now is nothing like what privacy used to be.
And just to show you how conformist and blind you are to how easy it is to manipulate many who grew up online, you're doing the exact same things every young generation has done post-World War II: You believe you are anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, and environmentalist in ways no previous generation ever was, and yet the "Okay Boomer" merchandise industry is worth tens of millions of dollars and who knows how much pollution from manufacturing the goods.
This is not my opinion of young people, honestly; this is what the advertisers and talking heads tell me millennials and Gen Z are all about, and yet I see young people working for paychecks in every business within capitalism. You're not hypocrites, right? So they must be lying about most of you.
Imagine if I actually believed that stuff about you. You'd hate me and have a good reason to. Truth is, you've been shit on and told that the shit is part of who you are. It's not right. Don't accept the labels. You're much better than they're saying you are.
I know, I know. tldr. No worries. I know your lives are shit and you have neither the time nor patience to read -- so many options, who knows where to look for knowledge or wisdom? Porn is easy to find so you've got that going for you.
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