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What the Fuck happened with Gen X? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by NONE_dc to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

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.
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.
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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Millenials definitely were called enitled and lazy when they were in their 20s. Theyre in their 40s now, now the supposedly lazy generation is Gen Z. Every generation has called kids in their 20s entitled and lazy. In about 15 years Gen Alpha will be the lazy and entitled generation.

That said, it is a big hole in this theory. Gen X and the Silent Generation seem to only be remembered by how they behaved in their youth, and Gen Z seems to be following that trend.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Millennials are not in their 40s. The oldest of them are, sure, but a ton are still in their 30s.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Very generous outlook on Gen X, who are mostly seen as boomer lite in my experience.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Did some digging, and Gen Xers were best known for being helicopter parents. This was in reaction to how their parents barely paid attention to them. They are the only generation that gets hate for being helicopter parents, as far as I can tell. They seem to be the Soccer Mom generation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

They behave about how you would expect a boomer to act. It is their turn to extract value, well at least those who are in any position to do so, which are obviously a minority but not are they working hard at it right now.

Just parasitic bahvior serving the owner class to get their mcmansions and 401ks loaded aka boomerism