(0522) Morning all. Dark out there. (0612)
That TDS piece on generations
HERE
The big thing for me was a Gen X going on about a Gen Zee, no mention of Boomers any more, nor Millennials. Millennials we’ve done so much on over recent years, Gen X I’ve generally laid off, due to most of my friends being Boomer or Gen X.
However, there was a time when all you ever heard was GenXers like Vox Day interminably moaning about wicked Boomers. And Boomers’ views on Gen X? Still living with parents, resenting Boomers having the jobs (prepared to work, not feckless?), earring in one ear, given to raves, drugs, techno, less educated … don’t shoot the messenger, juss sayin’ what Boomers said. Perceptions wildly divergent from how each saw itself.
With hindsight, I’d say Boomers were “play radicals” … certainly better educated, due to their parents, the Great Generation, but sadly, those parents gave us too much rope and we were sitting ducks for all the evil forces preying on us. Overall though … we were certainly free … ride our bikes and graze our knees, interminably fighting and wrestling, tumbling.
Thing was … in the middle of that were the Woodstock generation, then prog rock … preyed on by The Pill, by Phillips’s narcotics … and the miscreants in all that were born around 1935 … Depression years … was it some sort of radical payback, using us? Timothy Leary, Frankfurt School, Spock.
Gen X were the first tech gen to be sure … we latched onto it of course but it was driven by Gen X … as well as utter cynicism about society, potty mouthed too. I’m truly Boomer/GenX cusp, yet I feel close to DAD’s lot too … I used to admire the older boys and girls of the 50s and their fashions, their ways … the Big Kids. Millennials were my students … son and daughter types.
Was interesting reading a Gen X going on about Gen Zee … the world turns and now Gen Zee are the new journos and doers … see Karoline Leavitt (1997, Millennial/Gen Zee cusp).
Just going to finish this (still dark out there) with that tale I’ve mentioned a few times … we were by the summer seaside, there was a fair/carnival, with marquees, we were the kids, the new young radicals (what’s the matter with kids today).
There was a ring or small arena … boxing, singing, a band … and the MC was introducing a group of older kids in real 50s costumes (I was maybe 11/12) … swirling skirts, boys with ties … and I thought … wow, they’re so cool but so old, I dare not go up to talk to them.
Suddenly, to some rockabilly song or whatever, they started jiving, so they called it. I mean, this was not just what you saw in old movies … these were actually the real deal … they’d always been like that. And man, they could dance, they could really dance, joined up dancing I call it … mesmerised I was, realising there was a half generation ahead of us who were way cooler than us.
Never forgot that.