#Generation Gap

[prokopetz]

I just don't think the generation that made the Spongmonkeys an overnight viral sensation has any room to speak critically about how incomprehensibly weird the stuff kids these days are into is.

[lawfulgoodness]

Shoutout to the Elder Millennial at the table next to me at the gaming bar, whose barbarian just charged into battle shouting "LEEEEROYYYY JENKINS!!!!"

and then had to stop and sheepishly explain a World of Warcraft meme to his genZ GM.

[wubomei]

I would really appreciate if my small number of followers reposts this, please.

[taee]

a happy accident

[morlock-holmes]

Maybe this is appropriate for September, but I watched this joke when it first aired:

And as I approach late middle age I'm struggling to deal with the question not of how I deal with the fact that it happened, but with the fact that it didn't.

You just are never going to convince me that I'm as culturally different from the Zoomers as the baby boomers were from their WWII-era parents, and you aren't going to convince me of it because it is so incredibly, self-evidently untrue.

The reason I say this is appropriate for September is that after the 9/11 attacks some people tried to talk about the cultural death of irony and its replacement by the New Sincerity, which I now take to be an attempt to convince ourselves that the pace of cultural change wasn't slacking, but there was no New Sincerity, and the irony of the 90s continues unabated to this day.

After that Bush II created the disgusting morass of the Iraq war, and people said, "Well, at least we'll get some great protest art and comedy out of this".

I remember Jon Stewart talking about how it was fundamentally unserious to even suggest that the moral horrors of the 00s were worth it because we might get some good comedy out of it, and while that was a good point it kind of overshadowed the fact that, for the most part, the biting satire and artistically vital protest art didn't actually materialize at all.

Now we're trying to gin up this generation gap nonsense and we are on at least the third attempt of my life to cargo cult the moral and artistic vitality of the 60s back into existence.

But man, like, that radio tower is just a stack of bamboo and that headset is made of coconuts.

[dollmaidcrystal]

This week, Mistress was informed by her doctor’s office that her lifestyle makes the office staff uncomfortable, and they will no longer be accepting her as a patient. I was ready to give some judgemental old churchgoing busybody a piece of my mind, but, after investigating, it wasn’t the old ladies at reception at all. Old ladies handling medical admissions have seen it all, and aren’t phased by anything.

It was the youngins.

The office had hired some kids fresh out of high school to do admissions. One of them asked Mistress about her recent sexual history. To put it mildly, he wasn’t ready for anything other than a yes or no answer. A whisper campaign later, every employee under the drinking age filed simultaneous sexual harassment complaints against Mistress for making them feel uncomfortable. That got HR involved, and now Mistress is seeking a new primary care physician.

Asking around, it turns out that this kind of experience is becoming common. Apparently, sex positivity peaked with Millennials, and we're just starting to notice now that Gen Z is entering the workplace.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with that knowledge. I'm worried that those kinds of hangups are going to be hard to overcome now that Gen Z is also reaching the age where they are entering the kink scene. I want them to be able to feel comfortable enough with themselves that they're able to explore and form meaningful connections there. That's not going to be easy if their vanilla lives really have been so chaste.

[bourbonsandicecream]

I sometimes come across some younger people's accounts and I'm legit so confused, cause I can't understand a thing they write, like I can't understand the language the use.. even though it's just english but still the words, I've never heard of them, or maybe the way they write things is so different, I can't understand their configuration...neither I can understand their sense of humour, the context behind what they find humeorous, and also than all of this gets even more funny when i realise I myself ain't that old.. I'm just 20, what do you mean why is there so much generation gap between people who are 20 and people are 14-15 .. 😭🖐🏻

[whowhowhoareyou]

i spend a lot of time with a non-related 10 year old and these were the main cultural exchanges this year

she showed me:

skibidi sigma, naur

the amazing digital circus

friendship bracelets a la the eras tour

i showed her:

gravity falls

biblical lore so she could understand the common-knowledge items in hazbin hotel

legend of zelda: breath of the wild

[oldshowbiz]

1969.

[prokopetz]

I won't deny that there are things about contemporary web media I don't fully understand, but I find that the specific examples folks like to gesture toward as evidence of a growing generation gap just... aren't that hard to figure out? Like, I remember when Macromedia Flash going free-to-use was big news, and the stuff people did with it over the next couple of years was every bit was unhinged as anything you'll find on YouTube today. If you don't "get" Skibidi Toilet in 2023, you probably wouldn't have understood animutations or Joe Cartoon in 1998, either. It's not a generational thing – you're just boring.

[aunti-christ-ine]

Pickles by Brian Crane for January 01, 2025

[dragonagitator]

So many of the newer House MD fans are shocked by House's casual racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. remarks and microagressions, and all I can think is... did y'all forget that House is literally a Baby Boomer?

I know that you are seeing a 45-year-old man on your screen, but you should not expect Xennial values and behaviors from that man because the show is 20 years old. House was born in 1959. He would be 65 now.

So yeah, next time House shocks you by saying something offensive or making a joke that really didn't age well, just think "okay boomer" and move on. No need to twist yourself up in knots trying to analyze or explain it away -- his generation was just Like That.

[hyperlexichypatia]

I know I write all the time about ageism and age discourse and generation discourse etc., but my only contribution to "We shouldn't be hating on Gen Alpha" is "We shouldn't be saying anything about Gen Alpha, because it's too soon. They're babies."

A generation is supposed to last twenty (20) years. Two decades. That's because it's a very rough shorthand for the turnaround, on a population-wide level, between being born and starting to have one's own kids.

If anything, the fact that in recent decades, people are having children later than in the past should have meant that we started making "a generation" longer.

But no! People are listing "generations" that are less than 10 years apart! And it's all microdemographics and telescoping and rapid turnaround and artificial cultural obsolescence and even though generational cohort and age group are two different things, it feels thematically connected to "A 21 year old and a 25 year old are somehow meaningfully different life stages" bullshit, and and and... I hate it.

And yeah, it's always been vague around the edges, and broad generalizations, and it's not like someone born in 1978 is meaningfully generationally different from someone born in 1982, but the point is, a generational cohort has to span about 20 years to be at all meaningful!

If Gen Z began in ~2000, then it ended in ~2019, and the oldest Alphas are no older than 6 in 2024. They're not teens or even tweens yet! "And whatever is coming up after Alpha --" The kids who will start being born in about 15 years? Let's not worry about them yet!

I know, I know, being irrationally annoyed that a fake, artificially constructed concept of discrete "generations" is being misused is, well, irrational. But you're making an already fake thing faker! Stop letting marketers fragment people into even smaller microdemographics!

[oscyllarus]

[not-a-kaleshi-saanp]

I was just talking to my mother and I knew with or without a subtle hint she'll want me to have a life partner, children and also take a break from my career for my children.

But all I want to say was you suffered all your life and you want to internalize that into your daughter...why? When I say I just want extreme education and succeed in the career of my choice, that's all I want! In no damn way am I asking to be treated like a baby producing machine for another family, have responsibility of another man and get my wings clipped, NO TF NOT!

The people who want partners are not wrong but wanting to be alone in only my presence isn't wrong either. Wanting a family is beautiful but not wanting it is also okay. Taking a break is okay but not taking one should also be respected.

Ladki ki iccha, uski padhai aur uske sapne utne hi maayne rakhte hai jitne ki ladko ke. Dono hi tumhari aulad hai aur dono se barabar ka pyaar karna tumhara farz. Apni beti ya bete ke sapno ko roundne waale rakshas mat baniye, aage badhne me unka sahaara baniye, phir koi baccha kabhi Ghar chodne ki baat nahi karega.

Dinosaurs vanished because they couldn't change with time, you'll vanish too if you don't walk hand in hand with time!

[icedsodapop]

Gen Zs are so funny making fun of the Sephora kids and doing the whole, "when I was a kid, we didn't do xyz" schtick. Like bestie, when we were 10 years old, Tiktok wasn't a fucking bleep on the radar and youtube was in its infancy stage, we didn't have influencers to watch and worry about emulating??? Gen Alphas also don't have free Internet games to play like Moshi Monsters or Neopets or Petpetpark or Pet Society or [insert gen 1 Facebook game here] or Club Penguin or Toon Park like we did?? They are literally surrounded by online ads and consumerist culture.