Boomers v Millenials-how many times in the last few years have I seen this headline? Enough to know that boomer is shorthand for stodgy entitled old whiners who accumulate as much power and money as they can, and millenial is shorthand for milquetoast entitled whiners who obsess over avocado toast and are too lazy to work real jobs. Meanwhile, life goes on as always for Generation X-the forgotten cohort crammed in between.
Shouldn't surprise us, really. Gen X is used to being overlooked. We grew up alienated and suspicious of both parents and corporate culture. Remember Lloyd in Say Anything? Totally leery of being commodified:
"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed."
Maybe we don't have as great a line as the Boomers' Brando in The Wild One (to "what are you rebelling against, he sneers 'Whaddaya got?'"), but we do have Bender from Breakfast Club with "Being bad feels pretty good". We watched the Boomer generation go from hippie to yuppie, and lost our idealism early on just as grunge was exploding from garages in Seattle.
No end of Gen X memes went around during the pandemic a couple of years ago, based on the point that we are the ultimate survivors. Used to isolation, the first real generation of latchkey kids who come home to an empty house after school, scrounge a sandwich and some chips, and watch mindless TV for a couple of hours.
Our attitude is minimalist-we pretty much invented "whatever." Our cynicism is legendary, part Han Solo in the 1st Star Wars and part Venkman in Ghostbusters. The originators of memes, dealing in snippets of pop culture to encapsulate the drudgery of Every. Single. Day.
Boomers, Millenials, all the rest--Generation Z or Zoomers, and the newest Generation Alpha--can ignore us, but we are still going about the daily grind. Still, even despite it all, optimistic deep down.
Still trying to follow Ferris Bueller's Rule:
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
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