Historically, nearly every generation’s economic status was nearly identical to their parents’. The way the baby boomers did exponentially better than their parents was an historical anomily. Millennials are not the first generation to be less well-off than their parents, they’re just not experiencing the rare and specific set of circumstances that lead to a sudden burst of upward mobility. And needless to say all of this is only for white people.

(#yep #when they say ‘baby boomers’ these days #they mean ‘white people’ of the period #and not even all white people ’cause poor whites still existed in droves)

I feel like Gen Z isn’t aware that Boomers had a counterculture or that it has any relevance still

It’s weird. It’s like they’re totally unaware that the Civil Rights Movement existed, that there were radicalized countercultures, that Woodstock/the “Summer of Love”/ etc happened.

As a Gen Xr who had hippie parents, who’s known lots of Gen Xrs who had hippie parents, it’s weirding me out. There is a lot of specific cultural, generational baggage that goes with that. It’s not like the stereotypical Millennial just crawled out from under a rock, there were lots of Gen Xrs who were early adopters of that zeitgeist.

Also, Gen Y mainstream edge culture has its roots in Gen X counterculture, which has its roots in Boomer counterculture.

Relax, Ladies. Don’t Be So Uptight. You Know You Want It

rapeculturerealities:

It 1982, Donald Trump was 36 years old and he preferred Hanes pantyhose. Not because other leading brands constricted his balls, but because women belonged in dresses; it pleased the male eye.If you’re a Gen-Xer, you undoubtedly remember these ads.

For nearly two decades, Hanes ran television, print, and radio ads as part of their Gentlemen Prefer Hanes campaign.As for your preferences, ladies? No one gave a shit, least of all, you. You were happy to tuck that ass in Hanes if that’s how gentlemen preferred it.

Why? Because you, Gen-Xer, were socialized not to see a problem with this campaign. Even if you did see a problem, what were you going to do about it in 1982? Form a hashtag army on Twitter?

Gen X. We came of age with movies like Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, and Revenge of the Nerds. Date rape scenes were “funny.” Harassment meant you were “hot.” Getting pinned to a wall by a guy at work, at school, or a party was “normal.” Relax. Don’t be so uptight. You know you want it.

read more

fieldbears:

fetus-cakes:

sideshowcomics:

bogleech:

OR, maybe, just maybe, and hear me out here, MAYBE the actual reason is that not as many people in this day and age feel a pressing urge to spend money on mediocre food at an exploitative business just because some boobs are under a t-shirt in the same room?

This promise was an exciting novelty only to a pre-internet and wealthier generation which simultaneously felt far less shame in leering at or catcalling women but far more shame in looking at porn. Hooters was softcore pseudo burlesque for married Christian men and the culture permitting its success will likely never be repeated and shouldn’t be.

Hooters always seemed really weird for me for this exact reason. It’s like this bizarre fusion of strip club and family restaurant that no one asked for. The food isnt great, everyone is fully clothed, even the staff exists in a creepy limbo where they’re not actually strippers, but they’re only there because of their tits. Its like if someone decided to turn exploitation into a chain restaurant.

Millennials go to an actual strip club or burlesque show if that’s what they’re into, and then to a good wings bar after. There’s no need for a completely mediocre combination of the two

How dare they accuse us of not liking boobs. How dare

caitatonic:

babyboomerbullshit:

commenter has a point

Why do older people assume younger generations can’t write or read in cursive and why the FUCK does it matter

Just YouTube “how to drive stick shift” or like…..live somewhere other than the United States.

fierceawakening:

anaisnein:

I’m intuitively certain that the best reported numbers of trans people grossly underreport actual prevalence, because the concepts and lexicon weren’t out there on the mainstream culture table till quite recently

in Gen X and preceding age cohorts, maybe some older millennials, the trans people who actually figured out their shit and ended up getting counted as trans people were those whose dysphoria (whatever type, this isn’t a specifically medicalist point) was so severe and constant they literally couldn’t repress it or interpret it as anything else so it was basically own it or death. I bet money there are four or five times as many people in middle age looking at all the trans visibility this last few years and slowly going “… oh” internally (and maybe doing something about it, but quite likely just carrying on with their lives and the adaptations and compensations they’re already adept at: these are the ones who could survive if not thrive in their birth gender assignments in the first place and their sunk costs are high) as people that age getting counted as trans by the official statistics

the average young USian person on this website is growing up in a world where trans is a thing that some people are. it’s a tough af position to be in, there’s still a hellish zip code lottery kind of like there was for being gay in 1990, etc, I’m not suggesting it’s a bed of roses or easy to claim, my point is that it’s a position that exists to be in. it’s there in the differential as a possibility. and I don’t know if young people realize how novel that is

I agree with this, because I’m pretty sure I’m one of those people. Whether I’m “a gnc woman” or “a person who needs T” matters less to me than whether I can present in the way I want to, though I won’t be surprised if I ever try t and go “well yep”

Source: ithelpstodream

complaints about millennials from ancient greece and rome

meggory84:

sigaloenta:

thoodleoo:

ungrateful, wait with eagerness for the day of their fathers’ deaths (seneca’s de beneficiis)

travel everywhere, take up agriculture instead of letting nature provide (tibullus 1.3)

carp at their parents, praise evil-doers and their violent deeds (hesiod, works and days)

spend too much time talking about philosophy and pretending to be greek to fight wars (plutarch, life of cato the elder)

bad at riding horses (horace, odes 3.24)

can’t lift boulders (homer, iliad 20)

still can’t lift boulders (vergil, aeneid 12)

8. spend all their time declaiming about pirate-chieftains and tyrannicides and oracles commanding human sacrifices and what kind of preparation is that for the real world? (Eumolpus in Petronius, Messala in Tacitus’ Dialogus, a bunch of others)

9. only care about snappy one-liners and ignore good periodic Ciceronian prose (Quintilian, IO 10)

9. take up stupid trendy fads like vegetarianism (Seneca the Younger’s father yelled at him about this, apparently)

10. use philosophy as an excuse to avoid the duties of a Roman senator (Tacitus, Hist. 4.4)

Tag yourself, I’m #8

shinelikethunder:

Re-reading The Authoritarians is making me wonder all over again whether the Gen X / Millennial gap will ultimately end up being far less significant than the split right down the middle of the Millennials: do you remember the world before 9/11?

More to the point, before the United States’ epic authoritarian meltdown in response to 9/11. Because there is a whole psychology of fear, attack, and solidarity that most of us have fallen into at some point, but at least have the ability to retreat from. And I fucking worry about the kids born into a world that’s never run on anything else. I worry that they don’t have a working model of a civilized, pluralistic, individualistic society where there are rules that apply the same to everyone, no matter how afraid they are or how vehemently they disagree, and where not every risk is a risk of annihilation.

I worry because before 2008, pretty much all the factions who weren’t the Religious Right or the neocons were at least standing united as a voice of anti-authoritarian moral clarity. And then the Democrats inherited Cheney’s imperial executive branch, the security state, and the siege mentality, and completely, utterly, catastrophically failed to dismantle any of them. All they did was get corrupted by trying to use them “responsibly.” (Helped along, of course, by the Republicans’ scorched-earth descent into obstructionism, extremism, and delegitimization.) And everything just… splintered and went muddy. It’s not a coincidence that 2008 was when left-wing authoritarianism, rebranded as “social justice,” really started taking off. Monkey see, monkey do, especially in the tumult of an anti-establishment faction that suddenly became the establishment, and found out that being on the right side of history didn’t make the opposition go away.

I’m only starting to figure out how angry I am that the left has been pissing away its energy trying to put out every last ember of trashcan fires like homophobia when the entire edifice of American democracy is in flames. I’m gay. Given a choice between keeping Obergefell v. Hodges or repealing the Patriot Act, I would happily throw gay marriage under the bus. There’s an entire generation just coming of age who point-blank do not understand that, who think it means I don’t give a shit about something that affects me personally, because to them the Patriot Act is background radiation. It’s bad, but it’s not shocking and it’s not an aberration–it’s part of the normal fabric of their reality.

And it’s going to take a long time to unwind all the implications of how terrifying that is.