<extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

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Blossom
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<extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Blossom » Sat Jun 03, 2017 9:19 pm

Do we have a thread focused particularly for the age war that's basically killing us as a society, the economic crimes of the baby boomers and their lasting impact on milennials? Or, I dunno, that's kind of an aspect of a rot that pervades every other aspect of everything - the environment, electoral politics, corporate law, war, just fucking ... everything. But someplace other than Bullshit News for the various capitalist and societal sins of the post-war generation that will haunt us for decades to come might be nice. And, of course, the perpetual Hot Takes on that Shiftless and Lazy Milennial Generation and how we don't know how to Work An Honest Day's Labor. Old Man Yells At Cloud: The Thread.

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Bal
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Bal » Sat Jun 03, 2017 9:53 pm

Young Man Yells At Parents.

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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Mongrel » Sat Jun 03, 2017 10:25 pm

I would just like to take the time to state in my oldest old man voice that I really hate this newfangled "woke" term, while not having entirely figured out what the hell it's supposed to mean or even which political alignment has claimed it (the left?!).
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Bal
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Bal » Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:10 pm

The part of the left that will tell you how you're being liberal the wrong way.

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Friday
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Friday » Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:15 pm

Don't forget that the Boomers fought their war against a bunch of WARNING: OLD MEN bent on destroying the planet.

You either die a hero, or live long enough to etc.
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Friday
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Friday » Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:21 pm

To go a bit more in depth, while I despise idiotic boomers shitting on us for being young as much as anyone, I do cut them more slack than most people simply because they just literally don't know any better. They had it so easy with jobs and the economy that they literally just cannot comprehend how come we can't afford houses.

It's not malice, it's just being pampered. And stupid. The latter of which is not a crime specific to any generation.

None of that stops me from mocking them relentlessly for being mad because we use phones or whatever.

Of course, when these types of attitudes are endemic in the people making law and policy, yeah, that stops being funny really fast.
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Mongrel » Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:24 pm

Friday wrote:Don't forget that the Boomers fought their war against a bunch of WARNING: OLD MEN bent on destroying the planet.

You either die a hero, or live long enough to etc.


The funny part is that this always makes me think of - of all possible commentaries on the Boomers - Smashmouth (specifically "Walking on the Sun")

That or Thad posting "The bums lost, Lebowski!" again.

Memes, man.
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Friday
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Friday » Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:29 pm

I don't think the Bums/Boomers either won or lost, really. The general consensus is that they lost (and in a lot of ways, maybe even the more important ones, they did) but they managed to do a lot of good and planted a lot of seeds about peace and love and acceptance which still echo today.
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Mongrel » Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:34 pm

Yeah, I would agree.
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Büge » Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:46 pm

Here's a thing I saw on tumblr.

http://once-a-polecat.tumblr.com/post/160195380436 wrote:Note to Millennials from GenX:

So you know those news stories about how Millennials don’t buy enough breakfast cereal or paperback books or homes or whatever the hell that Boomers are complaining that “kids these days” don’t spend money on? And y’all are like “LOL, no cash my pal”?

I think there’s something more insidious going on. You see, they thought they had you. Forget the Saturday morning cartoons of my childhood, they had Disney Channel and Nickelodeon feeding you ads all day long. Your generation got advertising in your schools. Your parents took you to prosperity doctrine spewing MegaChurches (it’s Mega so it’s gotta impress the kids, right?).

They thought you were going to be their generation of super-consumers.

You are generations distant from the great depression, and the 1979 energy crisis. Boomers want to pretend that the 2008 housing bubble wouldn’t affect the little kids. And plus, we had grown past the era of Yankee thrift and hippie DIY frugality. Right? And there was no mopey Kurt Cobain glamorizing thrift-store flannel shirts. You guys were going to out-consume the Boomer generation. They were sure of it.

Those think pieces? They’re Boomer disappointment that you have found value in something other than your place as a mindless consumer.

And yeah, I’m not going to pretend that y’all have more cash than you do. It was fucking idiotic to think they were going to raise a consumer generation without having to pay them the money they would need to buy even life’s necessities. And I could write a book about how my generation was complicit in destroying the old values around work and loyalty that left your generation screwed. Really, I’m genuinely sorry for the mistakes we made.

But you guys have given a big middle finger to the generation who thought that they could manipulate you from birth into manipulable-money-spending-machines. And I’m way fucking proud of you for that.
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jun 04, 2017 1:04 am

One thing I have repeatedly said is that the millenials are the first generation in eighty years to ask questions like "So why DO we have to work 40 hour workweeks? Why is that the norm?"

And sure, some of that is plain old selfishness/laziness and some of it is a basic sensible self-interestedness that comes from seeing that a 40-hour workweek doesn't buy shit and isn't rewarding.

But for a while there, there was a progressive notion that technology would not just bring new gadgets but the most valuable commodity a human can ever have, time itself, and that had really fallen by the wayside in favour of shiny knickknacks. It's good to see those questions being asked.

There's other things too.

It also seems like millenials are taking a real interest in being good parents. I mean there's always yahoos and idiots, but there's a genuine generational desire to research and use best-practices parenting that I see from new, young parents. To try and balance confidence boosting versus self-reliance, freedom versus responsibility. Not incidentally, I have always approved of the comment that if an older generation thinks a younger one is shit, well, who raised that generation? As someone on here already said, it wasn't Gen X or Millenial kids who asked for participation trophies - we knew those were bullshit, even downright embarrassing - it was our parents.

I'm actually hopeful about young generations, as foolish as that might sound. They seem better equipped to deal with the world and have a generally level head about them.

Hipsters were so easy to make fun of because in searching for an authenticity they felt was missing from modern life, they looked to the superficial elements of previous generations in a fumbling (and funny) search for guidance, which led to the sort of ridiculous affectations all young generations have in some way. Now that the same generation is entering their 20's and 30's and starting families, they seem to have generally figured out what authenticity really is in a modern context are are looking for things in a way The Greatest Generation and even before might have in more dire times. Good quality goods which will last. People who will tell the truth and act in a responsible way. Friends who are loyal and stand up for one another.

There are also a great number of entitled shitheads. Don't get me wrong. But I choose to believe they will not be the ones who control the future, because they largely lack the emotional tools and skills to do so.
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Bal » Sun Jun 04, 2017 2:27 am

Equating boomers with the actual hippie movement is stupid and dangerous. The boomers that were hippies lived through WWII and Korea and had their start in the Beatnik and BIkers movements of the 50's. They'd seen the version of the American dream post war America was selling, and they didn't buy. But there's little brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, the second wave boomers, they bought a whole different message. We're all going to die, so find a good view. They didn't make the 60's, they sneered at the 60's from the 70's and did coke while they waited for the world to burn in nuclear fire and when it somehow didn't they said "Fuck it, better get mine before this whole party ACTUALLY ends" and went ahead and made the 80's where greed is good was not an ironic statement and they masturbated with hundred dollar bills while calling the record number of homeless people too lazy to work.

Fuck every single one of them.

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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby nosimpleway » Sun Jun 04, 2017 10:16 am

Mongrel wrote:I would just like to take the time to state in my oldest old man voice that I really hate this newfangled "woke" term, while not having entirely figured out what the hell it's supposed to mean or even which political alignment has claimed it (the left?!).

During the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the cops would tell the protesters to go back home and go to sleep. "Stay Woke" emerged from this as a rally to keep fighting, and has since broadened to include "keep generally aware of social injustice."

Bal wrote:The part of the left that will tell you how you're being liberal the wrong way.

...but that, too.

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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby François » Sun Jun 04, 2017 10:35 am

All sensible language used by reasonable people to virtuous ends is sooner or later co-opted by idiots to foolish ends. We are in a perpetual lexical struggle to find and use rallying symbols before they are rendered worthless and putrid by morons, and it is accelerating to a breakneck pace.

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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby patito » Sun Jun 04, 2017 3:40 pm

If you start having a beef with slang then you really have achieved peak old man

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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Bal » Sun Jun 04, 2017 4:11 pm


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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Thad » Mon Jun 05, 2017 10:31 am

patito wrote:If you start having a beef with slang then you really have achieved peak old man

I'm probably not the best guy to dispute this, but I do think we've got a little bit of a problem with the meanings of phrases like "safe space" and "trigger warning" that was, in part, brought on by well-meaning but naive college-age folks mistaking kindness and compassion for a right not to be challenged.

And, TBF, by a bunch of Fight Club-quoting dipshits who think "safe space" and "trigger warning" just sound funny and have no idea what they actually mean. (I saw somebody correctly point out, the other day, something to the effect of, "Hey guys, VFW halls are safe spaces.")

It's been about a decade since I've watched South Park (and a little longer since I've been in college -- the overlap is probably non-coincidental), so regarding its contribution to the conversation, I'm not sure how it breaks down on "South Park misses the point"/"South Park's fans miss the point" lines. (FWIW, everybody I've talked to about the subject has told me South Park's take was good.)

And of course there's an entire industry of people whose job it is to obfuscate and degrade language. (If memory serves, George Orwell had a thing or two to say on the subject of politics and the English language.) The same people who've made "feminist", "liberal", "progressive", "PC", "happy holidays", etc. into dirty words are hard at work on devaluing political terms, just as they always have.

I, obviously, have some prescriptivist tendencies that I've been trying to get a hold on. Ultimately, the purpose of language is communication. A speaker should try to communicate effectively; a listener should try to understand the speaker's intention. "Try and understand each other" isn't a particularly original or insightful piece of advice, but it's often a good one.

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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby beatbandito » Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:54 am

yeah but, like, they're not real gamers
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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby Thad » Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:58 am

Backing up a bit:

Bal wrote:Equating boomers with the actual hippie movement is stupid and dangerous. The boomers that were hippies lived through WWII and Korea and had their start in the Beatnik and BIkers movements of the 50's. They'd seen the version of the American dream post war America was selling, and they didn't buy. But there's little brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, the second wave boomers, they bought a whole different message. We're all going to die, so find a good view. They didn't make the 60's, they sneered at the 60's from the 70's and did coke while they waited for the world to burn in nuclear fire and when it somehow didn't they said "Fuck it, better get mine before this whole party ACTUALLY ends" and went ahead and made the 80's where greed is good was not an ironic statement and they masturbated with hundred dollar bills while calling the record number of homeless people too lazy to work.

Fuck every single one of them.


Yeah, generational lines are, by their nature, fuzzy and arbitrary. By most definitions, I (born 1982) am a Millennial, my wife ('79) and mom ('63) are Gen X, and my dad ('60) and maternal grandmother ('44) are Boomers. It doesn't take a whole lot of deep inspection to observe that that doesn't really make a lot of sense.

You can draw useful demographic information by breaking down age groups, obviously, but it only takes you so far. Somebody born at the beginning of any given 20-year period is going to have a pretty different experience than somebody born at the end of it. (And even two people among the same age cohort don't necessarily have the same experience or outlook; you have to look at a pretty large group of people before you can make general statements that have any sort of validity.)

Broadly, I'd say the millennial generation is defined by two major factors: the internet and a job market defined by a major transition away from long-term security. (Broad social change is a factor too, of course, but I think you could define any generation by broad social change; humanity continues to be a work in progress.) And there are still plenty of millennials who haven't even entered the latter yet. Whereas I'm at the older end of the generation; I finished college in '05, after which I worked part-time at a computer store for five months or so, took a very underpaid IT job for a year and a half, tried grad school for a semester, and then spent seven and a half years bouncing from unemployment to temp job to unemployment. It took just shy of eleven years between leaving school and landing a stable job with decent pay.

Kids graduating college today are likelier to find a job, but not any likelier to find a good job, and they've got the existential dread of the Trump Administration, which is, on the whole, worse than the existential dread of the Bush Administration even if (so far) the economic outlook is better.

And that's just the Millennials who are graduating college. Some haven't even finished high school yet. What's the experience going to be like for them? Fuck if I know.

What all that means, I couldn't tell you. Older millennials and younger millennials have some experiences that are very similar, some that are very different, and that's going to result in outlooks that are in some ways very similar and in others very different. Which is an observation so vague that you could accurately apply it to any two groups of people.

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Re: <extremely Harrison Ford voice> Get Off My Lawn

Postby zaratustra » Mon Jun 05, 2017 1:00 pm

anyone can be a millenial as long as they're young at heart and cannot afford to buy a house

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