Generation X: what made us great?

We got rid of shoulder pads.

Past tense? Are we dead? Is it over?

Pulp Fiction made us great

What's so great about trading a diddler for a junkie?

The only positive thing Gen X gave to the world is Bridget Fonda in Singles.

I think you meant to say we dethroned Michael Jackson and replaced him with Prince.

South Park: the ode to nihilism

We dethroned Madonna with Mariah

We're not boomers.

We're not millennials.

We're not gen Z.

We fell for none of the bullshit that every other generation had.

So did Courtney kill him or not? Will that be the next great documentary?

Is Nirvana even popular with the younger generation?

I'm curious as to how many people under thirty even know who Kurt Cobain is.

[quote]We fell for none of the bullshit that every other generation had.

Of course not. You fell for a different type of bullshit. Like the low-fat diet.

Our voting power is what made us great. It’s too bad we are sandwiched in between two nihilistic generations 🤕

R8 only temporarily as Madonna has outsold Mariah Worldwide steadily since 1997 but yes Mariah outsold Madonna Worldwide from 92-97

Just five years

What makes us great is we accepted and embraced how not-great we are.

As gay men, we were the sexually responsible generation who took gay rights from sex in backrooms to rights in the board room. Not necessarily by choice - but we had to learn to grow up and take responsibility for our actions at an earlier age. If not, we knew we would die. Coming of age in the AIDS era also forced us to deal with coming out publicly - and making a statement in the anti-gay backlash of the 80s/early 90s. Queercore films like The Living End are a good example.

we're largely responsible for the rapid development of the internet/web

As the first latchkey kids / children of divorce, we’re a generation of introverts.

We were quite determined not to hit, neglect, or ignore our own kids.

These are both very good things.

Starbucks and iPhones!

zima

Pearl Jam, 90210, “Reality Bites”

Early stroke detection

You guys always made a big deal out of condoms which I hope resulted in less crotchfruit. Thanks for that.

Believe me condoms weren’t easy. To spend your prime sexual years - 17-35 - needing to ALWAYS put mortality at the forefront of your mind when engaging in sex was not easy and forever warps you. Which is why I have no patience with accidental pregnancy - even among teenagers. I had to fear death every time I had sex.

OMG, we were a very charismatic generation, the media and hollywood loved us. Now .... millennials....yuck

Step away from the crackpipe, R28.

R29 a sad pathetic millennial

We invented Snark.

Stay triggered, R30.

R32 I'm not triggered. You are.

I think you are triggered, R33. That's why half this thread is about others when it's supposed to be about you.

We gave the world Limp Bizkit

First generation to be worse off financially than the previous generation.

Irony

OP, Michael Jackson may have been a kiddie diddler but you're delusional if you think his status as a musical artist has been eclipsed by dead drug addict Kurt Cobain. Nice try, though.

Michael Jackson is a dead drug addict too.

Most of Wacko Jacko’s fanbase actually were GenXrs, but one thing that makes this generation great is their ability to ironically detach from their own embarassing history and pretend it was really a “Boomer thing.”

r14 not from what I've seen. Nirvana is strictly Gen X, they're not big with younger people.

I have a couple of Gen Z students who are into Nirvana

R38 exactly. I think they're referring to Nevermind knocking his Dangerous album out if the #1 spot on the charts in 1992

Just like Madonna and Mariah, Mariah debuted in 1990 and by 1992 was outselling Madonna and virtually ever other female artist internationally, bar Whitney's Bodyguard soundtrack, but from 1997 onwards Madonna has EASILY been outselling Mariah Worldwide, not to.mention Madonna's massive 1982-1992 sales

Suspiciously enough, 1997 was the year Mariah divorced Tommy Mottola, the head of SONY, except for The Emancipation of Mimi comeback in 2005, her career has never been the same not did it have the momentum it had from 1990-1997

Flop after flop

Nothing

Asshole R44

Yakov Smirnoff

We'll be sitting on the riverbank when R44 floats by. That will be great.

Radiohead Radiohead Radiohead

We brought you barrack Obama and Beto o’rourke

Gen Z seems more optimistic and educated than millennials. It’s early and they are still young, but logic and balance are missing in the social media obsessed M’s. I expect a SM backlash against their predecessors

Yuck R50. You are why we hate you and why we feel no sympathy seeing you get owned by Boomers

Kurt Cobain sucked. Just cause he sounded angry and wrote gibberish lyrics doesn't mean there was any depth to him.

Agreed, R52.

r51 you proved r50's point.

Forget all the nasty quips between Millennials and Xers here - the bickering is fun to read but is not productive at all. I think that what made us great was that we are the ONLY generation who remembers the world pre and post internet. Boomers still fumble around and for the most part can not embrace technology in the way that we did and still do. It was such a paradigm shift - and one that Millenials and younger will never understand. Everything that they see as a "given" and part of everyday life did not exist until many of us Gen Xers were in high school or college (therefore we were PIVOTAL in the momentum as we were the only target audience and the only consumers). We were the ones who opened this door for you and allowed you to blissfully enhabit what was once very hard to access and it required a Hell of a lot of effort on our part. You are welcome. The entire world will never be the same - mostly good and plenty bad as well.

I'm a baby boomer. Trust me, neither your generation or mine are that great. For me personally, it was my immigrant grandparents and people like them that shone brightly. Every generation produced here has just become progressively more rotten. Sorry.

Kurt was so needed. The early 90s was a boy band, metal head, empty wasteland and he changed that. Kurt made lyrics, politics and sensitivity cool yet rocked. Millennials have yet to produce anything similar. I say this as a challenge, not as an insult

It doesn't matter, R54.

It must suck to get politically owned by millennials.

We feel you.

But by all means, Kurt Cobain was hot.

"Politically owned by millennials?" Funny!

AOC, Buttigieg, etc.

Nobody is talking about you anymore, R60.

Your time passed.

No social media and no cellphones

Kurt was”gay in spirit”

Whichever cohort you belong to, if you participate in this sort of ridiculous inter-generational bickering, you exemplify what is wrong with your generation.

The new Kurt?

R63 Kurt was a big supporter of gay rights. In the early 90s, I lived in Portland and Nirvana did a "No On 9" benefit that raised money to fight a measure that tried to ban homosexuality.

Love AOC - R61. And I am very happy to have Millennial friends. Those that I socialize with are open-minded, well-read and not the stupid ignorants who watch Fox News and think that BS propaganda is real (it's an entertainment network). Thank God for the next generation - they seem to care about what is real and what is important. Sadly, older Americans (no need to call out this or that decade) are too often completely clueless politically. I know that many of you on this site (minus the bots and trolls) are not the culprit and are a minority when it comes to this group of easily influenced idiot GOP types. I will leave it at that.

r61 that is not accurate at all. Gen X will continue to be in the political realm for many years to come. And they're mostly liberal.

So will millennials, R68. Get used to it.

Of course r69. Both working together. It's a good thing.

Millennials?

Working?

LOL

I like the part where Gen Z sees tech as a tool but prefers face to face communication and considers it preferred. The pendulum is about to swing! So does this mean back to the bars and joining front runners after deleting Grindr? I’m optimistic for all generations if true

Gen X?

President?

LOL

We’ve already had a GenX President, dumbass millennial

Who, R74?

Obama, you stupid shit

A stupid-ass Gen X, R74

Ignore the stupid trolls here. Incredibly ignorant and nasty. In the real world, we don't care about your divisive tactics - what we do care about is our country. Here you go bots/trolls - Gen X and Millennials both think that fake Fox News, Evangelicals and Russian-paid thugs need to go down. Period.

We were the first to use the release of a sex tape to launch or sustain a career as oppose of letting it ruin a career and a life. Pam and Shlongy Lee’s Sex Tape was the best movie of the generation. Look at all the other whores who followed and literally rode a sex tape to fame and fortune!

Unfortunately, the celebs you would love to see in a sex tape have never been the ones who do them! It's always been the gross and nasty celebs.

Gen X gave the world irony. Before us, obvious, earnest sitcoms and movies ruled. We gave you ironic detachment and self awareness, rather than self amusement. Both boomers and millennials are myopic, navel gazing, humorless assholes, high on their own ubiquity. I weep for the future (though together boomers and millennials will kill what’s left of it for everyone ). Also, our dudes were hotter.

R81 is brilliant. WW

Luke Perry

Steve Jobs, the internet, great music, Absolutely Fabulous & Fabio.

We slacked off!

Not to be nitpicky, but AbFab is a Boomer show. Saunders and Lumley are certainly not Gen X.

R55 what a ridiculous statement re the embracing of technology. Us boomers use what we need without letting us consume both our professional and social lives. Next time you're out to dinner or out at an event with your friends, look around and see what group is constantly on their phones instead of enjoying the surroundings and the group they're with.

If you can't live without technology there's something wrong with the way you live

Loved Kurt's personality but can't stand Nirvana's music...

Our overuse of condoms. If we knew the experimental treatments in the mid-90s would work, we could have been bigger whores than millennials.

[quote]Boomers still fumble around and for the most part can not embrace technology in the way that we did and still do.

Don't even get me started about Boomers in the workplace. 2019 and many of them still can't do fucking basic Word and Excel functions, and forget about any other, more recent software. What should take 20 minutes takes two hours or more. Or the work is shuffled off to people who actually know how to do it.

[quote]Generation X: what made us great?

Your fantasies of self importance.

r81 I agree with everything you said, except for Ethan Hawke being hot. He always looked like he needed a good scrubbing.

Bogus.

Bag those toenails.

Whatever.

Pioneers of mainstream World Wide Web.

[quote]as oppose of

Oh, dear!

R87 - spew your venom somewhere else. Xers are not glued to their smartphones; you are describing Millennials. We do however show you how to use yours on a daily basis. Boomers were perplexed with how to send a fucking email (and many still are). We know that you are set for retirement - you guys made sure to take your cake and eat it too.

WW for R90!

I had to LOL at the Madonna vs Mariah statement to prove something about the generations. I'm not a huge pop music fan but both have fan bases full of Gen Xers. Only Madonna continued to add fans of younger generations, especially outside the Ageist USA. Mariah only outsold Madonna from 92-97 due to Madonna's self inflicted backlash from pushing the boundaries of sex.

Any way, carry on. I'm a Millennial but Gen Xers started saving us from the rapidly increasing conversion of Boomers to being conservatives.

Nobody was bigger on a global level than Madonna. Nobody. Not Janet, Whitney or Mariah.

JFC Boomer executives in the workplace in regards to technology. EVERY Boomer SVP: "I don't know how to do that." And that's the end of the discussion. A person my age would be shitcanned in two minutes if we didn't keep up with tech, but Boomers? "I don't know how to do that" is all they need to say.

As above, first generation to be worse off than our parents.

Gen X is also procreating less because of:

being latchkey kids of divorced parents

being preoccupied by the Cold War/nuclear war and climate change and overpopulation

But so much great music, especially in NYC, LA, Austin, Chicago, and Seattle in the 90s.

Richard Linklater and Quentin Tarantino and Coen brothers movies were enjoyable too.

R102 - so true! As a group generalization, they also shot up the corporate ladder relatively quickly and never had much fear of being downsized. There is of course an exception to every rule - but generally speaking, they had it pretty cush. Back in their day a college education was almost a guarantee of a job. Such a different world than the one that Xers graduated into. Anecdotally, I found that many Boomers were given cars, $20,000 down for a house, were given a business, etc, etc. but interestingly did not pass on the wealth to us Xers in the same way. Most of my friends and I have the same story to tell and it usually adds up the same way. Lots of perks given to them in their youth, but they rarely reciprocated with their own children. As a generalization, the group is a rather selfish bunch. They took the "Me Decade" a little too much to heart.

Baby Boomers were better film directors and studied the craft. X and Ms not as much

True R105.

Aaaah R102 speaking my language and we didn’t exactly have a lot of formal training ourselves we just had to get with the programme

R105, in your opinion do the advances in CGI technology and the like have anything to do with that? Or maybe because of the amazing current visuals in movies today as opposed to twenty years ago?

Just curious.

[quote]Back in their day a college education was almost a guarantee of a job.

Not just that, but a Bachelor's would suffice. A Master's was not really necessary.

Gen X fathers are more involved in parenting. They change diapers and are, by and large, not stigmatized by old stereotypes of fatherhood.

Directing is about finding a good story and telling it well. Special effects can add to or confuse the storytelling

Female musicians; I think we were the least sexist generation, in away. Female musicians in the 90s never had to sell their sexuality or bodies to become popular or successful. Now female prostitution is sold off a female empowerment.

WHAT? I let the everyone fingerfuck me when I crowdsurfed!

^minus the

Never used term elder gay (fact: invented by aging millennial fearing tomorrow)

It's in the middle there R115

R112, you can thank the Spice Girls and Christina/Britney for this changing.

Emma Frost and Jubilee

Sacking dick

RuPaul

Irony. Intelligence. Pragmatism.

Getting shit done.

Great music.

Managing to survive between two groups of nihilistic idiots.

Whining. That's what I remember most about you pissbrains. Always with the bitching about the boomers. I would not otherwise have paid you any attention, so I guess that's what it was about, getting attention, but oh, the whining.

Watching millennials pass you up.

Not falling for Boomers' shit. Ever.

As an early gen X'r (1963), I get nostalgic with the music I grew up with from the early 70's until the mid 1990's (selected beyond). Our teen dances featured some of the milder disco hits, and post high-school gave us groups with lots of reverb (Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Bronski Beat). When I see movies set in this era and hear some of those songs, I get a chill. I also know false representation of those eras when I see it, particularly with both the Broadway and movie version of "Rock of Ages" which is set in Hollywood, Beverly Hills & the surrounding era of the 1980's. Even walking by the rock shops on Sunset Blvd., I never saw the abundance of mullets represented in this movie, although I did get a chill with some of the Journey songs and a chance to re-visit the 1980's version of Tower Records on Sunset & Larrabee.

We are the last generation of rational, pragmatic, hard-workers. We can save this world against the idiots bookending us.

So go ahead, r129. Save us. God knows we need a good save right now.

[bold]Generation X: what made us great?[/bold]

We're still waiting...

What made the Boomers so great?

Every generation has greatness. It's up the individual born in that generation to find the greatness in themselves and utilize it wisely.

Their parents, r132. Life Magazine. Television. The end of WWII. Places like Levittown and Lakewood. Did people even think in terms of generations before the boomers?

[quote] What made the Boomers so great?

NOTHING except timing. They are the nastiest motherfuckers on social media.

But r134 why were Boomers such shit parents, as a group? I'm a child of the 80s and most of the Boomer parents in my neck of the woods were self-absorbed materialistic narcissists. Something happened in the 80s that really turned them into assholes.

[quote]They are the nastiest motherfuckers on social media.

And they've been the nastiest motherfuckers on social media since 1946.

R134 I'm elderish, so I also think of the Greatest Generation that grew up during the Great Depression and served in World War II and elected FDR to enact the New Deal.

[quote] most of the Boomer parents in my neck of the woods were self-absorbed materialistic narcissists. Something happened in the 80s that really turned them into assholes.

Those motherfuckers never thought they would age!

We gave you mullets bitches!

[quote]Something happened in the 80s that really turned them into assholes.

No, it really happened in the '40s and '50s. Our parents (my mother, in my case) spoiled us like we were God's gift (my mother would actually refer to me as a prince). I have to laugh when people whine and bitch about how spoiled the millennidongs are. We boomers were just as spoiled, from the moment we were born.

The Boomers were great in the 60s and 70s but the 80s turned them into selfish twats.

However, r138, the Greatest Generation wasn't called the Greatest Generation until Tom Brokaw wrote the book.

Baby Boomers are sociopaths.

They love watching their Gen X/Millennial children struggle and wagging their fingers at them.

That's when we started to work, r142. We believed we deserved everything. We had always been somewhat "selfish twats."

r144, boomers do not have Gen X children (well, most boomers, anyway).

R145 Visiting extended family in rural and midsize towns, I've experienced lots of this: Boomers that had kids in their early 20s are now in their 60s have Gen X kids in their 40s.

Plenty of these Gen Xers continued the pattern and had kids in their early 20s so now have Millennial kids who are now about 30.

I guess I thought of them as millennials, r146. But you're right. Thanks.

Banana Clips

Letting Baby Boomers know that they are a bunch of fucking twats.

I'm a millennial and I love you, R149.

[quote]boomers do not have Gen X children (well, most boomers, anyway).

????

Most Gen Xers born in the 70s had boomer parents.

[quote]Something happened in the 80s that really turned them into assholes.

Yes, that something was the ‘80s. Everyone was an asshole then. It was the “Greed is Good” decade.

My what a lovely story, r128. Simply lovely.

WTF it has to do with this thread I can’t tell you.

We can detect bullshit a mile away and trust no one.

R102: Boomers? "I don't know how to do that" is all they need to say.

And just think about it, kids: when you own or run the show, you can say that, too.

Oh, I forgot. You never will own or run the show. Sorry...

What did you people see?

Nirvana is still insanely popular. My 17 year old nephew and his friends love the band. And, like most white kids from the Burbs, they mostly listen to hip hop.

My nieces who are 8 and 10 love 80’s pop music.

Boomers can't live forever r155. And no, "I don't know how to do that" is not part of our vocabulary. We adapt quickly. We've had to because unlike Boomers we would be unemployable if we didn't.

R158 My millenial nieces think Tony Bennett is sexy!

My millenial nephews use scrunchies to secure their man buns.

Yes, you Millenials will surely rule the world just as soon as you move out of your parents’ houses.

r162 that's one thing I cut Millenials some slack for. The cost of housing has risen so high, but wages have remained stagnant. I can't judge them for still living at home because so many areas are just unaffordable as far as housing vs. jobs.

Gen X? You're not great.

As much as I don’t like to cut them slack either, I’m afraid I have to agree with r163.

My parents bought their house in 1967 for $17,000. That’s the equivalent of about $130,000 today. You can’t touch a large refrigerator box here for 130K today.

Millennials are not interested in buying Boomers' McMansions and there's a shortage of more affordable starter homes.

All the Millenials I know who still live with their parents are also unemployed. So, yes.... it’s surely difficult to buy a house when one is unemployed.

So why hasn’t some enterprising Milkenial real estate developer focused on the affordable housing demand?

Milkenial? Is that like children conceived during the Got Milk? ads?

R168, it’s not a matter of difficulty selling them, it’s that there aren’t any to sell.

Towns, counties and NIMBYs don’t want them.

What used to be called starter homes are not exactly affordable anymore for people who are "starting." Small ranch houses START at $230k around here.

I don't get the whole lumping tens of millions of people together, as if random birthyear has an effect on personality, motivations, accomplishments. Every generation has their heroes and villains. Seems to me that this is the laziest way to group people together.

Meaning the millenial way to group people together.

[quote]I don't get the whole lumping tens of millions of people together, as if random birthyear has an effect on personality, motivations, accomplishments.

And it really only applies to whites.

Funny how a GenX thread quickly became a millenial thread.

Millennials share the annoying habit of the Boomers of inserting themselves everywhere

What some of the posters on this thread REALLY think: ALL people of ALL generations are complete CUNTS (except for the poster himself, of course....he himself is PERFECT in every way!)

Our teen queen was goth Winona and mopey emo Angela Chase, our popular music was nirvana, girl music was fiona appLe, tori amos. Sensitive boys who cried were our teen idols hello river phoenix. The early 90s was an anomaly, outsiders ruled. Nowadays, generation after generation, its one boyband after another, girls worshipped superheroes and some buff dude on netflix who plays the jock roles, and basic goody goody gone wild girls like brit brit, lohan, hilary duff selena and repressed lesbian taytay. Sure ratface chalamet and lucas hedges can cry, theyre no river phoenix and not even leo di caprio.