#generational studies

Older generations dont realise that being 'good enough' is no longer good enough. Perfection has become the rule, not the exception. With mass urbanization and a weakened economy we have become a society of heightened competition and subsequently become desensitized to things like equality and equality in our need to compete and succeed to the standards set by our parents. By our age they were homeowners with little to no debt and kids.

More than ever before we have a generation that is over-educated and under- skilled, we were sold dreams that 'if you work hard enough anything is possible'. So we blame ourselves, we see our failures as personal inadequacies, and a stumble can mean we are never able to catch up again to the rat race that is our competitive world. We were raised as investments and self-impose clinical levels of stress and pressure till we crack.

The high rates of anxiety speak to our panic to 'do better! Be better! Work harder!'. High rates of depression speak to the helplessness and how we see ourselves as failures.

High suicide-rates speak of the combination these two leave us with - I am not good enough, I disappoint everyone, I'm ashamed, I am the problem, I cant keep up, I'm not unique or special, I'm just a burden, I will never be able to make a difference. Life is not longer worth the gamble.

I will never be good enough because I will never be perfect enough.

My mom had the deal with us we could go anywhere in the neighborhood as long as we came home on the weekends. My dad not so much because we were in a gentrifying area near downtown that wasn’t gentrified yet so the crime rate of our neighborhood was higher than suburban places like my mom’s neighborhood. But we were allowed to be in the yard.

And that’s just when we were kids. When we were teenagers, we were allowed to go hang out with our friends whenever we wanted to. Hell.... my sisters and I didn’t even have a curfew. Literally. Mom had the rule that if we were going to drink, she’d rather we brought it back to her house than run the risk of getting caught with it elsewhere.... but we literally had no curfew. At either house. We were allowed to do whatever we wanted. We were encouraged to let our parents know where we were going and who we’d be with and bring our phones so we could call if we needed them.... but those things weren’t conditions. We were given free reign as children. 

This gave us the ability to chose who’s house we wanted to be at.. if it was easier on my friends for me to crash at dad’s after a morning at mom’s and a day/night with my friends, I could do that. It also gave us the ability to lie. “I was at dad’s” “I was at mom’s” when I was really at the beach (a story my parents later found out about and they laughed for hours).

The post I just saw that prompted me to write this was about after school. It mentioned teens wanted to socialize with their friends all the time, but they weren’t allowed to, which is why they’re on social media all the time. They offered the “local news” explanation and “over scheduling after school activities” explanation. 

Neither of these make sense for my family. We had a lot of freedom as teenagers on the weekend. Week days, however, we were much more managed. By the time I graduated high school, my mom didn’t care if I went out for dinner with my friends, but it was expected I be back at a reasonable time. If I got home late on a school night, I was punished. At the beginning of my high school life, however, I was not allowed to do anything with my friends on school nights. I was told school nights were for family and homework and that’s it. That was a very strict thing. I remember the first time I broke that rule, it was a serious act of defiance. It was a Sunday night and my friends texted me asking me which house I was at. I said dad’s and they said they were planning on eating at my favorite restaurant that’s near my dad’s house so they were going to drop by and pick me up on the way if I wanted to eat with them. I told my dad I wanted to go to dinner with them and he told me no, that it was a school night and on school nights we ate as a family. I was pissed that I knew my friends would be 1. at my favorite restaurant and 2. so close to me and willing to spend time with me and I’d have to be stuck at home. I didn’t like what we were eating for dinner, so I fought with my dad. We fought the entire time my friends made the trek from their end of town to my dad’s. I told them to come get me. They got to my dad’s house and I said I was going. I got in the car. I got home and my dad said he would talk to my mom about what punishment I should have because disobeying that school nights are for family was that unacceptable that it was something they had to punish together (my parents never did that. If they did, you knew you’d done something really bad). 

While I was punished there, it prompted my parents loosening up. Even still... socialization with our friends on school nights was never encouraged or every fully sanctioned like weekend socializing. And it was different on days I had band practice and days I didn’t. On band practice days, it was much more acceptable that I eat with my friends. On non-practice days, it was expected I socialize with them before coming home and come home around 5 at the latest. There was no hard time, but there was just what was expected of me and what was generally acceptable and reasonable.

I always figured my friends who had stricter rules (curfews on the weekends, weren’t allowed to hang out after school almost at all unless it was in a club/after school activity (which a lot of kids joined for PURELY social purposes), etc) had these rules because of variations of the importance of family. “It’s important you be home by 10, because after 10 a family should all be under the same roof.” “It’s important you come home after school, because school evenings/nights are about family and homework.” That kind of thing...

And talking to my friends and knowing their parents, that seems so much more likely than they were scared by the local news into thinking their kids were going to get hurt. 

Yeah I hate how everyone younger than like, 45 is called a millennial. I'm really interested in this stuff because I'm a millennial but my brothers are gen X and it's kind of crazy how different our views and experiences are. Interesting for sure.

i got really into it learning about the differences between the millennials and gen z.  The fact that the millennials were so proud of their generation and protective and really gatekept a lot to the point where it’s now become a meme is really interesting to me.  

And the fact that we lump the gen z kids in with the millennials is frustrating to me because we, the millennials made a very clear point about not being lumped with them.  We developed a distaste for them when they were elementary schoolers, younger even.  and a lot of the criticisms we get are also not our issues, it’s theirs.  I don’t mean that they should be criticized for some of these things... but we didn’t grow up the way they did... and a lot of the things we’re getting criticized for is the way they grew up.  

conflating these two generations fucks up all understanding of cause and effect for why we exhibit the generational characteristics that we do.

And the gen xers are a really interesting group... They’re much more combative of norms than the baby boomers.... the baby boomers are self centered and focused.  the gen xers are outward centered and focused.  because of that, they focus their attention on other people for the most part... They’re issues oriented.  

half the gen xers get lumped with the baby boomers more often than not, and half of them get lumped in with the millennials.  

compared to the millennials, there’s the huge gap of growing up with the technology we grew up with.  We were the first generation to have the internet.  We didn’t have it in it’s current form when we were young (that’s WHY there’s the gap between gen z and the millennials), but we had the internet.  Where they grew up with MTV, we grew up with the internet.  The internet has matured and grown with us.  The IP model of the internet went global in the late 80′s and personal computers became more popular in the time of our birth too.  We have literally grown WITH the computers.  They have changed and evolved WITH us because they came into our homes when we did.  The xers do not have history, they do not have the networking that we do.  The criticisms we receive about being “Generation Me” are such that they cannot relate to because we get these criticisms because of how interaction with technology shaped our development, thoughts and feelings, and lives.  

I see everyone link us together though.... People call Gen Z Millennials all the time.  all.  the.  time.  On tumblr I see people who are Gen Z say #mygeneration about the generation before them.

There’s also a generation inbetween the baby boomers and the millennials.  Generation X.  People tend to forget about them too.  Not all non-millennials are Baby Boomers.

One of the things I didn't think about on my first reading of Homestuck is Dad Egbert. Because I viewed it to be a blender of tropes and memes, and wrote down much of it as style over substance, and Dad Egbert is an example of that.

Dad Egbert is a stereotypical "1950s father", of a type originally popularized on early television shows such as Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best. He is a businessman who smokes a pipe and is aloof but encouraging.

What is unusual about this is that John Egbert was born in the 1990s, meaning that his parents could have been expected to be born in the late 60s or early 70s. (We can set aside, for now, the ectobiological nature of his parentage). My first impression was that it was just a throwaway joke, a reference to the suburban father of 1950's TV. But I think there might be something to it, especially if we view Homestuck as being about generational issues. Here we have an intelligent millennial child, but he doesn't have an expected Baby Boomer parent. He has a parent of a generation above that. Rose LaLonde's mom, pre-scratch Roxy, is also a stereotypical 50s mother, albeit with a negative stereotype.

I think we don't see the "Baby Boom" generation until much later in the story. I think the dancestors, if we can place them anywhere, resemble the Baby Boomers. (of course, since they come from an alien civilization, the comparison doesn't quite make sense, but bear with me). Whereas our guardians all come from "The Silent Generation", quietly doing their duties,  and our protagonists are millennials, depending on team work and navigating multiple views and cultures, the Dancestors seem like Boomers: perpetually stuck in late adolescence, obsessed with image, and convinced that they have found the true answers to life in pursuing their desires and identities.

So there seems to be a lot of frustration on this topic and I thought an ordered list may be of use!

Are you a Baby Boomer? If yes, Stop here.  You will 9/10 (arguably 10/10) speak about something you know nothing about.  You will either say something that is legitimately false and untrue, or you will say something that is a very "Hi Pot, I'm Kettle" situation.  So save us all the time and energy, and stop here.  Do not continue at all.

Do you think technology is the "demise of society"?   If yes, Stop here.  You are obviously too stupid to handle intellectual thought and discussion.  So stop.  Everything was a new technology at some point, you car, your bank account, your electricity, your microwave, your clothes, your hammer.... everything as new at some point.  And you don't look intellectual when you say that, you look stupid.

Do you enjoy looking at one part of a trend, and not the rest of it?  And/or do you enjoy discussing trends but never causality? Stop here.  Do not even go forward a little bit.  You should not speak on any social trend ever.  Not generational, not gender, not race, not anything ever.  

Do you feel prepared to see the world as it is now, and not as it used to be?  In other words, in your criticism and/or discussion, will you see the world as it currently is?  or would you ask things of Millennials they cannot possibly give because the world doesn't work that way anymore? If no, Stop.  You are asking the impossible.  Go find a time machine and go live in the past.  You will like it better than now or the future, I promise.

If you have gotten to this point, congratulations, you are probably ready to discuss the Millennial generation!  But there's one more thing:  Are you ready to have a good discussion and hear Millennials speak back to you?  In other words, do you want to talk at the Millennials, or to the Millennials?  Are you prepared to treat them as people? If no, stop.  Reevaluate.  Figure out the pro's and con's of having a generation in this world that doesn't have opinions and voice them.. come back.

i dont really know what to do when i watch things like this.