#rush-keating

emospritelet

rumple-belle

scribbles-by-kate

freifraufischer

sieben9

riskpig

darthmelyanna

rush-keating

ripperblackstaff

No, I don’t think so. I think it’s more a function of maturity (or lack thereof) and the marketing of mass culture. It’s more economic and technological.

The 1960s were a huge landmark in terms of mass culture because youth subculture became a big thing for the first time. Before the 1960s, teenagers and twentysomethings didn’t really have a separate set of media tastes from their parents, because everybody sat around the radio/television and consumed the same thing. I mean, there were youth fads and so on, but NOTHING on the level of what you saw in the 60s where hippies started saying things like “don’t trust anyone over thirty.”

Now, ironically, youth subculture and mature mass culture are becoming more amorphous and collapsing into each other. We’re losing any sense of separate generational tastes because even people who are thirty and forty and fifty spend a lot of their attention share on media centered on kids. Boomers love Disney, Millenials love Disney, everybody’s ultimately hooked on the same stuff and it’s not “cool” to rebel against it anymore. Corporations love this sameness, because once you hook people’s sense of nostalgia early on, they also get their kids into it as well and it’s a self-reinforcing cycle. You just need to slap a fresh set of paint on the old characters every now and then and sometimes (if it affects the bottom line) sand off the racist/sexist edges.

I have several friends in the local DSA and might join in future, but I don’t have any inside info as to what makes one successful or not successful. So this answer is more general than specific. The absolute most important thing is to have an enforced sexual harassment/abuse policy. And if people aren’t cool with having that discussion and establishing one, they shouldn’t be around: that’s the first level of enforcement! Asking everyone to read this essay is also a good idea—Why Misogynists Make Good Informants—and then having a required discussion about it. It’s a widely shared essay for a very good reason. To give just one example of how topical it remains: as a leftie you might have heard a lot of hopeful stuff about Redneck Revolt in 2016-2017, but not nearly as much positive now in 2018. And the reason is the classic misogynist abuse leading to organization implosion. It happens OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.

There’s a lot of interpersonal drama that doesn’t involve abuse (engaged in by people of all ages not just twentysomethings) but there’s nothing that can be done about that but hope for the best and communally encourage people’s better natures.

If you have a group that’s almost all twentysomethings, especially ones without children, it’s very easy for the group to get focused on their needs and everyone else gets sort of pushed out. So it’s a good idea to keep asking questions like: where do you want to see the group in five, ten, twenty years? What makes the group multigenerational in appeal? What does the group offer to a sixty year old or a ten year old? That doesn’t mean every group should have a babysitting room or something, just that they shouldn’t actively alienate people who don’t fit the majority member pattern. A lot of disability inclusion also overlaps with multigenerational inclusion, so you’ll be accomplishing two goals at one time.

crowzley (5%)

scarlettjane22 (4%)

woodelf68 (4%)

celticheartedfangirl (3%)

canonspngifs (3%)

mrgoldsshopofhorrors (3%)

alwaysdearie (3%)

rush-keating (3%)

Ugh it’s not like you weren’t blogging about Rumbelle all the time before then