Gen X believed the world could change with expression, art and culture. When it failed they fell into line.

@michaeltorris5675

Жыл бұрын

This is the most concise and accurate summation of gen x I’ve ever read.

"Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy"

I do appreciate Amber slapping down every dumb take the guest tries to sneak in. “Reality Bites is so heteronormative” “Steve Zahn is gay in that movie.” “Fast Times is so racist and misogynistic.” “There is an abortion scene in that movie.” Idk who the guest was but it seemed like her critiques were just either buzzwords or just stating the obvious fact that sometimes old movies age poorly. It was less a feminist/leftist/Marxist/whatever examination of past media and generations and more a Tumblr circa 2012 post come to life. Chapo hosts were great though with Felix’s ridiculous summary of past generations and Amber not letting those dumb critiques slide.

@thebargainbin6020

Жыл бұрын

Amber is a real one

@bignov5173

Жыл бұрын

@@thebargainbin6020 yeah she really grew on me. Originally I felt like she just kept talking over everyone but I’ve since seen the error of my ways (my dad explained why I was wrong while we were getting gay together).

@thebargainbin6020

Жыл бұрын

@@bignov5173 don’t talk about my wife that way

@ince55ant

Жыл бұрын

i hate the phrase "old movies age poorly". or just any media "aging poorly". i know its not the point your making but i think its at the heart of your critique. like yeah this thing make 50 years ago wouldnt be made today, thats why it was made then and not now. you just know theres some blog explaining how "problematic" shakespeare is and how Homer's Odysee is not a good look for the author. its just people vibing with aesthetics and treating it like its important critical analysis

@tewodrosii2875

Жыл бұрын

@@ince55ant Its because since I was barley out of high school, pop culture started to try to simultaneously rely on nostalgia, But then justified it by doing just what you described at the end, and stays doing it now to defend both the drop in quality and shame people away from things that are direct competition. case in point: how so many MCU fan bloggers will shit on DC, not for any objective lack in quality, but because its too "problematic" for reasons that sound more akin to the way Hillary Clinton stans hysterically explained why Bernie Sanders made them feel "unsafe" its the mindset of the perpetually coddled and narcistic children of the ruling class

All Gen X wants to do is work at a magazine.

@RememberShuffle

Жыл бұрын

It's hard to judge them too much considering you can just replace the "magazine" with "podcast" for millennials

@mitchhosking5599

Жыл бұрын

@@RememberShuffle yeah but i can't pretend i have friends reading a magazine

@fuckfannyfiddlefart

Жыл бұрын

I haven't even bought a magazine since covid, have u seen the PRICE now!!

@blah146568766i87

Жыл бұрын

All Zoomers want is a twitch fanbase

@DaBirdOfHermes

Жыл бұрын

All millennials want is free college, student loan forgiveness, socialised medicine, and to seize the means of production…

Growing up I wanted to work at a movie rental place, it seemed so cool

@cti190

Жыл бұрын

I work at one. It’s not cool.

@ScabiousGarde

Жыл бұрын

@@cti190 Well yeah not *now*

@nicanornunez9787

Жыл бұрын

Lol yeah child me wanted to work with Tarantino and silent bob and jay

@macrussell78

10 ай бұрын

Same. As a kid I always wanted to own a blockbuster. Even had an highschool internship at Hollywood video before redox and Netflix killed it.

@Fuzhou

2 ай бұрын

As someone who did, it fuckin ruled

Gen X rallying cry: "What do we want!?" "NOTHING!" "When do we want it?!" "NEVER!"

17:15 She makes the point that the centralized entertainment industry is breaking down and how there will be "Nike Soap Opera", but that's actually how television worked at the very beginning. I Love Lucy is generally remembered as this iconic American 1950s television show, but it was really one long ad by Philip Morris. Tim Wu talks about it briefly in The Attention Merchants. Also, nailed it with the obsession with authenticity. I think it's some kind of internalized, dysfunctional idealism that their parents projected on to them. But unlike the 60s where it was super self-indulgent and self-conscious, Gen X grew up in it and made the mistake of taking it seriously. Nike is bad. Wearing Nike's doesn't make you a bad person. Not wearing Nike's doesn't make a good person. It's all about means of production.

@mattgilbert7347

Жыл бұрын

"Bogus corporatism" -Thurston Moore's devastating non-ideological critique of.. um.. Capitalism? I think?

@sengroagers1111

Жыл бұрын

“Nike Soap Opera” is so funny to me. Like… where do you think the term “soap opera” came from?

@tewodrosii2875

Жыл бұрын

@@sengroagers1111 "Days of our lives...BROUGHT TO YOU BY CLOROX!" not a joke, that was an ad I saw on a commercial before they cut back to Y&R (was caring for my Great grandma at the time, thus the show choice)

@ChangedMyNameFinally69

Жыл бұрын

Moreso art is more overtly corporate nowadays

@tewodrosii2875

Жыл бұрын

@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 well, it's overly corporate because 1. The internet really screwed up their demo markets and 2. The 90s was the last time Hollywood had the capital to spare on such acts.

Gen x is still just old enough to be influenced by Cold War mentality

@mistressofstones

9 ай бұрын

I was born in 1979 so I saw all the cold war stuff end but I was very young so I just remember the news was insanity for a period and people knocked down a wall and the Russian guy who had a big birthmark on his head. I knew it was all important but I was so young I couldn't understand it 😂

@zainmudassir2964

2 ай бұрын

It's the same generation obsessed by Russiagate conspiracy

Zoomer here, I don't want to work at a video renting establishment nor a video streaming platform. Why hasn't the generation before us solved the media question? We want royalty free art, solcialised healthcare and real democracy.

@tewodrosii2875

Жыл бұрын

simple answer: because everyone who tried was either bought out or taken out. Long answer? read Mark Fishers' "Leaving the vampires' castle"

gen x here. There was always a libertarian lean in Gen x, Self reliance, not joining groups, both side ism Makes sense as we get older we go further right

If you want to encapsulate the sentiment of a generation, you have to look at the decade they entered adulthood, which was basically the 90s for Gen X. Angry, self-destructive, hopeless; a nihilistic wonderland.

Saying that DFW never questioned why his “experiences” ought not be at the centre of everything is a great way to let people know that you know nothing about him or his work, only that he was white and a male. Otherwise though, I always enjoy listening to this clip once in a while.

@paulrogers8725

Жыл бұрын

Yea there was some dissonance in this once for sure

@into_the_flood_again

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, the Charlie Rose interview alone should put that to bed. But of course, all it takes is a Googling of him to get some dubious/conjecture-based allegations of him possibly being some sort of misogynist. And that means it's fine to marginalize him as some sort of white, patriarchal overstepper without further thought. It's irritating.

@riro1024

Жыл бұрын

I mean, by his own definition he was a bit of a misogynist. Listen to his interview with Michael Silverblatt on Bookworm KCRW about Brief Interview with Hideous Men. A lot of autobiographical stuff in there even if it merely represents the inside of the worst parts of his head. The point is that he knew that and was trying to interrogate that stuff in a way that was both thought and felt. He was incredibly well read so he knew about Spivak and subaltern studies and any academic thesis on marginality you could throw at him. His whole thing was that the only way he could live was by writing, and so he always asked himself how to write for other people while still satisfying himself. His whole artistic project railed against solipsism and one’s self as paramount, so to suggest he “never questioned” his white maleness or whatever is just factually wrong. The stuff about his life is not really dubious conjecture - I believe what Mary Karr says about him because of the circumstances of their knowing each other, her deep care and love for him despite how he acted toward her, and the simple fact that she doesn’t chase headlines and doesn’t want to punish a dead man.

@tewodrosii2875

Жыл бұрын

@@riro1024 Its because most of his detractors are the type of female journalists that work with guys who look like him or like Vaush, but are so bowed and chastened to and by institutional power, they really only exist around them to massage their egos as every guy who didn't have to do that is likely above them in some way. They hate him because he was what more and more men are becoming now due to how alienating this cultural moment were in is to most men in the best sense; he took on a peaceful, creative pursuit. His haters hate him because IRL, there are more guys who relate to his paradigm than whatever Matt Iglesias or Ezra Klein looking SOB is charged with sophistry duty.

@ChangedMyNameFinally69

Жыл бұрын

@@riro1024 But he didn't do nearly as much as say even Kurt to go against that image, Kurt who wore dresses and attacked his misogynistic fans and directly told them to leave concerts.

This is fun, but all this psychoanalysis seems unnecessary as far as explaining why Gen X is getting more conservative. As Gen X ages whichever of them are going to get wealth are getting it and their class interest changes when this happens.

@ince55ant

Жыл бұрын

also, gen x was incredably conservative. we're just choosing to only look at the cool subversive stuff like it was the contemporary mainstream. there was a lot of tripe that was being pushed at the time thats just forgotten about. most people weren't grunge david foster wallaces, they were mostly basic consumerists that loved when gorbachev went to pizza hut

@jabrokneetoeknee6448

Жыл бұрын

@@ince55ant I recall reading some statistic showing that young gen X was on average less promiscuous and experimented with fewer drugs, compared to both the Boomers before them and the Millennials after. They’ve always been a generation of prudes. First it was a reaction against the free love youth culture of their parent’s generation, but also having their earliest memories being of the Regan era prosperity in contrast to the stagflation and gas crises of the 70s

@tewodrosii2875

Жыл бұрын

@@jabrokneetoeknee6448 at least they didn't end up in THIS unfortunate cultural moment of millennials thinking being a snarky moralizing nag is "holding people accountable" Unless they plan to take someones life or freedom away, no accountability is being forged, just hysterics.

@plateoshrimp9685

Жыл бұрын

@@tewodrosii2875 I have no idea what you mean by this, but I know it's wrong.

I think artistic integrity and wanting editorial control over your own product has never not been desired, and is never going away. What they were calling Gen X values was already there in Punk at the end of the 1970s, which in turn inherited it from Hippy and Prog Rock in the mid 1960s, just adding a turn against pretention and snobbery and towards rawness and aggression and rejecting spliff in favour of speed, something they had in common with Mods. Before that the zeal for authenticity was there in the Folk revival of the 1950s, and in Jazz and so it goes. I'm pretty sure Beethoven was desperate to be authentic, and was refusing the easy gigs writing and playing pablum for the musically illiterate bourgeois audience of his day. Hippy and Punk and Indie in the 1980s and Grunge in the 1990s all also included various kinds of explicit left politics, and Punk, Hardcore Punk and Oi! still do. That is something to be built on, not rejected. I'm not a fan but I hear authenticity is also a big undercurrant in rap - the obligation to be "street" and "real" and so forth. "Repping the Ends" in UK Grime. The thing about wanting to avoid selling out has gone away because it has become much more difficult to sell out, because of the way that digital distribution has depressed prices and extended availability. Musicians have to survive on live tickets and merch rather than music sales anyway. In a way Fugazi were always doing that, back when people bought records, putting a premium on getting as many kids into their shows as possible by keeping their tickets at $5. Their business model is everyone's business model now, except for the giants who got big on television, which is also going away. When everyone is forced to do it, it's no longer cool to not have sold out. Musicans are subject to proletarianisation just like everyone else. That's basis for hope ultimately.

@ChangedMyNameFinally69

Жыл бұрын

Well they agreed here

Gen X's irrelevance is kind of what makes them endlessly relevant, like a constant signifier of look at those losers, they're like the cultural form of homeless people. Also Matt is really making us sound so much cooler than we are rather then the humiliating level of mentally ill that really defines us. Boomers are the ones that started and took over/destroyed the world, Gen X are the ones that started and then never got anything done, Millennial's are the ones endlessly restarting, and Zoomer's are the ones who never got to the start in the first place. Part of it is we were toddlers or not even born when the entirety of humanity decided it needed to start declining, like a veritable generation of AJ's, and also a big part is we seem to have nothing to say, I don't think humanity has been nearly as ideologically incoherent as us through the false signifier that is generational politics, then gen z is right now. To me that's where the blame lies mainly with our inability to start.

i just started watching The Larry Sanders show. All the eps are on KZread fo free

1965-1980*

The Merchants of Cool was the PBS special

I haven’t seen anyone mention this yet: “Generations: the history of America’s future 1584 to 2069” by Strauss and Howe has a great analysis of intergenerational politics in America. I’d love to hear what people think of it.

@RememberShuffle

Жыл бұрын

interesting, i'll take a look, love this sort of thing--oh damn, it's written in 2001? so it won't have most of the last 3 generations

"Fast times at ridgemont high is so incredibly racist and misogynist" Jesus Christ this is such a gay take

@toadvine7952

Жыл бұрын

On one hand Mike Damone is a stereotype but on the other hand you gotta admit that Italians do be like that.

@johngleason1776

Жыл бұрын

There are so many worse/more offensive 80s comedies that deserve that kind of scrutiny before Fast Times

@BigHomieGayAss1917

Жыл бұрын

I think it should be more racist and misogynist

@SkeletonWord

Жыл бұрын

@@BigHomieGayAss1917 I agree. Soul Man is the most underrated comedy of the 80s

@matttriano

Жыл бұрын

Written by feminist Cameron Crowe, Directed by Any Heckerling

There's at least one article titled "How cool kills itself" basically things are cool until people learn about it.

Worth remembering the concept of generations is largely hokum

@tewodrosii2875

Жыл бұрын

to YOU

There's a KZread called care free wandering who talks about authenticity and profilicity. A combo of authenticity and profile

younger millennials and based zoomer chicks will save American Society

I watch the king of queens woth janine garoffolo and this pops up wtf

17:30 "Nike soap opera" -november 2022 Air release- April 2023

Gen X is weird

@ryanwbourquin

Жыл бұрын

yes. we can’t help it.

@tewodrosii2875

Жыл бұрын

@@ryanwbourquin replace weird with navel gazing. more accurate

@mistressofstones

9 ай бұрын

Yes, definitely we were and are super weird

Amber haf

Millennials on TikTok embarrass me. Not just because they're on there, though.

Omg the Gen X guilt is so real, the neurosis about being authenic, the whole "selling out" thing (to certain people any job qualified lol), and being young old people haha. Ive forced myself to try basically all social media and devices so i dont become like the boomers who call me at work screaming about having to send an email 😂 but now ive put my info all over the internet so theres good and bad 😬

Whatever

I listened to shit list like every day for 2 years before I realized L7 were chicks

Great topic. Moronic execution.

Gen X? More like Gen Sex! My joke, don't steal. I'll know if you do.

Gen X is 1965-1980, we don’t give a 💩

damn i wanna be old and irrelevant

Whoever the 4th mic is insufferable

I'd like to apologize for my generation. Worst. Generation. Ever. Cobain had the right idea.

Gen x is the greatest argument for ending social security.

As a 73 X, I could not care less about the world. Not left or right either, I just don't care. All bullshit....

I've found too many Gen-Xers are kind of stuck in in the '90's politically. Like they're nominally pro-gay, but they don't get trans people. I was born in 1977 and not really sure what generation I'm part of. Isn't The Simpsons a big Gen-X show, though?

@ince55ant

Жыл бұрын

a lot of people just likedd the simpsons without understanding the points it was making, they just liked that bart was rude and homer was dumb.

@benbrujo8989

Жыл бұрын

Born in 75 and I feel like I'm from another planet when I speak to Gen Xers. Used to be that if you weren't White (back then) you probably had a good idea as to who were the oppressors and why the system wasn't working for you. Being a Mexican Goth was a little dangerous. Now almost everyone I knew from back then are bootlicking coconuts.

Gen Z needs to get a hair cut. Every. Single. One. Get. A. Hair. Cut.

Too bad all todays music, movies, comics, fashion, politics and books are anodyne versions of stuff Gen X gave y’all. But we’re not trans so I guess we’re not as progressive.

Wrong right away. Gen X is universally known to begin at 1965 not 1960 and this idiotic conversation is unlistenable

Reality Bites bites.

@mattgilbert7347

Жыл бұрын

Singles was even worse. God, I can't believe how old i am. I remember fucking SINGLES. Ugh.

Who is the annoying tryhard guesting

@ince55ant

Жыл бұрын

yer ma

@mostbased

Жыл бұрын

😂

Almost every point made about gen-x is the opposite of reality, especially late gen-x. It's the first generation to use computers & advanced electronics, the first generation to use the internet at a young age. Early & late gen-x are wildly different, if you even call this a science. But the limited actual research on this show this. It is the opposite of the gen-z who aren't 'good at tech' at all. They are adapt at consuming technology, not actually using it. If you think using social media is the same as having to type over a game from a magazine then you should enrich your humanities-centric sensibilities with some STEM subjects.

@benbrujo8989

Жыл бұрын

Early and Late Gen X should be separate generations.

@ChewyThomson

Жыл бұрын

Being a STEMlord is tired af and played out, it's more cool to tell the youngsters to go bible college instead

While I do find this guest mediocre and has nothing to say, I feel as if some of the people in the comments are couching their sexism as lOoK hOw gOoD i Am aT MaRxIsm Also, Will is out of pocket, I watched golden age Simpsons and south park, and Family Guy is absolute trash.

@tewodrosii2875

Жыл бұрын

we get it, you agree with the guest but shes embarassing. and its not sexist to specifically call out a woman idiotic critique. no, it doesn't matter the wording, or the tone. thats for babies. And family Guy is only trash to you because Seth Macfarlane isnt some self-loathing male who writes about how his privilege needs to be checked. If this critique is seen as "couching our misogyny" then what you came here for was sophistry and obedience, not an opinion. maybe we are being sexist...and? still a more dignified fate than avoiding being problematic and using a bunch of meaningless buzzwords to avoid running afowl of some random online figure. and please don't say the royal we with women when you reply. the only women I've met in my life who think like you are ones who think being an asshole is cool because "its cool when MEN do it" child, youre a child thinking like this

millennials are the next boomers..hated by all, sucking all the air and joy out of every room they enter. as a gen x’er I look forward to watching millennial endless misery, just as we did with the boomers. We get to sit back and watch and snicker.

@TheJumpsuitJack

Жыл бұрын

Passively watching while being invisible is so Gen X of you.

@pauldemelto6650

Жыл бұрын

@@TheJumpsuitJack according to the pundits that told you so.

@TheJumpsuitJack

Жыл бұрын

@@pauldemelto6650 Take a shower.

@AloisWeimar

Жыл бұрын

impotent and snarky, go back to telling Puck to take his hands out of the Peanut Butter

@lepjagman

Жыл бұрын

At least we'll be the largest generation and have power. Gen X can continue to do what it's always done: silently watch others run the world.