One of the weirdest modern things to me is this obsession with generations. Maybe I haven't read the right stuff, but you pick up a 19th or 18th century book and they talk about the past, or conflict in families between old and young, but never this weird cohort-antagonism thing?
Could be it's random culture shit, but maybe it's because people have fewer kids, so they don't span generations? Or maybe tech acceleration means cohorts have more differences that are real?
@ZachWeinersmith My theory is that it originated with the coincidence of the post-WW2 baby boom (providing a generation that conspicuously stood out, at least in magnitude) and the rise of mass media and mass middle-class prosperity (setting the norm for the youth to be differentiable by mass consumption of pop culture and recreational media). Once that happened, the idea of an entire age cohort having solidarity in blue jeans and rock’n’roll (or whatever) was self-reinforcing.
@ZachWeinersmith perhaps it’s driven by the ascendancy of youth culture in the early 20th century. These generational distinctions are often framed in terms of cultural impressions formed early in life.
@ZachWeinersmith my guess for this sort of us/them splitting is that it couldn’t have happened until information could move fast enough, and with enough fidelity that an average adult now can see and hear younger people from the whole world, not just what makes it to the 10 o’clock news. It’s probably also why “new” language from younger folks spreads so far and fast, which increases the chances of day-to-day hearing “the younger generation” talk amongst themselves. Both compound.
@ZachWeinersmith Because no one thought about groups of people having value other than as workers before.
Fuck man, in the 1600s-1800s you were trying to not die. That was your life: not dying. It’s not until the 1900s that “not dying” became a given and we could think about different things. Like how not being in WWII or the depression made you different as a group than people who were.
@ZachWeinersmith it is because the boomer cohort is significantly different from previous one.
It is the first cohort ever that got richer despite being more numerous (from an economic standpoint). That had... Ripple effects. And it created this lens of generation for demographs.
@ZachWeinersmith public school combined with marketing.
When I was in public school, you did NOT talk with kids more than…one grade?…above your grade and same downwards that carries on into adult life and then is reinforced by marketers who push the whole “gen whatever” labels.
That’s my off the cuff take.
Sprinkle in ephemeral media (“this was the show we watched when I was a kid) and viola*, you have something that can be a fun thing to discuss OR a generational dissent.
@ZachWeinersmith I think it's because the Baby Boom was such a big thing. All kids together, then all had their kids together, so a following "generation". By now the generation thing has gotten sort of washed out and I doubt it makes sense any more.
@ZachWeinersmith It feels like red state/blue state, which wasn’t a thing until very recently. They are similar in implying a permanent division where in actuality there is just a temporary correlation, with extremely fuzzy edges.
There’s also now the growing separation between the generations and their slurs. A 42 year old homeowner whose kids just left for college is a millennial-actual but if they’re being jerks to their neighbors via the HOA then maybe they’re a boomer-slur.
@ZachWeinersmith I thinks it's marketing and media. The financial powers that be like us being in neat little boxes they can market too. And the media likes people being in nice little boxes so they have someone to blame. Put them both together and we end up with a culture that forces the imaginary importance of generational cohorts on us non stop until people start to belive the importance is real.
The whole Gen X/Y/Z vs Boomer thing is just another manifestation of the divisive tribality that emerges from (having been enabled by) social media platforms. People so desperately need identities to display and tribes to belong to, so they can know which Others out there need to be hated and distrusted. It’s all very tedious and annoying.
@ZachWeinersmith The baby boom was a real demographic. Gen-X, with the end of the boom, prosperity, and the AIDS crisis, was distinct.
Everything since is just age cohort marketing and "kids these days".
@ZachWeinersmith I'd say it's a baby boomer thing. Generational framing like this is usually only used in opposition to the boomer generation which is very objectively an outlier from a demographic + economic standpoint. Even the "digital native" stuff doesn't make sens to me as I've yet to meet someone who outright refuse to use computing/Internet if they have access to it.
Add comment