Gen-X Slacker Trash #
I don’t recall when I first heard this term, and the search engines can’t find it, either. But I use it all the time. When I’m occasionally conflated with the Boomers, I make sure to clarify I’m Gen-X Slacker Trash. I suspect that, for a lot of Gen-X, it’s one of the few things we give a shit about.
Recently I’ve noticed a lot of things on the the World Wide Web1 that have discussed the similarities between the generations. I encourage this. Usually, people are more interested in pointing out the differences between generations. As if “generations” itself is shorthand for a certain cultural group.
The reality, as I see it, is that each generation is made up of people who respond in their own unique way to the situations they are put in. And, while it’s true that a lot of people in a generation may have faced similar circumstances, and thus have a common response to certain situations, it’s also true just being born in a certain year doesn’t mean you’re destined to feel a certain way.
What prompted this rant was a post about loyalty at work. What astounds me is that anyone would think anyone would feel any loyalty to a company in this, the period of late stage capitalism2. This isn’t an age related thing, this is true of anyone experiencing what it’s like to work for more than a few years in our corporate environment.
The shared experience #
Gen-X, in my opinion, was the Slacker Generation primarily because of the prior generations (the Silent and the Baby Boomer generations). Of course, they were a product of their proceeding generations (the “Greatest”3 and Lost generations).
I personally think every generation has one desire: To become the best they can become, given their circumstances4. But every generation faces their own challenges, and doing the best they can means different things at different times.
With absolutely no evidence to back me up, I will assert that there are ebbs and flows to the generations.
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You have the “Greatest” generation, plowing through the depression, and the Silent generation suffering the consequences of their “parents” generation. “We fought a war, so you didn’t have to!” Man, what sort of head trip that must have been.
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The children of the Silent generation, of course, would be motivated to do more than their parents, and maybe out-do their grandparents generation. Thus, the Baby Boomers are more than willing to burn the earth to the ground to make money.
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And Generation X5? Well, you know, much like the Silent generation, we were in a shadow
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When it became time for Millennials to assert themselves, well, the Boomers had extended their life (and control) longer and thus they’re fucked like the Gen-Xers.
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Zoomers, well, Zoomers, I have great hope for them, because the Boomers are finally dying. Too early to tell what the Alphas will be like.
Whatever #
Gen-X was resigned. Hence the “Whatever”. Seriously, when things are completely screwed, and you have no control over your destiny, well, then, what’s a person to do? We don’t care. We can’t care. It’s a defense mechanism. We make the best of whatever situation we can6, and move on.
Millennials are even more even more fucked than Gen-X. This is because while Gen-X felt resigned, we had a better world (at least from an economic point of view) to start with. No wonder they’re bitter and angry. I don’t blame them. Gen-X may have started 10 steps behind the Baby Boomers, but Millennials started 200 steps behind.
Zoomers (or whatever they want to call themselves), well, I don’t know where they’re starting from, but fortunately they aren’t just bitter and angry, they’re also motivated. And I believe they’ll have more of a chance to make changes, because most of the people blocking them will be dead.
Anyway, what can you do? You do the best you can with what you got. Rage against the machine, if you think that’ll help. Or disassociate and resign yourself to a fate you can’t control. Gen-X, as I see it, just said “Whatever” and got on with it, as best they could.
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For full disclosure, those of us who transitioned from a world without the “World Wide Web”, but who were involved in it’s making (I just mean those in the computer-related world – I don’t claim to be Al Gore or anything) never liked calling it the “World Wide Web”. It was always just “the net” or “the web”. It was the unwashed masses that needed to give it a name, and why not something catchy? ↩︎
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I don’t know if we’re really in the period of late stage capitalism, but certainly capitalism is really straining, of late, to be anything but pure fucking evil. ↩︎
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Greatest. Seriously. And people think the Boomers are self-aggrandizing. No wonder they’ve been rebranded the “G.I. Generation”. ↩︎
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If I had the desire, I’d put up a picture of the meme “Change my mind!”. :-) ↩︎
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One of the few generations without a nickname, I’d point out. And before you say “What about Generation Z?”, they’re Zoomers. ↩︎
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Of course, I will claim we had some seriously deep issues to contend with. I mean, we truly believed there was a good chance we’d experience a nuclear Holocaust. No, I’m not kidding. And no one who didn’t live through it will ever understand just how pervasive and deeply we felt this. So much so we had to shove it in a little corner of our brain and forget it was there. And while Climate Change is real, and an existential threat, and in many ways much more tangible, it will also take a long time to wipe out the world. ↩︎