Word association: When I say "Generation X" what is the first word that comes to mind?

[Writer]

?

[blonndee]

flannel.

[Deja Q]

1. Screwed

[hlthe2b]

17. I would have said "vulnerable"

maybe I'm feeling glass half full today...

[OhioChick]

37. Sums it up. n/t

[Greyhound]

41. Gotta go with this, too. n/t

[eShirl]

2. Xmen

2nd word that comes to mind is Pepsi

[Hardrada]

3. orange

hair (second word)

[rwheeler31]

4. Y

[mitchum]

5. Billy Idol's old band and the British novel from the 60s

[Howardx]

8. second

on that one

[mitchum]

25. I realize that it is more than one word...

but then again, I refuse to be manipulated by market research :)

[NashVegas]

132. Third

[mwb970]

136. "Billy Idol" was all that came to me. /nt

[Richard Steele]

134. 200 Cadillacs! nm

[Javaman]

160. Ready, Steady, go!! nt

[ceile]

6. Nirvana

Class of '94. Problem?

[NeedleCast]

13. Same word for me

Class of 92

[laundry_queen]

73. Ditto.

class of '93

[kohodog]

165. yep, class of 71'

but not quite grown up yet.

[TheCowsCameHome]

7. slacker

[El Supremo]

9. Body piercing

That's two words.

[Muttocracy]

10. not a word, but I picture Coupland's book and some grunge bands. nt

[anonymous171]

11. Useless

-in their youth. Thankfully they just grew up.

[LanternWaste]

12. Beavis and Butt-Head.

Beavis and Butt-Head. That protean stew of personality, trendy cynicism and social martyrdom from which all X-er's feed. :P

[Warren DeMontague]

64. That's two words. Or three. Actually, four.

However, "cornholio" is only one word.

[ContinentalOp]

76. Are you threatening me?

[Jennicut]

84. Cornholio?

[LooseWilly]

89. He needs some TP for his bunghole...

[Jennicut]

90. OMG, this brings back mems of watching B and B in my college dorm room

[Bill McBlueState]

146. Where I come from, we have no bunghole

[leftofthedial]

14. slacker

expects something for nothing, but is FAR more diligent than a Gen Y'er.

[ContinentalOp]

15. Slacker.

[tritsofme]

16. The death of Kurt Cobain

Defined that generation for me.

[ColbertWatcher]

18. Marketing. n/t

[mitchum]

20. That is the true answer

[ColbertWatcher]

22. Whenever I see one of those words for an entire generation of people ...

... the first thing that comes to my mind is someone is trying to sell something.

[mitchum]

24. And it's amazing that members of those demographics don't realize that...

they are being pandered to and flattered for their "specialness" only in order to have useless shit sold to them.

[ColbertWatcher]

55. Yes! The Society of Unique Individuals! n/t

[ContinentalOp]

60. Reminds me of this song

http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/browserRedirect?url=itms%253A%252F%252Fax.itunes.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewAlbum%253Fi%253D256716685%2526id%253D256716629%2526s%253D143441

[LooseWilly]

91. Funny, I clicked your link, and it tried to sell me an album...

[ContinentalOp]

109. Oh well, it's a silly song.

I thought it would link to a sample. http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/k/kingmissile15228/itssaturday407588.html

[stevedeshazer]

19. Huh?

[Xithras]

21. Slacker. What else?

Thank you Mr. Strickland for forever associating that term with my generation.

[BlooInBloo]

23. Nirvana.

[doc03]

26. Lazy n/t

[valerief]

27. High school suicide. nt

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

28. Floyd

[bunnies]

148. mmmmmmmm.... honey bear.....

:rofl:

[Mike 03]

29. "Zero" As in "Less than Zero." Then after that, "Cobain". Can I go on?

"Alley Sheedy" and how hard it was to try to get her to act in my student film.

"Alley Sheedy" and what I crush I had on her.

"Bret Easton Ellis" and connecting the characters in "Less than Zero" with the students at my college.

Cocaine.

Sorry, one word is impossible.

[proud patriot]

47. Yup!

[Juche]

30. Reagan

They came of age when the democrats were associated with ineptitude and the GOP with promise. They went Reagan pretty heavily.

[ContinentalOp]

32. The oldest Xers were only 16 when Reagan was first elected. Sorry, try again.

Clinton's election is more directly linked to the coming of age of Generation X.

[htuttle]

35. Naw, try a little older

I agree with the 1962 cutoff for Gen X. I was born in 63, and have absolutely no affinity for the Beatles, Happy Days, Woodstock or 1960's memorabilia. Billy Idol's band, Generation X, released their last album the year I graduated.

To me, the boomers were my parents generation (though they were old boomers, I suppose). I remember getting into the Pistols around the time that I graduated from High School.

[ContinentalOp]

39. OK, I always thought it started with '64, but going from '62...

that means only the very oldest, first year of Gen X would have been of voting age in 1980. By '92 those people would have been 30 so there would be a whole 12 years worth of Xers who voted for Clinton. Not that our vote really made a dent since we're about half the size of the Boomer generation.

Anyway, the idea that Xers are responsible for Reagan is HILARIOUS considering that on the big boomer argument thread the other day, some people were trying to argue that Boomers have no responsibility for the election Reagan because they were still too young and didn't have any political power yet! :rofl:

[htuttle]

46. People blame Gen X for Reagan because of Alex Keaton

...Who in fact, was portrayed by Michael J Fox, a life-long Democrat. That, and Huey Lewis and the News' song "Hip to be Square." The marketing forces of the world were trying to sell cultural change (or reversion) in a big way back then.

Nobody I knew actually watched Family Ties or listened to Huey Lewis, but we got blamed for it anyway...

[ContinentalOp]

51. I watched Family Ties!

But then I was in elementary school at the time. The irony is, of course that Michael J Fox is barely, if at all, a Gen Xer. He was born in 61, the same year as Obama. Although I guess if I'm going to claim Obama as an Xer I'll have to take Alex Keaton too. :P

But the whole reason that Alex P Keaton (a character surely written by boomers) was funny and charming was that he was acting like a grown up Boomer yuppie trapped in the body of a precocious kid. Even the most conservative Xers are really nothing like Keaton.

[Ishoutandscream2]

66. Gen X was originally 1965 to 1978

And yes, the Boomers were not responsible for Ronald Reagan. Boomers had yet to obtain the political power that their elders still held. That also included the power of the media. And no, Gen X was not responsible for Reagan, either.

I can still hear Secretary of the Interior James Watt proclaiming the immorality of the Beach Boys of all things. Reagan was not created by Boomers.

[mitchum]

68. That is utter bullshit...the fucking boomers certainly had "the political power"...

to cast their votes for Reagan. And MANY of them did.
It is apparent that you have not only swallowed boomer mythology...but some other things also.

[eShirl]

133. "to cast their votes for Reagan. And MANY of them did."

And MANY of them did not.

Don't hate on "the fucking boomers."

[NashVegas]

161. Alex Keaton Was A Stereotype

Of a subset of young people, particularly young white males, who loved Reagan for reasons no one quite understood.

I always suspected it may have been linked to a combination of being born during a time of massive divorce rates in the era when it was still believed "kids bounce back on their own," and when sexual mores changed way too rapidly for a young child to process the intellectual component of the Revolution and make sense of the wildly conflicting messages.

It wasn't just in the US. Check out the lyrics to this 1983 Kinks' tune: http://www.rhapsody.com/the-kinks/state-of-confusion/young-conservatives/lyrics.html

[htuttle]

164. Gen X/Gen Jones sort of split in half

Not along age lines alone. I think some of us thought our 1960's parents were wrong, while other ones thought they were hypocrites.

The ones who thought their parents were 'wrong' became Alex Keaton. The ones who thought their parents were hypocrites got into punk (and later, grunge).

I bet very few of us from that era think our parents were right about much. The world they said they'd build absolutely collapsed right around the time we were coming of age.

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

58. I was born in 1970. I was eligible for vote in 1988, which meant Dukakis is

who I cast mine for.

[Juche]

79. They grew up with Reagan, and it made them lean GOP

"Democrats a wide advantage in party identification, just as the previous generation of young people who grew up in the Reagan years -- Generation X -- fueled the Republican surge of the mid-1990's"

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/813/gen-dems



PARTISAN IDENTIFICATION BY GENERATION

Gen Y Gen X Boomers Silent GI
Democrat 38% 36% 37% 39% 39%
Independent 29 25 27 24 20
Republican 33 38 35 36 41
Net D-R +5 -2 +2 +3 -2

http://www.greenbergresearch.com/index.php?ID=1277

In 1984 Reagan won nearly 60% of the voters under 30. So he won the oldest in Generation X and the youngest boomers.

You guys asked me what I associated with Generation X and I told you. Reagan. Reagan made Generation X lean GOP. They didn't vote him in, they were too young. But Carter was the first impression of a democrat and Reagan the first impression of a republican as president to that generation the same way Bush is the first real impression of a republican and Obama the first impression of a democrat to my generation (the millenials).

[Jennicut]

81. Not for those of us born in the mid to late 70's. We were heavily influenced by Clinton.

He and Al Gore turned me into a Dem at 17. Bush was an idiot to me by 1991-92.

[ContinentalOp]

83. Your statistics are unconvincing.

So 36% of Xers are Dems and 37% of boomers are Dems? Wow, such a big difference there! :eyes:

[OHDEM]

86. Plus we "lean" Repub by 2% because of Reagan?

Don't think so. I'm Gen X(born 71) and I couldn't vote for President until 92 - and I voted for Clinton. The mythology might be that Reagan was "popular", but not in my house or my neighborhood. He was a not too smart, not very talented ACTOR who destroyed the economy and either had no clue what was going on in his administration or was almost as evil as Bush II.

Let's say for example a Republican is elected in 2012 (Unlikely, but stay with me on this.), if the millenium generation votes even 2% for the GOP, should we relate them to Bush II? Bet they wouldn't like that, would they?

[Juche]

88. So are your attempts at ridicule

Generation X is tied for the most republican generation listed by pew.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/27/politics-and-the-dotnet-generation

In the party identification by age chart you see a big spike towards the GOP among people who are in their mid 40s, aka people born around the end of the boomer years and the beginning of the generation X years.



Since that chart is from 2006 the biggest impact seems to be among people born around 1955-1970. You see a big hump of people born in that period (people 36 to 51 in the chart) who lean GOP.

Even at its peak, the GOP barely outnumbered dems in generation X. So I'm not saying generation X is a GOP generation per se, I'm saying that them coming of age during Reagan's years made them more likely to be GOP. The chart I posted shows a giant hump towards the GOP among people who came of age politically during the Carter and Reagan years.

[Jennicut]

92. True but the other half of us (the ones in our early thirties/late twenties) think Reagan sucked.

[Juche]

94. Good, because he did suck

My generation is even further to the left. There is a massive move towards the dems that gets bigger and bigger the younger you get from that chart.

[Jennicut]

96. Its Bush. He really turned the youngest generations liberal.

I had Clinton and we kind of took it for granted. At least I did my part and voted for Al Gore.

[ContinentalOp]

105. Good point about taking Clinton for granted.

I think that led to a lot of the "both parties are the same" stuff in 2000.

[Jennicut]

111. 2000 was a nightmare come true. I know they stole it but can't help think of the "if onlys"

It did lead to poor treatment of Gore and the whole Nader fiasco. I was 24 then. I will never ever not vote for a Dem candidate vs a Rethug one from that experience.

[ContinentalOp]

114. Unfortunately that's not really the lesson I learned.

I was 23 that year, and that election did nothing to dampen my cynicism. I was going to vote for Nader but I got lazy and stayed home and you know what -- it didn't matter one iota because I live in CA and my vote doesn't really count!

[Jennicut]

116. I live in CT. Doesn't matter. Always Dem for me. No Rethugs should ever be allowed in.

Even if Hillary got the nomination I was gonna vote for her (and I was not a big fan of her's at all).

[LooseWilly]

123. Yeah, Clinton didn't seem much different than Bush 41.

I mean, personally, if he'd not gone half-assed and gone with Don't Ask Don't Tell... if he'd really done something dramatic at that point... I might've really believed there was a difference. As it turned out... I didn't believe.

I didn't really have any kind feelings for Clinton until the bullshit impeachment started.

And then Gore tried to distance himself from Clinton, because of the blowjob. And, Gore's wife Tipper had gone after Punk Rock Bands in the early 80's... Tipper killed the Dead Kennedys.

So, fuck it... I voted for Nader. I still think the country needs a 3rd party. Or even a 4th...
W was so awful though, that I'm a Democrat for now. We'll see how long that lasts.

[ContinentalOp]

112. That hump looks to me like people aged 40-50 in '05/'06

More like people born between '55 and '65, the majority of them being Boomers, depending on which year you pick as the generational divide. Besides, how much does party identification mean when many of these Democratically registered boomers voted for Reagan? What that hump really represents is "Generation Jones" though I still think of them all as boomers. Except Obama. He's one of ours :P

[LooseWilly]

95. I grew up with Reagan

and it made me lean Anarchist... especially after the drubbing Dukakis got despite my vote.

Maybe it's just being in California... but I don't know anyone from my generation that would ever vote Republican after growing up with Reagan. I mean, unless they had a very dark sense of humor....

[htuttle]

33. Except the ones that got mohawks

I'd say, "Hopeless", because I had a mohawk.

But as above, 'Cocaine' and 'Less Than Zero' are probably the most accurate.

[Romulox]

144. Bizarre, time-distorting post. Look for more of this type of revisionism from the Boomers...

[rvablue]

145. I'm with you, bizarre, indeed! They can't take responsibility for giving us Reagan and Bush I

I'd love to go back and find every single boomer that was at Woodstock and poll them on who they voted for in '80, '84 and '88.

I'd bet half of them or more voted GOP.

But, but, but, it was the tiny of fraction of Gen Xers who could even vote in '88 that made that happen!?!?!?!?! :sarcasm:

[Juche]

154. I'm not a boomer, I'm 29

In retrospect the generation that fell for Reagan's bullshit was likely Generation Jones, not Generation X. So perhaps I am wrong on that.

[Raineyb]

155. Gen X? Voted for Regan?

I don't think so. Most of us couldn't even vote when Reagan was in office. You're going to have to look up a generation to find someone to blame for that if you're so inclined to find someone to blame.

[Juche]

156. I think I confused Generation X with Generation Jones

My mistake. Generation Jones was 1955-65 and they seem to be the ones that lean GOP. Some people lump the 2 together (Jones and X) and some call them both Generation X, claiming anyone 1961-1980 is Gen X.

[omega minimo]

31. mallrat

[Bucky]

34. A Sprite commercial. Or maybe it was Pepsi.

[eShirl]

135. it was the Pepsi commercial that really made it a household word

ok, household phrase

[Mike 03]

36. The answers are great. I just wish there were more rec's for this post. I am such a child of

gen X, and it is such a part of my identity, that I am dying to know what others think, and I'm afraid this thread will die, and I need to know how others feel about this.

I love this thread, and I just wanted to try to boost it a bit, in case it might gain steam.

I'm so in this boat.

[bananas]

40. I'll give it a rec for you.

[Mike 03]

45. Thank you. Much appreciated. NT

[mitchum]

70. The marketers will be overjoyed to know that...

"I'm so in this boat"
And that's exactly where they want you to be.

[rox63]

38. The band that spawned Billy Idol n/t

[whoneedstickets]

42. Overshadowed...

..I'm an X'er and is clear the songs, movements, wailing and greed of the boomers has tended to eclipse whatever nascent efforts our group made. In fact, being anti-boomer (generally cynical, anti-extremist, anti-idealist) seems to me our motivating credo.

[Mari333]

43. my son nt

[Fumesucker]

44. The Truth Is Out There..

Oh wait..

[proud patriot]

48. Metallica

Van Halen

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

49. Shopping

[ContinentalOp]

52. Hmm, I've never heard that stereotype and it doesn't really ring true.

Stereotypically, weren't Gen Xers known for our thrift store shopping and avoiding anything that is seen as being too trendy?

[OhioBlue]

65. naw - we followed trends and loved the mall.

thrift stores were a trend. we didn't do it until someone cool did.

big hair, pinch rolled jeans, jellies, stirrup pants, lee jeans, nike shoes, iou sweatshirts, we totally followed trends in the 80's.

[ContinentalOp]

77. Yeah, true. I'm at the tail end of the generation.

We were against all of that shit in the '90s. At least on the surface.

[TahitiNut]

50. Slacker

[Beam Me Up]

53. Slacker but the archetype is Maynard G. Krebs n/t

[gkhouston]

54. Stereotyping. n/t

[muntrv]

56. The Seattle rock groups of the early 90s.

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

57. My generation.

[OhioBlue]

59. latch key kids, reality bites, after school special,

I'm gen x - born in '72. When I hear "Gen X" it makes me think of the '80s and kids in the 80's.

[Warren DeMontague]

61. Stipealicious.

Although, yeah, technically he's a boomer.

[underpants]

62. X Games skateboarders having to stop and catch their breath

the first X Games this happened and my buddies and I just ragged on them for it

[Sebastian Doyle]

63. 70's punk band featuring a vocalist named William Broad

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tRg73iZIquM/RnpxrvouKtI/AAAAAAAALkw/5MDSOzDTWnQ/s320/generation+x.jpg

[Ishoutandscream2]

67. Whiny

and rude. Oh, one word. I guess I'll stick with whiny.

[mitchum]

69. Ironic that an apologist for the glorious boomers has the utter fucking gall...

to label another demographic as "whiny"
Fucking incredible.
Oh...and wipe your chin.

[Touchdown]

71. Condom wearers.

Thank you free lovers of the 70s!!!!:(

[Tyler Generation]

72. OLD

All the icons of Gen X are dead or well over 40.

And yes, I know one day I'll be old and bla, bla, bla.

[Jennicut]

82. Some of them died young sadly. Cobain killed himself when I was in high school.

It was a real downer.

[havocmom]

74. Problems are not generational- It's the CLASS WARFARE that hurts us all

And the way the top class keeps winning, while greatly outnumbered, is by turning various segments against each other to keep us to busy to notice they are feeding on all of us.

[nonconformist]

75. Me!

[Blue_In_AK]

78. Pearl Jam?

[LooseWilly]

98. Bite your tongue.

I hate to break the news to you, but Pearl Jam... erhhmm... sucks.
Please don't try to associate anything except corporate profit margins to Pearl Jam.

Thank you.

You could at least list... Nirvana, Tad, Skinny Puppy, Social Distortion, the Supersuckers, the Cramps, Chumbawamba, or quite a number of other bands that ... don't suck.

[Jennicut]

102. Aww, poor Eddie Vedder. Jeremy was like THE song when I was in high school.

LOL

[Blue_In_AK]

104. Well, you could be right,

but it was the first thing that popped into my head, which was the question.

[LooseWilly]

119. Heh, I see your point there.

I just harbor a personal grudge I guess...

[Warren DeMontague]

118. Skinny Puppy? I'd sooner stick electrodes on my own testicles.

I lived with animal rights activists in college one year. AeeeeeeSKRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRReeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Erm, no thanks. If I had needed that badly to piss off my folks with some kind of horrible industrial grade screeching and machine noise, I would have brought a rotary saw home for the summer and simply ran it all night long. Skipped the middleman.

Whereas actually, I think Pearl Jam has done some solid work since their overhyped early days.

But, hey, if that cat-in-a-blender sound is your thing, more power to you. :hippie:

[LooseWilly]

120. Heh, you may be right.

I doubt it, but, as I said before, Pearl Jam has generally seemed to be a group of worthy human beings. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a single instance of music from them that didn't suck.

I don't mean it as a critique on their humanity... solely a spot of "constructive criticism" of their music.
I will admit that I can't tell their early work from their later... and maybe some of their later work is alright. All I know is that every time I've heard their music... it has sucked... and when I didn't recognize it as Pearl Jam, I ahve asked whoever exposed me to said music who it was, before exclaiming that it sucked... and in the case of suck music that happened to be Pearl Jam... well, it's always turned out to be Pearl Jam.

I don't blame you for not being a fan of Skinny Puppy though. It's not easy on the ears and pop-musicky (by any stretch) like Pearl Jam.
Likewise... I would assume you'd not be a fan of Christian Death, or a number of other bands of that milieu. Let alone Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie... and the others that've later evolved from the industrial genre.

I could give you the names of some other bands though... that're equally challenging.. but your dismissive comment of "If I had needed that badly to piss off my folks with some kind of horrible industrial grade screeching and machine noise...", in my opinion, squarely defines you as someone who thinks all music is merely a way of 'getting back at our folks"... I find that very sad... to think that you find music solely to be a means of age-ist warfare... you apparently lack a dimension of personal soul that would allow for a real personal point of view in terms of musical taste... and I find that to be a shame.

I hope that the music that you use to "piss off your folks" is at least something better than Pearl Jam... elsewise I feel sincerely sorry for you.

[Warren DeMontague]

124. I'm a Deadhead. So, that's where I'm coming from. You can recoil in abject horror, if you wish.

Funny thing, I got stuck in the dorms in college with a roommate who was into what was then called, I guess, Death Metal. I could sort of grasp the technical chops of someone like, say, Dave Mustaine, but a lot of the stuff this cat was into was really atrocious in terms of not just sound but message- lots of hate, anger, homophobia, etc. It was pretty clear to me that his problem had directly to do with not getting laid. So-- why did they stick me with this guy? I figured that the genius who did the room assignments saw "Death Metal" and "Grateful Dead" on our Q&A form and thought the two sounds were similar.

Either that, or they had a very advanced- for college in the mid 80s- sense of humor and irony.

Hey, at least Skinny Puppy- from what I remember of it- was coming from a liberal pov, not arguing against "queers" or some such gibberish. Like I said, that year I lived with a couple of animal rights activists. Some of their other musical taste was pretty good, and overlapped with mine. The pissing off the folks thing was tongue in cheek. No offense intended, really.

Marilyn Manson always seemed -to me- a little too interested in trying to shock people and not much else, but I'm cool with Rob Zombie. I'm not completely incapable of appreciating a range of musical styles.

The Butthole Surfers, now they made some quality music in the 80s.

[LooseWilly]

126. Ahh, the irony...

In the acid haze of my college days (the late 80s)... I managed to get my brother into the Dead... despite his being a hard core punk into Nirvana, MDC, Citizen Fish, RKL, the Dayglo Abortions, and a number of other bands...
Skinny Puppy was an experiment in strange for everyone.
You'll love this... it was after coming back from a Grateful Dead show on Halloween... must've been '90 or so... that I put on a friend's Death Angel cd.... while still on the some good acid... and that's when I realized how cool Death Metal was.
Death Angel. Slayer. Some Metallica. Danzig.... Misfits (here we're verging into punk...)

Yeah, there's death metal that isn't fit to listen to. There're also a couple of Dead albums that're barely fit to listen to (Shakedown Street?... that's some hordcore dedication...)
Skinny Puppy, Christian Death, and Marilyn Manson are at least not as awful as some of the stuff that.. well, that I've turned off long before I knew the name of it.
Hehe.. though you would've loved to see the twitchiness of a girlfriend of a friend that I brought to a dead show... she was actually a skin head nazi (I didn't fully realize it at the time... though my friend was an asshole, so I wasn't surprised to hear it)... but this nazi chick freaked out at a Dead show... convinced that the hippies were gonna corner her and beat the living snot out of her... which, in hindsight... I kind of wish they had done... but.. who are we kidding.. she was just a paranoia case.

[Warren DeMontague]

128. People listen to the albums?

Shit, maybe the drugs DO hurt your brain. ;-)

American Beauty & Workingman's Dead, that's about it for the album-albums, for me.

Ha, too funny. Punk, metal, psychedelia, country,-- there's overlap everywhere. I remember I had a friend who blasted Beethoven to the parking lot at Alpine Valley while dosed out of his freakin' gourd. Most of my skater friends in college were big into Metallica (before they "sold out", of course)... likewise many of us thought early R.E.M. was the best thing since sliced bread, until they... you get the drift.

Anyway, I think I saw that nazi chick at that show!



Peace! :hippie:

[LooseWilly]

129. Hehe... that isn't her....

but yeah, if you were at a show at the shoreline in around '90 you might've seen her freaking out... poor skinhead fucktard that she was.

I agree, those were the albums worth having... but being young at the time... I only had some slice of idea of what the Dead was about... though I did make it to several shows, so I do know something of it.
My brother got it... despite his punk rock ideals. Most of the others I dragged to the shows, not so much. The Butthole Surfers really did have something to add...
The industrial scene that came afterward was ... another scene. Skinny Puppy, Christian Death, what have you... it was a club scene... but at least it had some heart...
Pearl Jam, they might've had some heart... but their music just plain sucked. Stone Temple Pilots... they had no heart, and they sucked...

[NeedleCast]

149. You say Pearl Jam Sucks

and then go on to mention Chumbawamba as a band that didn't suck?

Music cred fail.

[Jennicut]

80. confusion....heck I am one of them.

We were always the confused slacker weird baby boomer's kids generation.

[Tindalos]

85. I refuse to be labeled.

The "word" that comes to mind is more of a finger gesture. You get the picture.

Edit: Gesture not aimed at you, in case you wondered.

[LooseWilly]

87. Bullshit

I didn't read Generation X, but I read Shampoo Planet. Coupland sucks as a writer. I refuse to acknowledge the title of one of his books as a label for my generation... because that would mean we suck as much as he does.
And what's his fuck with the "Staggering Work of Breathtaking Genius" or whatever the fuck he called that steaming pile of literary-wannabe-shit... he can go fuck himself too.

The problem with being part of a generation in which Reagan was in charge is that the cultural industry was so spun on coke and had their tongues up so many asses that they had no idea what was really going on... and they didn't care. They grabbed onto convenient tripe that they could attribute to youth and called it representative, and then went to parties to do blow and talk about their stock market worth... and that's my theory that at least gives them the benefit of the doubt.
Otherwise they were just plain stupid.

Again, Coupland was a douchebag asswipe who wrote cliches as if they were somehow enlightened Warhol-esque pop-haikus... which would've been cool.. except his attempt amounted to little turds in the stream of pop culture. Mtv was more deeply culturally relevant and interesting...

Of course, I could be over stating. Perhaps my generation really is vapid enough to deserve to be likened to turds in the stream of pop culture...

[Jennicut]

93. Why are we always the ones picked on? Why were we always called slackers?

I never had a McJob and got a degree in Psychology, working with troubled kids. I refused to read any of the Coupland stuff.

[LooseWilly]

100. Hehe... I have held a number of McJobs... and I have read some Coupland.

And I have listened to Nirvana, on and off shrooms. And I have some flannels, and I used to shower only once every 7-10 days.. and I also have a degree in English Lit from UC Berkeley, speak fluent Spanish, and have written several books which I've self published (all of which are better than anything Coupland has written... that Hack, let alone Eggers... that useless sack of meat), and which I've sold through independent bookstores.

I say we're picked on because Coupland wrote precisely what the Boomers wanted to hear... that the generation coming up behind them were a bunch of neo-greedheads who were confused idiots... I think that's why he got published... because that was a line that the Boomers wanted to hear, and would be willing to buy... because it excused them for having sold out all the idealistic tripe they'd wanted to believe that they believed... and if the next generation were a bunch of greedhead swine with day dreams of becoming corporate tools, as Coupland made us out to be... well then the Boomer's selling out wasn't a sell out of their own children. Coupland is essentially a Boomer collaborator... making their self-sellingout seem like an act taken in consideration of their children... when they really just couldn't take the hangovers... especially the acid hangovers... anymore.

[Jennicut]

101. Ha! I too listened to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, my brother wore the flannels though

I agree, the boomers wanted to put us down because of guilt for being the ones to sell out. They bought into the Reagan myth, my own parents sure did.

[LooseWilly]

103. Heh.. my brother was also more into the flannels...

... but neither of us could, or can today, listen to Pearl Jam. It's kind of ironic, actually... because everything I hear suggests that the band is full of great human beings... but I can't stand their music.

And yeah, my mom sort of reluctantly bought into the Reagan Myth. Sort of.
My brother was a punk/grunge rocker, and I was some sort of educated hippy punk grunge freak... and I wasn't into Nirvana until I heard them on mushrooms (damn, that was some heavy hypnotic grooves they had...)

If anyone here mentions Stone Temple Pilots to me, though, they will hear a torrent of profanity to make a sailor weep.
I saw them co-headline with the Butthole Surfers, and as far as I'm concerned... it was the last time I was able to think of the Butthole Surfers without my thoughts being stained by the Pilots having pissed all over them...

[Blue_In_AK]

107. I'm a boomer and I never put any of you guys down.

You were my kids and their friends. Why would I put you down?

[Jennicut]

110. True. I should have said some. Some boomers never stopped being liberals.

[ContinentalOp]

115. That's what's confusing about the whole thing.

Why was the boomer generation so intent on putting their children down? Obviously it wasn't everyone but there was a pretty strong media-driven narrative there in the '90s.

[LooseWilly]

125. And I toast you for that..

... and I made a point of not taking personally that you mentioned Pearl Jam earlier. It was a MSM association... and you recognized it as just that.

Cheers sir/madam, a boomer after mine own heart... as I hope to be a (not-Xer) after the hearts of those who come up behind us...

Hehe... the labels really are just a sociological bit of simplification on the part of the culture/news would-be commentators after all... aren't they... as I get older they become more laughable. It'll be interesting to see what the cultural movement theorists in art theory textbooks say...

[ContinentalOp]

108. Perfect analysis.

Of the boomer/x dynamic that is. Never read Coupland myself.

Edit: Er.. that was actually meant to be a reply to post #100

[LooseWilly]

127. Heh, they're both my posts.

So thank you, either way.

I often get the feeling that my generation was expected to just play along, or something. Coupland was given "jurisdiction" over us, if I remember right, about the time I was near graduation from high school.
it wasn't until later that I realized he was an asshole.
I'd read Generation X, but only if I find it in a thrift store. I'm not sending a dollar to that asshole.
I'm sure the book is similarly full of shit to Shampoo Planet.
It borders on reasonable writing... so close... but there's something missing. A soul is my personal guess.

The irony is that, between a rejection of Coupland's easy commercialist bullshit... and a Bukowskian drunken work ethic.... and... what else is ther on the table to judge a generation against?
A tide of bullshit family epics?
Is the real point of judging literature whether or not a family member had cancer... or lumbago?...
What... dear audience... are we looking for from our word pimps?

[mitchum]

157. You may have just become my favorite literary critic...

based on your assessment of Coupland and Eggers.
Nothing but self-promoting hacks with branded shticks.

[PBS Poll-435]

97. Crackintosh

:shrug:

[Joe Fields]

99. clueless

[bridgit]

106. The first 'word'? How bout image?

[Golden Raisin]

113. Whiners.

[LooseWilly]

130. Because you had it so much harder?

Whiner how? (before I go all Bullwinkle out of turn)

[KillCapitalism]

117. How about generation fucked. n/t

[JonLP24]

121. X=Unknown

First thing that came to my mind honestly. Other then that I have no idea what Generation X means.

[Lilith Velkor]

122. This is a war. This is a war on drugs. Any questions?

[Name removed]

131. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pipoman]

137. MTV

& The Wall

How uncreative the moniker Generation Y is, and short sighted for that matter...what will the next generation be? Z? Then what?

[Echo In Light]

138. Doom Generation

[cherish44]

139. Angst

I'm an older Gen Xer, just turned 42. Many of us spent our formative childhood/teen years in the midst of the selfish, greedy Reagan years of the 1980s, so after watching our parents act like indulgent petulant snots, we got all angsty and disillusioned. Thing is grunge was a very short-lived fad but it was such a shock after the indulgent and hedonisistic times directly before that really struck a chord with people. The popular music scene went from spandex and hairspray and partying to flannel and "shampoo? what's that?" and "everything sucks" overnight.

Anyway we've now left behind the angst of youth and are now mostly people in our 30s and 40s basically hanging on in quiet desperation.

[Echo In Light]

140. Hi ya ... I'm just 3 yrs behind you. Re the 'grunge' thing, tho, I was a working musician in the 90s

...and every several yrs or so sizable % of the youth pop culture tends to revolt/rebel against the previous music of choice that of course was ruined via being co-opted into corporate commodity form.

In other words, whatever form it takes on as a means of rebelling against the previous form, it usually ends up in the same category, ha ...well, by and large. There are still very underground forms of metal and other types of music that have always been and always will be far removed from any mainstream sensibilities. Thank god ;)

[dorkulon]

141. Douglas Coupland, then Billy Idol.

Then myself.

[JDPriestly]

142. Young.

[Stevenmarc]

143. Over-promoted

[Odin2005]

147. Grunge Rock (I'm a 23yo "Millennial" BTW)

Oh, and lots of unfair bashing by their Boomer elders.

[Bluenorthwest]

150. Whatever!

Two things, Billy Idol and apathy.

[FailureToCommunicate]

153. Agreed, good call. But the apathy may have to due to affluence and NO DRAFT.

[calico1]

151. People about 10years younger than me. n/t

[Fendius]

152. Fight Club

:shrug:

[Matariki]

158. Passe

not the generation, but the phrase

[Javaman]

159. Billy Idol. yes, I know I'm middle aged. nt

[LSdemocrat]

162. Nirvana/grunge both popped into my head about the same time

Neither of them with a positive connotation for me.

FYI, I am a borderline Gen Y/Millenial.

[Fovea]

163. Grunge.

That was right there.