It's strange, but I've found myself genuinely enjoying my life *more* as I age (nearing 30 in a few months), but that also coincides with moving off of the social media platforms over the last several years. Few of the people my age (who i see in person) show any fears of aging beyond what probably any generation in history has shown (because aging and dying is hard!), but the terminally online people are really struggling with it. They're still slipping into the trends, vocal patterns, and jokes of people far younger than them that they only interact with online, and there's something awfully sad about it. It's clear that they don't really belong to the trends of the generation that's younger than them, and they also don't fit in with themselves. It feels like a recipe for disaster and further alienation.
This is pretty much my experience too! The online culture around covid was so toxic I just stopped using social media as soon as I escaped from NY state. My attitude in my new life was, "if I'm online all the time, I might as well have stayed in Lockdown Land". The move away from social media has been just as important as the move away from NY for my sanity and my ability to actually become a better (and more mature) version of myself.
that's great that you're in a better spot. It's a bit sad to look back on all of the time I spent terminally online -- I can't pull anything out of it that makes that time spent online feel worth it.
I feel like it's addictive when real life is lacking something. Honestly, it was easier to get off social media once I got into a really good romantic relationship. It's much easier to look for attention online when you're single or in a bad relationship.
It's not weird at all. Everyone's 20s universally suck. Okay, maybe not if you have a trust fund or something. But for everyone else, generally the 20s are full of being poor miserable, anxious, striving, not knowing WTF you're doing with your life, and putting on a front.
30s are so much better it's not even the slightest contest. I know zero people who think their 20s were anything but the worst...it's just that they don't admit that til they're older, because in their 20s they're still trying to be cool. The whole culture lies and pretends your 20s are the height of your life because your skin is still taut and bouncy, but that's literally the ONLY thing you have going, which does not make up for all the rest of it.
This is deeply reassuring. My girlfriend and I have been wondering how life changes as one gets older, because people online make it seem so dismal, but at the same time I can't help daydreaming about having some idea what my life will be like, my own place to live, being married, having a family and a career and overall that basic sense of security.
Unless literally the only thing you care about in life is being hot, and you don't care whatsoever for things like comfort, status, security, accomplishment, home, money, or things like building a life with someone/family, then 30s are so much better than 20s it's not even funny. And I say this as someone who will admit that I actually DO and did care a lot about being hot. But still, the 10-20% degradation in hotness does not even come close to outweighing the 500% increase in all those other factors I mentioned. In your 20s you're just floating around with nothing. It's like a decade-long New Year's Even where there's all this pressure for it to be the most fun and coolest ever, and in reality it totally sucks and no one ever has as much fun as they think they're supposed to.
I'm not hot currently so I don't have much leverage in that department, lol. I obviously care about being healthy but hopefully that will be mostly tied to my life choices.
Yes. Getting old rocks. Also, most men do better with women as they get older. My wife is 13 years younger than me, and she is way older than the women I dated before her. Young men are never taught that it gets so much easier as you age, so long as you make intelligent decisions (work more, save more). Youth comes with insecurities and terror. Life is better once you can set those aside. Furthermore, I cannot help but to think life is better for anyone willing to put the phone down and pick up good books. The wisdom is still there, if you are willing to acquire it.
There is one huge illogicality about this oft repeated meme: "far fewer of us [millenials] are going to be buying homes..." Maybe not but they are going to INHERIT THEM off their boomer parents! Far fewer boomers inherited propery.
As atomization increases, generations are less rooted within their own cohorts. When you have less and less real friends, your idea of someone your own age becomes a narcissistic projection of your own personality. In the case of millennials, with their poor economic conditions and social media induced imposter syndrome feelings of inadequacy, this projection happens to be filled with a million different perceived flaws. Of course they don't care for people of their own age, they remind them of themselves.
When you can't be satisfied with your own friends, your own self, your only option left is to live vicariously through the youth. A mirror into the potential you've squandered. Fan fiction self inserts in reality.
This obsession with youth, juvemania, isn't just limited to socially damned millennials. Even for Genz, rolemodels of yesteryear, action stars and athletes, have been dethroned by younger and younger influencers. Your typical 14 year old doesn't aspire to be old man Robert Downy Junior -- they look half a centimeter up to some streamer that is barely a year older than them, if not the same age. As online media concentrates fame to younger and younger influencers, as the money flows from older cohorts trying to buy their respect, even the youngest will reach a tipping point. What happens when a Gen Z, with their adult life still far ahead of them, feels pathetic in the face of a Gen A starlet that has achieved everything they've ever dreamed of?
If the media and material conditions don't change for the better, the self esteem of Zoomers, Gen A, etc. will be in even more dire psychological straits. They won't even have a punching bag generation of geriatrics to blame all of their problems on. Maybe online notoriety should be relegated to vtubers, AI, etc. so future generations won't feel lousy in the face of impossible standards. They can finally admit to themselves that the standards have become inhuman and move on with their lives.
I sometimes watch Youtube videos detailing the lightning-fast rises and falls of various online celebrities. Entire ecosystems that I'm only now learning about. In one sense, it's encouraging because it reveals that everyone lives in their own bubble and the things that you obsessively care about aren't the be-all end-all. But it's also dismaying because it reveals that everyone lives in their own bubble and the things that you obsessively care about aren't the be-all end-all.
The worship of youth and obsession with renewal and novelty is a predictable consequence of a nihilistic age. This has happened before.
Whenever there's a crisis of faith, a lack of belief in an overarching purpose or meaning to the structure of life, the terror of death and non-existance rises up to swallow us. We cannot psychologically handle the truth of our inevitable end without religious buffers between us and the devastating truth. No matter how much we gloss over it.
People want to be young because they are afraid of dying.
That makes sense. The flipside to glorifying living in the moment (or for today) is that tomorrow holds no value. And tomorrow is what getting older and ultimately children represent. There's no reason to be the ant anymore. Everyone just ought to be the grasshopper.
Oh yes! I am convinced the reason intelligent environmentalism turned into the modern death cult it has become because of people's need for religion. Germany getting rid of nuclear power and restarting their coal programs was a perfect example of this. I used to be active in environmental activism, but I could not do it anymore when it stopped being out the earth and became some kind of high school nightmare with demands for terrorism and grown men behaving like psychopaths. I recall a Muslim buddy telling me that Islamic terrorist groups probably started the same way.
If it makes you feel any better I am incredibly disappointed in my cohort, Generation X. There we were, coming of age at the cusp of not just a new century, but a new era of human history, and yet many of us treated young adulthood as a chore - one which was only made tolerable by partying (Gen X popularised the rave) and consuming media (we took to reality television like a toddler to a soft serve sundae). The worst part is that Gen X was not actually bad-natured - they were just extremely passive, self-centred and prematurely pessimistic. If you were basic and fun, you watched Friends and Sex and the City. If you were deep and complex, you watched The Matrix and American Beauty. That’s it. No one wanted to reform culture (or anything else) much less quietly revolutionise it. You either danced the macarena or mocked the macarena - or both.
I actually attended a large, urban high school where most of my classmates were the children of non-White, upper-middle class immigrants. As a kitchen grease baby from a Northern mining town I was shocked, and really pleased, at how loud, proud and ambitious they all were. Yet looking back thirty years on I wonder how many of those beautiful South Asian, East Asia and Black kids kept up their uninhibited, relenting confidence after graduation. I wonder whether they kept up their ties to their communities and kept polishing up their racial, cultural and religious identities for all to see. I wonder how much of their revolutionary level of self-respect they sacrificed to achieve their personal ambitions - whether professional, social or cultural, and whether that sacrifice made any personal success they carved out feel flat and second rate.
No one generation can take up the burdening of continuing humanity alone. Yet Western civilisation’s end state of extreme individualism, consumerism and competition has made every successive generation since the Baby Boomers feel alone, from each other and among themselves. We share this time together, this fleeting chance, yet instead of reaching out or even exchanging a sympathetic glance, we spend most of our time looking over our shoulders and passing side-eye. Eternal adolescents indeed - without any mad, egotistical, subversive adolescent hope.
“So in this environment, why shouldn’t the teenager be the most aspirational form? Nobody expects accountability and responsibility from you, but that’s now an asset and privilege.”
So much good stuff here, was honored to have my piece included. As a Zoomer, I feel like the point about having a very offline childhood distinguishes Millennials and Gen Zers immensely. I am an elder Gen Z so wasn’t as subject to the iPad baby treatment as my younger siblings and I can see a visible difference between their communication habits and my own. As someone who graduated college last year, it’s weird feeling so old whenever I go online.
Wny shouldn't the culture valorize youth and beauty above all else?
Unless you have some amazing talent, whether for self-promotion or for more concrete things such as financial math, basketball, or makeup, when just about every success story is really a story of successful grift, it is abundantly obvious that the only thing that hard work and devotion to duty will get you is old.
So you might as well swing for the fences, get rich or die trying, while you still can capitalize on your one asset that might be of value to somebody, somewhere.
My reply to Thomas del Vasto's comment could also apply here, that when there's no appealing vision for the future, it only makes sense to only value youth and beauty.
Youth, fertility, and beauty are also short-lived. That's why they're valued so highly. Anti-aging products and procedures aren't always used wisely anyway, so people often just end up looking bloated or like some caricature of their younger selves.
Skills and intelligence can last longer, but aging will eventually ruin it with Alzheimer's, dementia, hormone decline, and aching joints. It's only a matter of time before we basically awaken to darkness (my dad died around 5 in the morning, for example).
Decline is inevitable. We envy life and potential. It's natural.
If one values time, he uses it. Hiding away from the world, recording everything instead of doing anything is far from the best use of time. I am so happy I traveled the world and had a great time in my youth. I would be devastated if I were my age and all I had to show for it were a bunch of photos and online posts. If ANYTHING, i am thrilled that I was wise enough to use regular film as long as I did, given that so many early social media platforms are gone.
I see this often in my everyday life, and even in my own dating life. Embracing pessimism in this environment becomes an all too tasty anodyne for the weary heart.
Even just a few years ago when things like Bernie were still a thing. Seems like a different era. Now, it may not even be as much pessimism as it is numbness.
In fact, a lot of what's written here seems to be applicable to Gen X. I know lots of middle-aged Gen X retards who are still into childish diversions and youth culture.
In truth, the same could be said of the Boomers. Have you ever seen The Big Chill? The hippies did not age gracefully. The Boomers were the first to truly reorganize society around a cult of youth. And they are NOT letting it go.
Has it gotten worse? Maybe. But the Boomers suck at getting old, Gen X sucks at getting old... and yes, sure, Millennials also suck at getting old.
TL;DR my generation did it first and better, because we are better than you are at being childish assholes.
True, no generation ages 100% gracefully. But my feeling that it's a major jump between Gen X and Millennial, mainly due to online culture. And Gen Z will be worse than Millennials, but the magnitude of that jump won't be as stark.
That seems plausible. The internet has inflicted a lot of brain damage on people (especially me), and Millennials got hit with the full fire hose as kids.
“… even 21-year old women lament their youth slipping away. ”
I have a specific recollection of feeling this way at age 20, in 1983. I may even write about it. I have an idea for her little story or vignette about the episode. But it’s not that unusual to feel this in early adulthood.
Do you think it also has to do with boomers retirement age being in their late sixties? Working longer than before means change in culture because they are still in higher positions longer and unwilling to share with different age groups. And, people are owning homes, getting married, and having kids later making what an adult look differently.
I wonder if this has something to do with some gen x and younger people weaponizing identitarianism to attain a certain degree of power, status, and influence.
If conventional opportunities to climb the ladder are few and far between, why not hijack the legacy of the civil rights movement and deftly modify some of its tenets so it can be used in a war of all against all to get what you want from the boomers who invented it (or for that matter the ruling class that ultimately had to accept it)?
This might go a long way towards explaining why the this sort of skullduggery appears to be most common in arenas in which competition is fierce and there's significant subjective wiggle room in decision making processes, such as the arts.
I think the thing I get most out of this is the "stuckness" of the Millenial generation, in a vastly different way than the disaffected air of Gen X. Perhaps not a revelatory thought, but my generation spends an inordinate amount of time pining for the so-called hallmarks of generational attainment, thus being put off by having to put other things off--a bit like delayed gratification in a way. The bit that gets me is, how much of this is reality, (we can't afford nice things) and not insecurity related to unprocessed reactions from almost two decades of foreign wars and a few spells of an anemic economy?
How much of it is class based? I'm just spitballing as I still process the bits you wrote, but it seems to me Millenials are caught in a state of perpetual adolescence. I hate to say not sure why, as I've often seen older folks who go through trying times mature up appropriately, but Mills seem stubborn on this point.
The defining concern of Gen X was "selling out" to corporations. The defining concern of Millenials was "selling in" ie desperately trying to find sponsorship for your creative output. Different times different conditions.
GenXer here. One thing I see about Millennials that's not aging well is, well, their desire for moral authority.
If you read your Strauss & Howe, the Millennials were supposed to be the next Greatest Generation, sacrificing and winning in unison and bringing in big government (hopefully good government, YMMV) for the next American High, with themselves given a blank check for whatever they want like the Greatest Generation got.
This has not happened--at least not yet. And they're rapidly aging out of the target demo.
Meanwhile, the boomers are boomering--snickering among those who aren't already checked out and marking time. And GenX is going AW HELL NO!
Now, I think the Millennials will get it by default, once the boomers move on to that great Woodstock in the sky. Because GenX are still those "irresponsible" 18YOs Society decided they couldn't trust with a beer. As a GenXer, I know how this story ends.
The question is if Millennials haven't taken up that mantle of "next Greatest Generation," is it because they can't or won't? It's probably an impossible question to answer at this point. It's possible that if given equal opportunity to either dwell in perpetual adolescence vs. take up greater societal responsibility, Millennials would've still chosen the former. But maybe they all post-hoc rationalized that choice when they saw the latter was impossible (e.g. the political class still being dominated by Boomers). And at this point, nobody knows what their true motivations are.
It's strange, but I've found myself genuinely enjoying my life *more* as I age (nearing 30 in a few months), but that also coincides with moving off of the social media platforms over the last several years. Few of the people my age (who i see in person) show any fears of aging beyond what probably any generation in history has shown (because aging and dying is hard!), but the terminally online people are really struggling with it. They're still slipping into the trends, vocal patterns, and jokes of people far younger than them that they only interact with online, and there's something awfully sad about it. It's clear that they don't really belong to the trends of the generation that's younger than them, and they also don't fit in with themselves. It feels like a recipe for disaster and further alienation.
Just after I speculated that Zillennials had the best of both worlds lol
This is pretty much my experience too! The online culture around covid was so toxic I just stopped using social media as soon as I escaped from NY state. My attitude in my new life was, "if I'm online all the time, I might as well have stayed in Lockdown Land". The move away from social media has been just as important as the move away from NY for my sanity and my ability to actually become a better (and more mature) version of myself.
that's great that you're in a better spot. It's a bit sad to look back on all of the time I spent terminally online -- I can't pull anything out of it that makes that time spent online feel worth it.
I feel like it's addictive when real life is lacking something. Honestly, it was easier to get off social media once I got into a really good romantic relationship. It's much easier to look for attention online when you're single or in a bad relationship.
It's not weird at all. Everyone's 20s universally suck. Okay, maybe not if you have a trust fund or something. But for everyone else, generally the 20s are full of being poor miserable, anxious, striving, not knowing WTF you're doing with your life, and putting on a front.
30s are so much better it's not even the slightest contest. I know zero people who think their 20s were anything but the worst...it's just that they don't admit that til they're older, because in their 20s they're still trying to be cool. The whole culture lies and pretends your 20s are the height of your life because your skin is still taut and bouncy, but that's literally the ONLY thing you have going, which does not make up for all the rest of it.
This is deeply reassuring. My girlfriend and I have been wondering how life changes as one gets older, because people online make it seem so dismal, but at the same time I can't help daydreaming about having some idea what my life will be like, my own place to live, being married, having a family and a career and overall that basic sense of security.
Unless literally the only thing you care about in life is being hot, and you don't care whatsoever for things like comfort, status, security, accomplishment, home, money, or things like building a life with someone/family, then 30s are so much better than 20s it's not even funny. And I say this as someone who will admit that I actually DO and did care a lot about being hot. But still, the 10-20% degradation in hotness does not even come close to outweighing the 500% increase in all those other factors I mentioned. In your 20s you're just floating around with nothing. It's like a decade-long New Year's Even where there's all this pressure for it to be the most fun and coolest ever, and in reality it totally sucks and no one ever has as much fun as they think they're supposed to.
I'm not hot currently so I don't have much leverage in that department, lol. I obviously care about being healthy but hopefully that will be mostly tied to my life choices.
So I am very glad to hear this.
Damn, sucks for you but that's not what my 20s were like at all
Yes. Getting old rocks. Also, most men do better with women as they get older. My wife is 13 years younger than me, and she is way older than the women I dated before her. Young men are never taught that it gets so much easier as you age, so long as you make intelligent decisions (work more, save more). Youth comes with insecurities and terror. Life is better once you can set those aside. Furthermore, I cannot help but to think life is better for anyone willing to put the phone down and pick up good books. The wisdom is still there, if you are willing to acquire it.
I really enjoy your writing, says this aging boomer.
Thanks for the kind words!
There is one huge illogicality about this oft repeated meme: "far fewer of us [millenials] are going to be buying homes..." Maybe not but they are going to INHERIT THEM off their boomer parents! Far fewer boomers inherited propery.
Other than that, I too enjoyed this article.
How do you know that?
As atomization increases, generations are less rooted within their own cohorts. When you have less and less real friends, your idea of someone your own age becomes a narcissistic projection of your own personality. In the case of millennials, with their poor economic conditions and social media induced imposter syndrome feelings of inadequacy, this projection happens to be filled with a million different perceived flaws. Of course they don't care for people of their own age, they remind them of themselves.
When you can't be satisfied with your own friends, your own self, your only option left is to live vicariously through the youth. A mirror into the potential you've squandered. Fan fiction self inserts in reality.
This obsession with youth, juvemania, isn't just limited to socially damned millennials. Even for Genz, rolemodels of yesteryear, action stars and athletes, have been dethroned by younger and younger influencers. Your typical 14 year old doesn't aspire to be old man Robert Downy Junior -- they look half a centimeter up to some streamer that is barely a year older than them, if not the same age. As online media concentrates fame to younger and younger influencers, as the money flows from older cohorts trying to buy their respect, even the youngest will reach a tipping point. What happens when a Gen Z, with their adult life still far ahead of them, feels pathetic in the face of a Gen A starlet that has achieved everything they've ever dreamed of?
If the media and material conditions don't change for the better, the self esteem of Zoomers, Gen A, etc. will be in even more dire psychological straits. They won't even have a punching bag generation of geriatrics to blame all of their problems on. Maybe online notoriety should be relegated to vtubers, AI, etc. so future generations won't feel lousy in the face of impossible standards. They can finally admit to themselves that the standards have become inhuman and move on with their lives.
I sometimes watch Youtube videos detailing the lightning-fast rises and falls of various online celebrities. Entire ecosystems that I'm only now learning about. In one sense, it's encouraging because it reveals that everyone lives in their own bubble and the things that you obsessively care about aren't the be-all end-all. But it's also dismaying because it reveals that everyone lives in their own bubble and the things that you obsessively care about aren't the be-all end-all.
Everbodys an ex Mormon bobbing around for their next cult
The worship of youth and obsession with renewal and novelty is a predictable consequence of a nihilistic age. This has happened before.
Whenever there's a crisis of faith, a lack of belief in an overarching purpose or meaning to the structure of life, the terror of death and non-existance rises up to swallow us. We cannot psychologically handle the truth of our inevitable end without religious buffers between us and the devastating truth. No matter how much we gloss over it.
People want to be young because they are afraid of dying.
That makes sense. The flipside to glorifying living in the moment (or for today) is that tomorrow holds no value. And tomorrow is what getting older and ultimately children represent. There's no reason to be the ant anymore. Everyone just ought to be the grasshopper.
Oh yes! I am convinced the reason intelligent environmentalism turned into the modern death cult it has become because of people's need for religion. Germany getting rid of nuclear power and restarting their coal programs was a perfect example of this. I used to be active in environmental activism, but I could not do it anymore when it stopped being out the earth and became some kind of high school nightmare with demands for terrorism and grown men behaving like psychopaths. I recall a Muslim buddy telling me that Islamic terrorist groups probably started the same way.
If it makes you feel any better I am incredibly disappointed in my cohort, Generation X. There we were, coming of age at the cusp of not just a new century, but a new era of human history, and yet many of us treated young adulthood as a chore - one which was only made tolerable by partying (Gen X popularised the rave) and consuming media (we took to reality television like a toddler to a soft serve sundae). The worst part is that Gen X was not actually bad-natured - they were just extremely passive, self-centred and prematurely pessimistic. If you were basic and fun, you watched Friends and Sex and the City. If you were deep and complex, you watched The Matrix and American Beauty. That’s it. No one wanted to reform culture (or anything else) much less quietly revolutionise it. You either danced the macarena or mocked the macarena - or both.
I actually attended a large, urban high school where most of my classmates were the children of non-White, upper-middle class immigrants. As a kitchen grease baby from a Northern mining town I was shocked, and really pleased, at how loud, proud and ambitious they all were. Yet looking back thirty years on I wonder how many of those beautiful South Asian, East Asia and Black kids kept up their uninhibited, relenting confidence after graduation. I wonder whether they kept up their ties to their communities and kept polishing up their racial, cultural and religious identities for all to see. I wonder how much of their revolutionary level of self-respect they sacrificed to achieve their personal ambitions - whether professional, social or cultural, and whether that sacrifice made any personal success they carved out feel flat and second rate.
No one generation can take up the burdening of continuing humanity alone. Yet Western civilisation’s end state of extreme individualism, consumerism and competition has made every successive generation since the Baby Boomers feel alone, from each other and among themselves. We share this time together, this fleeting chance, yet instead of reaching out or even exchanging a sympathetic glance, we spend most of our time looking over our shoulders and passing side-eye. Eternal adolescents indeed - without any mad, egotistical, subversive adolescent hope.
“So in this environment, why shouldn’t the teenager be the most aspirational form? Nobody expects accountability and responsibility from you, but that’s now an asset and privilege.”
So much good stuff here, was honored to have my piece included. As a Zoomer, I feel like the point about having a very offline childhood distinguishes Millennials and Gen Zers immensely. I am an elder Gen Z so wasn’t as subject to the iPad baby treatment as my younger siblings and I can see a visible difference between their communication habits and my own. As someone who graduated college last year, it’s weird feeling so old whenever I go online.
Thanks, Madison! Which online spaces make you feel old?
Mainly TikTok - there’s a kind of energy on there that I associate with my high school self most
Wny shouldn't the culture valorize youth and beauty above all else?
Unless you have some amazing talent, whether for self-promotion or for more concrete things such as financial math, basketball, or makeup, when just about every success story is really a story of successful grift, it is abundantly obvious that the only thing that hard work and devotion to duty will get you is old.
So you might as well swing for the fences, get rich or die trying, while you still can capitalize on your one asset that might be of value to somebody, somewhere.
My reply to Thomas del Vasto's comment could also apply here, that when there's no appealing vision for the future, it only makes sense to only value youth and beauty.
Youth and beauty are inherently desirable in and of themselves regardless of if or how you die, regardless of what visions of the future you hold.
Senility and hideousness are not abhorred “just” for cultural reasons.
Youth, fertility, and beauty are also short-lived. That's why they're valued so highly. Anti-aging products and procedures aren't always used wisely anyway, so people often just end up looking bloated or like some caricature of their younger selves.
Skills and intelligence can last longer, but aging will eventually ruin it with Alzheimer's, dementia, hormone decline, and aching joints. It's only a matter of time before we basically awaken to darkness (my dad died around 5 in the morning, for example).
Decline is inevitable. We envy life and potential. It's natural.
"Youth, fertility, and beauty are also short-lived."
So really all we're seeing here is the value of time, the most precious resource.
If one values time, he uses it. Hiding away from the world, recording everything instead of doing anything is far from the best use of time. I am so happy I traveled the world and had a great time in my youth. I would be devastated if I were my age and all I had to show for it were a bunch of photos and online posts. If ANYTHING, i am thrilled that I was wise enough to use regular film as long as I did, given that so many early social media platforms are gone.
Wish I knew this when I was younger.
My motto might as well be "If I only knew then, what I know now..."
I see this often in my everyday life, and even in my own dating life. Embracing pessimism in this environment becomes an all too tasty anodyne for the weary heart.
Even just a few years ago when things like Bernie were still a thing. Seems like a different era. Now, it may not even be as much pessimism as it is numbness.
> cursed to be the first generation in a while to be less well-off than our parents
Look, I hate to be the Gen X guy dropping in on a Millennial conversation and telling them that I liked whatever they're into before it was cool, but... Gen X was into being worse off than their parents before it was cool. See, e.g.: https://money.cnn.com/2014/09/22/news/economy/gen-x-poorer-than-parents-pew-study/index.html
In fact, a lot of what's written here seems to be applicable to Gen X. I know lots of middle-aged Gen X retards who are still into childish diversions and youth culture.
In truth, the same could be said of the Boomers. Have you ever seen The Big Chill? The hippies did not age gracefully. The Boomers were the first to truly reorganize society around a cult of youth. And they are NOT letting it go.
Has it gotten worse? Maybe. But the Boomers suck at getting old, Gen X sucks at getting old... and yes, sure, Millennials also suck at getting old.
TL;DR my generation did it first and better, because we are better than you are at being childish assholes.
True, no generation ages 100% gracefully. But my feeling that it's a major jump between Gen X and Millennial, mainly due to online culture. And Gen Z will be worse than Millennials, but the magnitude of that jump won't be as stark.
That seems plausible. The internet has inflicted a lot of brain damage on people (especially me), and Millennials got hit with the full fire hose as kids.
Will? You guys already are. I guess it must not be so obvious from that point of view.
Touché
Great. If I write this weekend I am DEFINITELY quoting and citing this
Are you a morning, daytime, or nighttime writer?
Lately Friday night 🤣🤣 Can't explain it
But i publish Saturday afternoon 🤷🏾♂️
I cited both of your works in my latest
https://supculture.substack.com/p/follow-your-dreams-into-a-psyop-trap
Thanks! Will take a read soon!
excellent piece Chris
Thanks Matt!
“… even 21-year old women lament their youth slipping away. ”
I have a specific recollection of feeling this way at age 20, in 1983. I may even write about it. I have an idea for her little story or vignette about the episode. But it’s not that unusual to feel this in early adulthood.
Do you think it also has to do with boomers retirement age being in their late sixties? Working longer than before means change in culture because they are still in higher positions longer and unwilling to share with different age groups. And, people are owning homes, getting married, and having kids later making what an adult look differently.
I wonder if this has something to do with some gen x and younger people weaponizing identitarianism to attain a certain degree of power, status, and influence.
If conventional opportunities to climb the ladder are few and far between, why not hijack the legacy of the civil rights movement and deftly modify some of its tenets so it can be used in a war of all against all to get what you want from the boomers who invented it (or for that matter the ruling class that ultimately had to accept it)?
This might go a long way towards explaining why the this sort of skullduggery appears to be most common in arenas in which competition is fierce and there's significant subjective wiggle room in decision making processes, such as the arts.
Brilliant comment.
I think the thing I get most out of this is the "stuckness" of the Millenial generation, in a vastly different way than the disaffected air of Gen X. Perhaps not a revelatory thought, but my generation spends an inordinate amount of time pining for the so-called hallmarks of generational attainment, thus being put off by having to put other things off--a bit like delayed gratification in a way. The bit that gets me is, how much of this is reality, (we can't afford nice things) and not insecurity related to unprocessed reactions from almost two decades of foreign wars and a few spells of an anemic economy?
How much of it is class based? I'm just spitballing as I still process the bits you wrote, but it seems to me Millenials are caught in a state of perpetual adolescence. I hate to say not sure why, as I've often seen older folks who go through trying times mature up appropriately, but Mills seem stubborn on this point.
The defining concern of Gen X was "selling out" to corporations. The defining concern of Millenials was "selling in" ie desperately trying to find sponsorship for your creative output. Different times different conditions.
GenXer here. One thing I see about Millennials that's not aging well is, well, their desire for moral authority.
If you read your Strauss & Howe, the Millennials were supposed to be the next Greatest Generation, sacrificing and winning in unison and bringing in big government (hopefully good government, YMMV) for the next American High, with themselves given a blank check for whatever they want like the Greatest Generation got.
This has not happened--at least not yet. And they're rapidly aging out of the target demo.
Meanwhile, the boomers are boomering--snickering among those who aren't already checked out and marking time. And GenX is going AW HELL NO!
Now, I think the Millennials will get it by default, once the boomers move on to that great Woodstock in the sky. Because GenX are still those "irresponsible" 18YOs Society decided they couldn't trust with a beer. As a GenXer, I know how this story ends.
The question is if Millennials haven't taken up that mantle of "next Greatest Generation," is it because they can't or won't? It's probably an impossible question to answer at this point. It's possible that if given equal opportunity to either dwell in perpetual adolescence vs. take up greater societal responsibility, Millennials would've still chosen the former. But maybe they all post-hoc rationalized that choice when they saw the latter was impossible (e.g. the political class still being dominated by Boomers). And at this point, nobody knows what their true motivations are.