How many Boomers were researching minimalism and tiny homes in their 20s and 30s?
How did we go from living in a van down by the river to living in a van down by the river in the space of 30 years?
my midlife crisis is wearing flip flops, taking my blood pressure medication, and blushing nervously when people in their 20s flirt with me at the grocery store.
the thing some have said about reduced expectations rang true for me. i have a lot of genX acquaintances with plenty of material security and big incomes that are so much more bitter and angry than I am. I stepped off the careerist treadmill in my mid-20s to pursue my passion, which doesn't pay shit. I've managed to claw my way into not being broke, which is awesome, but it fucked my earning potential compared to my slightly older peers. but they all have weird, toxic relationships with their careers and seem stuck while I feel like I could walk away and start again despite having way less savings/equity.
boomers are just out of control at this point. consuming an endless treat filled summer, truly believing that another vacation or dinner out will be the thing that returns some spark of happiness they haven't felt since the return of Coke Classic. who cares if the nukes fly, so long as they have a mouthful of treats when the air around them reaches 10,000°C
meanwhile, my dream of retirement is sitting on a breezy porch after some light gardening in the morning, exchanging glances with an old dog, smelling the slow cooker going, and being able to afford my BP meds.
Most millennials were taught to be self-loathing at a young age, god forbid we steal the spotlight from parents.
that's because a. millenials don't have enough money to blow on a porsche and b. millenials realized that life was shitty sooner than boomers did. boomers by and large could fuck around for a while before their "is that all there is" moment, millenials were stuck working shitty jobs straight out of college
I blew money on a Porsche, it wasn’t worth it :deeper-sadness:
(TBF it cost about as much as a normal used car)
no shade on young parents but my mum was a mum at my age and that scares me
Based on the new Top Gun, it seems like Boomers are still having their midlife crises pandered to by the media.
"Of course a 65-year-old pilot can outmanuever a drone!! Of course we don't have to pass on the reigns to the next generation!! We're still cool! We're still cool!!"
If anything, I wish I was born a decade later so I could have had a better time in school
What do you mean you don't have fond memories of the state indoctrination and trauma factory??
I managed to avoid the religious angle, but even going through normie school was rough. Being aware of being gender nonconforming but with literally nothing other than drag as an even remotely positive example, at that time it's no wonder a lot of people ended up keeping to themselves.
Going to a relatively conservative college was a bad choice in hindsight, too :agony-soviet:
I'm doing really well now! Don't wanna dox myself but I ended up having a pretty successful career, good coping skills and a family that are supportive help a lot.
I'm also having a much better 30's than my 20's but coming out as trans a couple years ago might be a major component of that.
Good for you. I'm 42 and its probably the first time in my life where I've felt happy
I’m at the age that Boomers were when their mid-life crises were so aggressively loud and obnoxious that they weren’t just everywhere in public
I'm too poor to have a mid-life crisis, best I can do is drink more
"I'm handling my midlife crisis well" or "I'm not having a midlife crisis" are just subgenres of midlife crisis.
We're not far out enough of the 2010s to figure out what the mainstream was yet. If I were to guess at it, it's hipster fashion and athleisure, slim fit suits (some of the suits they used to wear look hilarious today), no more rock influence in pop its more electronic and rap I guess, smartphones took over pretty early into it when they weren't a thing, there was way more cultural emphasis on dystopias like the Purge series or any popular YA series.
None of that feels all that different from today cause we haven't been separated long enough, you'll probably realize there was a difference in like 2026. At least that's when I was finally able to articulate the difference between 2000s and 2010s. Even in the early 00s it was hard to tell what "the 90s" were because that was still just the way everything was. Like the only HUGE thing is covid19 and how that warped everything, thatll clearly be the dividing line like 9/11 was for 90s to 00s.
Good post, comrade. I figure we're roughly the same age, and I've had similar thoughts. It's funny, I remember just how pervasive the jokes/plotlines involving a "mid-life crisis" was back in the 90s. Getting old sucks. Sometimes it feels weird being around here knowing I'm on the older end of the curve. But I'm honestly pretty happy with my life. Sometimes I think there's a lot that I'd do different (like not be a cringe libertarian reading von Mises and Bastiat in college), but then again the path I took brought me to where I am (including being a commie, which is pretty rad) so I can't complain.
I do think people our age deal with this with maybe a somewhat unhealthy amount of nostalgia. Like, I often think about staying up late at night playing N64 in my friend's basement in the late 90s, and it makes me pretty. But that's a totally different ballgame from how the boomers dealt with it.
Also, this is entirely anecdotal so not really worth anything... but I know a few gen-Xers, and I've known them for a long time. None of them are really downwardly mobile or have a whole lot to complain about in life. But jfc, do they all seem a lot more angry and bitter all the time. Over the years they've just become very difficult to be around. Don't know what that's about.
Lol now I can't correct it to "pretty happy".
Eh, I like it how it is anyway.
I still play N64 sometimes tho :bottom-speak: don't judge me I like retro games
I mean, I own a console and have a bunch of games, I'd play more if I had the time.
Manufacturing consent happened to the boomers. The idea that the media was created to pander to a desire for sports cars and young mistresses, and not to create the desire, seems a little backwards and anti materialist to me.
The millennial version of what you are talking about is :reddit-logo:
Maybe, but it isn't a choice. It's all there is, "there is no alternative." Its a feedback loop for sure, but our ideology is determined by our relationship to production. To think otherwise is probably idealistic
Yeah you're right about that, def call out bullshit in media. It is fatalistic to just accept it. But that's bourgeois media, it doesn't have anything to do with boomers. It sucks because they were the last generation where like original content was mainstream and lots was bad but a lot of it was pretty good too. Buy yeah, now pop culture is just remaking all the shit that the boomers made, every 20 years or whatever.
Anyway this is a place for venting so I get where you're coming from.
