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 (leisure suits worn and convertibles driven by newly-divorced dads that just contemplated mortality for roughly the first time, often cruising to creep on people half their age), but were everywhere in media as well. TV shows, movies, stand-up comedians, comic strips, and much more from the 80s to the 90s were all there to either wail with anguish at the onset of middle age, or were there to provide Woody Allenesque creep-treats that constantly assured the Boomers that teenagers totally wanted to have sex with them. As one random example, City Slickers aged like milk doing that, where a central plot point is that one of the middle-aged protagonists impregnated a 20-year-old and the narrative presents his wife being upset about that as a neurotic, irrationally angry, and overall bad person. The standard Boomer "joke" about how they get older and their dates get younger escalates to the punchline "soon you'll be dating sperm!" :libertarian-alert:

Not all of it was sexual pathology, either. Some of the films made during that time were insufferably self-absorbed about Boomer identity, such as the "Thirtysomething" TV series, and some of the seeds of their chuddery can be seen all the way back then, such as the cognitive dissonance of its two main messages: "be yourself, you are the most important person in the world, all that matters is what pleases you" and "people that don't live exactly like affluent cliquish white people are worthy of contempt." :maybe-later-kiddo: :grillman:

Sure, most Millennials don't really have the means to purchase convertibles and creep on teenagers even if they wanted to, but I still commend most of the aging folks around me for handling the onset of middle age a lot better than our predecessors in the 80s and 90s. :stalin-approval:

The media also decided to ignore us after a relatively short pandering phase, where after that the nostalgia treats got decoupled from the kids that actually knew about them when they were new. Maybe that helped. I don't know. :shrug-outta-hecks:

  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      staying up late at night playing N64 in my friend’s basement in the late 90s, and it makes me pretty.

      Did you crack the code? :screm-pretty:

      • star_wraith [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Lol now I can't correct it to "pretty happy".

        Eh, I like it how it is anyway.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          This thread's all about acceptance anyway. :screm-pretty:

          Well, mostly. :screm-a:

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Getting old does suck. Yes, I did have a mid-life crisis, and I had it early. The feeling of dread about how many paths were not taken and how many doors closed forever behind me was haunting. That said, I and those my age that I know (those slightly older than me that I know are in full Gen-X Junior Boomer "I got mine, but also woe is me" perpetual angst, but that's a different story) seem to know that, accept that, and don't ask for and don't want endless media serenading that pain. We just... are.

      There's also the types that call Ready Player One their favorite novel, have walls of Funko Pops, and put thousands of dollars into Star Citizen, but those tend to be Xers (pre-1980s birth) in my experience. "Generation Meh" by and large turned into Junior Boomers. There might also possibly be something about leaded gasoline not really being phased out yet around the time of their birth and most crucial formative years.