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:
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.
You sound like my spiritual liege. :solidarity: