Okay first of all obligatory "generational labels are bullshit" disclaimer.
But I just noticed a lot of humour made by millennials as adults is very "cutesy" and "dad joke".
If anyone grew up in the 90s or 2000s, you know that we were the total opposite as kids. Seriously it wasn't long ago where the hight of our humour was homophobia and jokes about SA. We were the fucking horrible edgelord generation.
How did we go from being kids that would beat each other up for even looking at the colour pink, to the heckin' wholesome cat video generation?
Honestly I know we make fun of ourselves for the "HECKING POGGER PUPPERINO" shit, but honestly, it's a step up from the edgelord shit we grew up with.
This is, of course, ignoring that a lot of us didn't grow out of it and became your Ben Shapiro's and your Steven Crowders (I am so sorry Zoomers, we failed you hard)
a lot of us have turned into total weenies that like puppers and cry a lot?
I'll have you know I was always a total weenie that liked puppers! The edgelord shit came from my himbo ass being confronted with the increasing horrors of the United States and the powerlessness to blunt the tide.
I am so sorry Zoomers, we failed you hard
No. Zoomers now know what not to do. We tried the reasonable and peaceful approaches, just like we were asked. Now there is nothing but disillusionment and the ice-cold thousand yard stare of the next generation as the panicked political elite understand what they broke. The next generation gets to skip the pretense and get straight to the point.
EDIT: Live action recreation of when I discovered US History
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Millennials be like “today i will dye my hair blue before starting my first class of Social Justice 101 at Woke University because I am 18 and just graduated high school in 2021”
Boomers are going to start calling Gen alpha millennials when they turn 18 I swear.
lol i thought they would've caught up by now, but a few months ago my econ 101 professor complained about young people's work ethic and called us all "millennials" like three different times. someone said we're gen z and he just went "same thing"
he wasn't even that old, might've actually been early gen x but idk
kinda hope the bastard felt old tho. he was a full zionist chud who constantly went on about how communism killed a gazillion people or how "hitler was a socialist". econ classes, never again
Millennials are only a decade off being in their 50s and calling kids millennials
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Never really was an edge lord but, I just feel being able to be emotionally expressive as a man is best for my peace of mind. I feel comfortable and I can only imagine the sort of internal suffering previous generations had, being deprived of their full range of emotions due to restrictions placed upon them by gender roles. The thing that annoys me is that large swaths of society have yet to be accepting of this.
The worst are the ones that are all like "things were better when we were edgy and said slurs and hated each other!" Like hell no they weren't everyone was hyper aggressive and it was exhausting
Yeah, it was exhausting. I even tried it a bit at one point and said to myself "this is stupid, half-assed, and exhausting; why are you doing this?" I'm not raising my blood pressure for that.
I went along with a lot of it because it felt like what I was "supposed to do" but it really just made me miserable and I suspect the same was true for a lot of others.
Life is hard and we want some comforts
Personally, my comforts have blended with my hardness and turned me into a barely contained ball of violent neuroses
Which is why I box
While I've grown out of my edge and become much more emotionally in-touch, I have to admit that I really dislike the millennial obsession with childish things. A lot of times, it really feels like it borders on arrested development and escapism. I'm not free of this vice, myself, by the way.
When I speak about childishness, I'm not referring to particular forms of media such as cartoons and videogames which can both provide adults with something worthwhile depending on the story being told. I'm referring more to Disney/ Nintendo/ Marvel adults.
There are, of course, other things I love about my generation.
Haha yeah, what a bunch of babies
Hides Nintendo Switchfuck that, no shame, your Switch is cool
my little brother and I have been sharing custody of our childhood SNES since we moved out of Mom's house
Super Mario World will always be one of my favorite games
Mother 3 is one of favorites. Genuinely has a great story with a pro-environment/anti-capitalist message
I've never heard of it before and it looks awesome!! I think we have a Gameboy Advance stashed away in a box somewhere, maybe I can find a copy on eBay or something.
Thank you for the beautiful recommendation!!
Edit: I found it and Earthbound on Etsy. Is Earthbound great too?
Earthbound is also very good. It would be pretty expensive to buy these days though so if you're gonna play it, just emulate it. Also be aware that while it's pretty ahead of its time in some aspects, it's still a SNES RPG with all the associated hang ups of that genre at the time (it might be a bit slow if you're used to modern RPGs). It pretty much inspired every indie game ever though and at the time there were very few games like it.
Mother 3 is the sequel the Earthbound and is very very good. It never came out in English officially, despite fan demand. It was however translated pretty flawlessly by a fan called Tomato. The translation is so good that everyone pretty much forgets that it isn't official. Here is the translations official site: https://mother3.fobby.net/
Ignore the anti-pirating message and just get yourself a rom from romspure or something and apply the translation patch and boom. Translated.
If you like having physical copies of stuff I think eBay and Etsy have reproduction cartridges, like you mentioned.
Oh snap, I think we have a pi somewhere with emulators for a bunch of consoles and bunch of roms already on it! That was our special interest one winter, and then spring busy time came and we forgot 🤦
I'm coming for your crown - you might not be the dumbest Hexbear 😂 we can count your talons as superior thumbs to my weird noodles and trade
I don't think you're a Nintendo adult unless you an unhealthy obsession with collecting. If you're not posting on AITAH about your partner objecting to your Nintendo display taking up half the living room, I think you're safe.
The pop culture obsession as personality thing is my number one red flag for dating. If your only hobby is consume media and watch youtubers talk about media, it's not going to work.
Hmm. Idk if the cutesy ever died, more that it was being hidden under the edge. Like, happy tree friends was predicated on the idea that people liked cute shit to begin with, same with the grossness of invader zim or idk, most of the stuff on Newgrounds, I'm sure there's other touchstones. Edge is a reaction to and rejection of wholesomeness, with an unhealthy dose of self hatred and irony.
Now that the edgelord stuff is seen as cringe, the cute can breathe again. I don't know when the switch happens, like, some millenials i know are still in their edge phase. It's probably something dialectical but I'm not smsrt enough to theorise
Edit: talking specifically about millennials too, I'm deliberately not addressing south park because I'm not confident to tackle it as its own subject, but it's probably the most representative 'edgey' media entry point for that generation
I think there is a cycle where wholesomeness gives way into insincere saccharine causing a reaction of apathetic detachment and irony which itself eventually turns into insincere edginess creating the conditions for a new wave of sincere wholesomeness in reaction. At any point of time there are different currents at different stages of this cycle reacting to both themselves and other currents/subcultures within the greater culture.
I like to avoid the edginess of the moment and consume it later, when it's fermented into the charming edge-stalgia of yesteryear
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One day a switch flipped in my brain and I suddenly stopped liking filthy frank and switched to much lighter humour. Why? Because of woke.
society still hasn't recovered from the awakening of Francis of the Filth.
I think two major global economic meltdowns before many of us even reached middle age probably have something to do with a desire to return to pleasant and simple times.
Seriously it wasn't long ago where the hight of our humour was homophobia and jokes about SA. We were the fucking edgelord generation.
I was in middle school like 10 years ago. Same type of humor. It kinda died down as I got into late high school though
How did we go from being kids that would beat each other up for even looking at the colour pink, to the heckin' wholesome cat video generation?
Your brittle bones makes it harder to pick on each other probably. Also, maybe the decaying society we live causes us to develop an infantile disorder as a coping mechanism. Maybe that’s a bit too pretentiously deep. But I mean, back then when society faced similar hardships, people just kinda walked up to the house of the person upsetting them and shoot them. That or have a thriving family/community so you don’t suffer alone. If neither violence nor community is allowed/encouraged/available, then you just have to rely on the heckin pupperino to make you a little more comfortable
I am so sorry Zoomers, we failed you hard
Zoomer reactionaries just watch twitch streams all day and watch engagement bait podcasts where some brocoli head pretends to be superior to some model pornstar
Also, maybe the decaying society we live causes us to develop an infantile disorder as a coping mechanism
While I mostly agree with your comment, I will say I'm not a fan of the idea that liking wholesome or cute things is some kind of arrested development or some other personal failing.
Honestly sometimes I feel it's more mature to embrace what you like rather that be a stoic badass 24/7
I know that's probably not what you meant though, so this isn't like, calling you out or anything.
I was referring more to the “heckin wholesome chungus doggos” type language. Everyone enjoys cute things but i think it’s very odd when grown adults talk to each other the same way i talk to my baby cousins. I also watch videos of cats purring and vtubers, by the way
but if you want another example of the weird infantilizing behavior, just watch the FuwaMoco twins’ highlights (yes. I know its a persona)Ooooh I get you! Haha, yeah I'm not advocating for annoying baby talk lmao. No worries
Your posting is extremely high-powered this evening
Also it's because so.many millenials realised they are queer and neurodiverse.
I guess when things shifted from boomers and X'ers making and defining comedy content to Millenials making comedy content?
I vaguely remember my little pony and adventure time being labelled a "new sincerity" movement that was a response or reaction to the edgelord shit of the oughts and nineties. So maybe that was still x'ers in control. I guess people got sick of, or marketers decided people should be sick of, the sneering contempt for everything and everyone that kind of defined Clintonism through the mid late oughts. Plus people being sick of "hipster irony" though i don't remember how much that was really a thing.
Also the 90s had lisa frank and clarissa explains it all and the babysitters club and stuff. The all edge no point stuff was marketted at teenage boys and young men, but there were other trends and styles being pushed too.
It's pretty standard edgy middle schooler stuff. Most people grow out of it and become liberals. Some people stay that way, but in my experience it's mostly limited to people who spend way too much time on right-wing websites.
A lot of us maybe realized we were wrong.
I remember looking at rotten dot com crime scene photos because I was aware that my life was pretty comfortable even if my family wasn't all that wealthy and it felt like I needed to do something to "see the world" or something. Being politically and historically apathetic and a latchkey kid with no outside pressure to learn anything in those areas, the decision to "make myself uncomfortable" was the best guess I had for trying to figure out adulthood.
And it wasn't a good guess.
There was also a lane of people doing MY SPOON IS TOO BIG D: shit so I think the edgy ones are still out there somewhere
From what I remember the Animation Show you're referencing was just straight absurdism. Like it had some of the violence of edgelord stuff, but the violence was usually used to heighten the absurdity, the incoherence, of the scene. The contrast between the light fluffy happy dancing cotton balls and one of them screaming because a literal ocean of blood is coming from it's butt.
Don Hertzefeldt animations are like the exact opposite of edginess, instead promoting an impression of earnestness through absurdism like you said. Op ought to check out Such a Beautiful Day and reflect.
we should invent a new form of adulthood that transcends both of the "im an adult because i own a home and have kids and now do dad jokes" / "im an adult because i can still play videogames and consume childrens media without caring what people think" stuff.
The point is trite, since it's been echoed since the 90s and 00s, and is and was much of Gen X's cultural expression: The choice presented by @peppersky of being a suburbanite robbed of humor and youth, or a manchild, is a form of colonization of the mind via capitalism. Our unique selves buried under consumption of content and fulfilling social roles and goals determined by the capitalist system. (Not that there's anything particularly wrong with either of these choices, but living like this also turns life into a purgatory of repetition and variation. It deprives life of color and purpose that become filled by junk ideology.)
Instead, we should be aspiring to be self-actualized adults with our own individuality and aspiration for life beyond checking milestones or consuming media.
Not too long ago there was a post on here, I can't find it now, about some lady on Twitter saying that she liked Disco Elysium gameplay but didn't like that it's a game about a depressed guy walking around a depressing town talking to sad people. She proposed an alternate cutesy studio ghilbi esk game about a witch in Switzerland or something.
In a vacuum, yeah wanting a cool cutesy game about a witch is fine, but I and a lot of other posters found the tweet kind of grating because, there's TONS of feel good, cozy games these days. So complaining that one of the best written, most in-depth and complex games of all time isn't cozy and wholesome in an era where we have a dearth of cozy wholesome games just came off as really tone death.
So I think this nostalgia fixation and desire for comfort is causing some people to refuse to grapple with more unpleasant and challenging ideas in media, or in general. This is not to say you specifically have to like Disco Elysium but specifically saying you dislike it because it's not sun shiny and optimistic strikes me as immature.
Edit: shouldn't have typed this on my phone when I first woke up, damn there were some spelling errors
boxing buddy's! Boxing buddy's! Teehehehe!
this you?
