Cynicism, nihilism and distancing oneself from everything is not going to build anything good or allow others to succeed.
So no, not correct, not good, just a terrible mindset that will drag everyone down with you.
sneering distrust of unions
sneering distrust of science
sneering distrust of socialism
sneering distrust of wikipedia
I’d say their sneering distrust of everything has brought us to where we are now.
Nihilism isn’t witty or crafty.
South Park is a real grabbag, but they really hit the mark with Gen X yankees dismissing green energy and environmentalism for being “gay (pejorative)”. You could update that same episode and only need to swap out the last line for “that sounds woke”
You can trust unions. They’re there to make money and acting in your interest is acting in their best interest.
While you can trust science overall, there’s a hell of a lot of capitalism in there, muddying the water. Well-reviewed studies are generally pretty safe.
There is nothing inherently trustworthy or untrustworthy about socialism; it’s an economic and political philosophy that is only as trustworthy as the people implementing and operating within it.
You cannot trust anything on the internet, including Wikipedia or even this very post. There are actors with an agenda that can make every article better or worse. There is no verifiable truth, only facts through lenses, and Wiki, being a moderated system, is as fallible as anything else. Much like socialism, it is at least designed to make it more fair.
This would make sense if they didn’t vote for the people promising to fuck it up worse. (US politics only, I don’t know how generational breakdown goes in other countries)
Many disengaged and didn’t build anything to replace what was missing
No. And it may have contributed to the anti science and anti vaccine shit that has been floatung around. Just being a contrarian isnt helpful
They haven’t just contributed, Genx is the anti-vaccine generation.
Boomers and silent generation remember what diseases were like and get their vaccines.
Millienals are more anti-vaccine than boomers or silent generation but far less than gen-x.
Gen-x has never held itself accountable. They are worse than boomers in so many ways and some of their stupid has leaked into the infected the thinking of millennial and even gen-z generations.
Blaming Millennial and Gen Z conservatives on Gen X alone is wild. How about we focus on the billionaire propaganda machines of social media and mainstream news. Zuckerberg is a millennial and his platforms have done more damage to teenage brains than we realize yet.
Absolutely critique people and people groups when they deserve it, but this whole generational obsession is exactly what those fucking us over want. Any place to blame but on them is good for them.
I literally said you’re generation doesn’t hold itself accountable and you’re doing exactly that. Neat!
I’m actually Gen Z…
Tf kind of assumption is that?
Ok, simping for genx then. Cool, cool. Cool.
Fuck you as a Gen xer I resent you calling me anti vax. I am all for vaccination and all my kids are vaxed.
“Gen x is the antivax generation” literally means “gen x has a higher % of antivaxxers than other generations”
Source?
I haven’t ever looked into this. But it got me curious so now I’m looking. I haven’t seen one for vaccines in general yet, but I did find one study about generational differences in opinions on the covid vaccine in particular.
Interesting read, I’m still digesting the data. Seems like, compared to Gen z and millennials, Gen x was more in favor of the covid vax in this study.
Again, yes this is just about the covid vax, but there’s probably a decent overlap in the groups
Covid-only will skew things massively. Disinformation wars really went to town on that one.
Yea I have no idea how much it skews, that’s why I made it painfully clear. But it does still talk about the generational imprinting of the major events that the various generations experienced.
I’m just translating.
There was a skew to trump among gen x ers. But richer people tend to live longer so that’s not an uncommon trend.
Imo, I would expect the antivaxxers to be more common in generations with school age kids because it is media-slop targeted at parents. I’d like to see the sources myself.
I didn’t, so you can direct that fuck right back at yourself and your terrible reading comprehension.
Your generation is the anti vax movement. That doesn’t mean everyone in the generation is anti vax.
Kind of hard to comprehend your language when you don’t seem to know how it works.
You’re inability to parse it is on you.
Your choice to attack and dimiss what I’m saying rather than seek clarification, also on you.
Anyone who cannot get over a few weird autocorrects is clearly not interested in discourse.
Your choice to attack
Have you ever heard the phrase “pot calling the kettle black”?
That was literally your first interaction with me in this thread.
I’m calling out Gen X for creating the anti vax movement. No one, including you has attempt to refute that fact.
Your first interaction with me was to question my ability to communicate. That is an attack on me, the messenger by the message.
It is ridiculous for anyone to claim I am attacking them personally for pointing out a characteristic of a group, even if it’s a group they identify with.
It also shows a resistance to accountability which I also mentioned.
It’s not hard to acknowledge these things are true while stating they do not apply to you personally but that’s not what you or anyone else has done.
You choose to make it about me and continue to do so and will continue to do so because you choose to do so.
Jfc how are people still talking about generations?
Exasperation, not a genuine question ^
Because it is an effective distraction from the actual problem which is class war.
Billionaires and their followers are the problem, not people of a certain age, gender, skin colour etc. etc.
In all seriousness, it is mostly cis men doing this.
edit: this was meant to be a joke, but honestly the amount of mansplaining in this thread and the responses below this comment has unfortunately altered this into a true statement. What have you all done?
Since men are still getting angry and messaging me:
You’re doing the thing.
do i get to do the “i swear it’s everyone but me” dance or do you want to do it
I guess “class solidarity” only applies to everyone but cis men.
And then when cis men say their identities are being attacked/invalidated, everyone’s like “nuh uh, you don’t even have an identity!”
If it makes you feel better you could host a parade or gathering or something.
No I couldn’t, because everyone would think it’s just some white supremacist/manosphere/redpill nonsense, and likely the only people who would show up would be those types anyway.
Literally every other demographic gets their own “spaces” and “identity groups,” and if a white man shows up to those they’re seen as invading where they don’t belong. In mixed-identity spaces, white men are sidelined because they’re the “oppressors” and nobody wants to hear their input, perspective, or opinion. But if white men form an identity group, then everyone assumes it’s about racism and sexism. And if a white man self-isolates, then he gets called an incel and a creep.
There’s literally no good option available other than to be a self-effacing fly on the wall who passively agrees with everything said by a woman or person of color and never critiques, questions, seeks clarity, nor adds nuance.
Women get “women’s spaces,” but “men’s spaces” are to be deplored. BIPOC get “BIPOC spaces,” but “white spaces” are to be abhorred. LGBTQ+ get “queer spaces” but “straight spaces” are to be despised.
And if people say “all spaces are straight white male spaces by default,” then why is it unacceptable to boot anyone else out of those spaces? If someone of a different demographic shows up and starts demanding the narrative/vibe/atmosphere shifts to suit their sensibilities, anyone who doesn’t comply is seen as a racist/sexist/homophobe. But careful not to walk on too many eggshells, because it’s actually offensive to even imply that someone might be easily offended.
Literally the only other option is to hang out in actual racist/sexist/homophobic spaces, which I don’t want to do because I detest those types of people. I just want a space where I can hang out and feel welcome and taken seriously while retaining a modicum of self-respect. But this default view of “white man = oppressor (unless gay)” kinda gets in the way of that. And no one cares if I complain about it, or even believes I could have anything worth complaining about.
That’s what I mean by “white working class men are being excluded from class solidarity.” Maybe don’t force them into racially homogenous echo chambers and movements like trumpism won’t gain any momentum?
Lol. “They are making me hang out with racists and homophobes” is a remarkably strange thing to say.
I’m cis and I’ve never felt the need to accommodate racists and homophobes.
Should I feel more attacked?
Oh, is that the joke?
According to exit polls, no it’s not.
e.g. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
According to this, it’s rural, non-black christians doing this. Men were more likely to vote Trump, but the effect is nowhere near as strong as the urban/rural, christian/atheist and black/non-black divide.
Granted, the billionaires who benefit from this are almost all cis men, but non-billionaire women have been duped nearly the same as much as non-billionaire men.
Statistics don’t matter to bigots.
True. If they didn’t rely on small and unrepresentative samples (or often the imagination of themselves and others) to judge broad population groups and topics of discussion, they by definition wouldn’t be bigots.
Well that isn’t 100% true. There’s a bunch that like to parrot b******* crime statistics.
Okay, this was a joke but saying its bigoted to make fun of cis men is a new level of fragile masculinity
Triggering the boys’ club on Lemmy has accidentally become a hobby of mine. All I do is point out misogyny, which there is a lot of on here, and the club decends upon me. At a certain point the downvotes and insults become cathartic because they’re just proving my point. They never even try to convince me that they aren’t misogynists, it’s just pure insults. At least you got some honest discourse mixed in with the bullshit, lol.
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As a cis white man, I’m just glad to finally get credit for something. DEI and woke has made it really difficult for me to be rewarded for other people’s progress in spite of my mere passive existence being an active stumbling block in the path of those who made the poor choice of being born as they were.
I’m sorry that you’ve just now realized you exist in a system that connects you to a social order you have little power over, next few months are going to be rough on you I tell’ya.
Although, I wonder if there’s a word for the conditions that someone would have to exist under to make it possible to come this far in life without ever being forced to learn about this because of their advantageous position in that system. 🧐
I appreciate your apologies. Few people realize how hard it is to be given every advantage, but not have everything.
Ok, I’m done. These sarcastic comments are making me sad.
The answer was “privilege”
Well, corporations created generational division to blame what corporations were doing.
Corporations created anti-union sentiment for obvious reasons.
As evidenced by articles about the worst people in the world lamenting that those young poors aren’t buying enough diamonds, are ruining the economy, killing the golf industry, ruining handshakes, andmuch, much more.
Very seldomly do they mention that millennials are the first or second generation to be significantly poorer than the previous one, meaning that we can ill afford what previous generations took for granted.
Also, a lot of the things we’re “killing” are arguably in NEED of killing, such as the cartel-dominated diamond industry, environmentally ruinous and dreadfully expensive sports such as golf, and truly bizarre things like so-called diet products high in sugar and low in protein
Millenials are killing capitalism :(
Gen Xers are killing anti-union corpotation :((
Before the Internet it was a bigger deal bc culture was different but yeah basically just a distraction
People like to have identities tho and like for this person maybe being GenX means something. Like distrust of systems
It is exactly the opposite because the Internet is and mostly has been a way to connect with like minded individuals. Generations are a new concept to divide us. They are less than a century old.
Before generations we had time periods that united us. We all knew what it meant to live through the 90s, the 80s, fuckin disco. It was commonality with your fellow man. Despite absolutely everyone knowing someone wearing skinny jeans in the early aughts - now it’s a “stupid Millennial” trend.
https://worldhistory.medium.com/where-did-generations-come-from-e2fb73931a88
Love the rhetorical question clarification
I got like three dudes genuinely trying to explain it (with wrong answers) within a few minutes. So, seemed necessary so as to not suffer the mansplaining.
That wasn’t sarcastic, or not directed negatively at you anyway. Love to see clarification, hate that it’s needed
There will always be the need to have some societal construct for the grouping of people. People in the same generation were generally subjected to similar living conditions at similar points of their life so it makes it a valid grouping.
If not generations, then what? There is also sexual orientations, political beliefs, race… the list goes on.
Realistically you can’t have 8 billion plus classifications for every distinct person, so at some point there needs to be a generally agreed upon roll up.
If not generations, then what?
Income, average household size, cost-of-living, religious preference, level of education, geography… lots of ways to slice up that poll data once you correlate each polling place with other data. The key here is that it’s possibly more valid to correlate with information that is closer to the election date than birthdays that were decades ago.
Oh yeah, you think everyone born in the late 1940s had similar enough lived experiences to universalise them? That’s incredible that there’s so little variation despite drastically different socioeconomic positionalities, almost like you’d have to dismiss certain experiences that inevitably deviate from that imagined norm to allow it to exist. Of course, there’s only so many ways to account for everyone, so we will have to accept these dominant constructions of human experience as something inevitable as well.
I wonder if there’s a word for that.
You completely missed my point. Generation is a valid grouping even if you don’t like it. Yes there are others that may work, some may be better, some may not. But it is still a unifying thread. Take Xellenials (micro-generation between X and Millenial), it’s described as an “analog childhood and digital adulthood” that is somewhat that pretty much everyone in that generation was subject to, so yeah it was a “similar enough lived [sic] experience to universalize them”.
Lmao, “microgeneration.” You don’t even believe in what you’re saying, it’s just the language you’ve been given.
Fucking so wild how many men responded to this without ever considering that their experiences are not universal.
I don’t think it’s similar living conditions but more of significant world events in their lives. With say Boomers you have Vietnam, Civil Rights, and Reagan as examples that shaped their world views. Not all are shaped the same way but it affected them. Like with Millennials, we have the proliferation of the internet, 2001, and 2008. These have seriously affected how we think and act to differing degrees in the USA.
Because ideologies are a team sport now. And people need to feel like they’re part of something- regardless of its relevance.
Because ideologies are a team sport now
In the US? 🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
Seemingly everywhere.
True, but to a MUCH higher degree in the US than almost everywhere else.
Just like all western countries have different degrees of under-regulated capitalism but the US is a near-limitless eldorado for the rich and powerful.
I’m exhausted just reading that much of your nonsense. Let’s agree to disagree and part ways here.
Sure. It’s not like it’s a good use of my time and effort to try to educate someone who calls objective reality “exhausting nonsense” anyway 🤷
Gen X contrarianism is some stupid boomer shit. Its no wonder so many of them are divorced maga conspiracy morons now.
The biggest fear that Gen X has is that their parents might disapprove of them.
I thought we were known for apathy since we were constantly told growing up that our generation was the first for whom things would be worse than our parents. I don’t have a sneering distrust of everything, just cynicism towards massive, systemic injustice in the world.
Lots of genX Trump voters for a generation that identifies with “sneering distrust of everything”. Or are we talking about Q-Anon-style “sneering distrust of everything (except this totally believable source that conveniently aligns with the far right)”?
Look up some exit polls/surveys, e.g. this one: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
According to this, people born in the 60s (late boomers/early gen X) was the age cohort most likely to vote for Trump, and people born in the 70s and 80s still preferred Trump.
Though age cohort wasn’t nearly as good as predicting the voting decision than other markers like urban/rural, black/non-black or atheist/christian.
It’s strange because the vast majority of my GenX in all my circles are super left. But I’m a suburban guy with most of my acquaintances in high literacy areas.
Once you get outside of the suburbs, things change. I could see gen-X going full conspiracy theorist, then double-thinking as propaganda feeds them ideas.
Has anyone ever told you that “lots” isn’t “all”?
Nobody claimed it was every single gen x? A statement was made that a large portion (in this case a majority) of gen x voted in favour of Trump; which is backed up by exit polls
Do you understand aggregate descriptors? That it is quite typical and appropriate to talk about groups based on their average or median value, even if it is acknowledged that there is a proportion of exceptions?
What a dumpster fire of a comment section this is. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Anyways. It all goes show how counter culture anti-establishmentarianism has been co-opted and usurped by conservatives. This is by design to destroy the field of play.
It wasn’t a gen-x thing. This generational thing is a new invention and a weapon used to divide us. They put us in a ring and threw that knife in the circle, leaving us to fight to the death.
I know you smartypants are already typing out the, “hurr hurr generational strife has always been a thing”. Just stop.
The era of counter culture had its last hurrah around the time of Occupy. After which the world memory-holed it and entered the era of whatever the fuck this is right now. People too young for that era don’t have the lived experience to comprehend a totally different frame of mind that isn’t the way it’s been now. It’s only when they experience a massive world shift that they might possibly conceptualize such a thing. People who do have lived experience of the before times have largely forgotten.
This whole comment section is self evident. You’re applying the lens of the current zeitgeist over a different one and it amounts to little more than incoherent ramblings.
I had a difficult time understanding what you mean but I definitely agree that we need to stop focusing on the generational stuff. It’s capitalists vs normal people and if we don’t fight back against that core, from social democracy and democratic socialism on through, the neoliberal crisis will only worsen.
I miss when we used to talk about things as decades instead of generations. After the 90s it became Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha…
And yet you’re too young to have experienced what it was like when the very concept of the teenager was created. You wanna talk about a shift?
Except the vaccine.
That’s called a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I don’t even understand this one. It’s this a thing for Gen x? I feel like Gen x is more known for complacency.
Whatever
Exactly, just watch early 90s Simpson’s older teenagers, meh. That summed up gen x in a lot of media.
That’s just a side effect from the belief that nothing important was fixable because the interests that kept them that way were too entrenched.
It’s more apathy than complacency, after years of our cynicism being fully vindicated. A cynic is just a disappointed optimist.
You just don’t have to be so smug about it, also Millennials have been trying to warn you fucks for years that your blasé attitude towards shit was going to fuck us over one day and look where we are… Gen X fucking us over with the boomers.
Part of that attitude was that Gen X never had power. The Boomers have been clinging onto power since Gen X was in high school. Gen X could have fought for power, but would it really have changed anything?
Our youngest President (by a 15 year margin!) was Barack Obama who was a late Baby Boomer. If/when Trump does, Vance will become the first Millenial president.
Meanwhile in Congress, Gen X only this year achieved a plurality in the House at 41% (versus Boomers at 39% and Millenials at 15%). In the Senate, at 28% we’re still far behind the Boomers with their 61% and Millenials are far behind at only 5%.
I’m honestly appalled at how many of us Gen Xers broke for Trump (even more than Boomers), but with our smaller numbers (65 million vs 74 million Millenials), we weren’t enough to push him over the finish line alone.
Sorry my generation hasn’t done more to make the world a better place, but honestly we’re getting fucked more than we are doing the fucking.
GenX has never held any type of power, nor will they ever - not political, not economic, not financial. The Boomers were always like “Wait your turn”, but they never bothered turning anything over regardless of what we fought for, or how hard.
And now the Millennials have come up on the other side. And I’m just so tired of fighting to make things happen, or even just to try to preserve things, that that’s okay. I did what I could to make things better, and I’m happy for a less weary cohort to take over.
I have fought for over three decades. Never got anywhere. The more effort I put in, the less I eventually got back.
I’m out. Throwing in the towel. Not fighting more unwinnable battles only to then be slandered by the very people you fought to protect.
It’s one big free for all since we lower class types seem to be fundamentally incapable of organising.
Only war is the class war, but as long as there are those who want to forgo that for a culture war we have to fight on that front as well. Fucking capitalists.
So, the new Silent Generation (which only got its first and only president in 2021)
and Gen Z is trending in their direction, we’re fucked.
every generation except mine bad
Civilization peaked in 1999, what can I say. Disclaimer: I don’t actually mean that, the 1990s were a lot more racist.
The Nazis are back. The late 90s weren’t significantly more racist than today. Words were thrown around more. Fewer people had black bags thrown over their head before being deported to El Salvador.
That’s right, we’ve made very little progress in 30 years. Some on the queer front, but not the LG part.
Since the 90s, the political left wing of the USA have stood up to private prisons and monied interests.
For a good example of the timeline of this change, in 1995 Joseph Biden passed a crime bill with a Crack to Powder Cocaine sentencing disparity of 40:1, which disproportionately impacted black communities. In 2003 he was among those who banned PAC money from politics (which wouId be overturned by Citizens United 7 years later). In 2009 he was Vice President to America’s first black President. 2010 he was giving a speech in congress asking, begging even, for that sentencing disparity to be removed. In 2022 and 2023 he was pardoning THOUSANDS of marijuana convictions.
I think in the 90s both parties were moderately bad, but now we’ve got one who are fucking psychopaths but we also have one who can and will save us if we can give them the chance.
The openly nazi people are a society-wide extinction burst. In the 1990s they didn’t need to be openly contrarian, because the consensus agreed with them.
A few years ago I believed that.
Now that the fascists have taken over…not so much anymore.
The OG fascism was also a result of similar circumstances. If you look at history reactionary movements always form in the response to civic progress, and for long term progress what matters is the progressive side keep fighting until the progress is fully internalised by society. This doesn’t mean it won’t get worse before it gets better.
Yeah, but the music was better.
But no, it was a lot more racist and homophobic.
I think every generation sucks in its own special way
Maybe it’s just Americans, brah.
Got any examples of millennials trying to warn us “fucks” for years?? Because I don’t recall any millennials I know trying to warn anyone any more than my generation was.
Additionally, I don’t recall ever having people prefix their discussions with:
“So, I’m a [generarion] and here’s my take!”
So I’d imagine you’d be hard-pressed to find any evidence what to support this claim.
And lastly stop with the us vs them bullshit. We don’t need to be divided any more than we already are. Generational behavior isn’t as prominent as you think.
Gen X turned out to be more right wing than boomers, perpetuating the bullshit you all distrust.
I’m elder millennial and remember when gasoline switched from leaded to unleaded. I think GenX got exposed to the historical maximum of leaded gas fumes (in the US)
Nah, that’s boomers.
Most countries cut out leaded petrol for good when x’ers were rolling around their teens / early 20’s, boomers copped it their entire lives well into middle age. The famous reduction of violence when it started getting cut? Wasn’t gen-x’ers doing that shit in the 70’s.
I’ve often suspected it’s why we’re seeing older generations get batshit as rhey age. Lead can be uptaken into bones, and leach back out as the bone degrades. Like, say, with age
There’s been a few studies that have been looking into the effect of lead in the environment and its effects on mental acuity as the person gets older. It’s not a wide confirmation but the start that as Boomers get older, they are literally going insane from lead.
Okay now do why Gen Z men in particular are following the exact same dead end path despite 0 lead.
Know that quote from Lincoln? I’ll paraphrase it. You can fool some people all the time. You can fool some of the people all the time. But eventually they’ll wisen up. That’s what happened here. It seems the Gen Z men are wisening up, slowly though with reports and statistics I’ve seen.
Con artists are the only ones courting them.
Yeah, really not surprised
There are some that literally want to kill all the younger generations because they think they’re woke. Those people need to be in an asylum.
that would explain a lot
Gen Z has entered the chat. They’re more puritan than boomers
More puritan than the free love generation? It’s remarkable that millennials are less puritan than boomers
They were the free love until they became the Me generation…
Weren’t they the Me generation starting when they were kids? And they were able to be both, they were the hippies and the yuppies. And free love didn’t mean love, it meant “sleep around without commitment”. The hippies were interesting in part because while there were and still are genuine people committed to a lot of their higher ideals, a significant portion were the sort to pursue free love for their own pleasure and enlightenment for their own sake. All this to say they seriously pushed sexual culture towards increased freedom
So apparently you haven’t looked at demographic trends over the last ten years because shockingly middle aged dudes have become the progressives among males. Not that they’ve moved to the left, but young men have swung so far to the right, it’s terrifying.
So apparently you haven’t looked at demographic trends over the last ten years because shockingly middle aged dudes have become the progressives among males.
It’s why centrists are so keen on labeling us teenagers. It makes me feel so young.
Gen X males were the bigger supporters of the Republican party than even boomers in the last election. I’m not sure which demographics you think I’m not paying attention to.
The swing in youth is noteworthy because it was a suddenc change, and the youth rarely support Republicans to much degree. Not that they were the biggest supporters
Young people and progressives don’t vote.
The swing is a global phenomenon. It’s not just about your republican party.
I don’t know why you’re trying to argue with me. Nothing I said contradicts what you’re saying here.
But apparently me mentioning US parties in conversation about US-centric generational labels offended you somehow.
At least millennials trust in science.
Let me tell you about how watching the X-Files as a kid made me interested in science - AND the occult!
mostly made me interested in bigfoot. turns out my gran has a costume and her siblings all took turns borrowing it to use out at the cabin or whatever. put a little whimsy in the kids’ lives. family lore is that bigfoot’s name is larry.
That’s brilliant
So do genxers…
Sure don’t vote like it
Not in my country, they don’t. Not on average, at least.
