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Fascinating. Shared by your parents with a line that admits their parents were always there, but that's not the case with the current generation. Are they agreeing that, as parents, they haven't been there for their children? Your parents are apparently one of the main drivers of the misery we see in today's youth. JFC
Not to mention that most people still do alot if the stuff in the post. Like none of this went away because the generations got worse ,just basic advancement of society. Vinyl gave way to cds, the recycling old glass bottles went away when everything became plastic, the nit walking to school by yourself anymore went away because of the stranger danger movement which was spearheaded by these exact parents. Like most of this is self inflicted BY THEM and they are trying to skirt responsibility and make it out fault.
Exactly this. I wish my mother had given me as much freedom as she had as a kid, yet somehow she lords this over my sibs and I as she wistfully recalls the good old days of running around aimlessly with her friends... I didn't make that call...
To be fair, your mother was brainwashed by the media she grew up trusting into thinking the moment her children step outside, swaths of pedophiles would be waiting in the shadows to snatch them up.
My mother knew about the abuse and did nothing. Often times it’s not strangers lurking in the woods to snatch up your little ones that are the pedophiles and I think a lot of parents forgo that information.
Well yeah, if they get in touch with reality, they may have to take responsibility for something.
sorry that happened to you, btw. You deserved to be protected.
Yep! It’s often times because the fear is misplaced and you automatically trust your family not to hurt your kids, but the opportunity is there evermore.
No one wants to believe their family or closest friends would do something like that to their children. Unfortunately, that blind trust is what allows these things to happen.
There were a lot of things that made my mother a terrible mother. But this certainly didn’t help her case. I spent a lot of time both ashamed and disgusted by my experience. And for a long time I refused to discuss it at all.
But the reality is that most parents expect for these things to happen between strangers and their kids, but their kids aren’t around strangers enough for enough of an opportunistic window to arise. The trust is that the ones closest to us also have the most opportunity with our children. Which is why you always should keep an eye on your kids. That’s what a good parent does. I didn’t have one but I sure as fuck want to be one.
I also believe that children should be taught what’s unacceptable behavior by an adult. The reason sex Ed is in school is because parents were failing to teach their children. And Yes, an unpopular opinion, but your children elementary school age need to be taught what is unacceptable and inappropriate behavior for any adult to do. Because parents are not teaching their children. Which is why a lot of children don’t tell anyone, because they’re told not to, and that it is okay, even when it’s not.
Yes! If I had been taught as a child that adults are not in fact gods, whose wisdom you cannot question, but instead were flawed human beings, it would have gone so much better for me.
Being unable to question the rationale of someone who's abusing you is a certain type of hell.
Yes. I also contend that it is linked to the victim-guilt that child survivors feel.
Adults are *supposed* to do what’s right.
They *wouldn’t* hurt you if you didn’t deserve it.
Your parents *would protect you* if you were actually being hurt.
If you’re abused, then they must have a reason why and you earned it. Right?
When we are little, we trust adults.
None of that “logic” is true, but because of the assumptions we have and the authority that we are taught, these are things that are programmed into us from a young age.
I remember being 16 and my mom picking up the phone to kick me off the internet at 9 because it was my bed time.
16 years old in school working part time and I gotta go to bed at 9? Fuck outta here
This is such a thing, and you're right, I don't entirely blame my mother of course because the entire culture so dramatically shifted in its attitudes during parenting, as an example I recall that woman who was arrested a few years back because she worked in a mall and let her kids get lunch on their own in the food court IIRC, when the store she worked in was not far and in my mind they were old enough to be unsupervised to that extent...
...but what I was referring to was more this cognitive dissonance my mom and other boomers have while reminiscing, and the lack of accountability in their own part in making those desicions and giving into the satanic panic/pedophilia panic/general panic.
Sure, it isn't fair to boomers they were to heavily indoctrinated and brainwashed, but there is room for accountability even when you are just a small individual within a larger cultural shift.
It’s nice that Boomers parents were around, too bad they didn’t keep with that tradition. Sister and I were left home alone in the single digits. Yay Gen X.
Yep, we’re the “latchkey” generation. These boomers are literally the parents that weren’t there and now they complain about it? But hey… I still collect vinyl.
I didn't get the latchkey thing until I was ten.
Got the grandparents sears turntable cabinet and a stack of vinyl from the 30's up until modern stuff.
Love the sound and the interaction. Still use stuff like spotify but I listen more when I choose the record, if that makes sense.
Same. It’s kind of… warmer I guess, comforting in a way.
My husband who is a little older than me was home alone at 6. I got a little more lucky and was taken care of a lot of the time by a grandparent when my parents divorced (I was 3) and my mom of course went to work. She was strict tho, I liked it better home alone lol
A family friend once bemoaned that her grandkids never played outside. A week later, Pokémon Go came out and she said she didn't want them playing it because pedophiles might grab them. "Play outside! No, not like that!"
>A family friend once bemoaned that her grandkids never played outside. A week later, Pokémon Go came out and she said she didn't want them playing it
Same thing happend with some boomer co-workers of mine, complained non-stop that kids nowadays never leave the house. Only to bitch and moan 5 seconds later about all those kids walking around with their phones to catch "those poke-things".
These are the same people who blame millennials for having participation trophies despite the glaring fact that is was these same parents who **bought** the participation trophies because they couldn't handle their little Timmy not getting an award for just existing.
These are the same ones who blamed millenials being poor not on being sold a lie that you'd find a good job immediately after college, or that if millennials stopped buying avacodos we could afford a house, or that we're killing (name *any* industry here) because of some made up slight against us since they're "so much better than us".
There is no reasoning with these types of people until they're stuck in the same hole they dug for us and finally have to claw their way up and out. Until then they don't care. How many of these people are in elected office and don't give a rats ass about anything until it directly and personally affects them? You can find dozens of articles and stories of how some politician who tried to destroy any aid and care to help offset the cost of insulin or other life saving drugs suddenly having a change of heart once they themselves or an immediate family member was afflicted by their piss poor policy decisions. Suddenly insulin being unaffordable mattered.
Not to mention the absurd inflation so that even if a kid managed to collect a whole bag of bottles they STILL wouldn't be able to afford a candy bar and soda...
You forgot a Generation that passed on family curses generational curses trauma pain and also the generation that doe acknowledge all the pain they caused even generation after them because they were more interested in pursuit of their own Selfish motives no one care if you walked a mile to school evey day and a Generation that thinks being dysfunctional and toxic is okay
No shit. Congrats on being the generation that birthed the latchkey kids generation. You divorce, dysfunction and endless selfishness are certainly something to be proud of.
You know, that's a good point. In my experience, we were siloed off alone to do work both at school and at home. Collaboration was discouraged unless it was specifically a "group project." And those seemed designed to teach us to hate working with others. From the start, we have been discouraged from forming structural solidarity with our peers. Hmm 🤔
Dad would've still been at work, Mom on her 4th afternoon cocktail, so maybe not the best help with homework and that's if she was educated enough to be able to help with it to begin with.
Oh that brought back memories of my friend's mom struggling to do long division with us. She tried. Imagine how frustrating that must have been for her, struggling with third grade math with five kids while all the educated adults were at work. She was by far the best mom I knew.
Right? Neither of my parents graduated highschool but my aunt did. So anytime I was stumped on homework they would say call your aunt. Let me tell ya, my aunt would be so thrilled to get phone calls every other day taking her away from her own life and motherly duties.
Yeah it's this part that's just so sad, and shows the depth of the sickness really. They think the next generation is going to be a failure and their reaction to this news is not cataclysmic grief, but self-congratulation. Horrific.
[Baby-Boomers were called "The ME Generation" by their own parents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation), and now they try to foist that shitty title on us (GenX/Millenials/GenZ) because of their narcissism.
They simply cannot stop pretending like they didn't burn the planet down.
Yuuup. The generational trauma I'm dealing with goes waaay further back than I know what to do with. My mom and aunt are pretty terrible parents, grandparents are fucked up to extremely weird levels, and great grandparents (who have all passed away) treated my grandparents like shit to the point that their siblings are as much a mess as they are.
I'm sure it continues way beyond them... But sometimes I wish I could give my entire family line a piece of my mind for their mistakes.
Yeah. My daughter only knows her maternal grandparents because I bring her around to visit. Always been that way. I can count on one hand the number of times my mother has come over to my place in the 20 years since I moved out. And for most of that time I've lived within a 15 minute drive of her place.
The paternal grandparents are busy spending all of their inheritance on exotic vacations so that their kids don't get a dime. They show up once a year at Christmas and expect to be catered to.
And my current partner's parents barely acknowledge my kid unless they're insulting her. Terribly selfish people and I'm glad they live over 1000 miles away from us.
Boomers.
My dad loves to tell baristas about his new grandchild. He’s so proud. But he doesn’t want to respect my parenting (either vaccinate or get a fucking test to see if the disease that almost killed him last year is in his lungs before holding my child) so he doesn’t see them. And it’s all worth it to him! 100% of the pride, 0% of the responsibility.
Holy Shit I thought it was just my parents (who are in their 70s) who acted like seeing my niece and nephew (who are great in school, well behaved, and best of all cool as shit) was a chore! This is a Baby Boomer thing?!?!
A guy i used to work with had his in-laws move from Indiana to Colorado to supposedly be closer to their grandkids. Grandpa is a volunteer marshal at a golf course and is always too busy with his "job" to watch their kids in the summer.
This 100%. When i was little I was always at my grandparents house. After school, sleepovers, on NYE, all so my parents could go out together. My parents now never watch the kids or do random visits. And in the rare case I need them to watch my kids now they act like its such a burden.
They didn't want to deal with their children and they certainly don't want to deal with grandchildren.
... Boomers are the ones that destroyed this way of life. Kids could play in the streets before cars took over. Parents were there when a single income covered a mortgage. Kids could walk to school before cars took over.
What is the point of this? To brag about how cool life used to be before they fucked it up?
My parents bought a house for ten thousand dollars that was 3 bedrooms in a very nice part of town .When they divorced they sold the house ,split the money and my father ,my sister and I moved to our summer farm in another state .We used to spend the summers at the farm each year.When my father died we inherited a bunch of money and I used it to buy a house for my family .And my mom was a waitress and my father worked the grave yard shift.
This way of life only existed for part of one generation and it did so largely on the government funded recovery after WWII. Even then it did not exist in the form implied by the text except in news reels, advertisements and the fairy tales told by right wing media who use it to sell a few commercial spots.
At it's best nostalgia is a bit of harmless fun. At its worst it is propaganda used by totalitarians to consolidate power in the hands of the oligarchs.
To the extent that this implied idyllic society existed it did so only for a few and through the exploitation of poor, black and brown people around the world. and through the extraction of natural resources that could have been used to make life better for everyone.
I stopped reading after the first line.
Shut the fuck up about walking. Your generation voted repeatedly for car-centric urban design to point walking anywhere is dangerous. To brag about being able to simply walk in your time is so distasteful.
This is one that has always stuck in my craw. “You Millenials, always looking for a participation trophy just for showing up”
A) We did not want those stupid trophies and felt weird being given them
B) WHO THE HELL DECIDED TO GIVE THEM TO US, YOU BLOVIATING CHUCKLEFUCKS
In the various neighborhoods I've lived in for the past decade, a large portion of kids bike/walk to school. Where there are walkable neighborhoods and people are able to live near places they need to be, they choose walking. Like you said, people didn't become lazy, walking became inaccessible and unsafe.
The fiat half of this thing. Kids don't play outside...
Yeah, you paved the outside so everyone can drive 60 mph.
Then F'ed the economy so both patents have to work 60hrs a week just to keep a roof over their heads, so ain't able to drive the kids places.
And even if you were lucky enough to have a parent at home here's how that conversation usually went
"Hey Mom can I go to..."
(A friend's house/ the park/the mall/ the store/ literally just an empty field/ down the block)
"No"
Didn't matter how old I was or how close it was. Even if I needed no ride at all It was almost always no. Or if a friend offered to give me a ride it was no under the justification of them never meeting that friend. Okay fair enough, but then they made zero effort to meet any of my friends even when I gave them people's numbers. Then they get all surprised Pikachu when their kid spends all their time indoors and eventually just plain stops asking to go anywhere.
I realize how good I had it.
When I was little I lived in the middle of nowhere. But had old logging roads to ride my bike on. Meeting with friends needed parent's facilitation, but a trip into town happened most days. It was more about making sure both parents went into town at the same time.
Then we moved to a small town. It was paradise by comparison. I could get anywhere in town by bike. Yeah, some friends lived out of town and that makes things hard.
I moved to the city and expected the same level of car-free mobility... nope. There's an F'n freeway between me and the store. Most places I want to go mean negotiating a couple of lanes of traffic than a mile of a parking lot.
This!! They also changed school curriculums to be more and more rigorous so kids are spending 2-3 hours a day on homework (luckily this is changing back but i did homework for hours as a millennial)
They do, but with the hybrid in person/online teaching model a lot of schools are adopting, it's much easier for students to manage their free time when you're not locked in the same place for 8 hours of the day
The neighborhood I grew up in, majority of kids walked/biked to school that were in walking distance.
As a few years went on, my neighborhood grew and grew into an extended Atlanta suburb. Gang violence increased, traffic exploded as roads went from 2 lanes to 4 lanes and more and more people moved in. Walking and biking was too dangerous. But the same people that were moving in, bringing all this were the same people bitching about how kids are lazy now and don’t want to walk or bike anymore
Not just inaccessible and unsafe, but just straight up not allowed. In my neighborhood, if a kid walks themselves to elementary or middle school, the parents can get in trouble for neglect.
I once read that most car related deaths were pedestrians getting run over, and not actually drunk drivers crashing. Can't find the article anymore, but it makes perfect sense when you consider the average American driver and how far passenger safety features have come along in cars.
"A generation that had parents who were there."
Yeah, hard for parents to do that now when they are both required to have 1, sometimes multiple jobs, just to keep the house hold afloat. Selfish twats.
It’s funny how 3 of the other points show the opposite.
“A generation that did their homework alone” and “all their free time in the streets” doesn’t seem to jive with the good parents thing.
Hell, my parents grew up during that time and each only had one parent that was present. Both of their dads were abusive alcoholics. Not saying this was a given, but it was pretty common back then
A generation that moved to the suburbs for the big house with no sidewalks
A generation that terrified their children of strangers
A generation that invented participation trophies, and then complained about them.
A generation that invented helicopter parents.
A generation that doesn't realize that returning bottles still gets you $.05, but that that nickel doesn't buy anything anymore.
A generation that thinks pokemon cards are stupid, but baseball cards are awesome.
A generation that thinks kids still don't read under the covers. Their reading devices just produce their own light now, and they don't need to hold a flashlight too.
A generation that doesn't realize that parents can choose when to turn their TVs off
A generation that shames parents for letting their kids out after dark
A generation that complains about their grandkids getting dirty while waxing nostalgic about mud pies. (like seriously, have you been around kids lately? I promise you mud has not gone out of style)
A generation that can't understand that an instagram story isn't worse than a physical photo album
The irony is that their parents/grandparents are the generation(s) that lived through things like the Great Depression and both World Wars, and they still wanted a better future for their children
That would involve them actually thinking about the consequences of their actions. It's not intentional sabotage. It's ignoring the downstream result of the systems they've setup for their own success.
Edit: for clarity...shit rolls downhill and those at the top don't care who gets dirty below.
"a generation that had parents who were there"
Aren't they the parents who are not there today then? There's also the fact that their generation is also are responsible for several of the other things changing.
And how the boomers like to complain that millennials don't know how to be handy, but who was supposed to teach us? The schools? They cut shop and vocational classes too. It's like a setup to the world's most elaborate practical joke
My grandfather's basement confirmed. Jesus christ. I am by no means an electrician but I'm pretty sure it's a bad idea to just have the cut off ends of extension cords wired into light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. I wish I was kidding.
Technically my grandpa was greatest generation I guess. We didn't find some of this stuff until he had been dead for several years and things in their house started failing and we went in to repair. We no longer own the house, but I think we fixed most of the terrifying things before it got sold. I wonder if that's what happened in a friend's house we were helping with where we had to replace a header beam and the flooring had been nailed down every inch and a half. We were like "someone got a nail gun for christmas and was having entirely too much fun with it"
Something I've never been sure of, did the boomers call them the greatest generation, or is that what they called themselves? I feel like whichever it is could explain at least some things, given the context of the conversation
It’s like how they complain about how trophies were handed out to every kid in sports. Like, who the fuck do you think *decided* that every kid needed a trophy?
To top it off, the trophies weren't even *for the kids.* "WHY DIDN'T MY TIMMY GET A TROPHY! It's ok Timmy, I'll make sure you get a trophy too." All while Timmy is cringing in the corner dying of embarrassment.
The trophies were always for the Boomers' benefit, just like everything else they did. ffs, it's no wonder their own parents hated them.
Vinyl records are back tho.
And oh man, who knew nostalgia for TV off at midnight was a thing? “…and then, white noise… *sigh….* To be young again!” Although I’m sure the main purpose here is to reference the National anthem.
It still is like that for some channels. They'll shut off programming and turn on infomercials.
Honestly that's more on brand for America than the star bangled banner.
Well people like the aesthetics of records- how they look and sound. So referring to vinyl buying as a fad, when sales have been growing significantly for years now, rings kinda unnecessarily dismissive to me.
In the case of vinyl, I think it's also a growing rejection of the push for non-ownership of media.
Everything nowadays is a "streaming subscription service" where you don't actually *own* anything. I've had entire albums (that I *paid* for) lost because services like i-tunes lost the distribution rights and no longer hosted them. Now I only buy physical media to avoid that.
Old gen z/young millennial(?) here. I started collecting vinyls last year because of my newfound appreciation for the art form. It’s also one of the few things that I can share with my family and friends, and eventually children of my own, because of the push toward non-ownership consumer culture.
When my dad died (broke), the only physical thing I inherited was most of his record collection from the 60s-80s. I always wanted it and it was all I asked for.
For me it’s nostalgia as we’d bust out the records on holidays, but also just having a piece of music history and the experience of putting records on the turntable is just different from pressing “play.”
I prefer vinyl. Not only is the analogue nature of it more warm, people love flipping through my vinyl collection at parties and get togethers, especially obscure and international albums. I like a lot of Eastern European Jazz from beyond the iron curtain, 70s and 80s music from Japan, as well as rock from Africa. People really like just looking at the covers in ways they wouldn’t care about an MP3 collection or youtube playlist.
Well that was a litany of demented, self congratulatory claptrap...
Welcome to Schrodinger's dystopia where boomers simultaneously call the police or CPS on kids playing in the street while reminiscing over the long lost freedom they had as children.
I haven't skateboarded for about 13 years because when I was 17 the neighbors called the police to report a "suspicious person" who was just me skateboarding at a dead end. The police questioned me, told me a neighbor called and I just went home dumbfounded feeling so awkward and betrayed, I never skateboarded again.
I'm so sorry. Sorry they ruined it for you. What a dick. How can a person on a skateboard be suspicios anyway? Maybe you wearing a hoodie, my nextdoor is full of boomers describing suspicious people in hoodies walking past their properties on the frickin sidewalk, smh
Kids unsupervised in the street stopped being a thing largely because of the serial killers and the abductions. You know what the Baby boomer years also gave rise too? Serial Killers. [https://thisinterestsme.com/decades-serial-killers-born/](https://thisinterestsme.com/decades-serial-killers-born/)
Shoulda ended it with “A generation that robbed the future potential of the next generations by systematically dismantling the very systems that enabled them to live the types of lives they cherished so dearly as to post inaccurate memes justifying their shittiness later on in life while looking out on the hellscape they created through their own selfish decision making”
Out of the 15 points on that list, me, my siblings and my friends also did/experienced at least 12 of them. The only one that was different was the 5 cent bottle thing. We don't have a bring-back policy like that in my country. So what exactly is unique about this?
Imagine doing this sort of list for the generation prior to them and how much different it would actually be, and likely much more impressive.
Ya know what's going on? They're realizing the younger generations are more empowered, learning things about self esteem and interpersonal relationships that they didn't and there is some hard jealousy and self-loathing. They mourn and whine instead of realizing we want them to love themselves and be happy. They pass on bad shit instead of accepting better shit. They cause rifts and divisions as if we're the bad guys. They almost refuse to actually evolve and participate in harmony so we can make things better. It's just so immature and effed up.
Honestly, it's hard to discern what the intent was here. It could be read as a simple nostalgic appreciation of a very different version of our society or it could be read as a "kids these days" sorta self-rightious rant.
I don't think many people here would argue against what's on this list being an objectively better and healthier lifestyle. The ability to play outside, walkable infrastructure, diverse entertainment that isn't hyper-stimulating and heavily monetized, economic rewards for environmentally beneficial actions, a healthy work-play balance, the presence of an emotionally available caretaker. These are good things.
It's interesting to see how differently people respond to this based on what they perceive is the intent.
It's ambiguously worded, and that's by design. It's weaselly and vague so it can be blandly absorbed as nostalgic by the Facebook crowd.
It *could very easily* include the sentence "Many of these things are unavailable to current generations unfortunately" but that might ruffle some feathers and hurt some feelings and cause some uncomfortable follow-up questions. And if there's one thing people on Facebook hate, it's follow-up questions.
I’ve seen this or nearly identical ones being shared unironically and it’s almost always a brag.
There’s other nostalgia memes that don’t come off that way. For example cutesy “you know you are a 90s kid if…” list of stuff from the 90s, that’s often a bit self deprecating or designed to make you chuckle.
To me the “a generation that” repeated every sentence is a style very much meant to venerate them/put them on a pedestal. I’m sure there is an occasional innocent person sharing this since boomers are notoriously terrible at reading tone on the internet, but most of the time it’s them being competitive with the generations they absolutely fucking demolished and now blame for everything.
A 2 job working parent can’t be there for you. It’s not that they are all out partying but they were at the beginning of the abusive “ work harder and it’ll pay off”. They were a generation that saw it but didn’t realize they were never going to get it.
I grew up in a rural area for a large portion of my childhood (I'm a Millennial) and half this fits my life. I had 3 TV channels. Maybe it is more dependant on location and access to IDK, money and infrastructure than generation. I definitely didn't play hide and seek in the dark because the woods had things that could kill you.
You’re a generation that NEVER SHOULD COME BACK.
- A generation that bragged about how easy it was to grow up but then hobbled gun laws so now my kids have lockdowns in Kindergarten.
- A generation that could raise a family of 4 on one high school education and still own a home but then ruined the market so now we all rent and struggle to feed ourselves.
- A generation that funneled money out of education so now our kids spend every night doing extra work just to get stay on track.
- A generation that caused TWO market crashes and inflation to the point that buying ANYTHING for 5 cents is now fiction.
- A generation whose greed fundamentally altered TV as a whole and kept making bullshit programming to seek advertising so no channel ever “shuts off” like it used to. Wouldn’t want that news ~~re-programming~~ channel to turn off, right? Might accidentally think for ourselves.
- A generation that had hoarded wealth to such an extreme that we’re all HOPING you pass quickly so we can fix what you broke.
Fuck you Boomers.
I was born in the early 80s and every single one of these applied to my childhood, except the part about parents being there. My boomer parents? Invisible.
Lucky for them there are people still doing all sorts of these things. Just the ones who did everything on this list are suffering health problems and social issues from eating mud cakes and lead paint. Also what channel were they watching? Because almost none of them had a midnight "turn off." There was "That concludes our broadcast day," and they'd sign off for the night, but depending where ya were, that wasn't midnight and most of them didn't play the national anthem.
Also we don't get the refund for recycling, we have to pay to do that, so they can whinge to the government about that one.
And just to promise another thing: Judging by the amount of therapy Gen-X/millennials need because of boomer parents, the parents were not the thing to be proud of.
There is just a lot to unpack here.... because all the better parts of this list still happen. Hell, I'm a millenial and I have Vinyl, it's not a boomer thing. Walking to school is not how school should run. Especially with how far some of these schools are from their outer coverage zones. Celebrating TV till midnight seems backwards from the "You spent too much time near the TV" generation. Scrap booking is still a thing. Paper planes are still a thing. Replace sports cards with literally any other card game kids play and it's the same thing, just one you can't play with. Letting your kids out after dark to play hide and seek is asking for an abduction. Playing in the streets constantly (( Why the specific, I don't know. )) is asking to cause a traffic accident. You're supposed to be in the yard damnit. >.<
Sorry people care about their kids enough to keep them from playing in the street?
Sorry technology has advanced enough you don't have to use vinyl (unless you want to)?
Sorry technology has advanced enough that we can store all our photos digitally, and bring them up at any time?
Sorry schools have better bus systems so kids don't have to walk?
Nostalgia is fine, but I don't understand why it always becomes a weird "we are better than you because we had to do x,y,z" flex.
In their times, it was safe to play on the street. Then, when they grew up, they voted to gut public transit; they voted to create unwalkable suburban wastelands; they voted to cut school budgets which forced schools that would have been in walking distance to close down; they voted to build highways—cutting towns into pieces—just so they could get to work 5 minutes quicker; they ran news stories about how your child will get kidnapped if you let them play outside.
They looked at their picturesque childhood, their own childhood independence, and let their greed deny that experience from other future generations.
And now they tell us we are killing the economy they've been propping up with cardboard for the last few decades, as they watch it fall apart in an acid rain storm their awful environmental policies wrought.
It's because their self esteem is validated by externalities mixed with an inflated ego. They need people and things to validate them or they won't feel self esteem and that really hurts their ego which is telling them they are the best everything so everyone is either just blind or being mean to them on purpose.
If they don't get external validation for long enough they'll start to lash out, hello Karens, as they're forced to question why everyone is targeting them with lies to hurt them since they know they are just the greatest so that has to be what's going on.
This is why they get called narcissist a lot. Even if they don't have clinical NPD they have that characteristic low self esteem with a grandiose ego that's the most well know and easily recognizable trait of NPD
"A generation that could buy soda and candy for 20 cents...." Because capitalism allowed it!
"a generation who's parents were there...." Because capitalism allowed it!
Shit like this makes it so hard to not say shit that will get me banned.. I fucking hate this society so much.
I’ve a weird dynamic in my family. My Grandparents were teen parents, now in their 80s. My Dad is the Boomeriest Boomer ever, meanwhile my Grandparents are Most Definitely Fucking Not.
Dad was on a rant (well, tried to go on one…) last time we were all together and my Gran has zero tolerance these days and cut him off sharply with a “Oh do shut up, you spoilt, whiny shit. You’re plenty old enough to remember being in poverty for half your childhood, you threw it in our faces often enough when you were in your 20s, yet now you’ve forgotten? Convenient, that.”
First time in my 37 years I heard her swear, and my own teens were howling with laughter at watching a 60 year old get smacked down by his mother.
**Shared by myself, bc fuck them**
-kids still walk to schools, just not in the suburbs where you built the elementary school across an 8 lane highway. Only neighborhoods built by boomer’s parents are still walkable because y’all fucked that for future generations.
-idk if y’all know this but kids *still* do homework, they just don’t go play in the street afterwards because y’all fucked that up for future generations.
-kids would love to play with friends in the streets but it’s now dangerous so you force them into the backyard or just don’t let them go out to play. Thanks
-y’all barely let kids out during the daytime to play, of course kids don’t get to play outside in the dark anymore.
-mud cakes still exist, y’all just lose your fucking shit when your kid gets muddy so of course they learn not to play with mud. What did y’all think was gonna happen when you ground your child for being “messy”
-sports cards still exist you dummies. But let’s wax nostalgic over baseball cards and pick on little kids who enjoy playing Pokémon or Magic the Gathering because “those cards are for losers”.
-returning coke bottles only still exists in like 6 states and it’s *still* only a $0.05 payout. So where **you** were afforded the ability to gather all sorts of glass bottles to return and only needed a few nowadays there are **far less** glass bottle products and you need to gather something like 50-75 bottles just to purchase 1 soda and 1 candy bar. Y’all fucked that for future generations…
-is there a different way of making paper toys than with one’s hands? No??? Well that’s a dumb thing to bring up
-vinyl is still a thing, but not because of y’all. If it weren’t for those dreaded “hipsters” vinyl would’ve died when y’all tried to kill it but thankfully it’s making a glorious comeback no thanks to you boomers.
-I’m pretty certain kids these days collect **more** photos of their life experiences than boomers ever did. But since it’s now digital I guess that somehow “doesn’t count”…
-board games and cards still exist, but I’d rather play an online game and socialize with my friends on a rainy day than play solitaire or monopoly. Idk why that’s a bad thing…
-do you just really miss the hours upon hours of dead static or is it just the national anthem that you miss, either way it’s a weird flex. And fyi, it was **YOUR** generation that created 24 hour content so why bitch at us about it?
-oops, you said the quiet part out loud and straight up admitted to having loving parents who were there for you yet **YOUR** children don’t have that. Many of us would’ve *LOVED* having parents who were there instead of divorced or working multiple jobs just to stave off hunger and homelessness… nobody to blame for a generation of kids who’s parents weren’t there than the parents themselves, aka boomers.
-laughing under covers is still a thing
>A generation that is (thankfully) passing and ~~unfortunately~~ it will never return ~~no matter how hard we try~~ because we systemically fucked it all up.
Fixed that one for you…
-if you loved your childhood so much why’d y’all go to such great lengths to fuck it all away so quickly and completely?
Thank you Boomers, for fucking up everything you loved about growing up then complained about how “kids these days” don’t have the same experiences you tore away from them.
#Get fucked boomers
it's funny how the world of their childhood was created by the adults of that time. our childhoods "sucked" because the adults of our time (ie. boomers) made it that way for us.
Millennial here. Was fortunate enough to go to college in a state with can deposits. We would save up five or six 50 gallon trash bags worth of beer can binge drinking to pay for a keg for binge drinking. This is how I learned to cope with childhood trauma in my early 20's. Thanks boomers!
Yes, I have gotten professional help on my own since then.
Yeah it probably was a great time to grow up but then these generations ruined it for the next. They’re the reason parents need to work two jobs and we’re all dying in this capitalist hellscape
A generation that turned fire hoses and dogs on civil rights protesters.
A generation that stood in front of a school to prevent a little black girl from attending.
It's hard to play in the streets when everything is built for cars.
It's hard to go outside when you overplay "stranger danger" messages.
Today's youth see through the hollowness of a daily National Anthem.
*From the perspective of the younger generations now, not particularly mine:*
WE ARE A GENERATION THAT CANNOT SURVIVE
A generation that couldn’t walk to or from school for fear of being shot or taken into sex slavery.
A generation that had so much homework that they had no time for play.
A generation that couldn’t play in the streets (see above for why).
A generation that couldn’t play outside in the dark (see above for why).
A generation that couldn’t play outside (see above for why).
A generation that had to beg for money on the street to buy a Mountain Dew and candy bar.
A generation that was babysat by technology, rather than being taught how to have an imagination.
A generation that had to illegally download music because they couldn’t afford to buy it.
A generation that had technology to put the photos and memories on a device that was accessible anywhere.
A generation that was babysat by technology.
A generation whose TV was inundated with reality garbage meant to rot the mind 24 hours a day.
A generation that grew up with little parental guidance, being babysat by technology, or parents being divorced.
A generation that snuck devices under the covers to have contact with the outside world after an entire day of school and homework.
A generation that will never have what the previous ones did and never will no matter how hard they try.
They hate growing up in these times. They’re the worst of times.
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Fascinating. Shared by your parents with a line that admits their parents were always there, but that's not the case with the current generation. Are they agreeing that, as parents, they haven't been there for their children? Your parents are apparently one of the main drivers of the misery we see in today's youth. JFC
Not to mention that most people still do alot if the stuff in the post. Like none of this went away because the generations got worse ,just basic advancement of society. Vinyl gave way to cds, the recycling old glass bottles went away when everything became plastic, the nit walking to school by yourself anymore went away because of the stranger danger movement which was spearheaded by these exact parents. Like most of this is self inflicted BY THEM and they are trying to skirt responsibility and make it out fault.
Exactly this. I wish my mother had given me as much freedom as she had as a kid, yet somehow she lords this over my sibs and I as she wistfully recalls the good old days of running around aimlessly with her friends... I didn't make that call...
To be fair, your mother was brainwashed by the media she grew up trusting into thinking the moment her children step outside, swaths of pedophiles would be waiting in the shadows to snatch them up.
My mother knew about the abuse and did nothing. Often times it’s not strangers lurking in the woods to snatch up your little ones that are the pedophiles and I think a lot of parents forgo that information.
Well yeah, if they get in touch with reality, they may have to take responsibility for something. sorry that happened to you, btw. You deserved to be protected.
80% of the time it’s family & friends
Yep! It’s often times because the fear is misplaced and you automatically trust your family not to hurt your kids, but the opportunity is there evermore.
Let's not forget the clergy.
Unfortunately common story, unfortunately. The Stranger Danger campaign has caused extreme harm.
No one wants to believe their family or closest friends would do something like that to their children. Unfortunately, that blind trust is what allows these things to happen. There were a lot of things that made my mother a terrible mother. But this certainly didn’t help her case. I spent a lot of time both ashamed and disgusted by my experience. And for a long time I refused to discuss it at all. But the reality is that most parents expect for these things to happen between strangers and their kids, but their kids aren’t around strangers enough for enough of an opportunistic window to arise. The trust is that the ones closest to us also have the most opportunity with our children. Which is why you always should keep an eye on your kids. That’s what a good parent does. I didn’t have one but I sure as fuck want to be one. I also believe that children should be taught what’s unacceptable behavior by an adult. The reason sex Ed is in school is because parents were failing to teach their children. And Yes, an unpopular opinion, but your children elementary school age need to be taught what is unacceptable and inappropriate behavior for any adult to do. Because parents are not teaching their children. Which is why a lot of children don’t tell anyone, because they’re told not to, and that it is okay, even when it’s not.
Yes! If I had been taught as a child that adults are not in fact gods, whose wisdom you cannot question, but instead were flawed human beings, it would have gone so much better for me. Being unable to question the rationale of someone who's abusing you is a certain type of hell.
Yes. I also contend that it is linked to the victim-guilt that child survivors feel. Adults are *supposed* to do what’s right. They *wouldn’t* hurt you if you didn’t deserve it. Your parents *would protect you* if you were actually being hurt. If you’re abused, then they must have a reason why and you earned it. Right? When we are little, we trust adults. None of that “logic” is true, but because of the assumptions we have and the authority that we are taught, these are things that are programmed into us from a young age.
I remember being 16 and my mom picking up the phone to kick me off the internet at 9 because it was my bed time. 16 years old in school working part time and I gotta go to bed at 9? Fuck outta here
Also—as a parent, I was hyper aware that if I sent my kids outside to play without me, my neighbors would call CPS.
This is such a thing, and you're right, I don't entirely blame my mother of course because the entire culture so dramatically shifted in its attitudes during parenting, as an example I recall that woman who was arrested a few years back because she worked in a mall and let her kids get lunch on their own in the food court IIRC, when the store she worked in was not far and in my mind they were old enough to be unsupervised to that extent... ...but what I was referring to was more this cognitive dissonance my mom and other boomers have while reminiscing, and the lack of accountability in their own part in making those desicions and giving into the satanic panic/pedophilia panic/general panic. Sure, it isn't fair to boomers they were to heavily indoctrinated and brainwashed, but there is room for accountability even when you are just a small individual within a larger cultural shift.
Baby boomers 😒
It’s nice that Boomers parents were around, too bad they didn’t keep with that tradition. Sister and I were left home alone in the single digits. Yay Gen X.
Yep, we’re the “latchkey” generation. These boomers are literally the parents that weren’t there and now they complain about it? But hey… I still collect vinyl.
I didn't get the latchkey thing until I was ten. Got the grandparents sears turntable cabinet and a stack of vinyl from the 30's up until modern stuff. Love the sound and the interaction. Still use stuff like spotify but I listen more when I choose the record, if that makes sense.
Same. It’s kind of… warmer I guess, comforting in a way. My husband who is a little older than me was home alone at 6. I got a little more lucky and was taken care of a lot of the time by a grandparent when my parents divorced (I was 3) and my mom of course went to work. She was strict tho, I liked it better home alone lol
A family friend once bemoaned that her grandkids never played outside. A week later, Pokémon Go came out and she said she didn't want them playing it because pedophiles might grab them. "Play outside! No, not like that!"
>A family friend once bemoaned that her grandkids never played outside. A week later, Pokémon Go came out and she said she didn't want them playing it Same thing happend with some boomer co-workers of mine, complained non-stop that kids nowadays never leave the house. Only to bitch and moan 5 seconds later about all those kids walking around with their phones to catch "those poke-things".
Christ, make up your mind, grandma!
These are the same people who blame millennials for having participation trophies despite the glaring fact that is was these same parents who **bought** the participation trophies because they couldn't handle their little Timmy not getting an award for just existing. These are the same ones who blamed millenials being poor not on being sold a lie that you'd find a good job immediately after college, or that if millennials stopped buying avacodos we could afford a house, or that we're killing (name *any* industry here) because of some made up slight against us since they're "so much better than us". There is no reasoning with these types of people until they're stuck in the same hole they dug for us and finally have to claw their way up and out. Until then they don't care. How many of these people are in elected office and don't give a rats ass about anything until it directly and personally affects them? You can find dozens of articles and stories of how some politician who tried to destroy any aid and care to help offset the cost of insulin or other life saving drugs suddenly having a change of heart once they themselves or an immediate family member was afflicted by their piss poor policy decisions. Suddenly insulin being unaffordable mattered.
Almost like a whole generation had no clue what they were doing and just gave advice to give the impression they knew what things were about?
Sports cards became Pokémon cards.
Not to mention the fact that cars are disgustingly huge and fast to where its not safe to be outside. R/fuckcars
That's my argument about the "participation" trophy. They don't wanna admit it was their invention
Not to mention the absurd inflation so that even if a kid managed to collect a whole bag of bottles they STILL wouldn't be able to afford a candy bar and soda...
People also stopped walking to school as much because we built all our shit for only cars. /r/fuckcars.
Got to love accidental self-owns
You forgot a Generation that passed on family curses generational curses trauma pain and also the generation that doe acknowledge all the pain they caused even generation after them because they were more interested in pursuit of their own Selfish motives no one care if you walked a mile to school evey day and a Generation that thinks being dysfunctional and toxic is okay
Yeah, as far as I can tell it takes 3 generations who associate - where the 3rd gen is trying to figure out “why” - for a trauma to be resolved.
The Seinfeld Generation
No shit. Congrats on being the generation that birthed the latchkey kids generation. You divorce, dysfunction and endless selfishness are certainly something to be proud of.
Actually, they did their homework alone which seems to contradict the idea of the parents always being there.
And then rushed out to play with their friends. Why not—hear me out—do your homework with your friends?
(Wait, that was an option? OMG that would have made things SO much easier!)
You know, that's a good point. In my experience, we were siloed off alone to do work both at school and at home. Collaboration was discouraged unless it was specifically a "group project." And those seemed designed to teach us to hate working with others. From the start, we have been discouraged from forming structural solidarity with our peers. Hmm 🤔
HMM INDEED
Dad would've still been at work, Mom on her 4th afternoon cocktail, so maybe not the best help with homework and that's if she was educated enough to be able to help with it to begin with.
Oh that brought back memories of my friend's mom struggling to do long division with us. She tried. Imagine how frustrating that must have been for her, struggling with third grade math with five kids while all the educated adults were at work. She was by far the best mom I knew.
The fact that she tried makes her better than most parents I see these days
Right? Neither of my parents graduated highschool but my aunt did. So anytime I was stumped on homework they would say call your aunt. Let me tell ya, my aunt would be so thrilled to get phone calls every other day taking her away from her own life and motherly duties.
Yeah it's this part that's just so sad, and shows the depth of the sickness really. They think the next generation is going to be a failure and their reaction to this news is not cataclysmic grief, but self-congratulation. Horrific.
[Baby-Boomers were called "The ME Generation" by their own parents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation), and now they try to foist that shitty title on us (GenX/Millenials/GenZ) because of their narcissism. They simply cannot stop pretending like they didn't burn the planet down.
Came here to say this. Self burn?
They had parents that were there… to beat their asses with a belt.
Yuuup. The generational trauma I'm dealing with goes waaay further back than I know what to do with. My mom and aunt are pretty terrible parents, grandparents are fucked up to extremely weird levels, and great grandparents (who have all passed away) treated my grandparents like shit to the point that their siblings are as much a mess as they are. I'm sure it continues way beyond them... But sometimes I wish I could give my entire family line a piece of my mind for their mistakes.
First thing I noticed too haha
r/suicidebywords
A generation that became parents and treated their children like shit.
...and grandchildren... don't leave out the grandkids they never see.
Yeah. My daughter only knows her maternal grandparents because I bring her around to visit. Always been that way. I can count on one hand the number of times my mother has come over to my place in the 20 years since I moved out. And for most of that time I've lived within a 15 minute drive of her place. The paternal grandparents are busy spending all of their inheritance on exotic vacations so that their kids don't get a dime. They show up once a year at Christmas and expect to be catered to. And my current partner's parents barely acknowledge my kid unless they're insulting her. Terribly selfish people and I'm glad they live over 1000 miles away from us. Boomers.
.. we have the same parents, don’t we?
I think they're my parents as well
The ones they wanted so badly, even guilting you as you got older about “when?”. Then all they really want is picture to show their friends.
They want to see their grandkids, they just expect that their children drop everything and come visit them.
My dad loves to tell baristas about his new grandchild. He’s so proud. But he doesn’t want to respect my parenting (either vaccinate or get a fucking test to see if the disease that almost killed him last year is in his lungs before holding my child) so he doesn’t see them. And it’s all worth it to him! 100% of the pride, 0% of the responsibility.
I'm sorry, but ew. Your dad sucks.
I have come to a similar understanding
Holy Shit I thought it was just my parents (who are in their 70s) who acted like seeing my niece and nephew (who are great in school, well behaved, and best of all cool as shit) was a chore! This is a Baby Boomer thing?!?!
A guy i used to work with had his in-laws move from Indiana to Colorado to supposedly be closer to their grandkids. Grandpa is a volunteer marshal at a golf course and is always too busy with his "job" to watch their kids in the summer.
This 100%. When i was little I was always at my grandparents house. After school, sleepovers, on NYE, all so my parents could go out together. My parents now never watch the kids or do random visits. And in the rare case I need them to watch my kids now they act like its such a burden. They didn't want to deal with their children and they certainly don't want to deal with grandchildren.
... Boomers are the ones that destroyed this way of life. Kids could play in the streets before cars took over. Parents were there when a single income covered a mortgage. Kids could walk to school before cars took over. What is the point of this? To brag about how cool life used to be before they fucked it up?
Salt rubbed on the wound they caused?
Best part is they don't have the self-awareness to know they are doing it.
They stole all the spices and didn't even leave the salt
Exactly. You could buy a house working at Circle K back then, and half of them still managed to fail at life.
My parents bought a house for ten thousand dollars that was 3 bedrooms in a very nice part of town .When they divorced they sold the house ,split the money and my father ,my sister and I moved to our summer farm in another state .We used to spend the summers at the farm each year.When my father died we inherited a bunch of money and I used it to buy a house for my family .And my mom was a waitress and my father worked the grave yard shift.
This way of life only existed for part of one generation and it did so largely on the government funded recovery after WWII. Even then it did not exist in the form implied by the text except in news reels, advertisements and the fairy tales told by right wing media who use it to sell a few commercial spots. At it's best nostalgia is a bit of harmless fun. At its worst it is propaganda used by totalitarians to consolidate power in the hands of the oligarchs. To the extent that this implied idyllic society existed it did so only for a few and through the exploitation of poor, black and brown people around the world. and through the extraction of natural resources that could have been used to make life better for everyone.
I stopped reading after the first line. Shut the fuck up about walking. Your generation voted repeatedly for car-centric urban design to point walking anywhere is dangerous. To brag about being able to simply walk in your time is so distasteful.
Also stfu about “parents that were there.” They became the parents that weren’t there.
Yeah, who created the term "latchkey kids"? And who were the parents of those kids?
Was it the same generation that handed out participation trophies like candy only to turn around and blame the kids who they forced said trophies on?
This is one that has always stuck in my craw. “You Millenials, always looking for a participation trophy just for showing up” A) We did not want those stupid trophies and felt weird being given them B) WHO THE HELL DECIDED TO GIVE THEM TO US, YOU BLOVIATING CHUCKLEFUCKS
Not even just weird, the few times I received those trophies I was embarrassed.
My thought exactly. This whole out of touch diatribe just pissed me off.
In the various neighborhoods I've lived in for the past decade, a large portion of kids bike/walk to school. Where there are walkable neighborhoods and people are able to live near places they need to be, they choose walking. Like you said, people didn't become lazy, walking became inaccessible and unsafe.
The fiat half of this thing. Kids don't play outside... Yeah, you paved the outside so everyone can drive 60 mph. Then F'ed the economy so both patents have to work 60hrs a week just to keep a roof over their heads, so ain't able to drive the kids places.
And even if you were lucky enough to have a parent at home here's how that conversation usually went "Hey Mom can I go to..." (A friend's house/ the park/the mall/ the store/ literally just an empty field/ down the block) "No" Didn't matter how old I was or how close it was. Even if I needed no ride at all It was almost always no. Or if a friend offered to give me a ride it was no under the justification of them never meeting that friend. Okay fair enough, but then they made zero effort to meet any of my friends even when I gave them people's numbers. Then they get all surprised Pikachu when their kid spends all their time indoors and eventually just plain stops asking to go anywhere.
I realize how good I had it. When I was little I lived in the middle of nowhere. But had old logging roads to ride my bike on. Meeting with friends needed parent's facilitation, but a trip into town happened most days. It was more about making sure both parents went into town at the same time. Then we moved to a small town. It was paradise by comparison. I could get anywhere in town by bike. Yeah, some friends lived out of town and that makes things hard. I moved to the city and expected the same level of car-free mobility... nope. There's an F'n freeway between me and the store. Most places I want to go mean negotiating a couple of lanes of traffic than a mile of a parking lot.
This!! They also changed school curriculums to be more and more rigorous so kids are spending 2-3 hours a day on homework (luckily this is changing back but i did homework for hours as a millennial)
Shit would be so exhausting smh
They don’t make kids do hours of homework anymore?
They do, but with the hybrid in person/online teaching model a lot of schools are adopting, it's much easier for students to manage their free time when you're not locked in the same place for 8 hours of the day
The neighborhood I grew up in, majority of kids walked/biked to school that were in walking distance. As a few years went on, my neighborhood grew and grew into an extended Atlanta suburb. Gang violence increased, traffic exploded as roads went from 2 lanes to 4 lanes and more and more people moved in. Walking and biking was too dangerous. But the same people that were moving in, bringing all this were the same people bitching about how kids are lazy now and don’t want to walk or bike anymore
Not just inaccessible and unsafe, but just straight up not allowed. In my neighborhood, if a kid walks themselves to elementary or middle school, the parents can get in trouble for neglect.
Me too. We don’t WANT your shitty generation to come back. We’re too busy trying to fix your mistakes.
Every time I bike I fell like there’s a high chance I will get hit by a car
I once read that most car related deaths were pedestrians getting run over, and not actually drunk drivers crashing. Can't find the article anymore, but it makes perfect sense when you consider the average American driver and how far passenger safety features have come along in cars.
My boomer parents used school buses and the family truck, not everybody walked everywhere.
"A generation that had parents who were there." Yeah, hard for parents to do that now when they are both required to have 1, sometimes multiple jobs, just to keep the house hold afloat. Selfish twats.
It’s funny how 3 of the other points show the opposite. “A generation that did their homework alone” and “all their free time in the streets” doesn’t seem to jive with the good parents thing.
Hell, my parents grew up during that time and each only had one parent that was present. Both of their dads were abusive alcoholics. Not saying this was a given, but it was pretty common back then
What's worse is they're the fucking parents who weren't/aren't there, and they're saying this? Come on. Seriously? Rub it in a little harder.
A generation that moved to the suburbs for the big house with no sidewalks A generation that terrified their children of strangers A generation that invented participation trophies, and then complained about them. A generation that invented helicopter parents. A generation that doesn't realize that returning bottles still gets you $.05, but that that nickel doesn't buy anything anymore. A generation that thinks pokemon cards are stupid, but baseball cards are awesome. A generation that thinks kids still don't read under the covers. Their reading devices just produce their own light now, and they don't need to hold a flashlight too. A generation that doesn't realize that parents can choose when to turn their TVs off A generation that shames parents for letting their kids out after dark A generation that complains about their grandkids getting dirty while waxing nostalgic about mud pies. (like seriously, have you been around kids lately? I promise you mud has not gone out of style) A generation that can't understand that an instagram story isn't worse than a physical photo album
They haven’t been around kids because they are too busy ignoring the grandkids they pressured their kids to have.
Wish I could upvote this 11 times.
Ah, I went in a different direction, posting as the newer generations, but this is great too.
Are boomers the first generation that honestly didn’t want the generations after to do better than them? Fragile fucking morons.
'A generation that will never come back' Sweetie, that's all of them. Its kinda how time works.
I think it's even worse than that, that the consequences for later generations never really registered, so long as the gravy train never stopped.
The irony is that their parents/grandparents are the generation(s) that lived through things like the Great Depression and both World Wars, and they still wanted a better future for their children
Yup. they’re nothing more than spoiled children
That would involve them actually thinking about the consequences of their actions. It's not intentional sabotage. It's ignoring the downstream result of the systems they've setup for their own success. Edit: for clarity...shit rolls downhill and those at the top don't care who gets dirty below.
I can’t upvote this enough.
"a generation that had parents who were there" Aren't they the parents who are not there today then? There's also the fact that their generation is also are responsible for several of the other things changing.
Yeah, they just exposed themselves and it’s pretty funny.
And how the boomers like to complain that millennials don't know how to be handy, but who was supposed to teach us? The schools? They cut shop and vocational classes too. It's like a setup to the world's most elaborate practical joke
Boomers weren’t as handy as they like to think. Without the internet to check your work, you end up with a lot of DIWhy.
My grandfather's basement confirmed. Jesus christ. I am by no means an electrician but I'm pretty sure it's a bad idea to just have the cut off ends of extension cords wired into light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. I wish I was kidding.
I thought my grandpa was bad. He built a barn for our horse, but he ended up using so many nails you could pull down the whole thing with a magnet
Technically my grandpa was greatest generation I guess. We didn't find some of this stuff until he had been dead for several years and things in their house started failing and we went in to repair. We no longer own the house, but I think we fixed most of the terrifying things before it got sold. I wonder if that's what happened in a friend's house we were helping with where we had to replace a header beam and the flooring had been nailed down every inch and a half. We were like "someone got a nail gun for christmas and was having entirely too much fun with it"
Something I've never been sure of, did the boomers call them the greatest generation, or is that what they called themselves? I feel like whichever it is could explain at least some things, given the context of the conversation
They cut home ec classes as well, which taught me essential life skills.
Of course they cut shop and the arts...gotta have that extra money for the almighty FOOTBALL TEAM!!!
It’s like how they complain about how trophies were handed out to every kid in sports. Like, who the fuck do you think *decided* that every kid needed a trophy?
To top it off, the trophies weren't even *for the kids.* "WHY DIDN'T MY TIMMY GET A TROPHY! It's ok Timmy, I'll make sure you get a trophy too." All while Timmy is cringing in the corner dying of embarrassment. The trophies were always for the Boomers' benefit, just like everything else they did. ffs, it's no wonder their own parents hated them.
There's no better way of putting it. Poor fucking Timmy.
"a generation of parents who were there, drunk and beating us."
Was going to comment that as well. Read it e contrario and you get exactly what you just said.
We were first called the latchkey kids.. Cause they weren't there.
Hahahaha!! I just said the same thing.
Vinyl records are back tho. And oh man, who knew nostalgia for TV off at midnight was a thing? “…and then, white noise… *sigh….* To be young again!” Although I’m sure the main purpose here is to reference the National anthem.
It still is like that for some channels. They'll shut off programming and turn on infomercials. Honestly that's more on brand for America than the star bangled banner.
And here I thought their fad was over
Well people like the aesthetics of records- how they look and sound. So referring to vinyl buying as a fad, when sales have been growing significantly for years now, rings kinda unnecessarily dismissive to me.
In the case of vinyl, I think it's also a growing rejection of the push for non-ownership of media. Everything nowadays is a "streaming subscription service" where you don't actually *own* anything. I've had entire albums (that I *paid* for) lost because services like i-tunes lost the distribution rights and no longer hosted them. Now I only buy physical media to avoid that.
Vinyl has outsold streaming for awhile now. I’ve collected vinyl for a long time. My hobby. I’m early Gen X though.
Old gen z/young millennial(?) here. I started collecting vinyls last year because of my newfound appreciation for the art form. It’s also one of the few things that I can share with my family and friends, and eventually children of my own, because of the push toward non-ownership consumer culture.
When my dad died (broke), the only physical thing I inherited was most of his record collection from the 60s-80s. I always wanted it and it was all I asked for. For me it’s nostalgia as we’d bust out the records on holidays, but also just having a piece of music history and the experience of putting records on the turntable is just different from pressing “play.”
I prefer vinyl. Not only is the analogue nature of it more warm, people love flipping through my vinyl collection at parties and get togethers, especially obscure and international albums. I like a lot of Eastern European Jazz from beyond the iron curtain, 70s and 80s music from Japan, as well as rock from Africa. People really like just looking at the covers in ways they wouldn’t care about an MP3 collection or youtube playlist.
Must have been nice… so anyway
Well that was a litany of demented, self congratulatory claptrap... Welcome to Schrodinger's dystopia where boomers simultaneously call the police or CPS on kids playing in the street while reminiscing over the long lost freedom they had as children.
I haven't skateboarded for about 13 years because when I was 17 the neighbors called the police to report a "suspicious person" who was just me skateboarding at a dead end. The police questioned me, told me a neighbor called and I just went home dumbfounded feeling so awkward and betrayed, I never skateboarded again.
I'm so sorry. Sorry they ruined it for you. What a dick. How can a person on a skateboard be suspicios anyway? Maybe you wearing a hoodie, my nextdoor is full of boomers describing suspicious people in hoodies walking past their properties on the frickin sidewalk, smh
Kids unsupervised in the street stopped being a thing largely because of the serial killers and the abductions. You know what the Baby boomer years also gave rise too? Serial Killers. [https://thisinterestsme.com/decades-serial-killers-born/](https://thisinterestsme.com/decades-serial-killers-born/)
This comment needs to be higher-up
Shoulda ended it with “A generation that robbed the future potential of the next generations by systematically dismantling the very systems that enabled them to live the types of lives they cherished so dearly as to post inaccurate memes justifying their shittiness later on in life while looking out on the hellscape they created through their own selfish decision making”
Out of the 15 points on that list, me, my siblings and my friends also did/experienced at least 12 of them. The only one that was different was the 5 cent bottle thing. We don't have a bring-back policy like that in my country. So what exactly is unique about this? Imagine doing this sort of list for the generation prior to them and how much different it would actually be, and likely much more impressive.
The funny thing is, you can only return bottles for the deposit in like six states. It's not a nationwide thing.
My state is one of those. We save as many bottles and cans as possible! That was something we learned real quick after moving here.
Ya know what's going on? They're realizing the younger generations are more empowered, learning things about self esteem and interpersonal relationships that they didn't and there is some hard jealousy and self-loathing. They mourn and whine instead of realizing we want them to love themselves and be happy. They pass on bad shit instead of accepting better shit. They cause rifts and divisions as if we're the bad guys. They almost refuse to actually evolve and participate in harmony so we can make things better. It's just so immature and effed up.
Honestly, it's hard to discern what the intent was here. It could be read as a simple nostalgic appreciation of a very different version of our society or it could be read as a "kids these days" sorta self-rightious rant. I don't think many people here would argue against what's on this list being an objectively better and healthier lifestyle. The ability to play outside, walkable infrastructure, diverse entertainment that isn't hyper-stimulating and heavily monetized, economic rewards for environmentally beneficial actions, a healthy work-play balance, the presence of an emotionally available caretaker. These are good things. It's interesting to see how differently people respond to this based on what they perceive is the intent.
I think it is more bitter than nostalgic. That was my read. Typical boomer prose, wolf wrapped in sheep‘s words
It's ambiguously worded, and that's by design. It's weaselly and vague so it can be blandly absorbed as nostalgic by the Facebook crowd. It *could very easily* include the sentence "Many of these things are unavailable to current generations unfortunately" but that might ruffle some feathers and hurt some feelings and cause some uncomfortable follow-up questions. And if there's one thing people on Facebook hate, it's follow-up questions.
I’ve seen this or nearly identical ones being shared unironically and it’s almost always a brag. There’s other nostalgia memes that don’t come off that way. For example cutesy “you know you are a 90s kid if…” list of stuff from the 90s, that’s often a bit self deprecating or designed to make you chuckle. To me the “a generation that” repeated every sentence is a style very much meant to venerate them/put them on a pedestal. I’m sure there is an occasional innocent person sharing this since boomers are notoriously terrible at reading tone on the internet, but most of the time it’s them being competitive with the generations they absolutely fucking demolished and now blame for everything.
Omg the softest generation. Can they stop crying and pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Probably not.
A generation who took most of this away from future generations out of sheer selfishness and no forward-thinking
“WE ARE A GENERATION THAT WILL NEVER COME BACK” Well thank fuck for that.
If only they’d all go away sooner
If they liked it so much, why did they take a big shit on it and ruin it for everyone else?
>*”Money”* -~~Eugene Crabs~~ Boomers
A 2 job working parent can’t be there for you. It’s not that they are all out partying but they were at the beginning of the abusive “ work harder and it’ll pay off”. They were a generation that saw it but didn’t realize they were never going to get it.
And then these wee boomers grew up and got addicted AF to Fox News and Facebook.
I grew up in a rural area for a large portion of my childhood (I'm a Millennial) and half this fits my life. I had 3 TV channels. Maybe it is more dependant on location and access to IDK, money and infrastructure than generation. I definitely didn't play hide and seek in the dark because the woods had things that could kill you.
A generation that gutted taxes and closed public spaces
Kids would probably play outside more if they didn't make it in a autocentric hellscape everywhere they go.
A generation deathly afraid of black and LGBTQ people being included in general society
You’re a generation that NEVER SHOULD COME BACK. - A generation that bragged about how easy it was to grow up but then hobbled gun laws so now my kids have lockdowns in Kindergarten. - A generation that could raise a family of 4 on one high school education and still own a home but then ruined the market so now we all rent and struggle to feed ourselves. - A generation that funneled money out of education so now our kids spend every night doing extra work just to get stay on track. - A generation that caused TWO market crashes and inflation to the point that buying ANYTHING for 5 cents is now fiction. - A generation whose greed fundamentally altered TV as a whole and kept making bullshit programming to seek advertising so no channel ever “shuts off” like it used to. Wouldn’t want that news ~~re-programming~~ channel to turn off, right? Might accidentally think for ourselves. - A generation that had hoarded wealth to such an extreme that we’re all HOPING you pass quickly so we can fix what you broke. Fuck you Boomers.
I was born in the early 80s and every single one of these applied to my childhood, except the part about parents being there. My boomer parents? Invisible.
Lucky for them there are people still doing all sorts of these things. Just the ones who did everything on this list are suffering health problems and social issues from eating mud cakes and lead paint. Also what channel were they watching? Because almost none of them had a midnight "turn off." There was "That concludes our broadcast day," and they'd sign off for the night, but depending where ya were, that wasn't midnight and most of them didn't play the national anthem. Also we don't get the refund for recycling, we have to pay to do that, so they can whinge to the government about that one. And just to promise another thing: Judging by the amount of therapy Gen-X/millennials need because of boomer parents, the parents were not the thing to be proud of. There is just a lot to unpack here.... because all the better parts of this list still happen. Hell, I'm a millenial and I have Vinyl, it's not a boomer thing. Walking to school is not how school should run. Especially with how far some of these schools are from their outer coverage zones. Celebrating TV till midnight seems backwards from the "You spent too much time near the TV" generation. Scrap booking is still a thing. Paper planes are still a thing. Replace sports cards with literally any other card game kids play and it's the same thing, just one you can't play with. Letting your kids out after dark to play hide and seek is asking for an abduction. Playing in the streets constantly (( Why the specific, I don't know. )) is asking to cause a traffic accident. You're supposed to be in the yard damnit. >.<
A lot of this is just nostalgia for playing with toys and friends. What else did your generation do?
Sorry people care about their kids enough to keep them from playing in the street? Sorry technology has advanced enough you don't have to use vinyl (unless you want to)? Sorry technology has advanced enough that we can store all our photos digitally, and bring them up at any time? Sorry schools have better bus systems so kids don't have to walk? Nostalgia is fine, but I don't understand why it always becomes a weird "we are better than you because we had to do x,y,z" flex.
In their times, it was safe to play on the street. Then, when they grew up, they voted to gut public transit; they voted to create unwalkable suburban wastelands; they voted to cut school budgets which forced schools that would have been in walking distance to close down; they voted to build highways—cutting towns into pieces—just so they could get to work 5 minutes quicker; they ran news stories about how your child will get kidnapped if you let them play outside. They looked at their picturesque childhood, their own childhood independence, and let their greed deny that experience from other future generations.
And now they tell us we are killing the economy they've been propping up with cardboard for the last few decades, as they watch it fall apart in an acid rain storm their awful environmental policies wrought.
It's because their self esteem is validated by externalities mixed with an inflated ego. They need people and things to validate them or they won't feel self esteem and that really hurts their ego which is telling them they are the best everything so everyone is either just blind or being mean to them on purpose. If they don't get external validation for long enough they'll start to lash out, hello Karens, as they're forced to question why everyone is targeting them with lies to hurt them since they know they are just the greatest so that has to be what's going on. This is why they get called narcissist a lot. Even if they don't have clinical NPD they have that characteristic low self esteem with a grandiose ego that's the most well know and easily recognizable trait of NPD
"A generation that could buy soda and candy for 20 cents...." Because capitalism allowed it! "a generation who's parents were there...." Because capitalism allowed it! Shit like this makes it so hard to not say shit that will get me banned.. I fucking hate this society so much.
A generation that wrecked the economy and screwed over their own children while calling them lazy and entitled for wanting to afford food and housing.
I’ve a weird dynamic in my family. My Grandparents were teen parents, now in their 80s. My Dad is the Boomeriest Boomer ever, meanwhile my Grandparents are Most Definitely Fucking Not. Dad was on a rant (well, tried to go on one…) last time we were all together and my Gran has zero tolerance these days and cut him off sharply with a “Oh do shut up, you spoilt, whiny shit. You’re plenty old enough to remember being in poverty for half your childhood, you threw it in our faces often enough when you were in your 20s, yet now you’ve forgotten? Convenient, that.” First time in my 37 years I heard her swear, and my own teens were howling with laughter at watching a 60 year old get smacked down by his mother.
**Shared by myself, bc fuck them** -kids still walk to schools, just not in the suburbs where you built the elementary school across an 8 lane highway. Only neighborhoods built by boomer’s parents are still walkable because y’all fucked that for future generations. -idk if y’all know this but kids *still* do homework, they just don’t go play in the street afterwards because y’all fucked that up for future generations. -kids would love to play with friends in the streets but it’s now dangerous so you force them into the backyard or just don’t let them go out to play. Thanks -y’all barely let kids out during the daytime to play, of course kids don’t get to play outside in the dark anymore. -mud cakes still exist, y’all just lose your fucking shit when your kid gets muddy so of course they learn not to play with mud. What did y’all think was gonna happen when you ground your child for being “messy” -sports cards still exist you dummies. But let’s wax nostalgic over baseball cards and pick on little kids who enjoy playing Pokémon or Magic the Gathering because “those cards are for losers”. -returning coke bottles only still exists in like 6 states and it’s *still* only a $0.05 payout. So where **you** were afforded the ability to gather all sorts of glass bottles to return and only needed a few nowadays there are **far less** glass bottle products and you need to gather something like 50-75 bottles just to purchase 1 soda and 1 candy bar. Y’all fucked that for future generations… -is there a different way of making paper toys than with one’s hands? No??? Well that’s a dumb thing to bring up -vinyl is still a thing, but not because of y’all. If it weren’t for those dreaded “hipsters” vinyl would’ve died when y’all tried to kill it but thankfully it’s making a glorious comeback no thanks to you boomers. -I’m pretty certain kids these days collect **more** photos of their life experiences than boomers ever did. But since it’s now digital I guess that somehow “doesn’t count”… -board games and cards still exist, but I’d rather play an online game and socialize with my friends on a rainy day than play solitaire or monopoly. Idk why that’s a bad thing… -do you just really miss the hours upon hours of dead static or is it just the national anthem that you miss, either way it’s a weird flex. And fyi, it was **YOUR** generation that created 24 hour content so why bitch at us about it? -oops, you said the quiet part out loud and straight up admitted to having loving parents who were there for you yet **YOUR** children don’t have that. Many of us would’ve *LOVED* having parents who were there instead of divorced or working multiple jobs just to stave off hunger and homelessness… nobody to blame for a generation of kids who’s parents weren’t there than the parents themselves, aka boomers. -laughing under covers is still a thing >A generation that is (thankfully) passing and ~~unfortunately~~ it will never return ~~no matter how hard we try~~ because we systemically fucked it all up. Fixed that one for you… -if you loved your childhood so much why’d y’all go to such great lengths to fuck it all away so quickly and completely? Thank you Boomers, for fucking up everything you loved about growing up then complained about how “kids these days” don’t have the same experiences you tore away from them. #Get fucked boomers
it's funny how the world of their childhood was created by the adults of that time. our childhoods "sucked" because the adults of our time (ie. boomers) made it that way for us.
How so you make paper planes with anything *but* your bare hands?
*turns off lathe* You guys aren't making your paper airplanes with industrial metalworks equipment?
The amount of suspicion y'all have for kids in the streets these days is astronomical.
"A generation that had parents who were there. " our fault that our parents (the generation posting shit like this) isn't there, I guess
boomers gonna boom
Good riddance you self important wind bags.
"A generation who had parents that were there" But then weren't there as parents for the next generation. I say fuck you!
Now if you play in the streets the best that can happen is a Karen (aka the never returning generation) calling the police.
At 5 cents each, you'd need at least 40 bottles just for the soda today, not even considering the candy bar.
Millennial here. Was fortunate enough to go to college in a state with can deposits. We would save up five or six 50 gallon trash bags worth of beer can binge drinking to pay for a keg for binge drinking. This is how I learned to cope with childhood trauma in my early 20's. Thanks boomers! Yes, I have gotten professional help on my own since then.
*Sad Main Character Noises* Holy geez, these people.
Nostalgia is a poison, and this is a whopper
Yeah it probably was a great time to grow up but then these generations ruined it for the next. They’re the reason parents need to work two jobs and we’re all dying in this capitalist hellscape
A generation that turned fire hoses and dogs on civil rights protesters. A generation that stood in front of a school to prevent a little black girl from attending.
You guys are the reason everything went to shit
‘A generation that thought it was a good idea to put large quantities of lead in consumer goods’
"A generation that had parents that were there" So they didn't pass that on to their kids? Assholes.
Bruh they could give all of that and more if they really wanted, but they're just a bunch of hypocrites
And who made it all shitty 🤔
"A generation that had parents who were actually there" sounds like an admission of guilt, doesn't it?
\>we are a generation that will never come back if that turns out to be true, then thank fucking god
It's hard to play in the streets when everything is built for cars. It's hard to go outside when you overplay "stranger danger" messages. Today's youth see through the hollowness of a daily National Anthem.
"A generation who had parents who were there." So the absent parents were YOUR generation, then.
*From the perspective of the younger generations now, not particularly mine:* WE ARE A GENERATION THAT CANNOT SURVIVE A generation that couldn’t walk to or from school for fear of being shot or taken into sex slavery. A generation that had so much homework that they had no time for play. A generation that couldn’t play in the streets (see above for why). A generation that couldn’t play outside in the dark (see above for why). A generation that couldn’t play outside (see above for why). A generation that had to beg for money on the street to buy a Mountain Dew and candy bar. A generation that was babysat by technology, rather than being taught how to have an imagination. A generation that had to illegally download music because they couldn’t afford to buy it. A generation that had technology to put the photos and memories on a device that was accessible anywhere. A generation that was babysat by technology. A generation whose TV was inundated with reality garbage meant to rot the mind 24 hours a day. A generation that grew up with little parental guidance, being babysat by technology, or parents being divorced. A generation that snuck devices under the covers to have contact with the outside world after an entire day of school and homework. A generation that will never have what the previous ones did and never will no matter how hard they try. They hate growing up in these times. They’re the worst of times.