"Survivor": Millennials vs. Gen X

[Anthony '58]

I'm very much looking forward to this.

And I wonder where they will draw the birth-cohort boundary between the two - and how old the oldest Xer will be.

[Bronsin]

I have watched all but the first season of Survivor, and I'm really looking forward to this one. I can easily see the Xer's getting fed up with the Millennials sitting around camp while they do all the work.

[Galen]

(09-18-2016, 04:09 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-18-2016, 09:22 AM)Bronsin Wrote: I have watched all but the first season of Survivor, and I'm really looking forward to this one. I can easily see the Xer's getting fed up with the Millennials sitting around camp while they do all the work.

If you are an xer you should remember when boomers were saying you guys were the lazy good for nothing arseholes. You are just repeating the ignorance. Elders also said the same of boomers in their youth.

Truth is, they were saying much worse things about Generation X and in the case of Eric the Obtuse and those like him they still are.  Millies have tended to be a mixed bag, those with a clue tend to work out well.  When a Millie suffers from the snowflake syndrome then they can be quite insufferable.

[Galen]

(09-18-2016, 11:47 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-18-2016, 11:36 PM)Galen Wrote:

(09-18-2016, 04:09 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-18-2016, 09:22 AM)Bronsin Wrote: I have watched all but the first season of Survivor, and I'm really looking forward to this one. I can easily see the Xer's getting fed up with the Millennials sitting around camp while they do all the work.

If you are an xer you should remember when boomers were saying you guys were the lazy good for nothing arseholes. You are just repeating the ignorance. Elders also said the same of boomers in their youth.

Truth is, they were saying much worse things about Generation X and in the case of Eric the Obtuse and those like him they still are.  Millies have tended to be a mixed bag, those with a clue tend to work out well.  When a Millie suffers from the snowflake syndrome then they can be quite insufferable.

Well, I certainly know what Twenge says and Mark Bauerlein about us with his book "The Dumbest Generation." What makes that laughable as he is of the baby boomer generation which Neil Howe stated declined in records of SAT scores at the same age. Probably partly due to being too busy protesting or getting high or joining cults. (Note I said partly due which implies I know other things would have contributed as well). My mother left school to go for the money for instance. Something I cannot do personally. I have to enjoy what I do as I do not have the patience to put up with anything else. As for mixed bag, well that can be said of any generation really. Every generation has its insufferable and its gems. It is just the loudest ones are noticed more and they tend to reveal the terrible side of their generation and their own nasty traits.

Take from someone in a position to know, the Boomers are on the average a complete loss and the years don't seem to have improved them much.  They definitely do not have the competence of their GI parents which is also a big part of the problem.

The Millies all too often need to have things spoonfed to them because the school system here doesn't teach them to think.  After a few years of dealing with reality they start to correct that problem.

[Odin]

(09-18-2016, 11:36 PM)Galen Wrote: Truth is, they were saying much worse things about Generation X and in the case of Eric the Obtuse and those like him they still are.  Millies have tended to be a mixed bag, those with a clue tend to work out well.  When a Millie suffers from the snowflake syndrome then they can be quite insufferable.

"Millennials with a clue", in reality meaning "Millennials who agree with me".

[Galen]

(09-19-2016, 07:05 AM)Odin Wrote:

(09-18-2016, 11:36 PM)Galen Wrote: Truth is, they were saying much worse things about Generation X and in the case of Eric the Obtuse and those like him they still are.  Millies have tended to be a mixed bag, those with a clue tend to work out well.  When a Millie suffers from the snowflake syndrome then they can be quite insufferable.

"Millennials with a clue", in reality meaning "Millennials who agree with me".

Not necessarily, I have to deal with them in the workplace.  There are a surprising number of them that simply don't know what they are doing and refuse to learn.

[Eric the Green]

(09-18-2016, 11:36 PM)Galen Wrote: Truth is, they were saying much worse things about Generation X and in the case of Eric the Obtuse and those like him they still are. 

Only when deserved. Like all generations, Xers have their good and bad points, in my opinion. Generalizing about generations "always" has its pitfalls. But I would not say that half of Gen Xers are "deplorables."

[Galen]

(09-19-2016, 01:04 PM)Eric the Obtuse Wrote:

(09-18-2016, 11:36 PM)Galen Wrote: Truth is, they were saying much worse things about Generation X and in the case of Eric the Obtuse and those like him they still are. 

Only when deserved. Like all generations, Xers have their good and bad points, in my opinion. Generalizing about generations "always" has its pitfalls. But I would not say that half of Gen Xers are "deplorables."

You don't like anything about Generation X like the music, culture and the fact that we don't worship the Boomers because of their destructive behavior and massive egos.  That attitude is very common among Boomers with Eric the Obtuse being an extreme example of these characteristics  to the point of being a caricature.

[Ragnarök_62]

(09-19-2016, 12:57 PM)Galen Wrote:

(09-19-2016, 07:05 AM)Odin Wrote:

(09-18-2016, 11:36 PM)Galen Wrote: Truth is, they were saying much worse things about Generation X and in the case of Eric the Obtuse and those like him they still are.  Millies have tended to be a mixed bag, those with a clue tend to work out well.  When a Millie suffers from the snowflake syndrome then they can be quite insufferable.

"Millennials with a clue", in reality meaning "Millennials who agree with me".

Not necessarily, I have to deal with them in the workplace.  There are a surprising number of them that simply don't know what they are doing and refuse to learn.

Half of Millies where I work do just fine.  The other half are ear budded/texting slackers.  I'm glad I don't have the snowflake variant though.

[Ragnarök_62]

(09-19-2016, 01:04 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(09-18-2016, 11:36 PM)Galen Wrote: Truth is, they were saying much worse things about Generation X and in the case of Eric the Obtuse and those like him they still are. 

Only when deserved. Like all generations, Xers have their good and bad points, in my opinion. Generalizing about generations "always" has its pitfalls. But I would not say that half of Gen Xers are "deplorables."

I'm not a deplorable, but I am quite cynical and pecuniary man.

Some Boomers like Hillary and Trump are clueless clowns.

[Galen]

(09-20-2016, 01:51 AM)taramarie Wrote: I only bring it up when he starts on his cultural superiority crusade. The bully hates karma.

Now you know one of the main reasons the seventies was a decade I would have just as soon done without.  You think they are bad now you should have seen them in their prime.  What a freak show that was.

[Galen]

(09-20-2016, 02:44 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-20-2016, 02:41 AM)Galen Wrote:

(09-20-2016, 01:51 AM)taramarie Wrote: I only bring it up when he starts on his cultural superiority crusade. The bully hates karma.

Now you know one of the main reasons the seventies was a decade I would have just as soon done without.  You think they are bad now you should have seen them in their prime.  What a freak show that was.

Hahahahaha freak show hahaha! I dread to think! It would have of course only have been some of them though. But the worst are always the loudest.

Here are some choice images from Woodstock in 1969.  The difficulty is that this kind of crap was happening everywhere and unfortunately many Hippies picked Oregon as a good place to set up their communes.  That is how we ended up with the Rajneesh who many refer to as Osho.  Probably so people won't associate him with the problems his circus sideshow created.





As you might expect they left one hell of a mess.  Woodstock really is a metaphor for the Boomer generation.  They get to have one hell of a party and everyone else has to clean up the mess.

Here is what the news reports of the time had to say about it.

[Galen]

(09-20-2016, 04:58 AM)taramarie Wrote: When the issue of Woodstock is raised I have to consider several things. I watched the videos and considered what they have to say as well as my reaction. I also have seen the recording of woodstock. The whole recording. Rather long but I saw it. I was shocked as I have never seen my parents generation act that way before. But I do need to also keep in mind that this was also a subculture of the boomer generation. Others just went about their daily lives not behaving in this manner. I listen to other boomers who are also early boomers and we do need to keep in mind that this would be early boomers. Not later ones who would have been too young for such an event like my mother who was born 1957. She would have been 11or 12 depending on the month. Probably 11 years old. So we need to address it would have been earlier boomers and not all early boomers fit the mold.

The mess would have been due to the fact there were so many and they had not prepared for so many to show up so they were not prepared naturally for the amount of mess they would create. Not enough bins. I do however think it would have been courteous of them to stay around and clean up after.

I have nothing against people using drugs although my initial reaction to the recording of woodstock when they were handing out P was total shock. It is their body to do as they wish with after all. However I do know some of them had wee children and I do think the parents had no right to bring their children to an event like that unsupervised and watching their parents get drunk, high and probably watching them have sex (i saw some doing that in the video). They should be caring for the child, not have the child run wild like that unsupervised and playing parent to the parents. This i saw as well in the video. Children caring for their parents. It sickened me. But I will not blame the whole thing on boomers. This does not include all boomers. Certainly not younger ones who would be too young for this event or the behaviours portrayed which by the sounds of things from the reporters despite what I have mentioned above they were kindly, peaceful and mannerly which I do know actually happened for i saw the video of woodstock.  So there are the good and the bad of my analysis of the event as well as thinking of how they simply were not prepared for so many concert goers...but I do also mention they should have picked up their mess or help to pick up all the mess. Anyway that is the best analysis I can think of currently. Many have moved on from such days. I say many as some still think they are back then and think we should be back then too.

This kind of crap was far more common than is generally acknowledged.  My parents were not hippies, thank God for small favors, but even they were affected by the culture these assholes created.  That self-absorbed, damn the consequences attitude has caused Xers more than a few problems.  Of which, the divorce epidemic was only one of the problems.  This is why so many of us are very good at surviving the stupid.  Those of us with Lost and GI relatives tended to fare better.

It is hard for you to understand what living in a time when the nominal adults were acting like children and busy breaking everything.

[Galen]

(09-20-2016, 05:24 AM)taramarie Wrote: Yes of course it is hard for me to understand. I was not alive back then. I judge best as I can from what I have observed but i have not lived it. Only seen it in old videos that were filmed before I was even a twinkle in the eyes of two kids back then (my parents). This is what makes me a millennial and not an Xer. I can only give a fair analysis of one event which not all boomers participated in for reasons I mentioned. I do want to be fair to them especially those of my mother's cohort who were just kids. It would be silly to blame them for that and they are boomers too. The later boomers have been far worse off than earlier boomers financially I also have to address. They also struggle being on the arse end of a large and demanding generation.

That one event was a symptom of something far more pervasive which is why I said it was a metaphor for the Boomer generation. Even now they believe that people and societies can be reshaped arbitrarily which accounts for how destructive the US has become.  First, there are the wars in the Middle East which is an attempt to reshape that part of the world into what the US government desires, both the left and right are guilty of this.  Second, there is this very phony economy caused by acting as if the usual economic rules don't apply.  Again, political orientation really didn't matter because the attitude was still there.  It didn't end well in the seventies and it won't end well now.

I had step-brothers and step-sisters who were part of that later Boomer cohort.  One of them died at the age of seventeen from this sort of crap.  Its odd how the later Boomers are ill-equipped to deal with things as they are because they keep assuming the old rules they were taught still apply.

[Odin]

(09-19-2016, 12:57 PM)Galen Wrote: Not necessarily, I have to deal with them in the workplace.  There are a surprising number of them that simply don't know what they are doing and refuse to learn.

That's true with every generation, there are tons of Xers and Boomers out there who refuse to learn things.

[Odin]

(09-20-2016, 01:15 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: The other half are ear budded/texting slackers.

Uh, you know you Xers were the original "lazy slackers", right?

[Odin]

Boomers were like a kid that was raised in an overly strict environment who then go on a massive orgy of fun and partying when they finally got free of that restrictive parental environment. Despite what Galen thinks the vast, vast majority of Boomers matured out of that phase fairly quickly. My dad is a good example, he was an absolute hell-raiser in his 20s and then matured out of it by the time the 3T started and became a rather restrained blue collar guy who rarely partied and rarely even drank. I didn't even know he used to be a regular pot smoker in his 20s until very recently.

[The Wonkette]

(09-20-2016, 02:41 AM)Galen Wrote:

(09-20-2016, 01:51 AM)taramarie Wrote: I only bring it up when he starts on his cultural superiority crusade. The bully hates karma.

Now you know one of the main reasons the seventies was a decade I would have just as soon done without.  You think they are bad now you should have seen them in their prime.  What a freak show that was.

Weren't the Seventies dominated by the Silents?

[Galen]

(09-20-2016, 10:47 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(09-20-2016, 02:41 AM)Galen Wrote:

(09-20-2016, 01:51 AM)taramarie Wrote: I only bring it up when he starts on his cultural superiority crusade. The bully hates karma.

Now you know one of the main reasons the seventies was a decade I would have just as soon done without.  You think they are bad now you should have seen them in their prime.  What a freak show that was.

Weren't the Seventies dominated by the Silents?

Not really.  On the whole they tended to be non-entities that took the easy path which usually involved doing what the Boomers wanted given the demographics.  Silents tended to be obsessed with process.

[Eric the Green]

(09-20-2016, 10:47 AM)The Wonkette Wrote: Weren't the Seventies dominated by the Silents?

Yes they were, in so far as the people in middle age dominate a turning.

What will be interesting to see is whether the millennials will be able to keep such emotional stability as they have, during the pressures of the Survivor game, or whether they will crack up while Gen X is more steady and enduring. Which generation will be more manipulative? Will the millennials use their cleverness to be manipulative, like she here who shall not be named, or will their geeky intelligence and teamwork serve them well against the Gen X tendency to think of only their own survival? Will Gen X practical survival skills enable them to gain the respect of their tribe and win challenges more often than millennials? Which tribe will quarrel more with each other? Will it be Gen X, as we might expect? Will Millennials demonstrate their teamwork skills, or their emotional instability and sense of entitlement?

Members of both generations have won the game before now, as have Boomers. So pitting these two generations against each other should be interesting to see how this brings out the strengths and weaknesses of both generations, and whether these jive with our S&H-based picture of them and our own experiences of them.