Cynicism, nihilism and distancing oneself from everything is not going to build anything good or allow others to succeed.
So no, not correct, not good, just a terrible mindset that will drag everyone down with you.
Except the vaccine.
This would make sense if they didn’t vote for the people promising to fuck it up worse. (US politics only, I don’t know how generational breakdown goes in other countries)
Many disengaged and didn’t build anything to replace what was missing
sneering distrust of unions
sneering distrust of science
sneering distrust of socialism
sneering distrust of wikipedia
I’d say their sneering distrust of everything has brought us to where we are now.
You can trust unions. They’re there to make money and acting in your interest is acting in their best interest.
While you can trust science overall, there’s a hell of a lot of capitalism in there, muddying the water. Well-reviewed studies are generally pretty safe.
There is nothing inherently trustworthy or untrustworthy about socialism; it’s an economic and political philosophy that is only as trustworthy as the people implementing and operating within it.
You cannot trust anything on the internet, including Wikipedia or even this very post. There are actors with an agenda that can make every article better or worse. There is no verifiable truth, only facts through lenses, and Wiki, being a moderated system, is as fallible as anything else. Much like socialism, it is at least designed to make it more fair.
Nihilism isn’t witty or crafty.
South Park is a real grabbag, but they really hit the mark with Gen X yankees dismissing green energy and environmentalism for being “gay (pejorative)”. You could update that same episode and only need to swap out the last line for “that sounds woke”
No. And it may have contributed to the anti science and anti vaccine shit that has been floatung around. Just being a contrarian isnt helpful
They haven’t just contributed, Genx is the anti-vaccine generation.
Boomers and silent generation remember what diseases were like and get their vaccines.
Millienals are more anti-vaccine than boomers or silent generation but far less than gen-x.
Gen-x has never held itself accountable. They are worse than boomers in so many ways and some of their stupid has leaked into the infected the thinking of millennial and even gen-z generations.
Blaming Millennial and Gen Z conservatives on Gen X alone is wild. How about we focus on the billionaire propaganda machines of social media and mainstream news. Zuckerberg is a millennial and his platforms have done more damage to teenage brains than we realize yet.
Absolutely critique people and people groups when they deserve it, but this whole generational obsession is exactly what those fucking us over want. Any place to blame but on them is good for them.
I literally said you’re generation doesn’t hold itself accountable and you’re doing exactly that. Neat!
I’m actually Gen Z…
Tf kind of assumption is that?
Ok, simping for genx then. Cool, cool. Cool.
Fuck you as a Gen xer I resent you calling me anti vax. I am all for vaccination and all my kids are vaxed.
“Gen x is the antivax generation” literally means “gen x has a higher % of antivaxxers than other generations”
Source?
I haven’t ever looked into this. But it got me curious so now I’m looking. I haven’t seen one for vaccines in general yet, but I did find one study about generational differences in opinions on the covid vaccine in particular.
Interesting read, I’m still digesting the data. Seems like, compared to Gen z and millennials, Gen x was more in favor of the covid vax in this study.
Again, yes this is just about the covid vax, but there’s probably a decent overlap in the groups
Covid-only will skew things massively. Disinformation wars really went to town on that one.
Yea I have no idea how much it skews, that’s why I made it painfully clear. But it does still talk about the generational imprinting of the major events that the various generations experienced.
I’m just translating.
There was a skew to trump among gen x ers. But richer people tend to live longer so that’s not an uncommon trend.
Imo, I would expect the antivaxxers to be more common in generations with school age kids because it is media-slop targeted at parents. I’d like to see the sources myself.
I didn’t, so you can direct that fuck right back at yourself and your terrible reading comprehension.
Your generation is the anti vax movement. That doesn’t mean everyone in the generation is anti vax.
Kind of hard to comprehend your language when you don’t seem to know how it works.
You’re inability to parse it is on you.
Your choice to attack and dimiss what I’m saying rather than seek clarification, also on you.
Anyone who cannot get over a few weird autocorrects is clearly not interested in discourse.
Your choice to attack
Have you ever heard the phrase “pot calling the kettle black”?
That was literally your first interaction with me in this thread.
I’m calling out Gen X for creating the anti vax movement. No one, including you has attempt to refute that fact.
Your first interaction with me was to question my ability to communicate. That is an attack on me, the messenger by the message.
It is ridiculous for anyone to claim I am attacking them personally for pointing out a characteristic of a group, even if it’s a group they identify with.
It also shows a resistance to accountability which I also mentioned.
It’s not hard to acknowledge these things are true while stating they do not apply to you personally but that’s not what you or anyone else has done.
You choose to make it about me and continue to do so and will continue to do so because you choose to do so.
What a dumpster fire of a comment section this is. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Anyways. It all goes show how counter culture anti-establishmentarianism has been co-opted and usurped by conservatives. This is by design to destroy the field of play.
It wasn’t a gen-x thing. This generational thing is a new invention and a weapon used to divide us. They put us in a ring and threw that knife in the circle, leaving us to fight to the death.
I know you smartypants are already typing out the, “hurr hurr generational strife has always been a thing”. Just stop.
The era of counter culture had its last hurrah around the time of Occupy. After which the world memory-holed it and entered the era of whatever the fuck this is right now. People too young for that era don’t have the lived experience to comprehend a totally different frame of mind that isn’t the way it’s been now. It’s only when they experience a massive world shift that they might possibly conceptualize such a thing. People who do have lived experience of the before times have largely forgotten.
This whole comment section is self evident. You’re applying the lens of the current zeitgeist over a different one and it amounts to little more than incoherent ramblings.
I miss when we used to talk about things as decades instead of generations. After the 90s it became Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha…
I had a difficult time understanding what you mean but I definitely agree that we need to stop focusing on the generational stuff. It’s capitalists vs normal people and if we don’t fight back against that core, from social democracy and democratic socialism on through, the neoliberal crisis will only worsen.
And yet you’re too young to have experienced what it was like when the very concept of the teenager was created. You wanna talk about a shift?
It turned out to be not nearly correct enough.
I thought we were known for apathy since we were constantly told growing up that our generation was the first for whom things would be worse than our parents. I don’t have a sneering distrust of everything, just cynicism towards massive, systemic injustice in the world.
Gen X contrarianism is some stupid boomer shit. Its no wonder so many of them are divorced maga conspiracy morons now.
The biggest fear that Gen X has is that their parents might disapprove of them.
Jfc how are people still talking about generations?
Exasperation, not a genuine question ^
Because it is an effective distraction from the actual problem which is class war.
Billionaires and their followers are the problem, not people of a certain age, gender, skin colour etc. etc.
In all seriousness, it is mostly cis men doing this.
edit: this was meant to be a joke, but honestly the amount of mansplaining in this thread and the responses below this comment has unfortunately altered this into a true statement. What have you all done?
Since men are still getting angry and messaging me:
You’re doing the thing.
do i get to do the “i swear it’s everyone but me” dance or do you want to do it
I guess “class solidarity” only applies to everyone but cis men.
And then when cis men say their identities are being attacked/invalidated, everyone’s like “nuh uh, you don’t even have an identity!”
If it makes you feel better you could host a parade or gathering or something.
No I couldn’t, because everyone would think it’s just some white supremacist/manosphere/redpill nonsense, and likely the only people who would show up would be those types anyway.
Literally every other demographic gets their own “spaces” and “identity groups,” and if a white man shows up to those they’re seen as invading where they don’t belong. In mixed-identity spaces, white men are sidelined because they’re the “oppressors” and nobody wants to hear their input, perspective, or opinion. But if white men form an identity group, then everyone assumes it’s about racism and sexism. And if a white man self-isolates, then he gets called an incel and a creep.
There’s literally no good option available other than to be a self-effacing fly on the wall who passively agrees with everything said by a woman or person of color and never critiques, questions, seeks clarity, nor adds nuance.
Women get “women’s spaces,” but “men’s spaces” are to be deplored. BIPOC get “BIPOC spaces,” but “white spaces” are to be abhorred. LGBTQ+ get “queer spaces” but “straight spaces” are to be despised.
And if people say “all spaces are straight white male spaces by default,” then why is it unacceptable to boot anyone else out of those spaces? If someone of a different demographic shows up and starts demanding the narrative/vibe/atmosphere shifts to suit their sensibilities, anyone who doesn’t comply is seen as a racist/sexist/homophobe. But careful not to walk on too many eggshells, because it’s actually offensive to even imply that someone might be easily offended.
Literally the only other option is to hang out in actual racist/sexist/homophobic spaces, which I don’t want to do because I detest those types of people. I just want a space where I can hang out and feel welcome and taken seriously while retaining a modicum of self-respect. But this default view of “white man = oppressor (unless gay)” kinda gets in the way of that. And no one cares if I complain about it, or even believes I could have anything worth complaining about.
That’s what I mean by “white working class men are being excluded from class solidarity.” Maybe don’t force them into racially homogenous echo chambers and movements like trumpism won’t gain any momentum?
Lol. “They are making me hang out with racists and homophobes” is a remarkably strange thing to say.
I’m cis and I’ve never felt the need to accommodate racists and homophobes.
Should I feel more attacked?
Oh, is that the joke?
Since when does “in all seriousness” mean “actually not seriously at all, and this is totally a joke”?
Do words mean nothing anymore? There’s even a “/s” specifically for instances when you mean the opposite of what you say, and you didn’t use it.
That’s on you, dude.
Oh my, you misunderstood. I don’t care if people didn’t get it, that so many men got angry was just an opportunity to make the second joke above.
A joke is also not necessarily untrue, it is a fact that cishet men are overwhelmingly responsible for the turmoil this meme references.
“/s” would also be an abbreviation, not the word itself. Since y’know, you’re concerned with the meanings of words.
Imagine if a man were to make a “joke” at women’s expense, and then when women get angry in the comments he says “see, women are sensitive/emotional creatures after all!”
It wouldn’t be the “gotcha” that you seem to think this is. So tell me, what’s different?
Also, just because the people responsible for the turmoil are overwhelmingly cishet men, does not mean that cishet men writ large are overwhelmingly responsible for it. That’s painting with a very large brush, and it should be no surprise that people got upset about it.
When else is it ever okay to blame an entire demographic for the actions of a very small percentage of them? What are working class white men supposed to feel when you lump them into the same category as the oligarchs with such sweeping generalizations? Do you see how that might impede class solidarity?
Also, “/s” is an abbreviation of a word, which everyone on the internet understands and knows what it means. That doesn’t change the fact that you said you were serious, only to backtrack and say you were joking.
Imagine if a man were to make a “joke” at women’s expense, and then when women get angry in the comments he says “see, women are sensitive/emotional creatures after all!”
Having been around since 1978 i assure you this this was the case for a very long time and still very much is the case in parts of the internet.
Don’t try that equivalency.
Well in those cases, it’s wrong. And in this case, it’s still wrong. Just because it’s happened the one way, doesn’t make the other way okay. Both are wrong.
The equivalency stands. And if you don’t think so, then you’re a hypocrite.
I’m agender, and this person is reminding me of all the mean girls who bullied me for not being femme enough. It’s the same kind of middle school logic that said that me not wearing makeup made me a man, and that I ought to kms.
I’m sorry you experienced that, those people didn’t deserve you. Bigots exists in every gender, unfortunately…
Okay, ngl most of these comments are just funny stupid man shit, but now you’re calling me a bigot for literally pointing out indisputable facts about a patriarchal society.
Chuds are not your friend, they will not reward you for siding with them.
#notallmen. Hmm, yes, of course, how could I make fun of men when it isn’t all men. This is misandry! 😰
Since you’re just recycling chud talking points here’s a recycled joke:
I’m not recycling any talking points, whatever tf a “chud” is. My points were valid, and since you refuse to address them rationally and instead resort to insulting me (and half the world’s population at that), I can only assume you don’t have a valid response.
You would pout if someone made light of misogyny, and yet here you are making light of misandry. Are you aware of your double-standard, or completely blind to it?
Imagine a man making fun of women for something stereotypical, and imagine the response you would have. Then ask yourself, are you really any better than those “men” you despise so much?
Like, honestly, I’m politically left and believe in social progress and egalitarianism and all that, but comments like yours make me really not want to care about the oppression of people like you.
According to exit polls, no it’s not.
e.g. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
According to this, it’s rural, non-black christians doing this. Men were more likely to vote Trump, but the effect is nowhere near as strong as the urban/rural, christian/atheist and black/non-black divide.
Granted, the billionaires who benefit from this are almost all cis men, but non-billionaire women have been duped nearly the same as much as non-billionaire men.
Statistics don’t matter to bigots.
True. If they didn’t rely on small and unrepresentative samples (or often the imagination of themselves and others) to judge broad population groups and topics of discussion, they by definition wouldn’t be bigots.
Okay, this was a joke but saying its bigoted to make fun of cis men is a new level of fragile masculinity
Triggering the boys’ club on Lemmy has accidentally become a hobby of mine. All I do is point out misogyny, which there is a lot of on here, and the club decends upon me. At a certain point the downvotes and insults become cathartic because they’re just proving my point. They never even try to convince me that they aren’t misogynists, it’s just pure insults. At least you got some honest discourse mixed in with the bullshit, lol.
Well that isn’t 100% true. There’s a bunch that like to parrot b******* crime statistics.
As a cis white man, I’m just glad to finally get credit for something. DEI and woke has made it really difficult for me to be rewarded for other people’s progress in spite of my mere passive existence being an active stumbling block in the path of those who made the poor choice of being born as they were.
I’m sorry that you’ve just now realized you exist in a system that connects you to a social order you have little power over, next few months are going to be rough on you I tell’ya.
Although, I wonder if there’s a word for the conditions that someone would have to exist under to make it possible to come this far in life without ever being forced to learn about this because of their advantageous position in that system. 🧐
I appreciate your apologies. Few people realize how hard it is to be given every advantage, but not have everything.
Ok, I’m done. These sarcastic comments are making me sad.
The answer was “privilege”
Well, corporations created generational division to blame what corporations were doing.
Corporations created anti-union sentiment for obvious reasons.
As evidenced by articles about the worst people in the world lamenting that those young poors aren’t buying enough diamonds, are ruining the economy, killing the golf industry, ruining handshakes, andmuch, much more.
Very seldomly do they mention that millennials are the first or second generation to be significantly poorer than the previous one, meaning that we can ill afford what previous generations took for granted.
Also, a lot of the things we’re “killing” are arguably in NEED of killing, such as the cartel-dominated diamond industry, environmentally ruinous and dreadfully expensive sports such as golf, and truly bizarre things like so-called diet products high in sugar and low in protein
Millenials are killing capitalism :(
Gen Xers are killing anti-union corpotation :((
Love the rhetorical question clarification
I got like three dudes genuinely trying to explain it (with wrong answers) within a few minutes. So, seemed necessary so as to not suffer the mansplaining.
That wasn’t sarcastic, or not directed negatively at you anyway. Love to see clarification, hate that it’s needed
Before the Internet it was a bigger deal bc culture was different but yeah basically just a distraction
People like to have identities tho and like for this person maybe being GenX means something. Like distrust of systems
It is exactly the opposite because the Internet is and mostly has been a way to connect with like minded individuals. Generations are a new concept to divide us. They are less than a century old.
Before generations we had time periods that united us. We all knew what it meant to live through the 90s, the 80s, fuckin disco. It was commonality with your fellow man. Despite absolutely everyone knowing someone wearing skinny jeans in the early aughts - now it’s a “stupid Millennial” trend.
https://worldhistory.medium.com/where-did-generations-come-from-e2fb73931a88
There will always be the need to have some societal construct for the grouping of people. People in the same generation were generally subjected to similar living conditions at similar points of their life so it makes it a valid grouping.
If not generations, then what? There is also sexual orientations, political beliefs, race… the list goes on.
Realistically you can’t have 8 billion plus classifications for every distinct person, so at some point there needs to be a generally agreed upon roll up.
If not generations, then what?
Income, average household size, cost-of-living, religious preference, level of education, geography… lots of ways to slice up that poll data once you correlate each polling place with other data. The key here is that it’s possibly more valid to correlate with information that is closer to the election date than birthdays that were decades ago.
Oh yeah, you think everyone born in the late 1940s had similar enough lived experiences to universalise them? That’s incredible that there’s so little variation despite drastically different socioeconomic positionalities, almost like you’d have to dismiss certain experiences that inevitably deviate from that imagined norm to allow it to exist. Of course, there’s only so many ways to account for everyone, so we will have to accept these dominant constructions of human experience as something inevitable as well.
I wonder if there’s a word for that.
You completely missed my point. Generation is a valid grouping even if you don’t like it. Yes there are others that may work, some may be better, some may not. But it is still a unifying thread. Take Xellenials (micro-generation between X and Millenial), it’s described as an “analog childhood and digital adulthood” that is somewhat that pretty much everyone in that generation was subject to, so yeah it was a “similar enough lived [sic] experience to universalize them”.
I don’t think it’s similar living conditions but more of significant world events in their lives. With say Boomers you have Vietnam, Civil Rights, and Reagan as examples that shaped their world views. Not all are shaped the same way but it affected them. Like with Millennials, we have the proliferation of the internet, 2001, and 2008. These have seriously affected how we think and act to differing degrees in the USA.
Because ideologies are a team sport now. And people need to feel like they’re part of something- regardless of its relevance.
Because ideologies are a team sport now
In the US? 🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
Seemingly everywhere.
True, but to a MUCH higher degree in the US than almost everywhere else.
Just like all western countries have different degrees of under-regulated capitalism but the US is a near-limitless eldorado for the rich and powerful.
I’m exhausted just reading that much of your nonsense. Let’s agree to disagree and part ways here.
Sure. It’s not like it’s a good use of my time and effort to try to educate someone who calls objective reality “exhausting nonsense” anyway 🤷
That’s called a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Lots of genX Trump voters for a generation that identifies with “sneering distrust of everything”. Or are we talking about Q-Anon-style “sneering distrust of everything (except this totally believable source that conveniently aligns with the far right)”?
Look up some exit polls/surveys, e.g. this one: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
According to this, people born in the 60s (late boomers/early gen X) was the age cohort most likely to vote for Trump, and people born in the 70s and 80s still preferred Trump.
Though age cohort wasn’t nearly as good as predicting the voting decision than other markers like urban/rural, black/non-black or atheist/christian.
It’s strange because the vast majority of my GenX in all my circles are super left. But I’m a suburban guy with most of my acquaintances in high literacy areas.
Once you get outside of the suburbs, things change. I could see gen-X going full conspiracy theorist, then double-thinking as propaganda feeds them ideas.
Has anyone ever told you that “lots” isn’t “all”?
Nobody claimed it was every single gen x? A statement was made that a large portion (in this case a majority) of gen x voted in favour of Trump; which is backed up by exit polls
Do you understand aggregate descriptors? That it is quite typical and appropriate to talk about groups based on their average or median value, even if it is acknowledged that there is a proportion of exceptions?
I don’t even understand this one. It’s this a thing for Gen x? I feel like Gen x is more known for complacency.
Whatever
Exactly, just watch early 90s Simpson’s older teenagers, meh. That summed up gen x in a lot of media.
That’s just a side effect from the belief that nothing important was fixable because the interests that kept them that way were too entrenched.
It’s more apathy than complacency, after years of our cynicism being fully vindicated. A cynic is just a disappointed optimist.
Maybe instead of sneering distrust, try doing your research and vote? 20% of genx registered to vote.
*in the US.
Remarkably, there were births outside the US between 1965 and 1980
OK? That’s obvious, but we’re still in this predicament due to US citizens, genx included, not voting.
If it’s so obvious then why did it need to be pointed out and why are you reactionary over it?
There is a tendency of US citizens on the internet to assume they are the only people. You are not.
Gen X really did perfect the “trust, but verify” muscle 😅 — the healthiest version is keeping the skepticism and staying curious so it doesn’t turn into cynicism.
