"Things stay terrible for so long, you almost miss when they were merely bad" is something that hit on a much more personal level than I was expecting it to. Another fantastic entry.
I miss March of last year because this pandemic stuff was new, a little exciting, and staying home made me feel morally superior and not just exhausted.
@@leplus1 - It's not enough to be tired of the neo-liberal Democrats. We have to do the work to replace them and Republicans (who have gone off the rails with their supporters). That's a very tall order because our culture and our governments are so dysfunctional, and it's virtually impossible to compete with right wing media and regular, profit-driven media. But that's what needs to be done.
@@normandy2501 - I'm a Gen Xer from the suburbs of a dying Rust Belt city. A lot of my "white," male peers wanted to be like their fathers, as their fathers were in the 80's. They bought into trickle down economics, even as it was accelerating the demise of our city, region, state, and country. They sought the illusory sense of security from embracing "tradition." They weren't listening to Grunge - they were listening to the Beatles, Beach Boys, and Billy Joel. And I don't think it's reasonable to characterize Baby Boomers in general as former activists or peace-loving hippies. Those people were a relatively small portion of the population. The overwhelming majority swallowed what they were fed in the 50's and 60's. The overwhelming majority of the Baby Boomers didn't sell out their values and principles by becoming part of the system because they were already part of the system (or at least on the path to becoming part of the system).
As a Zoomer, I have to respect Millenials for taking so much sh*t from older generations. We do too, but y'all were the beginning of the "holy shit the world is broken" revelation that both of our generations have had. For Gen Z, the recession was a part of childhood. The idea of returning to "when things were better" doesn't make sense to us because when were things better?
Millenials are the most shafted over people in this country. As our dwindling life expectancy illustrates. The Millennial life is one defined by terrorism, economic instability, mass shootings, political turmoil, civil unrest, viral outbreaks, and the effects of irreversible climate change. Our only hope is to ensure that those after us will never share this fate.
"The beginning of the 'holy shit the world is broken' revelation" --I'd say that started with Gen X, who grew up seeing the wreckage of the hippie dreams of peace and love. They were also the first to experience the shrinkage of job opportunities and got told it was their fault for just not being willing to work hard enough. All trends that have only increased for Millennials, of course, but I'd say Gen X got them first.
As a "born in the early 90s millenial" I related to SO much of this. Especially because I often talked with a Gen Z friend of mine about the differences between our generations. And I had always said: 'When I was a child, things looked like they were on a steady path of improvement. Then some bad stuff happened. And then the bad stuff didn't stop happening.' To my friend, things getting worse was the norm. Which is why I am constantly heartbroken and she isn't afraid of anything.
Mid 90s millenial myself, it's interesting how my own outlook is almost a perfect halfway point there. There was always that little bit of a memory of things getting better, but by the time most of my memories formed, it was 2001.
"I am constantly heartbroken and she isn't afraid of anything." I'm 31 and I've got a close friend in her early 20s, and if this doesn't sum up the major difference underpinning our social and political beliefs, I don't know what does. Like, our politics are very very similar from the outside, but my anger is rooted in disappointment and heartbreak, and hers feels like it's informed at least in part by having to harden herself to the reality that shit is objectively terrible and it's only going to get worse.
@@injusticeanywherethreatens4810 It's my sincere hope that the effort to counter climate change will become a catalyst for huge economic growth like post-WW2 america saw. It won't happen automatically, but it does need to happen.
"...and young people don't feel trapped by the future, because nobody *believes* in the future anymore." Holy fuck dude you just summarized all of my anxieties.
@@fahim102 I actually went in not thinking that. Most of my time was spent trying to get them arguing more about why somehow their opinion should be tolerated, but the opinion that their opinion shouldn't be tolerated shouldn't. As in, why is racism tolerated, but anti-racism isn't. From there it was mostly just a process of fucking with them. The more confused and disoriented they are, the less time they're able to spend spreading their bullshit, and the more likely they are to slip up and say the quiet part loud, which did end up happening.
As a Gen Xer, there's a part of me that wants to defend my generation. You know, leave some ominous message about how growing up and selling out are inevitable. Thing is, the generations that came after us have no one to sell out too. No one is buying.
Exactly. The opportunities to actually sell out don’t exist anymore. The most sellout thing you can do now is to take commissions online, but that’s just the self employed hustle really.
@@DarkFlame7755 true... I did camming on the side starting uni and we didn’t have OnlyFans! You had a private Twitter or Tumblr you’d give people access to if they paid you by PayPal instead lol. OnlyFans seems like a much more streamlined system
The choice of muting out the conversations between Daria and Jodie is interesting to me. I feel like Jodie was the foil to Daria’s choice to be apathetic because she felt crushed by how sick and sad the world was. Jodie is well aware of horrible the world is and was just as disaffected but knew she didn’t have the privilege to lean into the apathy the way Daria did. Jodie is one of the voices in the show that gets Daria to think about if she didn’t lean into the disaffectedness and possibly be proactive in addressing the issues she cares about so much.
Yes. So lets change the system. No, not tweak it, add some boundaries that conservatives will just erode again. I mean entirely dismantle and replace the damn thing. Lets start with the healthcare system.
The biggest problem, is: it wasn't really that good. Nostalgia and media make it seem good....but it wasn't. As an Xer that turned 20 in '90 it was pretty fucked. Those of us who served in Desert Storm (like myself) came to understand that American Democracy was run by $$$ not morals. Crack addition and the war on drugs was in full swing, and entire neighborhoods were ruined. Cities became wastelands with rampant poverty hidden by social stratification. We had all this pressure to get a career and become productive members of society, but we being beat over the head with how we were lazy slackers with no motivation, hippies with no passion, artists with no desire. We weren't slackers, we just saw the world as a fake shit sandwich and didn't want to participate. It's funny, because I'm now seeing more and more of us Xers getting loud and passionate and in peoples face about leftism and making things right - all the shit we talked about in the 90's but did very little about - because we're seeing it affect our kids - and if there is one thing, one precious thing to us - it's our kids; the one thing we're terrified that we fucked up and can't fix, can't compensate for.
As a Gen Z, the "nobody believes in the future anymore" part hit so hard when I realized that when we say "nothing really matters" we actually believe it which is why we are so calm about the future. We aren't as disappointed with the world because we didn't believe in it in first place, but Millennials did.
Absolutely, absolutely. I still feel a stubborn clinging to hope. I’m still bitter that everything was snatched away from us, after we had our childhoods steeped in telling us how stable and safe everything was. And the only way I can keep pushing for the future is the hope that I could help make the world worth hoping for again.
My high school professors literally told me I was fucked because 2008 and... yeah, I took that to hurt. Can't really be disappointed when you didn't believe good things were possible.
Its like the Bane monologue from The Dark Knight Rises: Millenials are Batman: those who knew the light but then adopted the dark, and Zoomers are Bane: the ones born and raised in the darkness and have no memory of there being anything else.
Being calm can help you more clearly think of solutions, so I'm not sure why you are all viewing being more stoic to be bad in some way besides victim mentality.
"My goal is not to wake up one morning in my 40s with the bitter realization that I wasted half by life in a job that I hate because I was forced to choose a career in my teens" I... am not sure if I've ever related to something more. I was born in the early 2000s, But, this... this is just so... damn. All the adults around you in highschool are always like "What do you want to major in?" "What college are you going to?" I mean, fuck, I was asked this shit in the 7th grade. Dear god, I was 13, you want me to pick what I want to do with my LIFE? I think between this and the similar "My goal is not to graduate college thousands of dollars in debt only to have a computer program do the thing I spent years studying for ten times better and one thousand times faster" Is why I am in college and still trying to figure out what the hell I actually want.
Don't feel bad about not knowing what you wanna do in your 20s. Hell, some of the more interesting people you'll meet haven't figured it out in their 40s. But always remember the sunscreen.
That was literally verbatim how i would have phrased it the day that episode would have come out. It’s almost weird knowing there was media around at the time I COULD have identified with so strongly, but we did not have the channel it was broadcast on so I missed out.
Does anyone else think it's pretty fucked up that the trajectory of our lives is dependent on choices we make during a time where we have little to no meaningful control over our own lives?
@@jonathankent1517 thats the secret - the illusion of choice. our generations quickly realized we have no choice. now we r stuck dealing with our combined 40-years-early midlife crisis. hopefully most of us make it out
"and young people don't feel trapped by the future, because nobody believes in the future anymore" is the perfect explanation for why millennials are so fond of zoomers even when they joke at our expense. It's not only because their jokes about millennials are significantly funnier than those of Xers and Boomers, but because their jokes demonstrate the problems with cynicism and ironic detachment in the first place.
From my experience, the Zoomers aren't being malicious with the jokes, either; it's all in good fun. We can talk on the same level field with Zoomers and we can, for the most part, agree the system is fucked and that it's gonna take Millennials and Zoomers working together to completely UNFUCK the world as we know it. That's always how conversations I've had with Zoomers go, anyways; we're all generally in agreement.
@@SeanStrife Zoomer is without a doubt just fed-up and directly saying to the older generation, "You fucked up so bad, that a teenager can clean the ocean, a kid can denounce your generation and anything you say to us can't stick". The burden us Zoomer and Millennial carry is Bigger than our collective can handle.
@@SeanStrife We HAVE to be the generations to fix this shit. If we aren't able to do it. I doubt there will be time left to do for the coming generations. And I for my part will not just fucking accept the boomer mentality of just letting the fucking planet die.
This is very true, but also a near useless statement because literally everything these days is called "liberalism" or "neoliberalism", as perfectly explained by this chart: i.redd.it/b676lafcg1361.jpg (i have no idea who made the chart, maybe the political opinions of the chart's creators are horrible, but the chart is still true, though maybe only as an exaggeration)
@@lordbuss I dont think u understand. The system itself is neoliberal, every thing quite literally is neoliberal. The term isnt meaningless, it is just literally meant to encapsulate the hegemonic late 20th-21st century politics. Both dnc and rnc, the EU generally, intl trade organizations completely... those are neoliberal institutions and they are what we have. Its just an adjective for what that general political and social view of markets and welfare is. And no, that doesn’t mean everything is “the same.”
@@bobblebee49 None of what you just said justifies the graph. The problem with the graph is that it implies that almost every side criticises, nay *blames,* "neoliberalism", but they can't rightfully make it the boogeyman, if it's part of their ideology.
Here's my lukewarm take of the day. Until we can establish communism (News flash: It won't be any time soon, and that's probably for the better, because the world isn't ready for it), neoliberalism is the best thing we have. There is potentially room in it for unlimited political social benefits. It also discourages wasteful spending on luxury goods if the market output doesn't allow for them, as well as it discourages inefficient market strategies such as insisting on crude oil/coal when their infrastructure won't be efficient in the long run, or baiting everyone who doesn't have a job into opening a superfluous restaurant on some street corner. It only appreciates labour that is actually valuable or asked for, not labour that only exists to enrich the person doing it. Those are all good things for society as a whole.
A big 90s moment that cemented my world view was listening to Romeo Delaire every night on CBC radio, pleading to the reporters to tell people about the Rwanda genocide and send help. And how that was happening globally. After watching 80s propaganda about fighting for freedom wherever there's trouble learning just how little humanity was actually valued even when the evidence that hundreds of thousands of people were dying horrible was indisputable, well, it got very easy to be numb to everything else.
It seems like there are a lot of people who idealize and romanticize the 90s so much that they are more than willing to overlook or ignore the victims that experienced terrible events like 2 goddamn genocides (Bosnian ethnic cleansing & the Rwandan genocide) meanwhile the American government with all their wealth & influence barely did anything to help.
And for me as a person born in 1998 I think Romeo Dallaire was the first example given of a living person with PTSD and discussing how the UN and UN peacekeepers are almost certainly necessary but deeply flawed.
@@fahim102 Purposely ignoring those genocides happens. Though, in America there's a... hmm... /lack luster/ education system which doesn't touch on too much history past WWII during K-12... seems like they sure love to streamline the last several decades of history.
Yes. There was a lot of numbness. The cold war was over. Passion over ideology was dead...and yet there was still darkness in the world and new narratives for actions had yet to emerge. It felt like we could only stand by and watch.
As a millennial, it's so weird to me there are zoomers old enough to drink but too young to remember 9/11. They are old enough to enlist in a war that started when I was in elementary school.
ay that's me! I was but a baby at the time and noone told me about it till years later. felt as relevant to my life as time time my city exploded about a century ago
I can tell you as a gen-z person, it's unfortunately not that weird feeling to us. I think most of us just accept that being in a forever war with the middle east because of an event none of us were alive for as the default state of reality. It's pretty sad, but that's what happens when you grow up with a war going on the entire time, and literally every avenue you turn to learn things tells you this is a good an necessary war.
As a gen Z living in an age where the nostalgia cycle harkens to a time before I was born, everything that isn't "the hot new thing" happened when or before I was in diapers.
As a Gen Z, it's honestly weird that there's even a world before 9/11. Generations before us learned that the political system had major issues as teens and adults. For us, we grew up hearing about foreign prisoners being tortured, and the US military lying about war for oil was just an accepted fact. The president wasn't someone you were supposed to like, until I was 11, and Obama was elected. Literally the moment he stepped in the door, the economy collapsed, and we spent 8 years watching elected officials fight like children, while all the adults in our lives became the casualties. By the time we were young adults, Trump was president. Maybe I'm just especially disaffected, but I find I genuinely find it difficult to comprehend that people see Trump as this complete anomaly, rather than something that the system naturally produces. To be clear, I despise Trump, but for me, my early schema of a president is someone who bombs foreign nations and neglects the poor. We had one president claim he would stop this, and The GOP and Fox News attacked him like antibodies fighting a virus. Bernie Sanders claimed he could do the same in 2016, and we watched the Democrats a party that was supposed to match his values, do the exact same thing. We got stabbed in the back, by the "right people" who are supposed to in charge. Gen Z who support Trump, and older generations that hate him, honestly seem to do so for the same reason, he's an existential threat to America, the only difference, is that for my generation, the American system in it's current for is something we genuinely want replaced. Honestly, I'd never admit this off of an anonymous comment, but a tiny part of me in on November 10th 2016, hoped the regime would be like a controlled burn of a forest fire. Maybe people older than 25 would finally see the system the same way I saw it. Not as something sick, but violent by it's very nature.
@@davidmhh9977 it’s weird for me to think about. I was in grade 10 when 9/11 happened. It hit us in Australia not as hard, obviously, but it was still huge. There was this weird juxtaposition of silence and noise. My high school was right next to the largest Army base in the Southern Hemisphere, and all day we had the incredibly loud noise of Army choppers flying overhead. And because we were right next to an Army base, a lot of the students were Army brats. And they were completely silent, knowing (rightly) that their mum or dad was about to go to war. It was so huge. The biggest single event of my lifetime. And it’s crazy to think that there are now people fighting in that war, who weren’t even alive when it started, or who were so young that they can’t remember a time before it. It messes with my head a little.
I was in college exactly when the recession hit. I was promised (for my degree) $60k starting salary entry level guaranteed. By the time I finished, you needed 2-5 years work experience for an “entry level” position that pays $30k. I think the cynicism has stayed directed at the larger social structures as we’ve all become more sincere in our relationships with ourselves and each other. Like, I just want a lot of money so I can create a commune for all my friends where we don’t rely on corporations and greed.
Dude, can I join your commune? I'll be upfront, I'm not a very good worker, by any means, but if you can find a way to make me valuable, I'll be sure to do what's in my ability!
Boomer: “Milennials are cynical buttheads” Gen X: Milennials: 🤔. “Daria does not care about participation trophies” well yeah. Then again, neither did any actual milennial when we were given them.
I'm not sure why some people have chosen to use the idea of participation trophies to bash how weak or entitled today's young people are. They've literally been using them for decades. I'm a Gen-Xer and can remember them from the early 80's and I'm sure they were giving them out before then.
@@edward2962 Boomers got participation trophies, too, except they call them "consolation prizes" and expect pity and sympathy for having received them.
As a gen z kid it’s weird for me to think about how we’re trying to recapture a past that I never knew. I was literally in the womb when 9/11 happened so all my life it has felt like no one even really knew if the sun was going to rise tomorrow. I think that’s why I’m so deep in the mindset of “screw the past, let’s focus on making sure there is a future.” Everyone promises a return to when things were better, but that’s not what I want, or what I think any of us need.
That’s very interesting. I was born in the mid 90s and could never relate to older kids who’d grown up in the 80s talking about doubt of existing tomorrow due to the Cold War. I hadn’t realised gen Z experienced something similar. Maybe that’s part of why millennials are sometimes looked on as too sensitive by both X and Z? We grew up in a world where things seemed not just safe, not just hopeful, but was presented as inevitably so. (In fact, many pundits used the phrase “end of history” in the 90s, about the 90s, that’s how inevitable the track we seemed to be on seemed to everyone.) Then all the bad shit resumed and it was a huge shock to us, and in many ways we’re still processing it all (like this video). But I guess if you’re steeped in it from before you can remember... our reactions can seem like overreactions.
Im a millennial and I'm with you. Fuck the past, we learn from it and make our own futures. Why go back when we can make something even better? Why accept anything less than what we deserve. I get being nostalgic but everyone's gotta grow the fuck up.
That's probably an advantage of the Zoomer generation. I was 15 when 9/11 happened and the world became scared of brown people, and I was 22 when the economy broke down. I know it's not constructive, but I honestly long back to the time the world was a bright and hopeful place.
@@everynameistakenyet But it wasnt really so bright. Before 9/11 we had the war in Ruanda and Yugoslavia. All countries with social welfare start to lower taxes for the rich and cut down social welfare. Who had eyes open knew already about the climate crisis (you could knew it since the 70ths) and we saw that the petrol industry is so powerful, that the politicians wont change our economic course. Also we knew about the problems with the ozon layer, and many other ecology problems. And many states had problems with high unemployment. And rassism began to rise again. I think the last year were people could look optimistic in the future (if they forget about the cold war) was 1973. Since than, first everything stopped to get better like in the years before and since the 80ths everything got worse. But I really do have hope with the new generaration - and hope they dont come too late.
My brother and I are older Gen Z too and we were joking the other day that we can’t wait for the 80s to end. The back of the Golden Grahams cereal box had an 80s theme, ridiculous
Damn, as a Gen Z kid, this is the first piece of writing that actually made me understand the millennial perspective somewhat. I always thought Millenials where dumb and naive for expecting things to go back to normal and to bring back the destructive mundanity of the 90s, but it must have been utterly horrifying to watch the guard rails come off of society, as it were. We were born into a world of constantly increasing absurdity where the concept of “normal” will always and forever feel like a luxury, but perhaps we are protected from the pain of losing something we never had.
You were never promised a future because we knew better. Sorry, kid. Wish you knew the world before it went all shitty cyberpunk. Enjoy what you can while you can, I guess.
In a dark room your eyes adjust. But when you're used to light, when they do go off the room feels much darker. I'm truly not sure what is worse, pervasive longing for the good times, or never knowing them to begin with. They're probably both equally horrible in their own way.
We were also, y'know, KIDS in the 90s. In a time that was seemingly relatively progressive and peaceful. Near the turn of the milennium there was a concept called the "end of history." The promise of the internet was pretty new, the economy was booming, and futurism was in. There was an optimistic feeling, at least in middle class America, that things could probably keep getting slowly better, that we had a lot of it pretty figured out. So I think a lot of us experienced varying leves of intense whiplash as we like turned 12 or so and just became working adults in the midst of endless downturns that have still never stopped. We've been at war since then. The middle class has only suffered, since then. It never stopped.
As a gen z kid, I must say I have only three moods We must try to salvage what's left of our future to build something better The world is dying, theres so much to fix I cant handle it all Make jokes to stop the pain
I've a slightly different mood, which is be happy, and accept that the world is going to get worse than what it already is, Life is nice even when filled with pain, cause suicide is gae. And a different one being I no longer care about being peacefully accepting what's happening but I've no power, and cannot change anything ever due to the corpotocracy.(Basically Life is pain, precurssor to the former) I think I would also make jokes if I could be funny.
if there is any hope for a future worth living in, it is in our perverse refusal to sit down and shut up while our world burns, and in our collective action. every significant victory of the people in the past has only ever happened because enough people believed it was possible and banded together to collectively make it a reality, despite being against the interests of the ruling classes, because we outnumber them. we just need to believe in our collective strength, educate ourselves on effective praxis and commit to making a future that works for us a reality. a defeatist attitude isn't what advanced civil rights for poc and lgbtq+ people. it was a collective refusal to lie back and accept the world imposed upon us by sociopathic rich fucks and direct action by the people to change the world, whether those in power wanted it or not.
actual in-high-school zoomer here. while gen z is definitely the new "sincerity generation", i don't think the cynicism ever leaves teenagers. things are bleaker than ever n while a lot of us are finally, finally deciding to be ourselves bc There Is No Saving Us Now, that layer of jadedness n alienation n fear has stuck around. we're terrified. n we're all doing something different to try n deal w it - i've turned into the archetypical transgender anarcho-whatever 12 year old - but it's not rly working. every time we get our hopes up for a second that things could be okay, that we could have even the smallest chance of a "normal" transition from adolescence to adulthood, we're let down. that sarcastic view of our current situation hasn't gone away. i just hope to god we turn the dissatisfaction into action for once.
A weird mix of sometime and activism. Maybe that’s why millennials and Gen Z don’t seem to have the same tensions between us that most other generations do/did? It’s all very absurdist. We know the world is fucked, but we keep rolling the Boulder up the hill anyway. What else is there to do?
Very well put! It’s interesting the ways what you said is similar to how I felt when I was 12, but also different in other ways. For one, living through the whiplash of 9/11 and the later recession made there be a deeper yearning for “maybe this is what turns things around”, especially when Obama won and stuff. Things went bad so quickly, the idea of quick solutions didn’t seem as far fetched. It’s only really been in the last ~5 years that my peers have started realising.... shit, we’re in this for the long haul, stuff is so complicated but also the right is so organised... etc. Like: we were so hopeful for Occupy Wall Street to somehow do something big. It was crushing when it ended up passing without doing anything. I think we’re more realistic now in realising that movements take a lot to build up momentum, and they don’t happen quickly like that. (I’m 26)
For some reason, that summary of millennials' generational anxieties and traumas and the "relationship in crisis" metaphor are hitting me like a fucking _airplane,_ and I am unable to stop crying. ... And by "for some reason", I mean COVID gave me familial, relationship, and political problems all at the same time, and I was born in the early 90s and have long since watched my and all my friends' roadmaps go up in flames, and I really am desperate for things to only just be bad. Jesus. Thank you for giving me a space to feel all this, genuinely.
Me too. That feeling of desperately trying to make your own map, and only for stability rather than prosperity, is something else. Plus of course the metaphor hit home hard because I’ve had plenty of relationships that did function in that way. Only working properly during big traumatic life upending times, or when they can create their own conflict to “recover” from together. So that was a big whoof. I still sting remembering old teachers go “you had such a bright future” to me, as if it were my fault. All the things we were collectively promised while going through school. Did my final high school years in the big recession, which in the UK lasted until 2010 roughly. It was so strange seeing them try to still sell us on the roadmap they’d used all along, even while the news was full of way older ppl who’d followed the map whose jobs were in the shitter too. I remember feeling like it was all bullshit at the time, but lots of social pressures caused me to keep my head down and follow the path in the hopes things will have recovered by the end. That worked out well,
Things will be, there we are heading I believe, even Uber rich guys are at least trying to save the planet. And there are a lot more activist. Please hang in there, try to take care of yourself, hug yourself, se will survive this horrible and will have the bad, I believe in gen Z.
God, maybe the whole roadmap thing is the reason I stuck with a law degree which in Germany at least is a decent ticket into becoming a state employee with special benefits that are so much more stable than any job in the market economy could ever offer. That makes so much sense.
@@kaitlyn__L My parents still keep asking me what I want to do with my life now that I'm entering the 2nd half of my 20's and all I can ever think about is. "If you get a job that lasts longer than 6 months you can move into a studio apartment at the complex where most of your friends are, and once you have an income you can actually start thinking about dating people. Like career ranks so far down on my list of priorities it's staggering. Whenever I hear about people with grand career ambitions of "rising up the ladder" all of it just sounds like Nobles in Versailles indulging in pointless intrigues so they can be named Grand Marquise and Knight of the Dolphin of his Majesty's High Exchequer and get to wear an extra lacy handkerchief to wear at the Winter Ball.
When I left education and did my first practical thing I remember sitting face to face with the first unemployed software developers. Yes. Those people who were believed to have the safest best paid jobs ever. And they couldn't understand the world anymore. And us youngsters (decades ago) got the first glimpse of a world turning with so much speed that people were indiscriminately kicked off the spinning wheel of career, future, dreams, security. Not very comforting. Sorry.
As a 16 year old zoomer you summed up pretty well why I do that strained, wheezing Joker laugh every time I remember the "Man what if we get a stable, well paying career and turn into consumerist squares" trope.
When you were like (paraphrasing here) "Sarcasm was the response to having this map of a stable career laid out for you and maybe not wanting that, wanting to choose your own path instead", I was like "Wow dude, I wish that was my problem. I'd be happy to have ANY path in front of me." And yeah... turned out that was the point of this video
i will not surive the climate crisis. i just want to have a good time for once and leave behind a record of how we fought against this for the survivors, alongside messages of how to be kind. (like the mental health stuff that we are only just beggining to figure out). if i wasnt struggling to exist then id build a garden to feed the ones who make it through.
Oh my god, the vision of getting another Bush-type president in 2030's has left me genuinely traumatized. And fun fact, some conservative organisations like the Lincoln Project are already working on to soften the image of George Bush and make him retrospectively not as bad as he used to be.
@@KingdomHeartsBrawler Because anybody loves to affiliate with Lincoln, no matter how far away they are from his actual believes (*cough* Donald Trump)
@@KingdomHeartsBrawler I’m sorry man but that’s just ahistorical. The only connection between Lincoln and Marx is that Marx sent a letter to Lincoln to congratulate him on the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln was not a leftist. www.google.com/amp/s/www.aier.org/article/was-lincoln-really-into-marx/amp/
What was even scarier was when the so-called "liberals" joined in, trying to make Dubya seem like a stand-up guy. Was like, do you remember this %$%$^%^% at all?
yea George Bush (jr) and even senior really seemed to begin the trend of softening genocidal corporate bigots. Seriously, the Iraq war was the break for me where I realized a) americans didn't know sh*t about sh*t, patriotism was disgusting, we all had no say over war crimes, and I lived in a different reality than other people (not even that we had different "opinions" but a different set of facts.) it was really awful. Going to my first giant protest I really thought there was no way we could go to war. And 36 million refugees later and more dead than the holocaust, ISIS created and everything later, we're still there. Ugh. But also they're funny. Or something. I get we all need satire and all, and as an abolitionist I like to try to see the human side of people.. to a degree. but I think it is very dangerous.
It's weird watching this as a zoomer who's in his freshman year of college, because I've never really lived through the time when things were just bad. I was born after 9/11, so when older people say they want things to return to normal, I have no fucking idea what that would look or feel like. My entire political upbringing in the last few years has been predicated on the thought that I may, truly this time, be part of humanity's last growing generation, and trying to not be that
When I was 11 in the 90s, I flew from California to Pennsylvania to attend my cousin's wedding. I flew alone, without my parents. My mom walked me all the way to the gate in San Jose and my uncle met me at the gate in Philadelphia. It felt normal to just go somewhere, see people, and it wasn't a big deal to anyone.
As a Gen Xer I've never understood why people dump on either millennials or zoomers, I got lucky. Many in my generation didn't, I grew up with punk bands using "no future" as a cool slogan, we've come to a place where "young people don't feel trapped by the future, because nobody believes in the future anymore" isn't said to be edgy or angry, it's just a cold statement of fact.
This hits really hard when I think about my relationship with my Step mom. My little brother was about to enter college in a few years when she asks me to give him advice. I tell him make sure to study something your actually interested in and follow your passion. She got mad at me because she thought I would tell him what degree would make him the most money.
You're absolutely right even in practical sense. It feels like nowadays you pretty much have to a fan of your job to have even a slight hope of being hired.
I wish somebody had told me that I didn't have to go to university lol. I just picked the first degree that seemed vaguely interesting without really contemplating anything.
@@FortoFight On the other hand, I wish someone had told me how advantageous going to college would be. Now. i'm 40, stuck in a job I hate, with no means to move forward. At least if I had a degree, I could leverage it to move to another country or whathaveyou.
I graduated high school in 2002. I told my father I wanted to be an IT professional. He said I was stupid and should go into something more lucrative like auto repair despite never showing a fucking ounce of interest in cars in my short life. I refused. The asshole in turn refuses to co-sign on my student loans because he doesn't want to "get stuck with a bill he can't pay" when I can't find a job in a "fad". I'm 36 now and the first person he calls when he has a problem with his computer.
I wouldn’t mind if you kept making these kinds of videos after COVID is under control. Not to tell you what to do with your own creative work, but I wouldn’t be opposed.
This video came at a good time for me also since I’ve been job-searching with no luck for a good few months and I’d been wondering how long the machine can last.
"Daria does not want participation trophies." Neither did we. Did anyone even ask for a participation trophy as a kid? Because to me and my peers growing up (and I realize this is anecdotal evidence), participation trophies were fucking humiliating. It was the "you tried" star but in physical form, and it was basically confirmation that we sucked in the thing we were trying to do. Also we didn't give them to ourselves; our boomer and gen X teachers gave them to us. They're the ones who introduced us to participation awards in the first place, so why is this our fault lmao
I have a theory that participation trophies, certificates and medals ect were always more about giving parents the ability to brag about their kids having awards from school or clubs than it was about the kids.
@NeptuneWalker As a, I guess middle millennial (born '87), nobody knows what the fuck the future will bring. College is stupid expensive, but if you can swing it it's probably better to be formally educated than not. If you go, do whatever major you want, it's a crapshot which will actually be 'useful'. Learn to be flexible and learn whatever you need to as time changes, boomers can afford to be ignorant nobody else can. And if an opportunity comes by, don't be afraid to grab it. Also seek out friends you can trust enough to be like family.
I recently read an article on how young people aren't saving for retirement. Because they figure they'll be dead or having a personal pension won't matter because of economic changes. I felt personally targetted. My retirement plan is campaigning for socialism.
It wasn't until listening to a podcast talking about how Forrest Gump was a movie that could only come out in the 90s because it was the time to sort of take a breath and look back like "whoa, that was quite the ride, huh?" that I realized just how unique that decade was. I wasn't old enough to really exist in that moment. I went to my first anti-war protest when I was 12. I was 14 when I saw An Inconvenient Truth in theatres. As soon as I was introduced to the world outside the playground, the world was unfair and unforgiving. And we were raised by people who held strong personal responsibility (pay the rent on time, no crying) and weak moral responsibility (actually do something about injustice in the world), and chastised us for having our priorities flipped.
It feels like gen x and boomers started the whole millennials are whiners things because we actually started speaking out against things like homophobia, climate change, stigma around depression, racism, rape culture etc. They just wanted us to maintain the status quo and we wanted better for ourselves and the next generation.
Everything from "For two generations, the nineties were the least things had sucked in living memory" onward felt like you pulling things straight out of my soul.
Hi, zoomer in a semi-poor city here. The part where you talked about the stance of gen Z, and what's cool/brave and what isn't, I feel is missing something. Going through school in both honors classes ("the smart kids", a lot of them were more wealthy, not me though) and gen ed classes, I felt like the mindset differed greatly between kids in the two. Honors kids were vastly more accepting and genuine, particularly when it came to social issues like LGBTQ+ stuff, but I felt like most of them didn't fully grasp the financial hardships the average student there might have had to go through. Like you could be trans and most of them would be cool about it, but if you asked them about socialism, or about the modern day financial gap between races, they might react with indifference, and they have little class consciousness. The kids in the gen ed classes were much more aware of financial issues that burdened them, but they also had the kind of mentality that leads them to think "I'm gonna be really good at football and get in the NFL" is an achievable career choice. And their mentality regarding social issues was much less forgiving. Anyway, this was just my takeaway from one school in one part of the US, as part of gen Z.
That’s very interesting. I was always a high achiever and came out as trans in high school and relate mostly to the first group you said, but I was also in a family that talked plainly and openly about politics and I was very aware of classism and so on. But some of that might be being in the UK, where we never had a myth of classlessness, only one of social mobility. And I understand fully that only about half of my year group in my classes even knew what socialism was, and some of them lived in places with a big gate up front and a private road going to their house. So you’re probably pretty spot-on in general.
i have a lot of the same experiences. i was one of the honors upper middle class kids in a largely poorer area, and i straight up didn’t understand what my friends and peers were going through until i got out of my parents’ house. i truly believed everything i was told about how the world was supposed to work until i saw first-hand how well it was actually going.
i think its important to note that those on the upper side of that wealth divide are still sheltered by their parents by nature of still being in high school. Trust me when I say that the realization hits them in college. It hit me. Hard.
As an honors kid, I agree. Every honors kid was progressively minded and very accepting. Public school opened my mind to the harshness of the world for the first time. My parents used their wealth to shelter me. I became aware of financial issues as I saw other kids not have the same things, comforts, and opportunities as me. Now, I'm realizing I may lose those things as an adult unless I can find a way to maintain the wealth.
“Most cultural narratives are written by those with money” is added to my list of best lines you have ever said. I grew up in Cuba, came to the states almost a decade ago. So weird that when people refer to the 90s and early 2000s they speak of things I never experienced at all until I arrived here. And it creates different kinds of people even if they share the same generation. They ask me if I remember shit I never saw and look at me in a way that reminds me that even with my weird accent I sometimes pass as a normal American boy lol. No worries tho, I still hate you for being a far better writer than I will ever be! I think I this point I watch your videos out of sheer jealousy.
I was bad mouthing neoliberalism on another video, and someone asked what the other option was. I said bring back unions and have some reasonable banking regulations. But they have us so brainwashed we forgot that we beat this before.
It's infuriating seeing people actually defend the system we have now....the people who speak up on behalf of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk when people talk about taxing their obscene wealth....the people who pretend their mcdonalds hamburger is going to double in cost if we raise workers wages....the people who pretend that they're surely going to be super super wealthy any day now. How can you seriously argue that people shouldn't be paid more? This system does not work - it is not conducive for the thing all of us ever started to work at all in the first place for: to enjoy LIFE and to build strong relationships with others to share these experiences we're supposed to be having together.
But hey, one of those parties has a faction that wants to be the "Thirties Party (minus the racism)" and the other has a faction that wants to be the "Fascist Party." So hey, it's not all 50's and 90's.
@@GeneralBolas I see it more as them being basically the same thing, but with different parts shown to the public. If you pay attention to what presidents do throughout their terms, whether they’re a democrat or a republican doesn’t really make a huge difference. They do the same stupid shit, and make the same overreaching policies. It’s just what they justify it with publicly, but in reality they’re the same thing.
@@sigismundafvolsung5526 I don't remember Obama putting forth the Big Lie for months that Trump's win in 2016 was illegitimate. I don't remember Obama inciting a seditious mob to march on the Capitol building and murder some of our elected officials. I don't remember Clinton not conceding or Obama inhibiting the transition of power. I don't remember Obama trying to claim that Trump wasn't born in the USA and therefore ineligible to be President, and doing so for *years.* I don't remember when Democrats passed state legislation to do voter suppression. I don't remember when Democrats passed state legislation allowing the legislature to arbitrarily de-certify the results of the presidential election (Arizona's Republican state legislature just today submitted such legislation for consideration). More Republican states are gerrymandered than Democratic ones. Etc. So no, they're not "basically the same thing". One of them is a bunch of fascists who want power at any cost. The other side believes in democracy.
@@GeneralBolas well almost all of those are misrepresentations or exaggerations, but whatever. My comment isn’t a defense of republicans or trump, it’s me saying that both sides are horrible and I don’t trust a single one of them. Democrats don’t exactly fix things either. Trump’s just way less diplomatic so we actually got to see the dumb shit presidents do, but at least we got to see it. Usually they do dumb shit, power grabs, and authoritarian shit and nobody hears about it. I’d say trump is only slightly worse than a normal president, and likely only slightly worse than future presidents for the foreseeable future. I can’t honestly believe that either side believes in democracy, they’re both authoritarian and are more than willing to take away freedoms. I wouldn’t call either fascist, but they’re both heading towards that level of stupid shit at Mach 10
@@sigismundafvolsung5526 However much you don't want it to be a defense of Trump's fascist movement, that's what it ultimately boils down to. When you downplay bad behavior by the fascists and upsell bad behavior by the not-fascist side, you're helping the fascists win. You are covering for them being fascists and hurting the only force organized enough to keep them out of power. And it should be noted that your comment is very light on specifics. However much you are willing to dismiss all of my points as "misrepresentations or exaggerations", they are at least specific instances of anti-democratic actions. Thus far, you haven't put forth a single thing that the Democratic party has done that is anti-democratic, nor have you put forth enough to provide evidence that both are equally bad *in degree.* You've merely gestured vaguely at the Democrats and said "they did bad stuff too!" If you want to be convincing about your "both sides" rhetoric, you need to put forth some actual evidence. Specific cases where "both sides" are doing equally bad things equally often that it warrants a "both sides" determination. To me, the most anti-democratic actions taken in the most recent election are: 1. The Big Lie: the claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that Trump won. This led to a violent insurrection. 2. Voter suppression tactics: malicious purging of voter registration rolls, voter ID laws, restricting the number of polling places in high-population areas, draconian restrictions on mail-in balloting, etc. 3. Gerrymandering: deliberately drawing House district lines to ensure that a particular party has more representation than the population of its voters would naturally give it. If you want me to believe that Democrats are as anti-democratic as Republicans, you will need to show me that they rely on these particular tactics *as often* as Republicans do. Or just show me a single state with a Republican legislature that voted to use an independent commission to draw House districts (as opposed to inheriting one from a Democratic-led legislature). Oh, and: "Democrats don’t exactly fix things either." Only because Republicans don't let them. We would have strong voting reform if not for the filibuster, which allows Republicans to shut down any legislation they don't like. Republicans don't like voting reforms because voter suppression and gerrymandering are the *only reason* they can win. In terms of promoting democracy (ie: voting), Democrats do a much better job.
Oldest zoomer, can confirm that even in the Glorious Socialist Paradise of Denmark, I'm lucky to not have any debt. Yet. Student loans will come for me soon enough, and my for my girlfriend sooner yet. Even if I may have it better than many others my age, this is still just the top of the bottom, and looking up, I can't see the sun.
gen z here. there's a brazillian channel that talked about the gen z feeling of living in a cconstant crisis, and not remembering any "good times" to return too. the video mentioned this as a reason of why young adult novels and teen movies nowadays are so often set in a dystopic world --- well, we sure do relate with dystopias
Vaguely related but I for one am sick to death of “participation trophies” as a talking point. We never actually asked for those, we just didn’t care enough to actively oppose it, yet the very generation who came up with the idea act like it destroyed our minds and that it’s somehow our fault. It’s like dropping your sandwich on the floor, deciding to continue eating it anyway, and then blaming the floor when you end up sad because the sandwich now tastes like dirt.
We did get participation trophies though, and they have caused harm, just not the harm people think. We knew they were bullshit. When the coaches didnt keep score the kids still did, and when the team that made the fewer goals got the same "reward" as the winners, everyone involved lost faith in rewards and praise. The legacy of the participation trophy is not overconfidence, but underconfidence. For example: I didn't realize until after I quit my job as a manager that I actually WAS good at training and keeping up morale, I just assumed the boss told everyone that. I now run my own business for the last year and have literally nothing but perfect 5/5 reviews on both Google and Yelp, yet almost every time I start working on a customer's order I have minor anxiety that I will screw it all up. When my friend was working for the census literally no one on his team believed they were the #1 team in the state when their supervisor told them so (it wasn't until they looked at the data themselves that they believed it). I have no evidence or studies to back this but I believe we are the generation with the highest rate of imposter syndrome. Top that off with being blamed for the participation trophies that our parents decided we should get and I am amazed we have the confidence to find our own dicks in a dark room.
Oh boy, that "wanting to shake Daria and tell her how good she has it" is such a mood. The DVD set came out during the recession, and all I could see was her big house in a pre-9/11 world. I still like the show and appreciate what you said about her feelings being treated as valid by the narrative (as a sensitive snowflake millennial, of course, I'm all about telling people their feelings are valid), but I came away from my rewatch wishing Jodie had gotten more screentime and with a new-found love of Brittany. Brittany is a ditz, but she is mostly very kind, sincere, and enthusiastic, and we need more people like that.
You should check out 30 Rock. It feels like a deconstruction of Daria and the Gen Z mindset at times. The biggest thing is that the Gen Z girl who was apparently bullied in school for being like Daria, smart and idealistic, was actually the bully that everyone feared. She was the mean girl, not the cheerleaders. But, cheerleaders don't make movies or tell the narrative to a wide audience, the Darias of the world did.
I just found out about Daria this year from a friend, and loved it. But it's not the same unless you watch the daria restoration project which puts the original music back in. Because, yeah, the 90s music rocked.
I like how you sympathize with Daria, but you don't let her off the hook for her disaffection. It's nice to have the perspective that "the world can suck, but you still have to try and be better."
@@nathanseper8738 Full transparency: I also watched the show when I was in high school, which while post-9/11 was still pre-recession. And I definitely related more with Daria back then. So when I rewatched it once the DVD came out, I was still inclined to empathize with Daria, just with new eyes and experience.
Millennial here, born 1990. This really made me think about my Gen X cousins have houses and are raising kids while my fellow Millenial friends and relatives are living in apartments and trailers with roommates or significant others. Hell, even my Elder Millennial boss can't afford her own car, and she has the luxury of being able to afford to live on her own otherwise. The company we work for provides her car (manager privilege, on that one). The wealth gap is wild when I compare this to my grandmother who has been living comfortably in a city townhouse for at least as long as I've been alive, and she retired (from TEACHING) in the early 1990s. When I was in elementary/middle school, my grandma would frequently travel out of the country to visit places. On retirement/social security. My Boomer mother (who had to retire early due to health issues) can't even do that on the disability she gets every month, though she can still live fairly comfortably. And me, travel? Nice joke.
I was born right on the line between millenial and gen z, and let me tell you, every part of this video resonated so highly with me, especially the last bit about how we've become a generation of loud, uncompromising sincerity and self-truth.
This is why I, as a millennial (peak millennial in fact, born in '91) feel so fiercely protective of Gen Z and am willing to fight anyone who tries to rob them of their sincerity and sensitivity. Having experienced the traumatic "loss of innocence" that was 9/11, the subsequent war on terror, and the recession, I know what it's like to feel helpless, hopeless and scared upon realizing that the world is as unpredictable as it is cruel, and that older generations will happily sell out their own children's future for profit (and then blame them for being bitter and angry about it or caving under the pressure). I also know that bitterness is paralyzing. I think the social activists of my generation tended to overfocus on identity politics rather than class divide or environmentalism because to so many of us, our identities were all we had left, the only thing that gave us any joy or sense of community. (I assume that's also why so many cishet white male millennials were so easily steered towards reactionary politics. They longed for the same sense of community, and for an enemy to fight in order to feel even slightly empowered, but couldn't easily identify one.) As heroic as it is that zoomers are able fight for an uncertain future without falling into cynicism, I know how easy it is to fall apart and/or in line eventually. Children and young adults shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of undoing centuries worth of damage to society, the economy, and the planet. I'm not going to do what my parents and their parents did and leave it to future generations to pick up the pieces of everything mine broke or couldn't fix.
I'm a zoomer. I think milenials where born during the worst time. It was right before computers and globalization really took off and america was uncontested on the world stage. you guys did have it amazing. to amazing in fact. Yall weren't prepared for any of these things hitting because most people didn't realize how big these changes would be. So yall went to college got whatever degree for whatever tuition and then bam your left with quartermillion dollar degree in liberal studies and little to no marketable job skills. So while I don't blame you I don't blame your parents generation either. People are short sited and stupid. How would they know that computers would make most desk jobs obsolete and that globalization would kill domestic manufacturing almost completely. Zoomers and their parents know what their dealing with and while there still is the problem of people going to 50k a semester school to become a English teacher it is getting somewhat better as most people have wisened up.
@Lex Bright Raven OK I'm saying that you shouldn't go to a school that charges 50k a year to be a English teacher. If you can't get into a public school or get a scholarship that makes private school the same cost you should not go to college.
As one of the youngest Gen Xers, I really get this. 15 years ago I got a graduate degree, and while it didn't help me do as well as my boomer parents, aunts, and uncles, and I definitely needed lots of help with student loans from them, that degree helped me acquire a career that I like. A career where I get to use skills I acquired because I wanted to, and where I feel appreciated by my coworkers and the other people I work with. I used to feel trapped and angry because I have to work a lot more than I want to, and I can't manage to really save money, and I needed help from boomer relatives well into my 30's. But now I'm 42, and I have a house, and I have a couple kids I can afford to provide for, and when I turned 40 I was even able to start an IRA so maybe I can retire some day and not have to work until I'm dead. But last year on whim I looked up what tuition is at my graduate school alma mater, and HOLY FUCKING SHIT. I'm not making much more than I did when I first got out of graduate school, but had I wracked up THAT much debt, I'd have been fucked. I would not have a house. I would not be able to afford kids. I sure as fuck wouldn't have started an IRA. I don't know what to tell my kids. I won't be able to help them like my boomer relatives helped me. And I can't even advise them on what career path to take because so many of the paths that worked out for my generation are now closed down. I find myself in middle age being increasingly radicalized toward the Left because I see what is happening to the younger generation, and I'm scared shitless about where this is going to lead if we don't do something about it collectively now.
This….makes my life make a lot more sense. I end up playing video games with a lot of Gen z and I get their memes and struggles and shit and they treat me with respect, but not like the average adult. I’m 42. And a mom. I had to drop out of school, never finished my degree, and am a single mom. Many of my peer group got at least some time as the good old 2 income house, finished college, and had that head start. I’m a neurodivergent single mom. Rip.
I was born in '80, and while I sometimes feel guilty for not having kids, I'm glad I don't have to explain how to them how utterly screwed they are. My "radicalization" has me teetering on the edge of working toward a workers communist revolution -- the (D) in office is worlds better than the (R) alternative, but incrementalism may not be enough to save Gen Z / Gen Alpha, my nieces and nephews.
As a 20yo high school dropout that just lost their job, I read this with bitter jealousy in my heart and tears in my eyes. I am very happy for you, and I'm glad you got all of this, and I wish you the best in helping your children. I love you and stay safe, please, for their sake.
I'm nearing 40 and have none of that. Good job for two years that gave me a 401k, but that disappeared, too. Now jobless, wondering what will be the next step in a world that's just tilting on its side constantly and trying to find a foothold to get some health insurance. Our country is so fucked up.
You're right, I don't believe in the future. It's why we embrace sincerity. Because like, fuck it, I'm not making it to 30, I may as well live life as me. The world is burning for profit and nobody who could change it gives a fuck. I feel like it's at best even odds whether I live for another 5 years.
It’s hilarious looking at Boomers-Millennials talk about going back to “better times” as a Zoomer Like what better times? The Great Recession? 9/11? Will I miss the global pandemic in 10 years?
@@ZodiacEntertainment2 lol, hard to see how good 90s is when you born in a country that goes through economy crash and massive riot across the country on 98 that razing near half of big cities while brain dead rioters kill, burn, and rape minorities due to vague conspiracy theories.
When I imagine going back to a good time, I imagine going back to the '80s. That's when computers were actually a thing, and people didn't know how good they had it, so my future wisdom could actually give me a strong hand up and I could ride the wave until I grow old and die watching the rest of the world fall apart under me.
They mean America circa 1991-1999. It was the peak of the post-Cold War neo-liberal system. It lasted a few short years and it wasn't actually *good* because it set us up for every failure since. Another era similar to this was roughly 1948-1962 which was America's Mid-Century high point. Once again if you were living anywhere like the Soviet Union, The Balkans etc. then this doesn't apply.
In defense of Gen X, we were born during the baby crunch. We are a smaller voting block. We were out numbered and out gunned by Baby Boomers in their prime. I personally saw some of this coming. And while I was ahead of the curve, I get the impression some of us knew something was coming. I now see a lot of my fellow Gen-ers getting sucked into Boomer beliefs and I made a realization. Gen X isn't a lost generation, we are a generation held hostage and we are getting Stockholm
Yes I remember the Gen-Xer plight quite well and I don't like using these vague "generational generalisms" without making the effort to understand the situation in an empathetic way. Gen X were probably the most politically disenfranchised of the groups. They literally lived through Fisher's "Capitalist Realism" stage, where most large scale political questions were considered utterly finished with. Your concerns weren't even considered bad or ignorant; they were barely even understood, even by those experiencing it. Overall, Gen X were considered dull-witted and incoherent, millennials neurotic and loathsome, Gen Z goofy and twisted. We've all suffered and nobody's had a free ride.
As a fellow Gen Xer, right on the head. It's like we knew the 90;s were shit. It was all a veneer. The youth controlled nothing. Boomers owned the world, and we just lived in it.
@@TheGameCraftDragon I know my goal in life has mostly been to get enough wealth together to make it through the storm the "Me Generation" is bringing on. I personally was banking on the dystopia being a capitalist Great automation in which either you owned the robots, oversaw the robots, or were brutally poor. A fascist 1984 brought on by stupid people is so fitting for the Boomers though. It is only fitting they use hand me down dystopias from their parents instead of coming up with their own and can only come about about because they were too self absorbed to notice.
Even though I’m a younger millennial, a teen in the ‘00s, this video still perfectly sums up how I often feel about the ‘90s. In many ways it’s even more potent than what you say, because there’s also the inevitable “everything was fine when I was 5 years old” type of nostalgia that happens about ANY generation, let alone one coinciding with, as you put it, the only decade without some big ideological war. Thank you so much for this.
To me, this video feels like listening to my older cousins and people I look up to talk through their shit and I'm enraptured. Littering comments everywhere! Oh, also: Trans rights are human rights ✊
@@marcusosborne6123 I was 20 when 9/11 happened, and it was night and day. The thing about the '90s was the total optimism. Communism had fallen, the world would be at peace, no war, no poverty, and the world wide web would unite us all and usher in an age of love and brotherhood. Then: infinite war and Parler.
You nailed it, you effing nailed it. this is how it happened for me. "This doesn't work this hasn't worked for many years Things stay terrible so long, you almost miss when they were merely bad." That sums up everything!
Hello. Am later-millenial. Parents are earlier-Gen X. "Sold out" isn't the exact word but it might as well be. It's more that they believed in things for a while. Saw how it was getting them nowhere and shit kept not changing. So they _gave up and had babies._ Mind you, my parents are a rare breed that is _honest_ with their kids. I feel most older people try to put on this façade of being "perfect" and never having been young or believing things or being different in the past.
I'm one of the lucky few whose parents never stopped believing in things, at least not totally. My parents are still more accepting of the world as is than I am, but they still believe we can do better.
My mother will tell anyone who asks that we need communism. She didn't mention it until like 2 years ago when I thought I had to tell her that I think capitalism is bad and she just said:"yes, we need a change of our economical system to free people from their shackles". Tfw your mom was always woke but you never knew.
Late middle millennial(90) to boomer parents, got lucky to some extent, on one hand with an environmentally conscious botanist for a mother and a left of center(global, not us-american) us-american father who seems to have been angry at the world for most of his life, def all of mine. Down side dad's only control on his anger was no physical violence and my mom is a post-war germany mess of a person. Also baveria not great for foreign kids in the 90s, or kids at all. Try planning for your future at 10, cause you need good grades in 4th grade or getting into university is a lot more annoying.
I'm early gen x (graduated HS in'87) and "believed for a while... gave up and had babies" is not an inaccurate description of how I feel. Not at the time but certainly in hindsight.
"young people don't feel trapped by the future, because nobody believes in the future anymore" My 12 year old sister has talked before about how she doesn't want to bring a child (the conversation happened because my grandparents were joking about future grandchildren and stuff) into the world because of how it is.
As a Gen Xer, I often think about the generations coming after you. What about the kids born in 2050? They're going to be a facing a much different world. I feel like the next few decades will suck, but after that things will either get better or we will have a total collapse of civilization. Maybe 2394 will be nice.
Your sister is wise beyond her years. I could never fathom bringing a life that I loved into this world on purpose. Climate change alone.... Like, that's GOING to happen. It's already started. So I'm never having kids. I'm happy to be the very coolest survivalist aunt instead. 😎
@r3z3nd3 OMG, I actually have a copy of "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race." I don't think I've ever come across another person who has even heard of that book. It's perhaps the most bleak and depressing book I've ever read, yet it's oddly soothing. I read about half of it and got bogged down, because the dense philosophical argot was hard to get through. Did you read the whole thing?
Hell, I'm 25 and I struggle with having hope for my own fucking future. I just moved into my own apartment for the first time this weekend, and I'm excited to have finally taken that leap. I want to be able to enjoy the autonomy, independence, and flexibility being on my own provides. But the world is scary as fuck right now, and I'm not sure in another 25 or 30 years any hypothetical child I raise is going to have it much better. The world is going to have to stabilize and get a hell of a lot better before I consider bringing another life into it.
If we had a glimpse of our map before it caught fire... What must Gen Z be feeling to have the ashes of theirs poured into their hands and instructed to "go find it".
I find hope in the line for the good ending "In the times following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, however, Old World Blues took on a new meaning. Where once it was viewed as a form of sadness, nostalgia, it became an expression describing the potential for the future. The was Old World Blues and New World Hope"
As a Zoomer who’s finishing up highschool through the pandemic and was born right after 9/11, 2008-2014 probably feels like to me like what the 90s feels like to Millennials. I was much younger in that time period and didn’t know about most of the evil that took place on this planet. Likewise, 2015 onwards probably feels like what the post-9/11 era feels like to Millennials. The feeling of living in a society that is on the brink of collapse and a society that fails its citizens in many ways. 2020 for us Zoomers is probably the equivalent of what 2008 was to Millennials: a horrific economic crisis during an important election year, only this time, with the bonus of a pandemic that has forced us all indoors for a year and has killed millions across the world.
@@somebodylikesbacon1960 For me it was just kinda more of middle school but in a bigger building with more specialty classes and groups because they had the student body to support them. You aren't missing too much and what you are you've got 3 years to do anyways. Don't worry about it.
Nah dont worry ur society is not on the brink of collapse, not even close, the only way for societies to collapse is if all the elites are dead, their culture long gone and the populace under them dies by around 80-90% of total population
I'm from Poland and I feel pretty similar. Before circa 2013 most things for me are blurry memories of 2000's culture and my childhood partly shaped by Poland being a fresh member of the EU. In my mid-teens I started caring about politics and saw the refugee crisis, the Trump's presidency, the Global Warming and how my country's democracy started steadily devolving and inexorably turning into authoritarianism. And then the pandemic hit and messed up my college life.
The collection of complete-in-box Lucasarts adventure games on my shelf and trumpet in my closet that I played a ton of ska on in HS/College means this video hits pretty home for me as well.
As a zoomer it's depressing how my entire life I just get to see the nation I live in fall from grace, when I wasn't even born before the begging of that fall to see it.
@@samumohacsi This is something I haven't seen a video on yet, but I'm sure it exists somewhere. Millenials in the US were the first generation, the *first*, to actually be taught about many of the horrific things the US did throughout its entire history. If only in a sanitized form in most cases (Also depending on where you live, actually taught correctly that the Civil War was about slavery). Then came the internet. And we all discovered, roughly at once, that every single good thing and heroic figure from our national past is either much more complicated at best, or outright evil at worst. It broke us psychologically. Maybe on its own, maybe just in concert with everything else. But we were the ones who had that idealized image completely undone after we'd grown up on it. Gen Z didn't even get that; information has always been so available that they've known from the start how objectively evil the majority of the country's history and actions have been. There are *reasons* this kind of awareness doesn't crop up, historically. Human beings are not well-equipped to deal with it. Little wonder so many Conservatives are self-obsessed and willfully ignorant of the world outside themselves unto psychosis. The pain of the alternative is shattering.
@@QuikVidGuy A book by Francis Fukuyama of the same name, about how the fall of the USSR proved that neoliberal capitalism is, indeed, the only option.
@@MK.5198 The idea of the end of history is actually quite important to acknowledge. It's important to note that it doesn't mean the literal end of historical events, but that, for Francis Fukuyama, it meant neoliberal capitalism is the end all and be all of economic organisation. Zizek and Mark Fisher, on the other hand, see this phrase as a symbol of the post-cold war lie that ideology is dead. For a lot of people, to quote Fisher's "capitalist realism," "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." This inability to imagine an end to capitalism is ideology, and until we acknowledge and understand ideology, we are doomed to be ensared by it.
Speaking as an early Xer (who loved/loves Daria by the way) I can tell you why we thought the 90s were so great. The 70s were a darn scary time to be a kid. I and my age mates graduated HS shortly after one of the worst recessions to date since the Great Depression. I graduated college into a stock market crash and another recession. When people talk about how great the 90s were, they mean from about 1995 on, and even then, the quote about things going from horrible to merely bad is relevant. I didn't have a scrap of optimism or hope until about 1997, and that didn't last long. Have you ever heard the phrase "No future?" It was a hallmark of late 70s/early 80s punks who even then felt they had, well, no future. To be honest, I always looked at Daria as a Gen X artifact, even though the characters were technically early millennials by age. Your analysis of Daria is spot on. I don't see how anyone could see her as a person who didn't care.
I’m a late Xer, and I remember in primary school (80s) we were still living the nuclear war fears. My high school German teacher brought in a piece of the newly demolished Berlin wall… there were moments of optimism. The quote that resonated with me was that in the 90s we didn’t know how good we had it. We genuinely thought things would get better, because they’d started to…
Looking back as a millennial who graduated in `04, I feel like we were being trained and educated for a world that no longer existed after we graduated.
@@brown-eyedcheese5440 Eh, I have walkers older than you, sonny! Now, if you will excuse me, imma go hop on that AOL after hanging up my phone so I can yell at a 64x64 pixel jpeg of a cloud.
That world was demolished by neoliberalism, when the public went from citizens to consumers, and shipping manufacturing to the 3rd world, just so some executives that can bribe political parties could create bigger fake numbers in the hands of these executives while failing to plan more than one quarter in advance while the Earth gets ready to burn us all alive.
I was a few years before you in 1999 and it was much the same then too. The worse part is people criticizing us for not making smarter decisions, like going to a trade school, and being stuck with college debts when everything told to us by people we trusted to have our best interests in mind (teachers, parents, councilors) all were telling us that going to college was the best shot we had to have our best chance in life.
Honestly, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was a period piece for the early 90s that came out in 2004. It's only now that I can appreciate how unusual that is.
Rockstar always likes setting they're games in period pieces. Gta 1 and 2 60s london, gta vice city 80s miami, gta san andreas 90s los Angeles riots, red dead redemption 1911 old west, la noire 40s post war los Angeles.
From an elder Millennial to younger Millennials and Zoomers: I got you. Let's set things up better for our kids and grandkids than they were set up for us. We both grew up online, which broke down generational barriers. We have a historic opportunity to be the first pair of generational demographics in North America that don't shit on those weaker and younger and poorer than us.
I told my mom this week about when I changed, explaining Iran Contra and the AIDS crisis and Newt Gingrich. And how nothing was done. Everyone basically got away with it. While we were ridiculed.
Y2K Zoomer here and something odd I've noticed is that for people around my age, we have a sort of nostalgia-by-osmosis for the 90s as well. We weren't alive for it, but between the fact that most people feel it was the last time everything wasn't awful, and the fact that millennials are the only living older generation most of us have any real respect for, we have more familiarity with and nostalgia for 90s culture than would really be expected.
I grew up in the '90s and I loved it. It's hard to convey just how optimistic things were at the time. We really believed that with the fall of communism there would be an end to war, to poverty, and the world wide web was going to connect strangers from around the world and usher in a new era of brotherhood, love, and understanding. 20 years later: viking dude standing at the podium of the Senate.
@@tomtimelord7876this is funny given the USA has been destroying countries to end communism and socialism and what we ended up with?? REFUGEES FLEEING THOSE DESTROYED COUNTRIES. THE END OF POVERTY?!?! 🤣CAPITALISM REQUIRES POVERTY. It’s not a bug, it’s an INTENDED FEATURE of capitalism. This was all brought to us by the NEVER TRICKLES DOWN, Greed is good, Reagan Revolution that turned the largest wealthiest middle class in history into the Robber Baron’s 2nd Gilded Age IN JUST A BOOMER’S LIFESPAN. In 50 years the top 1% of the USA stole 50 Trillion dollars and with private equity buying up hospitals and nursing homes they are targeting the Boomer Generation’s 76 TRILLION DOLLARS OF WEALTH meaning Wall Street is going to get most of the boomer wealth in END OF LIFE HEALTHCARE AND ASSISTED LIVING FACILITIES THAT WILL COST $10,000 PER MONTH!!!! Because they know healthcare and even pet care IS THE INDUSTRY TO FINANCIALLY EXTORT AND RAPE the American people.
I was born in 1984 and can tell you that I miss the 90s for being the 90s. I became an adult in the 2000s and loved the responsibilities that came with it. It felt so freeing to be in charge of these responsibilities. I love being an adult as long as it doesn't come with unnecessary, cruel hardship from a system designed by the very few to benefit them. So it's not like I just long for my childhood and early-ish teenage years.
Yeah, I was thinking that. We look back and think, we should’ve made the most of it, we didn’t know how good we had it, but as he says at the end, we hated it at the time. Going back to tell ourselves that this was the best it could be, and we were that miserable already... honestly I could even see it precipitating some suicides in some cases? I know from a very early age I clung onto the promise of the future as the only thing that kept me going through a lot of stuff. If I’d had foreknowledge about how bad it would get, I don’t know what I would’ve done.
@@kaitlyn__L Unfortunately, I know what I would've done, given I've had a history of suicidal tendencies and do still battle with those lingering feelings from time to time...
Bernie losing the primary after winning the first couple of states was crushing. To zoomers, there had never been a Hope as promising as a Sanders presidency. He built up just enough steam to break hearts.
As that may be, for a lot of older folk on the left found it was highly encouraging. Things have been deteriorating since the early 80s (if not earlier) and to see things starting to swing left a bit, you're giving us some light at the end of the tunnel. Don't give up, keep voting for candidates like Bernie and we'll get there. We're looking forward to something like an AOC presidency. For many people my age (almost mid thirties now), Obama represented that change, but his time in office was a disappointment. Personally, I was more skeptical because I followed policy pretty closely. For some of the Gen Xers, the Bernie run was a real breath of fresh air. Check out Sam Seder (of The Majority Report) talking about it as a Gen Xer sometime. The continued power of the Baby Boomer generation has been extended by their longevity and the size of their generation. Even so, people only live so long and COVID has been accelerating that schedule (my condolences to everyone that has lost someone), so I think things will shift in 4-8 years. Don't give up hope, it's only your first crushing defeat, we've weathered many more and will still be with you when we finally get one.
It's such a shame so many people don't want to take the chance to make a place better just because it could be worse, so they stay at the spot, because it was familiar.
that "fuck you got mine" line is weird for me as a warehouse labourer... cause my bosses attitude is that, but my coworkers go "shit sucks for you man, your wage has been capped at half of what mine was and your dollar is worth substantially less... sorry kid." but hey at least I don't have a bunch of debt, that's nice.
Yeah, as an X'er, I've been promoted and then downsized 6 or 7 times since 2000. I'm literally making the exact same wage as I was 20 years ago. Accumulating wealth? Ha. But yeah, scraping to keep ahead of the debt cycle is the new goal.
It isn't a personal 'fuck you, got mine,' it is one that has been manifested in their voting for representatives that favor consolidation of wealth. The gained their wealthy relatively easily in the post-WWII era when the US was reaping the rewards of victory. They easily got stable, good-paying jobs. What happened next is where they voted to screw you. This is the era of "trickle down" economics, Reaganomics, in which they cut taxes like mad. This allows accelerated accumulation of wealth and on average who had the most wealth when they start this game? The oldest of course. At one time the highest marginal tax rate was over 90%, in 1964 it became 77%, and then 70% in 1965. It was mostly around 70% until 1982, when it was dropped to 50%. It has been between 28 and 40% from 1987 to today (2021). They perpetuate the myth that government is bad and the free market does things better. The idea here is to get governments to stop doing things and hand lucrative contracts to their companies. E.g. this is why they (including DeVoss) try to privatize schools in Michigan. It's not because they actually think they are better, it's a grift to transfer public money to private corporations. I think this (admittedly lengthy) video (mostly audio) of Sam Seder on The Majority Report does a lot to elucidate the kinds of machinations that lead us to where we are today. ua-cam.com/video/iSNHI9rpX58/v-deo.html And it's not necessarily your boss, not everyone in the generation advocated these policies and favored the candidates that supported them. It has been the overall effect of the generation. I'm leaving out a lot of detail for the sake of brevity in this already lengthy post. Reference for highest marginal tax rates: www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates
Okay, this one almost made me cry a few times because of how close to home it hit. Thank you for really encapsulating a ton of the things I feel. Even as someone who's on that precarious cusp of Millennial and Gen Z (b. 1995), the feelings are still there. A million times, thank you.
Not to make people feel old but seeing that peoples' graduation year was my birth year is a crazy concept. Like, I know time is a thing but seeing it like this really puts time in perspective. Amazing video! Being a Gen Z kid, I had little to no relation to the 90s and this was an amazing explanation of it.
As somebody a few years younger than the creator, he is absolutely right about how the 90's were; I'd say a combination of 9/11, the War on Terror, and the 2008 Recession that we still haven't really recovered from is what gave us all this nagging sense of hopelessness. But you Zoomers give us hope, and we'll fight like hell for you so that when more Zoomers are available to join the fight, we can fix this hellhole world.
Seeing them on true crime docos freaks me the fuck out. Like, I was born in 1989, you're too young to be a victim, and you're too young to have done it and now have a life sentence!
"My goal is not to wake up one morning in my 40s with the bitter realization that I wasted half by life in a job that I hate because I was forced to choose a career in my teens" Seriously, that quote carried me through highschool in the late 00s! And I've kept that in mind all these years. And now I've been unemployed since university and am trying to make my dream of being a successful writer happen all on my own and it sucks, but at least it's better to follow my passion than whatever is happening to the job market right now. I do hope I do actually have a future, but, like every millennial, I don't know if it's ever really going to happen.
Either this show can see in the future or literally nothing fundamentally culturally changed from the 90s until now, even as careers are becoming less and less attainable
The irony is -- as the video pointed out -- the terrible fate that we were scared of, waking up in our 40s in a dull career, would be an UPGRADE over what a lot of us got. A decade into a part time job (and I'm extremely lucky -- at least I got a *somewhat fulfilling* part time job), with no advancement opportunities, no way to save money, no way to predict whether I'll even get enough hours for rent next month, being constantly rejected from job apps despite having one of the "good" degrees (STEM!)... god, a soul-sucking desk job sounds so nice right now. As awful as it was going to be, as cynical as it made us as kids, it was still at least a promise of stability. And it was ripped away from us. Good luck with your writing! We can use all the writing we can get these days.
I turn 30 this year. I feel like I'm constantly getting it from all sides and the "fuck you got mine" bit really got to me. I have boomers on facebook attacking me for not being able to own a house and I have teens on twitter telling me to get back in the kitchen and be a mom.
I’m Gen Z but I see Twitter stans mock 30 year old’s all the time and say shit that is (borderline) misogyny because they think it’s funny. I find it hilarious that they don’t realize that they will turn 30 too and very quickly.
Suggestion: Run as fast as you can away from Facebook. I *promise you* that you will feel significantly better about almost everything if you just step away for a couple days. Don't delete your account at first if you don't want, but just delete any shortcuts to the app or bookmarks in your browser and keep away from it. Facebook is a deadly cancer upon human society.
My generational experience as a millennial has been both wondering why so many of my friends and classmates are doing awful, and how any of them are doing so well. It's the worst kind of economic anxiety, where every opportunity is already dry by the time you hear about it.
Yiu're just too right about this. We need more statistics published on the TYPE of jobs that people get nowadays. Are they no benefit, low wage, tempoarsy, contract, non-related to held degree, gig-economy type of jobs? Release the stats! We dont' care about how MANY jobs were created. We need the number AND the TYPE of jobs created.
Snowball effect is real. A few lucky breaks, especially "early on," tend to beget more success later on. The most successful former friends and classmates I know are-- to a person-- the ones who launched well right out of the gate. There are no real comeback success stories in my world unless you're willing to shift the definition of success, and by a lot.
@@chavesa5 As one of those guys who came out of the gate strong, I feel a rather significant amount of guilt over it. I mean, it’s relative, I graduated at the height of the recession, the programming job I had laid me off and it took me nearly a year and moving to a new city to find my feet. But I did find my feet. And so many of my friends did not. And, at some level, I’m aware that the work I do is accelerating the capitalistic divide. Now I use a lot of that money for cheap dopamine by supporting artists and streamers, ‘cause at least in that tiny moment when my silly donation shows up on their screen and it looks like I made another human being smile, the guilt that I’m helping build a world where people don’t matter, is quieted. So the success, while certainly better that not having it, doesn’t fix the underlying ennui.
@@TubeTAG Don't mistake this for a personal attack, but your comment fills me with nothing but antipathy. Your guilt means nothing. "Poor little rich boy" doesn't fill me with any desire to connect with you unless I were interested in trying to milk you for resources, which you would spot and treat-- correctly -- with disgust. And that's not your fault. I'm sure you're a good guy who does the best he can within the framework he's got. Really, I do believe that. Sight unseen. You are not my enemy. But the problems are systemic and just because you're not a monster doesn't mean you're not part of the problem. And frankly, "just about a year" is not struggle. I know you weren't positioning it as struggle, but it's still hard to look at it and not remember year four of what was meant to be a stopgap job and suddenly realizing I was living that scene from 12 Years a Slave where Solomon Northrup is singing a hymn at a funeral and coming to terms with this being his life. The system actively punishes those who are not capable of succeeding on the first or second try. Systemic issues need to get fixed before we'll be able to mend that divide between us. And I'm sorry, but I don't see it happening within our lifetimes. Die comfortable and guilty. It's not an exaggeration to say "that's all you can really do."
@@chavesa5 That's fair. Apologies that I made you feel that way. I'll keep that in mind next time and will try to calibrate better, or perhaps better just keep my comment to myself.
The line about the Jobs. Like. I had people mocking me for my major, saying there was no jobs in those fields. They were right, but there wasn't any in their fields, either. Lol.
I was told that I'd never get a "good job" because I didn't further my education, but then there are people with degrees and a mountain of debt and letters after their names and they work with me in a call centre making the same money 🙄
Because we zoomers didn't really grow up with a future, hopefully we'll be able to break out of the system and avoid the nostalgia trap, and cause real change in the process. That is, if we can survive until our 30s.
Here's hoping! Priority number one is just my friends and I making it through the year, priority two is fixing this shit. Trans rights are human rights ✊
Ren Rolo hahahhaa “oh boy I sure do miss feeling existential dread every day knowing that the world I lived in was (literally) burning and there was nothing I could do about it.” That’s assuming we last long enough to look back on this stuff
exactly!!! i srsly can't imagine living past my 20's.. i'm not suicidal or anything i just can't imagine that there's anything out there for me anywhere
@@brown-eyedcheese5440 If neoliberal capitalism survives into the 2050s I guarantee we'll be seeing Hollywood movies desperately trying to whitewash the merciless brutality of the US's pandemic experience the same way 1980s films like _Rambo_ whitewashed that of the Vietnam War.
As a Gen Z member, what you said about nobody believing in the future anymore struck a deep chord with me. Today I actually had a conversation with a Senior that ended up with her saying that neither of us will make it to twenty. Spending a term living with the constant weight of wondering if your best friend will be written off as subhuman at some point does something to you that I can only describe as acceptance. We’re the generation that recognized that we are going to die because of our parents and grandparents.running the world dry and leaving us to pick up the mess. We’re just waiting to see if the bombs go off when the clock hits 0.
As a middle millenial born in the early 90s, I totally bought into the road map. Somehow, mine panned out and I got my "dream" job (not really cause no one wants a rockstar trombonist), made good money before the pandemic killed all classical jobs. Even when you make it, you see so many friends that didn't, you see a full 3rd of Americans diving headfirst off the bridge into fascism, you see the neverending wars, the complete farce politicians put up in order to try and convince people that they care about them, that every action they take isn't dictated by their need for ever-increasing power and the corporate dollars lining the pockets of their reelection campaigns. Well you see all that and wonder how everyone isn't just taking to the streets to burn it all down and start over, going to scream at these dunces in office until their ears bleed and they finally understand the damage they've done to billions of people, just going out there to fix shit once and for all. And then you remember that we collectively can't go out there and fix shit, run for office, because we're broke and one paycheck away from being homeless. It's fucked up, and my older colleagues don't fully understand why we're all so angry.
"The 90s were [...] the only sustained period in 75 years where the US wasn't in a forever war against an infinite and loosely defined enemy." War on Drugs poking its head in here.
You're not wrong, but it wasn't a literal war in any sense. Sure, you have armed agents of the state shooting people on thin to zero pretext, but there's still a difference between invading foreign countries and violently policing your own communities. Less bombing, obviously, but also fewer people who can be convinced that the Enemy is an existential threat to the American way of life.
I suppose that the practical difference was that it never positioned itself as a slide into absolute annihilation. The Cold War presented a nuclear threat that would plunge the world into the apocalypse at the mere whim of distant leaders presented to the "West" as unfit for office and unpredictable in their hatred of the "us" in the "West". The War on Terror did much the same, with indiscriminate bombings and destruction wrought by much the same. The War on Drugs never threatened to consume all of society, never threatened systemic seemingly senseless and wanton destruction: it was always presented as isolated incidents and individuals. That said, it certainly trafficked in that powerful imagery: people here are bring up the African American community but distant drug lords "who don't look like us and are eroding our values and youth" *hint hint nudge nudge*, also used that same doomsday rhetoric. The War on Drugs was forever war expansionism come home to roost, while always presenting itself optimistically. Nancy Reagan sitting on Mr. T's lap telling kids not to do drugs seemed reasonable, but you wouldn't have the same for George Bush and not becoming Al Qaeda... When discussing these wars it's important to note the spirit of the times, both the Red Scare and the War on Terror both created a sense intense paranoia that the War on Drugs did too, but it never spilt over into the majority psyche; they're not the same, not quite identical, but they certainly are birds of a feather...
It’s hard not to wish we could go back, in part, to grab the Gen-X teen by the shoulders and shake ‘em, yelling, just like their parents, “What right do you have to be disaffected? You don’t know how good you’ve got it!” But where their parents would say, “It was so much worse in my day,” we’d tell them, “It will never be this good again.” I get literal chills at that point. Reminds me of Lindsay Ellis describing the feeling she gets when watching Rent
But the thing is, we Gen-X teens, or at least the later Gen-X teens, the ones who were not much older that Daria, knew that while we might have it good *now*, things were not going to be so good by the time we became adults. There was a huge recession in the early 90s, right while I was in college, and I and all my friends KNEW that the "go to college and you're guaranteed a high-paying job" we'd been promised in high school was not going to be the case for us. At all. And it absolutely wasn't. We all ended up working minimum-wage jobs (which even in the 90s didn't offer a living wage, although yes, it was closer to a living wage than now) that had nothing to do with our major. The 21st century recessions have overshadowed the early 90s recession, but we did not at all have it as good as you seem to think we did. Our Boomer parents had it good. We didn't.
My favorite "Millenials Are Killing ____" article was when they accused us of killing MAYONNAISE of all things! Like mad that we prefer mustard and other flavors and connecting that to the end of American culture as we know it 🤦🏾♀️ I often reread it for laughs and to remind myself it was real 🤣😭
I like the fact we were killing places like Applebee's and Buffalo Wild Wings, myself. It's like "I'm sorry we can't afford to go out to chain restaurants and eat mediocre food, or if we can, we don't have the fucking time to do it because we're doing whatever we can just to survive."
As a GenXer it's been fascinating to watch the transition from the hopeful 80s to the cynical 90s to the sort of tentatively hopeful again 00s to the sincere-but-traumatized 10s. Fascinating in horrific kind of way, but I'm curious where the generation mindset (if such a thing exists) is going next. We're off to a great start! /s I'm sad that I likely won't live to see the system that caused all these cycles of batshittery broken and something more humane put in its place.
Yeah, I think COVID is gonna be for the Zoomer generation what 9/11 proved to be for my generation: the Millennials, and I was in that age range where I remember just how happy and joyous the 90's were... and then being traumatized by 9/11.
@@SeanStrife Yeah, that's what I meant by 'great start', covid/trump is going to leave lasting scars just like the 2008 recession, 9/11, etc, all tectonic shifts that dramatically reshaped worldviews.
@@SeanStrife Covid was only the stage. An empty vacuum as well as a heavy, sobre atmosphere. On the stage bursted out many of the hidden, ugly truths of decades past that were never allowed to be solved, and they're all one. More people now that ever can see how _"anthropogenic"_ climate change is inseparable from the laws of white supremacism, particularly the decades of propaganda that stalled and ridiculed environmentalists, vegans, "waiting until the Science comes in" of the topic of carbon pollution intrinsic to economic activity.
See I was born in ‘95. I was literally 4 years old when the year 2000 rolled in. The 90s might as well be considered a mythic lost period because that’s what it sort of feels like for me, even if I live during those twilight years as a infant/toddler and live during the last years of quite before 9/11. My child life was throw into the weird world that was resulted from the rise of far-right conspiracy and religious fundamentalism and the War on Terror and the eventual Great Recession and the decaying politics of the moderates. Hell my dad was practically deployed during the worse of it. So, in the end, I really don’t get the appeal to things like the 80s and 90s. The supposed better world. Because when I look back as an outsider, they all feel just as bad as I had it. I can’t grasp what was this glorious golden past because all my life all I even knew was the cynicism and frustration and for the most part hatefulness of this world that I was raised and continue to live in and look back on how it all began. The Obama years and the eventual train wreck of the Trump years were nothing more then a twisted version of the 90s and 80s respectively trying to regrasp the world. In the end, it felt all so superficial when looking back in history at all the ways the world was already a steaming pile of shit. The imaginary aesthetic the world supposedly had. The fetishizing of the musics, media, and styles. It wasn’t an accurate representation. It was an over glorified version. It’s probably why I have such a hateful disposition of nostalgia even if it’s my own. All I can see when looking at the safe version of the past constructed in people’s head and in my own is nothing but absolute anger. A “how dare you try to sell me on your bullshit again when all it did was forge the world I had to live in for most of life” kind of thing. “Why are you celebrating and reminiscing on the “Golden Age of Rome” when Rome is literally falling because of that supposed ‘golden age’” is probably the best way to put how I feel. It’s probably why I am so infatuated with the future and the present. I don’t see any glorious past awaiting us. I don’t see any promise in returning to how things were or the promises of past beliefs and ideologies saying they will get it right and have the better world they promised. There time is already over. All I can hope for is when a better possible world will come and hope to find a way to bring it.
As a Gen Xer that was born in the tail end of the defined time, I've always related more to Millennials than either earlier Gen Xers or, laughably, Boomers. Though you described Gen Xers as what I've usually classified Boomers, I can't help but see the evidence that demonstrates the accuracy of your statement. I've always seen the thing that defined my generation as cynicism, and the thing that defined Millennials as despair, but I have come to realize that there is a Venn diagram of tremendous crossover between the two generations I've talked about and the things that defined them.
Ian, every time I watch one of your videos, I think "why is this guy the most articulate, intelligent, and creative essayist on the internet." You so concisely capture the disenfranchisement of a generation and the nature of the incoming one that I'm starting to think that you're some sort of savant. You seem like the kind of person with whom I could have a real conversation about the world. Seriously, keep up the good work!
I was born in the early 2000s making me a zoomer. The 90s stereotypes of Anglo-American life have been continually shattered in my mind as I've grown up. In fact, I'd say most of them shattered for me in just one very unusual week in march of 2020, where in the span of just one week, my school experience an active shooter threat (nobody got hurt), and then half my friends went into isolation on the same day due to a positive COVID case and then the school shut down, and it was announced that grades were frozen so summer was essentially three months longer, but you could barely hang out with your friends. It was also the week that Super Tuesday happened in the USA, which was an incredible shock that literally left me in tears seeing Biden's victory on that day. It was one of the most eventful weeks of my life, one of those weeks where decades happen. That one week of March was the beginning of a new era, the 2020s and imo the cut off date for Zoomer vs the Post-covid generation. If you can't remember that week, you are not a Zoomer. That week I realized was the week where I in fact would not be able to get a high school job to fund university. I wouldn't get a stable High school experience as Millennials and Gen Xers got. I wouldn't be able to move out of my parent's place until well into my 20s due to the global depression. I wouldn't get to see the progressive democrats take power and set up a better future.
Gen X here, that whole trama-bonded analogy hit me hard. "Oh no, this isn't working. This hasn't been working for many many years." This whole video hurt my heart.
"It will never be this good again." I'm shook, crying, and a late millennial here watching my kids play with blocks on the floor, knowing full well you are right.
I was shown Daria by my mom who watched it when it came out. I was in middle school at the time she showed me and I found the show both an incredibly funny product of its time, and way too relatable to be from the 90s.
I watched Daria as an adult when it came out and loved it so much I bought the whole series. One of the strengths of the series is that it really is more universal than it first appears: a lot of what Daria goes through and how she handles it seems pretty familiar as a male high schooler from the early 1980s.
This is easily the best CO-VID you've uploaded yet, Ian. It's emotionally charged, but pragmatic. It's well written, well paced, illustrated wonderfully, and SO well delivered. You're speaking from lived experience, and it shows. Keep up the incredible work, my guy.
Sorry for the long delay between videos. Had COVID.
I'm so sorry that you got sick! I hope you are doing okay and that you had enough support and care during your illness!
Happy to hear that it's "had" and not "have", I suppose, but still sorry you were sick. Hope you're feeling ok now. Thanks for doing what you do.
Sorry to hear that, Ian. Glad to see you're doing better!
I hope you are feeling better, and don't end up with the long term problems
Sorry about that.
"Things stay terrible for so long, you almost miss when they were merely bad" is something that hit on a much more personal level than I was expecting it to. Another fantastic entry.
I miss March of last year because this pandemic stuff was new, a little exciting, and staying home made me feel morally superior and not just exhausted.
literally came down here to write this almost word for word
@@leplus1 - It's not enough to be tired of the neo-liberal Democrats. We have to do the work to replace them and Republicans (who have gone off the rails with their supporters). That's a very tall order because our culture and our governments are so dysfunctional, and it's virtually impossible to compete with right wing media and regular, profit-driven media. But that's what needs to be done.
I felt that!
@@normandy2501 - I'm a Gen Xer from the suburbs of a dying Rust Belt city. A lot of my "white," male peers wanted to be like their fathers, as their fathers were in the 80's. They bought into trickle down economics, even as it was accelerating the demise of our city, region, state, and country. They sought the illusory sense of security from embracing "tradition." They weren't listening to Grunge - they were listening to the Beatles, Beach Boys, and Billy Joel.
And I don't think it's reasonable to characterize Baby Boomers in general as former activists or peace-loving hippies. Those people were a relatively small portion of the population. The overwhelming majority swallowed what they were fed in the 50's and 60's. The overwhelming majority of the Baby Boomers didn't sell out their values and principles by becoming part of the system because they were already part of the system (or at least on the path to becoming part of the system).
As a Zoomer, I have to respect Millenials for taking so much sh*t from older generations. We do too, but y'all were the beginning of the "holy shit the world is broken" revelation that both of our generations have had. For Gen Z, the recession was a part of childhood. The idea of returning to "when things were better" doesn't make sense to us because when were things better?
Millenials are the most shafted over people in this country. As our dwindling life expectancy illustrates.
The Millennial life is one defined by terrorism, economic instability, mass shootings, political turmoil, civil unrest, viral outbreaks, and the effects of irreversible climate change.
Our only hope is to ensure that those after us will never share this fate.
I APPRECIATE THE FUCK OUT OF THIS AND YOU! Very hopeful about you zoomers!!
"The beginning of the 'holy shit the world is broken' revelation" --I'd say that started with Gen X, who grew up seeing the wreckage of the hippie dreams of peace and love. They were also the first to experience the shrinkage of job opportunities and got told it was their fault for just not being willing to work hard enough. All trends that have only increased for Millennials, of course, but I'd say Gen X got them first.
I think this is the first time *this* old man has seen anything but scorn from a zoomer lol tysm ;-;
I think zoomers and millennials have the strongest generational camaraderie ever
As a "born in the early 90s millenial" I related to SO much of this. Especially because I often talked with a Gen Z friend of mine about the differences between our generations. And I had always said: 'When I was a child, things looked like they were on a steady path of improvement. Then some bad stuff happened. And then the bad stuff didn't stop happening.' To my friend, things getting worse was the norm. Which is why I am constantly heartbroken and she isn't afraid of anything.
This.
I was born like 2 years too early to be fearless
Mid 90s millenial myself, it's interesting how my own outlook is almost a perfect halfway point there. There was always that little bit of a memory of things getting better, but by the time most of my memories formed, it was 2001.
@@QuikVidGuy Well, it takes fear to be brave, so maybe that's a benefit. But then again, I'm a pathologic optimist
"I am constantly heartbroken and she isn't afraid of anything."
I'm 31 and I've got a close friend in her early 20s, and if this doesn't sum up the major difference underpinning our social and political beliefs, I don't know what does. Like, our politics are very very similar from the outside, but my anger is rooted in disappointment and heartbreak, and hers feels like it's informed at least in part by having to harden herself to the reality that shit is objectively terrible and it's only going to get worse.
that "Fraction of US Wealth Owned by Each Generation" graph broke me in a way that nothing else ever has. oh my god im beyond horrified
“If you just work hard and persevere you’ll succeed like your grandparents did!”
Fuck, fuck, we're fucking fuckied we're fucking fuck! What the fuck are we gonna do?I can't even think straight when I look at that graph.
@@injusticeanywherethreatens4810 It's my sincere hope that the effort to counter climate change will become a catalyst for huge economic growth like post-WW2 america saw. It won't happen automatically, but it does need to happen.
I just paused the video & sat there for a while.
as a zoomer, every time I hear a millenial or someone from my generation talking about having kids someday, i'm just like... why??? with what????
"...and young people don't feel trapped by the future, because nobody *believes* in the future anymore."
Holy fuck dude you just summarized all of my anxieties.
Been stuck in a dead-end argument with a fascist all day but this moment made me shed a tear
@@DeepDiveDevin See, that was your first mistake right there: thinking a fascist would change their mind.
@@fahim102 Thats why I always aim to hurt them as much as possible, because that's what they're trying to do to the rest of us
@@fahim102 I actually went in not thinking that. Most of my time was spent trying to get them arguing more about why somehow their opinion should be tolerated, but the opinion that their opinion shouldn't be tolerated shouldn't. As in, why is racism tolerated, but anti-racism isn't.
From there it was mostly just a process of fucking with them. The more confused and disoriented they are, the less time they're able to spend spreading their bullshit, and the more likely they are to slip up and say the quiet part loud, which did end up happening.
That's called doomerism. It looks bleak, but the brave are still trying.
As a Gen Xer, there's a part of me that wants to defend my generation. You know, leave some ominous message about how growing up and selling out are inevitable. Thing is, the generations that came after us have no one to sell out too. No one is buying.
"No one is buying"
jesus christ that gave me chills
Exactly. The opportunities to actually sell out don’t exist anymore. The most sellout thing you can do now is to take commissions online, but that’s just the self employed hustle really.
@@kaitlyn__L And that's how things like OnlyFans come to exist
Christ you the nail on the head...
@@DarkFlame7755 true... I did camming on the side starting uni and we didn’t have OnlyFans! You had a private Twitter or Tumblr you’d give people access to if they paid you by PayPal instead lol. OnlyFans seems like a much more streamlined system
The choice of muting out the conversations between Daria and Jodie is interesting to me. I feel like Jodie was the foil to Daria’s choice to be apathetic because she felt crushed by how sick and sad the world was. Jodie is well aware of horrible the world is and was just as disaffected but knew she didn’t have the privilege to lean into the apathy the way Daria did. Jodie is one of the voices in the show that gets Daria to think about if she didn’t lean into the disaffectedness and possibly be proactive in addressing the issues she cares about so much.
"The 90s are as good as this system gets" is a pretty soul crushing take.
Yes. So lets change the system. No, not tweak it, add some boundaries that conservatives will just erode again. I mean entirely dismantle and replace the damn thing. Lets start with the healthcare system.
@@anarchisttechsupport6644 Right? Burn it all down. The America we have now needs to die so something better can take its place.
It was only good to live in the height of empire - and before empire ever existed abroad.
@@MLBlue30 Not just America, global neoliberal capitalism as a whole needs to burn, and soon.
The biggest problem, is: it wasn't really that good. Nostalgia and media make it seem good....but it wasn't. As an Xer that turned 20 in '90 it was pretty fucked. Those of us who served in Desert Storm (like myself) came to understand that American Democracy was run by $$$ not morals. Crack addition and the war on drugs was in full swing, and entire neighborhoods were ruined. Cities became wastelands with rampant poverty hidden by social stratification. We had all this pressure to get a career and become productive members of society, but we being beat over the head with how we were lazy slackers with no motivation, hippies with no passion, artists with no desire. We weren't slackers, we just saw the world as a fake shit sandwich and didn't want to participate. It's funny, because I'm now seeing more and more of us Xers getting loud and passionate and in peoples face about leftism and making things right - all the shit we talked about in the 90's but did very little about - because we're seeing it affect our kids - and if there is one thing, one precious thing to us - it's our kids; the one thing we're terrified that we fucked up and can't fix, can't compensate for.
As a Gen Z, the "nobody believes in the future anymore" part hit so hard when I realized that when we say "nothing really matters" we actually believe it which is why we are so calm about the future. We aren't as disappointed with the world because we didn't believe in it in first place, but Millennials did.
Absolutely, absolutely. I still feel a stubborn clinging to hope. I’m still bitter that everything was snatched away from us, after we had our childhoods steeped in telling us how stable and safe everything was. And the only way I can keep pushing for the future is the hope that I could help make the world worth hoping for again.
My high school professors literally told me I was fucked because 2008 and... yeah, I took that to hurt. Can't really be disappointed when you didn't believe good things were possible.
Its like the Bane monologue from The Dark Knight Rises: Millenials are Batman: those who knew the light but then adopted the dark, and Zoomers are Bane: the ones born and raised in the darkness and have no memory of there being anything else.
Being calm can help you more clearly think of solutions, so I'm not sure why you are all viewing being more stoic to be bad in some way besides victim mentality.
I always try to explain to my Gen X parents were fucked and there’s nothing we can do about it
"My goal is not to wake up one morning in my 40s with the bitter realization that I wasted half by life in a job that I hate because I was forced to choose a career in my teens"
I... am not sure if I've ever related to something more. I was born in the early 2000s, But, this... this is just so... damn.
All the adults around you in highschool are always like "What do you want to major in?" "What college are you going to?" I mean, fuck, I was asked this shit in the 7th grade.
Dear god, I was 13, you want me to pick what I want to do with my LIFE?
I think between this and the similar "My goal is not to graduate college thousands of dollars in debt only to have a computer program do the thing I spent years studying for ten times better and one thousand times faster"
Is why I am in college and still trying to figure out what the hell I actually want.
Don't feel bad about not knowing what you wanna do in your 20s. Hell, some of the more interesting people you'll meet haven't figured it out in their 40s.
But always remember the sunscreen.
That was literally verbatim how i would have phrased it the day that episode would have come out. It’s almost weird knowing there was media around at the time I COULD have identified with so strongly, but we did not have the channel it was broadcast on so I missed out.
Does anyone else think it's pretty fucked up that the trajectory of our lives is dependent on choices we make during a time where we have little to no meaningful control over our own lives?
@@jonathankent1517 thats the secret - the illusion of choice. our generations quickly realized we have no choice. now we r stuck dealing with our combined 40-years-early midlife crisis. hopefully most of us make it out
As a gen Z my fear is more that I wake up a few years from now realizing that I have messed up my one shot with a decision I made back in high school.
When people ask me when I graduated college, I tell them "After Bear Stearns collapsed, but before Lehmann Brothers."
I understand that reference.
"and young people don't feel trapped by the future, because nobody believes in the future anymore" is the perfect explanation for why millennials are so fond of zoomers even when they joke at our expense. It's not only because their jokes about millennials are significantly funnier than those of Xers and Boomers, but because their jokes demonstrate the problems with cynicism and ironic detachment in the first place.
Haha funko pop wubba lubba dub dub.
From my experience, the Zoomers aren't being malicious with the jokes, either; it's all in good fun. We can talk on the same level field with Zoomers and we can, for the most part, agree the system is fucked and that it's gonna take Millennials and Zoomers working together to completely UNFUCK the world as we know it. That's always how conversations I've had with Zoomers go, anyways; we're all generally in agreement.
@@SeanStrife Zoomer is without a doubt just fed-up and directly saying to the older generation, "You fucked up so bad, that a teenager can clean the ocean, a kid can denounce your generation and anything you say to us can't stick". The burden us Zoomer and Millennial carry is Bigger than our collective can handle.
@@SeanStrife We HAVE to be the generations to fix this shit. If we aren't able to do it. I doubt there will be time left to do for the coming generations.
And I for my part will not just fucking accept the boomer mentality of just letting the fucking planet die.
"ironically giving a shit is the new ironically not giving a shit"
"Neoliberalism is a politics of saving the relationship that only works in crisis by allowing more crises to happen."
Damn, there's a line.
#codependency
This is very true, but also a near useless statement because literally everything these days is called "liberalism" or "neoliberalism", as perfectly explained by this chart: i.redd.it/b676lafcg1361.jpg (i have no idea who made the chart, maybe the political opinions of the chart's creators are horrible, but the chart is still true, though maybe only as an exaggeration)
@@lordbuss I dont think u understand. The system itself is neoliberal, every thing quite literally is neoliberal. The term isnt meaningless, it is just literally meant to encapsulate the hegemonic late 20th-21st century politics.
Both dnc and rnc, the EU generally, intl trade organizations completely... those are neoliberal institutions and they are what we have. Its just an adjective for what that general political and social view of markets and welfare is.
And no, that doesn’t mean everything is “the same.”
@@bobblebee49 None of what you just said justifies the graph. The problem with the graph is that it implies that almost every side criticises, nay *blames,* "neoliberalism", but they can't rightfully make it the boogeyman, if it's part of their ideology.
Here's my lukewarm take of the day. Until we can establish communism (News flash: It won't be any time soon, and that's probably for the better, because the world isn't ready for it), neoliberalism is the best thing we have. There is potentially room in it for unlimited political social benefits. It also discourages wasteful spending on luxury goods if the market output doesn't allow for them, as well as it discourages inefficient market strategies such as insisting on crude oil/coal when their infrastructure won't be efficient in the long run, or baiting everyone who doesn't have a job into opening a superfluous restaurant on some street corner. It only appreciates labour that is actually valuable or asked for, not labour that only exists to enrich the person doing it. Those are all good things for society as a whole.
A big 90s moment that cemented my world view was listening to Romeo Delaire every night on CBC radio, pleading to the reporters to tell people about the Rwanda genocide and send help. And how that was happening globally. After watching 80s propaganda about fighting for freedom wherever there's trouble learning just how little humanity was actually valued even when the evidence that hundreds of thousands of people were dying horrible was indisputable, well, it got very easy to be numb to everything else.
It seems like there are a lot of people who idealize and romanticize the 90s so much that they are more than willing to overlook or ignore the victims that experienced terrible events like 2 goddamn genocides (Bosnian ethnic cleansing & the Rwandan genocide) meanwhile the American government with all their wealth & influence barely did anything to help.
And for me as a person born in 1998 I think Romeo Dallaire was the first example given of a living person with PTSD and discussing how the UN and UN peacekeepers are almost certainly necessary but deeply flawed.
@@fahim102 Purposely ignoring those genocides happens. Though, in America there's a... hmm... /lack luster/ education system which doesn't touch on too much history past WWII during K-12... seems like they sure love to streamline the last several decades of history.
@@fahim102 Not to mention Chechnya and Somalia.
Yes. There was a lot of numbness. The cold war was over. Passion over ideology was dead...and yet there was still darkness in the world and new narratives for actions had yet to emerge. It felt like we could only stand by and watch.
As a millennial, it's so weird to me there are zoomers old enough to drink but too young to remember 9/11. They are old enough to enlist in a war that started when I was in elementary school.
ay that's me!
I was but a baby at the time and noone told me about it till years later. felt as relevant to my life as time time my city exploded about a century ago
I can tell you as a gen-z person, it's unfortunately not that weird feeling to us. I think most of us just accept that being in a forever war with the middle east because of an event none of us were alive for as the default state of reality. It's pretty sad, but that's what happens when you grow up with a war going on the entire time, and literally every avenue you turn to learn things tells you this is a good an necessary war.
As a gen Z living in an age where the nostalgia cycle harkens to a time before I was born, everything that isn't "the hot new thing" happened when or before I was in diapers.
As a Gen Z, it's honestly weird that there's even a world before 9/11. Generations before us learned that the political system had major issues as teens and adults. For us, we grew up hearing about foreign prisoners being tortured, and the US military lying about war for oil was just an accepted fact. The president wasn't someone you were supposed to like, until I was 11, and Obama was elected. Literally the moment he stepped in the door, the economy collapsed, and we spent 8 years watching elected officials fight like children, while all the adults in our lives became the casualties. By the time we were young adults, Trump was president.
Maybe I'm just especially disaffected, but I find I genuinely find it difficult to comprehend that people see Trump as this complete anomaly, rather than something that the system naturally produces. To be clear, I despise Trump, but for me, my early schema of a president is someone who bombs foreign nations and neglects the poor. We had one president claim he would stop this, and The GOP and Fox News attacked him like antibodies fighting a virus. Bernie Sanders claimed he could do the same in 2016, and we watched the Democrats a party that was supposed to match his values, do the exact same thing. We got stabbed in the back, by the "right people" who are supposed to in charge.
Gen Z who support Trump, and older generations that hate him, honestly seem to do so for the same reason, he's an existential threat to America, the only difference, is that for my generation, the American system in it's current for is something we genuinely want replaced. Honestly, I'd never admit this off of an anonymous comment, but a tiny part of me in on November 10th 2016, hoped the regime would be like a controlled burn of a forest fire. Maybe people older than 25 would finally see the system the same way I saw it. Not as something sick, but violent by it's very nature.
@@davidmhh9977 it’s weird for me to think about. I was in grade 10 when 9/11 happened. It hit us in Australia not as hard, obviously, but it was still huge.
There was this weird juxtaposition of silence and noise. My high school was right next to the largest Army base in the Southern Hemisphere, and all day we had the incredibly loud noise of Army choppers flying overhead. And because we were right next to an Army base, a lot of the students were Army brats. And they were completely silent, knowing (rightly) that their mum or dad was about to go to war.
It was so huge. The biggest single event of my lifetime. And it’s crazy to think that there are now people fighting in that war, who weren’t even alive when it started, or who were so young that they can’t remember a time before it. It messes with my head a little.
I was in college exactly when the recession hit. I was promised (for my degree) $60k starting salary entry level guaranteed. By the time I finished, you needed 2-5 years work experience for an “entry level” position that pays $30k.
I think the cynicism has stayed directed at the larger social structures as we’ve all become more sincere in our relationships with ourselves and each other. Like, I just want a lot of money so I can create a commune for all my friends where we don’t rely on corporations and greed.
Dude, can I join your commune? I'll be upfront, I'm not a very good worker, by any means, but if you can find a way to make me valuable, I'll be sure to do what's in my ability!
@@SynthApprentice Maybe you could be melted down into soap bars. People always need soap.
Boomer: “Milennials are cynical buttheads”
Gen X:
Milennials: 🤔.
“Daria does not care about participation trophies” well yeah. Then again, neither did any actual milennial when we were given them.
I'm not sure why some people have chosen to use the idea of participation trophies to bash how weak or entitled today's young people are. They've literally been using them for decades. I'm a Gen-Xer and can remember them from the early 80's and I'm sure they were giving them out before then.
Yeah, I had gotten my fair share of participation ribbons in the past and... yeah, I felt nothing from them.
@@edward2962 Boomers got participation trophies, too, except they call them "consolation prizes" and expect pity and sympathy for having received them.
@@chaos386 Boomers GAVE us participation trophies because every boomer needed a kid with a goddamn trophy.
stealing peoples labor value is the ultimate participation trophy. they are projecting like all psychopathic narcissists do
As a gen z kid it’s weird for me to think about how we’re trying to recapture a past that I never knew. I was literally in the womb when 9/11 happened so all my life it has felt like no one even really knew if the sun was going to rise tomorrow. I think that’s why I’m so deep in the mindset of “screw the past, let’s focus on making sure there is a future.” Everyone promises a return to when things were better, but that’s not what I want, or what I think any of us need.
That’s very interesting. I was born in the mid 90s and could never relate to older kids who’d grown up in the 80s talking about doubt of existing tomorrow due to the Cold War.
I hadn’t realised gen Z experienced something similar. Maybe that’s part of why millennials are sometimes looked on as too sensitive by both X and Z? We grew up in a world where things seemed not just safe, not just hopeful, but was presented as inevitably so. (In fact, many pundits used the phrase “end of history” in the 90s, about the 90s, that’s how inevitable the track we seemed to be on seemed to everyone.)
Then all the bad shit resumed and it was a huge shock to us, and in many ways we’re still processing it all (like this video). But I guess if you’re steeped in it from before you can remember... our reactions can seem like overreactions.
Im a millennial and I'm with you. Fuck the past, we learn from it and make our own futures.
Why go back when we can make something even better? Why accept anything less than what we deserve. I get being nostalgic but everyone's gotta grow the fuck up.
That's probably an advantage of the Zoomer generation.
I was 15 when 9/11 happened and the world became scared of brown people, and I was 22 when the economy broke down.
I know it's not constructive, but I honestly long back to the time the world was a bright and hopeful place.
@@everynameistakenyet But it wasnt really so bright. Before 9/11 we had the war in Ruanda and Yugoslavia. All countries with social welfare start to lower taxes for the rich and cut down social welfare. Who had eyes open knew already about the climate crisis (you could knew it since the 70ths) and we saw that the petrol industry is so powerful, that the politicians wont change our economic course. Also we knew about the problems with the ozon layer, and many other ecology problems. And many states had problems with high unemployment. And rassism began to rise again. I think the last year were people could look optimistic in the future (if they forget about the cold war) was 1973. Since than, first everything stopped to get better like in the years before and since the 80ths everything got worse. But I really do have hope with the new generaration - and hope they dont come too late.
My brother and I are older Gen Z too and we were joking the other day that we can’t wait for the 80s to end. The back of the Golden Grahams cereal box had an 80s theme, ridiculous
Damn, as a Gen Z kid, this is the first piece of writing that actually made me understand the millennial perspective somewhat. I always thought Millenials where dumb and naive for expecting things to go back to normal and to bring back the destructive mundanity of the 90s, but it must have been utterly horrifying to watch the guard rails come off of society, as it were. We were born into a world of constantly increasing absurdity where the concept of “normal” will always and forever feel like a luxury, but perhaps we are protected from the pain of losing something we never had.
thank you
You were never promised a future because we knew better. Sorry, kid. Wish you knew the world before it went all shitty cyberpunk. Enjoy what you can while you can, I guess.
Yeah
In a dark room your eyes adjust. But when you're used to light, when they do go off the room feels much darker.
I'm truly not sure what is worse, pervasive longing for the good times, or never knowing them to begin with. They're probably both equally horrible in their own way.
We were also, y'know, KIDS in the 90s. In a time that was seemingly relatively progressive and peaceful. Near the turn of the milennium there was a concept called the "end of history." The promise of the internet was pretty new, the economy was booming, and futurism was in. There was an optimistic feeling, at least in middle class America, that things could probably keep getting slowly better, that we had a lot of it pretty figured out. So I think a lot of us experienced varying leves of intense whiplash as we like turned 12 or so and just became working adults in the midst of endless downturns that have still never stopped. We've been at war since then. The middle class has only suffered, since then. It never stopped.
As a gen z kid, I must say I have only three moods
We must try to salvage what's left of our future to build something better
The world is dying, theres so much to fix I cant handle it all
Make jokes to stop the pain
haha floor pizza
I've a slightly different mood, which is be happy, and accept that the world is going to get worse than what it already is, Life is nice even when filled with pain, cause suicide is gae.
And a different one being I no longer care about being peacefully accepting what's happening but I've no power, and cannot change anything ever due to the corpotocracy.(Basically Life is pain, precurssor to the former)
I think I would also make jokes if I could be funny.
if there is any hope for a future worth living in, it is in our perverse refusal to sit down and shut up while our world burns, and in our collective action. every significant victory of the people in the past has only ever happened because enough people believed it was possible and banded together to collectively make it a reality, despite being against the interests of the ruling classes, because we outnumber them. we just need to believe in our collective strength, educate ourselves on effective praxis and commit to making a future that works for us a reality.
a defeatist attitude isn't what advanced civil rights for poc and lgbtq+ people. it was a collective refusal to lie back and accept the world imposed upon us by sociopathic rich fucks and direct action by the people to change the world, whether those in power wanted it or not.
And a few "how dare those minorities have enough rights that I'm not allowed to beat them up"
Can't forget those assholes
Make jokes to slow the pain
actual in-high-school zoomer here. while gen z is definitely the new "sincerity generation", i don't think the cynicism ever leaves teenagers. things are bleaker than ever n while a lot of us are finally, finally deciding to be ourselves bc There Is No Saving Us Now, that layer of jadedness n alienation n fear has stuck around. we're terrified. n we're all doing something different to try n deal w it - i've turned into the archetypical transgender anarcho-whatever 12 year old - but it's not rly working. every time we get our hopes up for a second that things could be okay, that we could have even the smallest chance of a "normal" transition from adolescence to adulthood, we're let down. that sarcastic view of our current situation hasn't gone away. i just hope to god we turn the dissatisfaction into action for once.
Absolutely. I feel like Daria's attitude is almost the default now.
A weird mix of sometime and activism.
Maybe that’s why millennials and Gen Z don’t seem to have the same tensions between us that most other generations do/did? It’s all very absurdist. We know the world is fucked, but we keep rolling the Boulder up the hill anyway. What else is there to do?
Very well put! It’s interesting the ways what you said is similar to how I felt when I was 12, but also different in other ways. For one, living through the whiplash of 9/11 and the later recession made there be a deeper yearning for “maybe this is what turns things around”, especially when Obama won and stuff. Things went bad so quickly, the idea of quick solutions didn’t seem as far fetched.
It’s only really been in the last ~5 years that my peers have started realising.... shit, we’re in this for the long haul, stuff is so complicated but also the right is so organised... etc. Like: we were so hopeful for Occupy Wall Street to somehow do something big. It was crushing when it ended up passing without doing anything. I think we’re more realistic now in realising that movements take a lot to build up momentum, and they don’t happen quickly like that. (I’m 26)
Likewise. Right now I'm simultaneously full of hope and despair.
It gets better. I mean, the world doesn't necessarily get better, but you will.
For some reason, that summary of millennials' generational anxieties and traumas and the "relationship in crisis" metaphor are hitting me like a fucking _airplane,_ and I am unable to stop crying. ... And by "for some reason", I mean COVID gave me familial, relationship, and political problems all at the same time, and I was born in the early 90s and have long since watched my and all my friends' roadmaps go up in flames, and I really am desperate for things to only just be bad. Jesus. Thank you for giving me a space to feel all this, genuinely.
Me too. That feeling of desperately trying to make your own map, and only for stability rather than prosperity, is something else.
Plus of course the metaphor hit home hard because I’ve had plenty of relationships that did function in that way. Only working properly during big traumatic life upending times, or when they can create their own conflict to “recover” from together. So that was a big whoof.
I still sting remembering old teachers go “you had such a bright future” to me, as if it were my fault. All the things we were collectively promised while going through school. Did my final high school years in the big recession, which in the UK lasted until 2010 roughly. It was so strange seeing them try to still sell us on the roadmap they’d used all along, even while the news was full of way older ppl who’d followed the map whose jobs were in the shitter too. I remember feeling like it was all bullshit at the time, but lots of social pressures caused me to keep my head down and follow the path in the hopes things will have recovered by the end. That worked out well,
Things will be, there we are heading I believe, even Uber rich guys are at least trying to save the planet. And there are a lot more activist. Please hang in there, try to take care of yourself, hug yourself, se will survive this horrible and will have the bad, I believe in gen Z.
God, maybe the whole roadmap thing is the reason I stuck with a law degree which in Germany at least is a decent ticket into becoming a state employee with special benefits that are so much more stable than any job in the market economy could ever offer. That makes so much sense.
@@kaitlyn__L My parents still keep asking me what I want to do with my life now that I'm entering the 2nd half of my 20's and all I can ever think about is. "If you get a job that lasts longer than 6 months you can move into a studio apartment at the complex where most of your friends are, and once you have an income you can actually start thinking about dating people.
Like career ranks so far down on my list of priorities it's staggering. Whenever I hear about people with grand career ambitions of "rising up the ladder" all of it just sounds like Nobles in Versailles indulging in pointless intrigues so they can be named Grand Marquise and Knight of the Dolphin of his Majesty's High Exchequer and get to wear an extra lacy handkerchief to wear at the Winter Ball.
When I left education and did my first practical thing I remember sitting face to face with the first unemployed software developers. Yes. Those people who were believed to have the safest best paid jobs ever. And they couldn't understand the world anymore. And us youngsters (decades ago) got the first glimpse of a world turning with so much speed that people were indiscriminately kicked off the spinning wheel of career, future, dreams, security. Not very comforting. Sorry.
As a 16 year old zoomer you summed up pretty well why I do that strained, wheezing Joker laugh every time I remember the "Man what if we get a stable, well paying career and turn into consumerist squares" trope.
When you were like (paraphrasing here) "Sarcasm was the response to having this map of a stable career laid out for you and maybe not wanting that, wanting to choose your own path instead", I was like "Wow dude, I wish that was my problem. I'd be happy to have ANY path in front of me." And yeah... turned out that was the point of this video
I'm running towards a brick wall that I'm gonna hit the second I graduate high school, and there's nothing past it. Fuck.
i will not surive the climate crisis. i just want to have a good time for once and leave behind a record of how we fought against this for the survivors, alongside messages of how to be kind. (like the mental health stuff that we are only just beggining to figure out). if i wasnt struggling to exist then id build a garden to feed the ones who make it through.
We were lied to and told we had a path.
A lot of edge in this comment section.
@@realdaggerman105 ok boomer
Oh my god, the vision of getting another Bush-type president in 2030's has left me genuinely traumatized.
And fun fact, some conservative organisations like the Lincoln Project are already working on to soften the image of George Bush and make him retrospectively not as bad as he used to be.
I still find it hilarious how they call themselves the Lincoln Project. Abraham Lincoln was a staunch Leftist who was friends with Karl Marx.
@@KingdomHeartsBrawler
Because anybody loves to affiliate with Lincoln, no matter how far away they are from his actual believes (*cough* Donald Trump)
@@KingdomHeartsBrawler I’m sorry man but that’s just ahistorical. The only connection between Lincoln and Marx is that Marx sent a letter to Lincoln to congratulate him on the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln was not a leftist.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.aier.org/article/was-lincoln-really-into-marx/amp/
What was even scarier was when the so-called "liberals" joined in, trying to make Dubya seem like a stand-up guy. Was like, do you remember this %$%$^%^% at all?
yea George Bush (jr) and even senior really seemed to begin the trend of softening genocidal corporate bigots. Seriously, the Iraq war was the break for me where I realized a) americans didn't know sh*t about sh*t, patriotism was disgusting, we all had no say over war crimes, and I lived in a different reality than other people (not even that we had different "opinions" but a different set of facts.)
it was really awful. Going to my first giant protest I really thought there was no way we could go to war.
And 36 million refugees later and more dead than the holocaust, ISIS created and everything later, we're still there. Ugh.
But also they're funny. Or something. I get we all need satire and all, and as an abolitionist I like to try to see the human side of people.. to a degree. but I think it is very dangerous.
"I'm no pessimist, Tulio. I'm just well-informed optimist"
- Juan Carlos Bodoque.
Ah, a man of culture
As a Gen z kid I never got why "90s kids" were the way they were. Thank you for explaining it to me.
We once had a future. I am so sorry we can't even offer that to you.
@@Puerco-Potter but we are trying our best to support zoomer future
@@yao592 we can promise that at the end either we win or zoomers will be the ones over the ashes having to restart civilization
@@Puerco-Potter exactly but I’m hopeful especially with our current tactic of destroying hedge funds right now lol
@@Puerco-Potter Hehe, maybe it was kinder to have grown up without there ever having been a map to go up in flames.
It's weird watching this as a zoomer who's in his freshman year of college, because I've never really lived through the time when things were just bad. I was born after 9/11, so when older people say they want things to return to normal, I have no fucking idea what that would look or feel like. My entire political upbringing in the last few years has been predicated on the thought that I may, truly this time, be part of humanity's last growing generation, and trying to not be that
ey, age buddies
I dunno, i still feel like we had a shield until big Don came up.
When I was 11 in the 90s, I flew from California to Pennsylvania to attend my cousin's wedding. I flew alone, without my parents. My mom walked me all the way to the gate in San Jose and my uncle met me at the gate in Philadelphia. It felt normal to just go somewhere, see people, and it wasn't a big deal to anyone.
Good luck man.
I'm 17 now and while definitely more of an idealist than a complete doomer, i don't think that idealist meant the same back then.
As a Gen Xer I've never understood why people dump on either millennials or zoomers, I got lucky. Many in my generation didn't, I grew up with punk bands using "no future" as a cool slogan, we've come to a place where "young people don't feel trapped by the future, because nobody believes in the future anymore" isn't said to be edgy or angry, it's just a cold statement of fact.
Damn...
This hits really hard when I think about my relationship with my Step mom. My little brother was about to enter college in a few years when she asks me to give him advice. I tell him make sure to study something your actually interested in and follow your passion. She got mad at me because she thought I would tell him what degree would make him the most money.
You're absolutely right even in practical sense. It feels like nowadays you pretty much have to a fan of your job to have even a slight hope of being hired.
I wish somebody had told me that I didn't have to go to university lol. I just picked the first degree that seemed vaguely interesting without really contemplating anything.
@@FortoFight On the other hand, I wish someone had told me how advantageous going to college would be. Now. i'm 40, stuck in a job I hate, with no means to move forward. At least if I had a degree, I could leverage it to move to another country or whathaveyou.
Have you told here we don't make money anymore but just scrape by?
I graduated high school in 2002. I told my father I wanted to be an IT professional. He said I was stupid and should go into something more lucrative like auto repair despite never showing a fucking ounce of interest in cars in my short life. I refused. The asshole in turn refuses to co-sign on my student loans because he doesn't want to "get stuck with a bill he can't pay" when I can't find a job in a "fad".
I'm 36 now and the first person he calls when he has a problem with his computer.
I wouldn’t mind if you kept making these kinds of videos after COVID is under control. Not to tell you what to do with your own creative work, but I wouldn’t be opposed.
Agreed, these are really good.
This video came at a good time for me also since I’ve been job-searching with no luck for a good few months and I’d been wondering how long the machine can last.
Inversely I really need an alt-playbook to help me make sense of what's been going on
+
"Daria does not want participation trophies."
Neither did we. Did anyone even ask for a participation trophy as a kid? Because to me and my peers growing up (and I realize this is anecdotal evidence), participation trophies were fucking humiliating. It was the "you tried" star but in physical form, and it was basically confirmation that we sucked in the thing we were trying to do.
Also we didn't give them to ourselves; our boomer and gen X teachers gave them to us. They're the ones who introduced us to participation awards in the first place, so why is this our fault lmao
Because blaming someone else for problems you’ve caused is the most on-brand Boomer thing on earth.
@@ericpayne4424 It's their religion!
Boomers; the generation that did a revolution and then got bored and bought a cottage in the burbs
@@ericpayne4424 Boomers to Millenials: Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!
I have a theory that participation trophies, certificates and medals ect were always more about giving parents the ability to brag about their kids having awards from school or clubs than it was about the kids.
Young people don't feel trapped by the future...because nobody believes in the future anymore. Goddamn.
@NeptuneWalker As a, I guess middle millennial (born '87), nobody knows what the fuck the future will bring. College is stupid expensive, but if you can swing it it's probably better to be formally educated than not. If you go, do whatever major you want, it's a crapshot which will actually be 'useful'. Learn to be flexible and learn whatever you need to as time changes, boomers can afford to be ignorant nobody else can. And if an opportunity comes by, don't be afraid to grab it. Also seek out friends you can trust enough to be like family.
That’s why none of the pop is angry anymore, we’re all too burnt out to be angry.
I still do... Call me a dumb ass if you will but I guess I just do...
I recently read an article on how young people aren't saving for retirement. Because they figure they'll be dead or having a personal pension won't matter because of economic changes. I felt personally targetted. My retirement plan is campaigning for socialism.
It wasn't until listening to a podcast talking about how Forrest Gump was a movie that could only come out in the 90s because it was the time to sort of take a breath and look back like "whoa, that was quite the ride, huh?" that I realized just how unique that decade was. I wasn't old enough to really exist in that moment. I went to my first anti-war protest when I was 12. I was 14 when I saw An Inconvenient Truth in theatres. As soon as I was introduced to the world outside the playground, the world was unfair and unforgiving. And we were raised by people who held strong personal responsibility (pay the rent on time, no crying) and weak moral responsibility (actually do something about injustice in the world), and chastised us for having our priorities flipped.
Just look at all big 1999 releases, and you'll see
It feels like gen x and boomers started the whole millennials are whiners things because we actually started speaking out against things like homophobia, climate change, stigma around depression, racism, rape culture etc. They just wanted us to maintain the status quo and we wanted better for ourselves and the next generation.
@@beepbeep9043 💯
Everything from "For two generations, the nineties were the least things had sucked in living memory" onward felt like you pulling things straight out of my soul.
Hi, zoomer in a semi-poor city here. The part where you talked about the stance of gen Z, and what's cool/brave and what isn't, I feel is missing something. Going through school in both honors classes ("the smart kids", a lot of them were more wealthy, not me though) and gen ed classes, I felt like the mindset differed greatly between kids in the two. Honors kids were vastly more accepting and genuine, particularly when it came to social issues like LGBTQ+ stuff, but I felt like most of them didn't fully grasp the financial hardships the average student there might have had to go through. Like you could be trans and most of them would be cool about it, but if you asked them about socialism, or about the modern day financial gap between races, they might react with indifference, and they have little class consciousness.
The kids in the gen ed classes were much more aware of financial issues that burdened them, but they also had the kind of mentality that leads them to think "I'm gonna be really good at football and get in the NFL" is an achievable career choice. And their mentality regarding social issues was much less forgiving.
Anyway, this was just my takeaway from one school in one part of the US, as part of gen Z.
That’s very interesting. I was always a high achiever and came out as trans in high school and relate mostly to the first group you said, but I was also in a family that talked plainly and openly about politics and I was very aware of classism and so on. But some of that might be being in the UK, where we never had a myth of classlessness, only one of social mobility. And I understand fully that only about half of my year group in my classes even knew what socialism was, and some of them lived in places with a big gate up front and a private road going to their house. So you’re probably pretty spot-on in general.
i have a lot of the same experiences. i was one of the honors upper middle class kids in a largely poorer area, and i straight up didn’t understand what my friends and peers were going through until i got out of my parents’ house. i truly believed everything i was told about how the world was supposed to work until i saw first-hand how well it was actually going.
i think its important to note that those on the upper side of that wealth divide are still sheltered by their parents by nature of still being in high school. Trust me when I say that the realization hits them in college. It hit me. Hard.
As an honors kid, I agree. Every honors kid was progressively minded and very accepting. Public school opened my mind to the harshness of the world for the first time. My parents used their wealth to shelter me. I became aware of financial issues as I saw other kids not have the same things, comforts, and opportunities as me. Now, I'm realizing I may lose those things as an adult unless I can find a way to maintain the wealth.
This is so true I was in a mix of both and what you described is spot on.
“Most cultural narratives are written by those with money” is added to my list of best lines you have ever said.
I grew up in Cuba, came to the states almost a decade ago. So weird that when people refer to the 90s and early 2000s they speak of things I never experienced at all until I arrived here.
And it creates different kinds of people even if they share the same generation. They ask me if I remember shit I never saw and look at me in a way that reminds me that even with my weird accent I sometimes pass as a normal American boy lol.
No worries tho, I still hate you for being a far better writer than I will ever be! I think I this point I watch your videos out of sheer jealousy.
I was bad mouthing neoliberalism on another video, and someone asked what the other option was. I said bring back unions and have some reasonable banking regulations. But they have us so brainwashed we forgot that we beat this before.
It's infuriating seeing people actually defend the system we have now....the people who speak up on behalf of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk when people talk about taxing their obscene wealth....the people who pretend their mcdonalds hamburger is going to double in cost if we raise workers wages....the people who pretend that they're surely going to be super super wealthy any day now. How can you seriously argue that people shouldn't be paid more? This system does not work - it is not conducive for the thing all of us ever started to work at all in the first place for: to enjoy LIFE and to build strong relationships with others to share these experiences we're supposed to be having together.
The parties should change their name. It’s now a choice between the Fifties Party and the Nineties Party.
But hey, one of those parties has a faction that wants to be the "Thirties Party (minus the racism)" and the other has a faction that wants to be the "Fascist Party." So hey, it's not all 50's and 90's.
@@GeneralBolas I see it more as them being basically the same thing, but with different parts shown to the public. If you pay attention to what presidents do throughout their terms, whether they’re a democrat or a republican doesn’t really make a huge difference. They do the same stupid shit, and make the same overreaching policies. It’s just what they justify it with publicly, but in reality they’re the same thing.
@@sigismundafvolsung5526 I don't remember Obama putting forth the Big Lie for months that Trump's win in 2016 was illegitimate. I don't remember Obama inciting a seditious mob to march on the Capitol building and murder some of our elected officials. I don't remember Clinton not conceding or Obama inhibiting the transition of power. I don't remember Obama trying to claim that Trump wasn't born in the USA and therefore ineligible to be President, and doing so for *years.*
I don't remember when Democrats passed state legislation to do voter suppression. I don't remember when Democrats passed state legislation allowing the legislature to arbitrarily de-certify the results of the presidential election (Arizona's Republican state legislature just today submitted such legislation for consideration). More Republican states are gerrymandered than Democratic ones. Etc.
So no, they're not "basically the same thing". One of them is a bunch of fascists who want power at any cost. The other side believes in democracy.
@@GeneralBolas well almost all of those are misrepresentations or exaggerations, but whatever.
My comment isn’t a defense of republicans or trump, it’s me saying that both sides are horrible and I don’t trust a single one of them. Democrats don’t exactly fix things either. Trump’s just way less diplomatic so we actually got to see the dumb shit presidents do, but at least we got to see it. Usually they do dumb shit, power grabs, and authoritarian shit and nobody hears about it. I’d say trump is only slightly worse than a normal president, and likely only slightly worse than future presidents for the foreseeable future.
I can’t honestly believe that either side believes in democracy, they’re both authoritarian and are more than willing to take away freedoms. I wouldn’t call either fascist, but they’re both heading towards that level of stupid shit at Mach 10
@@sigismundafvolsung5526
However much you don't want it to be a defense of Trump's fascist movement, that's what it ultimately boils down to. When you downplay bad behavior by the fascists and upsell bad behavior by the not-fascist side, you're helping the fascists win. You are covering for them being fascists and hurting the only force organized enough to keep them out of power.
And it should be noted that your comment is very light on specifics. However much you are willing to dismiss all of my points as "misrepresentations or exaggerations", they are at least specific instances of anti-democratic actions. Thus far, you haven't put forth a single thing that the Democratic party has done that is anti-democratic, nor have you put forth enough to provide evidence that both are equally bad *in degree.* You've merely gestured vaguely at the Democrats and said "they did bad stuff too!"
If you want to be convincing about your "both sides" rhetoric, you need to put forth some actual evidence. Specific cases where "both sides" are doing equally bad things equally often that it warrants a "both sides" determination.
To me, the most anti-democratic actions taken in the most recent election are:
1. The Big Lie: the claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that Trump won. This led to a violent insurrection.
2. Voter suppression tactics: malicious purging of voter registration rolls, voter ID laws, restricting the number of polling places in high-population areas, draconian restrictions on mail-in balloting, etc.
3. Gerrymandering: deliberately drawing House district lines to ensure that a particular party has more representation than the population of its voters would naturally give it.
If you want me to believe that Democrats are as anti-democratic as Republicans, you will need to show me that they rely on these particular tactics *as often* as Republicans do.
Or just show me a single state with a Republican legislature that voted to use an independent commission to draw House districts (as opposed to inheriting one from a Democratic-led legislature).
Oh, and:
"Democrats don’t exactly fix things either."
Only because Republicans don't let them. We would have strong voting reform if not for the filibuster, which allows Republicans to shut down any legislation they don't like. Republicans don't like voting reforms because voter suppression and gerrymandering are the *only reason* they can win.
In terms of promoting democracy (ie: voting), Democrats do a much better job.
Imagine having *any* accumulated wealth, this post brought to you by Gen Z
Oldest zoomer, can confirm that even in the Glorious Socialist Paradise of Denmark, I'm lucky to not have any debt. Yet. Student loans will come for me soon enough, and my for my girlfriend sooner yet.
Even if I may have it better than many others my age, this is still just the top of the bottom, and looking up, I can't see the sun.
Most of that millenial wealth in the graph is probably Zuckerberg... we don't have shit either...
Proletarian moment
@@dammagrilla it's so true - there's such a huge difference in stability/wealth between 80's millenial and 90's, too
@@wabc2336 There nothing weaker than the force of one, so workers need to unite. We all need to show solidarity, and demand fundamental change.
I think that we already got a good feel for what an adult Daria would be like from Bojack Horseman.
That show is so brutal I actually had to stop watching it.
@@rileynicholson2322Have you finished it now?
gen z here. there's a brazillian channel that talked about the gen z feeling of living in a cconstant crisis, and not remembering any "good times" to return too. the video mentioned this as a reason of why young adult novels and teen movies nowadays are so often set in a dystopic world --- well, we sure do relate with dystopias
Good comment. What channel? I speak Portuguese, I'd like to check it out.
@@iansanchez966 ua-cam.com/video/k8mx-JGUXVw/v-deo.html there you go! it's from the channel Quadro em Branco. this video has english subtitles, too!
@@_bibi_s Thanks a lot! I've been checking out some of his other videos since you sent me the link, great channel!
@@iansanchez966 opa, servimos bem para servir sempre
The only "good times" I could return to was not knowing how bad the world was in 2010, playing Mario Kart Wii
Vaguely related but I for one am sick to death of “participation trophies” as a talking point. We never actually asked for those, we just didn’t care enough to actively oppose it, yet the very generation who came up with the idea act like it destroyed our minds and that it’s somehow our fault. It’s like dropping your sandwich on the floor, deciding to continue eating it anyway, and then blaming the floor when you end up sad because the sandwich now tastes like dirt.
Here, here, say it louder for the people in the back
Make something up then blame the youth. classic
We did get participation trophies though, and they have caused harm, just not the harm people think. We knew they were bullshit. When the coaches didnt keep score the kids still did, and when the team that made the fewer goals got the same "reward" as the winners, everyone involved lost faith in rewards and praise.
The legacy of the participation trophy is not overconfidence, but underconfidence.
For example: I didn't realize until after I quit my job as a manager that I actually WAS good at training and keeping up morale, I just assumed the boss told everyone that. I now run my own business for the last year and have literally nothing but perfect 5/5 reviews on both Google and Yelp, yet almost every time I start working on a customer's order I have minor anxiety that I will screw it all up. When my friend was working for the census literally no one on his team believed they were the #1 team in the state when their supervisor told them so (it wasn't until they looked at the data themselves that they believed it).
I have no evidence or studies to back this but I believe we are the generation with the highest rate of imposter syndrome. Top that off with being blamed for the participation trophies that our parents decided we should get and I am amazed we have the confidence to find our own dicks in a dark room.
@@justincenter4061 That's a fascinating concept, and by my own personal experience, I think your theory might be correct
Can u edit this in all caps, thank you.
Oh boy, that "wanting to shake Daria and tell her how good she has it" is such a mood. The DVD set came out during the recession, and all I could see was her big house in a pre-9/11 world. I still like the show and appreciate what you said about her feelings being treated as valid by the narrative (as a sensitive snowflake millennial, of course, I'm all about telling people their feelings are valid), but I came away from my rewatch wishing Jodie had gotten more screentime and with a new-found love of Brittany. Brittany is a ditz, but she is mostly very kind, sincere, and enthusiastic, and we need more people like that.
You should check out 30 Rock. It feels like a deconstruction of Daria and the Gen Z mindset at times.
The biggest thing is that the Gen Z girl who was apparently bullied in school for being like Daria, smart and idealistic, was actually the bully that everyone feared. She was the mean girl, not the cheerleaders.
But, cheerleaders don't make movies or tell the narrative to a wide audience, the Darias of the world did.
I just found out about Daria this year from a friend, and loved it. But it's not the same unless you watch the daria restoration project which puts the original music back in. Because, yeah, the 90s music rocked.
I like how you sympathize with Daria, but you don't let her off the hook for her disaffection. It's nice to have the perspective that "the world can suck, but you still have to try and be better."
@@nathanseper8738 Full transparency: I also watched the show when I was in high school, which while post-9/11 was still pre-recession. And I definitely related more with Daria back then. So when I rewatched it once the DVD came out, I was still inclined to empathize with Daria, just with new eyes and experience.
Millennial here, born 1990. This really made me think about my Gen X cousins have houses and are raising kids while my fellow Millenial friends and relatives are living in apartments and trailers with roommates or significant others. Hell, even my Elder Millennial boss can't afford her own car, and she has the luxury of being able to afford to live on her own otherwise. The company we work for provides her car (manager privilege, on that one). The wealth gap is wild when I compare this to my grandmother who has been living comfortably in a city townhouse for at least as long as I've been alive, and she retired (from TEACHING) in the early 1990s. When I was in elementary/middle school, my grandma would frequently travel out of the country to visit places. On retirement/social security. My Boomer mother (who had to retire early due to health issues) can't even do that on the disability she gets every month, though she can still live fairly comfortably. And me, travel? Nice joke.
I was born right on the line between millenial and gen z, and let me tell you, every part of this video resonated so highly with me, especially the last bit about how we've become a generation of loud, uncompromising sincerity and self-truth.
This is why I, as a millennial (peak millennial in fact, born in '91) feel so fiercely protective of Gen Z and am willing to fight anyone who tries to rob them of their sincerity and sensitivity.
Having experienced the traumatic "loss of innocence" that was 9/11, the subsequent war on terror, and the recession, I know what it's like to feel helpless, hopeless and scared upon realizing that the world is as unpredictable as it is cruel, and that older generations will happily sell out their own children's future for profit (and then blame them for being bitter and angry about it or caving under the pressure).
I also know that bitterness is paralyzing. I think the social activists of my generation tended to overfocus on identity politics rather than class divide or environmentalism because to so many of us, our identities were all we had left, the only thing that gave us any joy or sense of community. (I assume that's also why so many cishet white male millennials were so easily steered towards reactionary politics. They longed for the same sense of community, and for an enemy to fight in order to feel even slightly empowered, but couldn't easily identify one.)
As heroic as it is that zoomers are able fight for an uncertain future without falling into cynicism, I know how easy it is to fall apart and/or in line eventually. Children and young adults shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of undoing centuries worth of damage to society, the economy, and the planet. I'm not going to do what my parents and their parents did and leave it to future generations to pick up the pieces of everything mine broke or couldn't fix.
>sincerity
Same.
I'm a zoomer. I think milenials where born during the worst time. It was right before computers and globalization really took off and america was uncontested on the world stage. you guys did have it amazing. to amazing in fact. Yall weren't prepared for any of these things hitting because most people didn't realize how big these changes would be. So yall went to college got whatever degree for whatever tuition and then bam your left with quartermillion dollar degree in liberal studies and little to no marketable job skills. So while I don't blame you I don't blame your parents generation either. People are short sited and stupid. How would they know that computers would make most desk jobs obsolete and that globalization would kill domestic manufacturing almost completely. Zoomers and their parents know what their dealing with and while there still is the problem of people going to 50k a semester school to become a English teacher it is getting somewhat better as most people have wisened up.
So basically what you're saying is, us millennials are Batman?
@Lex Bright Raven OK I'm saying that you shouldn't go to a school that charges 50k a year to be a English teacher. If you can't get into a public school or get a scholarship that makes private school the same cost you should not go to college.
As one of the youngest Gen Xers, I really get this. 15 years ago I got a graduate degree, and while it didn't help me do as well as my boomer parents, aunts, and uncles, and I definitely needed lots of help with student loans from them, that degree helped me acquire a career that I like. A career where I get to use skills I acquired because I wanted to, and where I feel appreciated by my coworkers and the other people I work with. I used to feel trapped and angry because I have to work a lot more than I want to, and I can't manage to really save money, and I needed help from boomer relatives well into my 30's. But now I'm 42, and I have a house, and I have a couple kids I can afford to provide for, and when I turned 40 I was even able to start an IRA so maybe I can retire some day and not have to work until I'm dead. But last year on whim I looked up what tuition is at my graduate school alma mater, and HOLY FUCKING SHIT. I'm not making much more than I did when I first got out of graduate school, but had I wracked up THAT much debt, I'd have been fucked. I would not have a house. I would not be able to afford kids. I sure as fuck wouldn't have started an IRA. I don't know what to tell my kids. I won't be able to help them like my boomer relatives helped me. And I can't even advise them on what career path to take because so many of the paths that worked out for my generation are now closed down. I find myself in middle age being increasingly radicalized toward the Left because I see what is happening to the younger generation, and I'm scared shitless about where this is going to lead if we don't do something about it collectively now.
This….makes my life make a lot more sense. I end up playing video games with a lot of Gen z and I get their memes and struggles and shit and they treat me with respect, but not like the average adult.
I’m 42. And a mom.
I had to drop out of school, never finished my degree, and am a single mom. Many of my peer group got at least some time as the good old 2 income house, finished college, and had that head start. I’m a neurodivergent single mom. Rip.
I was born in '80, and while I sometimes feel guilty for not having kids, I'm glad I don't have to explain how to them how utterly screwed they are.
My "radicalization" has me teetering on the edge of working toward a workers communist revolution -- the (D) in office is worlds better than the (R) alternative, but incrementalism may not be enough to save Gen Z / Gen Alpha, my nieces and nephews.
As a 20yo high school dropout that just lost their job, I read this with bitter jealousy in my heart and tears in my eyes. I am very happy for you, and I'm glad you got all of this, and I wish you the best in helping your children. I love you and stay safe, please, for their sake.
I'm nearing 40 and have none of that. Good job for two years that gave me a 401k, but that disappeared, too. Now jobless, wondering what will be the next step in a world that's just tilting on its side constantly and trying to find a foothold to get some health insurance. Our country is so fucked up.
You're right, I don't believe in the future. It's why we embrace sincerity. Because like, fuck it, I'm not making it to 30, I may as well live life as me. The world is burning for profit and nobody who could change it gives a fuck. I feel like it's at best even odds whether I live for another 5 years.
I'm reminded of Russian literature.
@@stoontechguy Oh?
I feel you
@@stoontechguy Which one may I ask?
@@stoontechguy If you ever tell it please also tell a place to pirate such books, I don't have money.
It’s hilarious looking at Boomers-Millennials talk about going back to “better times” as a Zoomer
Like what better times? The Great Recession? 9/11? Will I miss the global pandemic in 10 years?
They mean the 90s, usually. If not, they mean the period of time where they weren't paying enough attention to know how bad it was.
@@ZodiacEntertainment2 lol, hard to see how good 90s is when you born in a country that goes through economy crash and massive riot across the country on 98 that razing near half of big cities while brain dead rioters kill, burn, and rape minorities due to vague conspiracy theories.
@@mrdoormat6809 jeez
When I imagine going back to a good time, I imagine going back to the '80s. That's when computers were actually a thing, and people didn't know how good they had it, so my future wisdom could actually give me a strong hand up and I could ride the wave until I grow old and die watching the rest of the world fall apart under me.
They mean America circa 1991-1999. It was the peak of the post-Cold War neo-liberal system. It lasted a few short years and it wasn't actually *good* because it set us up for every failure since. Another era similar to this was roughly 1948-1962 which was America's Mid-Century high point. Once again if you were living anywhere like the Soviet Union, The Balkans etc. then this doesn't apply.
In defense of Gen X, we were born during the baby crunch. We are a smaller voting block. We were out numbered and out gunned by Baby Boomers in their prime.
I personally saw some of this coming. And while I was ahead of the curve, I get the impression some of us knew something was coming.
I now see a lot of my fellow Gen-ers getting sucked into Boomer beliefs and I made a realization. Gen X isn't a lost generation, we are a generation held hostage and we are getting Stockholm
Yes I remember the Gen-Xer plight quite well and I don't like using these vague "generational generalisms" without making the effort to understand the situation in an empathetic way. Gen X were probably the most politically disenfranchised of the groups. They literally lived through Fisher's "Capitalist Realism" stage, where most large scale political questions were considered utterly finished with. Your concerns weren't even considered bad or ignorant; they were barely even understood, even by those experiencing it. Overall, Gen X were considered dull-witted and incoherent, millennials neurotic and loathsome, Gen Z goofy and twisted. We've all suffered and nobody's had a free ride.
As a fellow Gen Xer, right on the head. It's like we knew the 90;s were shit. It was all a veneer. The youth controlled nothing. Boomers owned the world, and we just lived in it.
@@TheGameCraftDragon I know my goal in life has mostly been to get enough wealth together to make it through the storm the "Me Generation" is bringing on.
I personally was banking on the dystopia being a capitalist Great automation in which either you owned the robots, oversaw the robots, or were brutally poor. A fascist 1984 brought on by stupid people is so fitting for the Boomers though. It is only fitting they use hand me down dystopias from their parents instead of coming up with their own and can only come about about because they were too self absorbed to notice.
@@tcironbear21 Poetic. This is the kind of gallows humor I need in life
Gen X isn't a lost generation, it's a generation stolen and divided.
Even though I’m a younger millennial, a teen in the ‘00s, this video still perfectly sums up how I often feel about the ‘90s. In many ways it’s even more potent than what you say, because there’s also the inevitable “everything was fine when I was 5 years old” type of nostalgia that happens about ANY generation, let alone one coinciding with, as you put it, the only decade without some big ideological war. Thank you so much for this.
And then I read comments for hours and then refreshed the video and watched it another two times. Hot damn
To me, this video feels like listening to my older cousins and people I look up to talk through their shit and I'm enraptured. Littering comments everywhere!
Oh, also: Trans rights are human rights ✊
I was 4 and a half when 9/11 happened, so I don’t even have the “everything was fine at 5” nostalgia you speak of lol
@@marcusosborne6123 I was 20 when 9/11 happened, and it was night and day. The thing about the '90s was the total optimism. Communism had fallen, the world would be at peace, no war, no poverty, and the world wide web would unite us all and usher in an age of love and brotherhood. Then: infinite war and Parler.
You nailed it, you effing nailed it.
this is how it happened for me.
"This doesn't work
this hasn't worked for many years
Things stay terrible so long,
you almost miss when they were merely bad."
That sums up everything!
Hello. Am later-millenial. Parents are earlier-Gen X.
"Sold out" isn't the exact word but it might as well be. It's more that they believed in things for a while. Saw how it was getting them nowhere and shit kept not changing. So they _gave up and had babies._
Mind you, my parents are a rare breed that is _honest_ with their kids. I feel most older people try to put on this façade of being "perfect" and never having been young or believing things or being different in the past.
Excellent point.
I'm one of the lucky few whose parents never stopped believing in things, at least not totally. My parents are still more accepting of the world as is than I am, but they still believe we can do better.
My mother will tell anyone who asks that we need communism.
She didn't mention it until like 2 years ago when I thought I had to tell her that I think capitalism is bad and she just said:"yes, we need a change of our economical system to free people from their shackles".
Tfw your mom was always woke but you never knew.
Late middle millennial(90) to boomer parents, got lucky to some extent, on one hand with an environmentally conscious botanist for a mother and a left of center(global, not us-american) us-american father who seems to have been angry at the world for most of his life, def all of mine. Down side dad's only control on his anger was no physical violence and my mom is a post-war germany mess of a person. Also baveria not great for foreign kids in the 90s, or kids at all. Try planning for your future at 10, cause you need good grades in 4th grade or getting into university is a lot more annoying.
I'm early gen x (graduated HS in'87) and "believed for a while... gave up and had babies" is not an inaccurate description of how I feel. Not at the time but certainly in hindsight.
"young people don't feel trapped by the future, because nobody believes in the future anymore"
My 12 year old sister has talked before about how she doesn't want to bring a child (the conversation happened because my grandparents were joking about future grandchildren and stuff) into the world because of how it is.
Seriously as gen Z and and only child, this family will probably end with me. Only if my future partner is desperate for a child will I raise one.
As a Gen Xer, I often think about the generations coming after you. What about the kids born in 2050? They're going to be a facing a much different world. I feel like the next few decades will suck, but after that things will either get better or we will have a total collapse of civilization. Maybe 2394 will be nice.
Your sister is wise beyond her years. I could never fathom bringing a life that I loved into this world on purpose. Climate change alone.... Like, that's GOING to happen. It's already started. So I'm never having kids. I'm happy to be the very coolest survivalist aunt instead. 😎
@r3z3nd3 OMG, I actually have a copy of "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race." I don't think I've ever come across another person who has even heard of that book. It's perhaps the most bleak and depressing book I've ever read, yet it's oddly soothing. I read about half of it and got bogged down, because the dense philosophical argot was hard to get through. Did you read the whole thing?
Hell, I'm 25 and I struggle with having hope for my own fucking future. I just moved into my own apartment for the first time this weekend, and I'm excited to have finally taken that leap. I want to be able to enjoy the autonomy, independence, and flexibility being on my own provides. But the world is scary as fuck right now, and I'm not sure in another 25 or 30 years any hypothetical child I raise is going to have it much better. The world is going to have to stabilize and get a hell of a lot better before I consider bringing another life into it.
If we had a glimpse of our map before it caught fire... What must Gen Z be feeling to have the ashes of theirs poured into their hands and instructed to "go find it".
We'll plan A is to go to college to avoid the existential dread of having to work full time. And plan B is to sell drugs.
"Old World Blues refers to a person, who is so stuck in their past, they cannot see the present, much less the future."
-A literal brai-in-a-jar
Hey, New Vegas. Such good shit
I find hope in the line for the good ending "In the times following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, however, Old World Blues took on a new meaning. Where once it was viewed as a form of sadness, nostalgia, it became an expression describing the potential for the future. The was Old World Blues and New World Hope"
As a Zoomer who’s finishing up highschool through the pandemic and was born right after 9/11, 2008-2014 probably feels like to me like what the 90s feels like to Millennials. I was much younger in that time period and didn’t know about most of the evil that took place on this planet. Likewise, 2015 onwards probably feels like what the post-9/11 era feels like to Millennials. The feeling of living in a society that is on the brink of collapse and a society that fails its citizens in many ways. 2020 for us Zoomers is probably the equivalent of what 2008 was to Millennials: a horrific economic crisis during an important election year, only this time, with the bonus of a pandemic that has forced us all indoors for a year and has killed millions across the world.
I'm starting highschool through the pandemic, what's a normal start of highschool like?
never related to a comment harder
@@somebodylikesbacon1960 For me it was just kinda more of middle school but in a bigger building with more specialty classes and groups because they had the student body to support them. You aren't missing too much and what you are you've got 3 years to do anyways. Don't worry about it.
Nah dont worry ur society is not on the brink of collapse, not even close, the only way for societies to collapse is if all the elites are dead, their culture long gone and the populace under them dies by around 80-90% of total population
I'm from Poland and I feel pretty similar. Before circa 2013 most things for me are blurry memories of 2000's culture and my childhood partly shaped by Poland being a fresh member of the EU. In my mid-teens I started caring about politics and saw the refugee crisis, the Trump's presidency, the Global Warming and how my country's democracy started steadily devolving and inexorably turning into authoritarianism. And then the pandemic hit and messed up my college life.
As an elder millennial, I'm upset at how laser-targeted that "be in a ska band or make adventure games at lucas arts" comment is.
The collection of complete-in-box Lucasarts adventure games on my shelf and trumpet in my closet that I played a ton of ska on in HS/College means this video hits pretty home for me as well.
Like No Doubt’s early days!
It just struck home for me that Biden's whole appeal is "Make America Okay Again"... wow
As a zoomer it's depressing how my entire life I just get to see the nation I live in fall from grace, when I wasn't even born before the begging of that fall to see it.
Yeah it was always settle for Biden, not get excited for him
@@hollowhoagie6441 I'd say america never really had any grace to fall from, tbh.
@@samumohacsi This is something I haven't seen a video on yet, but I'm sure it exists somewhere.
Millenials in the US were the first generation, the *first*, to actually be taught about many of the horrific things the US did throughout its entire history. If only in a sanitized form in most cases (Also depending on where you live, actually taught correctly that the Civil War was about slavery).
Then came the internet. And we all discovered, roughly at once, that every single good thing and heroic figure from our national past is either much more complicated at best, or outright evil at worst.
It broke us psychologically. Maybe on its own, maybe just in concert with everything else. But we were the ones who had that idealized image completely undone after we'd grown up on it.
Gen Z didn't even get that; information has always been so available that they've known from the start how objectively evil the majority of the country's history and actions have been.
There are *reasons* this kind of awareness doesn't crop up, historically. Human beings are not well-equipped to deal with it. Little wonder so many Conservatives are self-obsessed and willfully ignorant of the world outside themselves unto psychosis. The pain of the alternative is shattering.
I mean his whole appeal seemed to be more like "Well he isn't trump"
He wasn't the desired candidate for a lot of people
Wow: an analysis of 90s ideology that doesn't use the phrase "end of history".
What's that phrase from?
Not even to mock it! Witch makes sense really, it is an idea fully less than worth acknowledging.
@@QuikVidGuy A book by Francis Fukuyama of the same name, about how the fall of the USSR proved that neoliberal capitalism is, indeed, the only option.
@@MK.5198 The idea of the end of history is actually quite important to acknowledge. It's important to note that it doesn't mean the literal end of historical events, but that, for Francis Fukuyama, it meant neoliberal capitalism is the end all and be all of economic organisation. Zizek and Mark Fisher, on the other hand, see this phrase as a symbol of the post-cold war lie that ideology is dead. For a lot of people, to quote Fisher's "capitalist realism," "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." This inability to imagine an end to capitalism is ideology, and until we acknowledge and understand ideology, we are doomed to be ensared by it.
@@dunningdunning4711 we can recognize ideology without using it's shitty catchphrases.
Speaking as an early Xer (who loved/loves Daria by the way) I can tell you why we thought the 90s were so great. The 70s were a darn scary time to be a kid. I and my age mates graduated HS shortly after one of the worst recessions to date since the Great Depression. I graduated college into a stock market crash and another recession. When people talk about how great the 90s were, they mean from about 1995 on, and even then, the quote about things going from horrible to merely bad is relevant. I didn't have a scrap of optimism or hope until about 1997, and that didn't last long. Have you ever heard the phrase "No future?" It was a hallmark of late 70s/early 80s punks who even then felt they had, well, no future.
To be honest, I always looked at Daria as a Gen X artifact, even though the characters were technically early millennials by age.
Your analysis of Daria is spot on. I don't see how anyone could see her as a person who didn't care.
I’m a late Xer, and I remember in primary school (80s) we were still living the nuclear war fears.
My high school German teacher brought in a piece of the newly demolished Berlin wall… there were moments of optimism.
The quote that resonated with me was that in the 90s we didn’t know how good we had it. We genuinely thought things would get better, because they’d started to…
Looking back as a millennial who graduated in `04, I feel like we were being trained and educated for a world that no longer existed after we graduated.
I feel the same way was a an older gen z even though I just graduated last year
To make you feel old I would like you to know I was born the year you graduated
@@brown-eyedcheese5440 Eh, I have walkers older than you, sonny! Now, if you will excuse me, imma go hop on that AOL after hanging up my phone so I can yell at a 64x64 pixel jpeg of a cloud.
That world was demolished by neoliberalism, when the public went from citizens to consumers, and shipping manufacturing to the 3rd world, just so some executives that can bribe political parties could create bigger fake numbers in the hands of these executives while failing to plan more than one quarter in advance while the Earth gets ready to burn us all alive.
I was a few years before you in 1999 and it was much the same then too. The worse part is people criticizing us for not making smarter decisions, like going to a trade school, and being stuck with college debts when everything told to us by people we trusted to have our best interests in mind (teachers, parents, councilors) all were telling us that going to college was the best shot we had to have our best chance in life.
Honestly, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was a period piece for the early 90s that came out in 2004. It's only now that I can appreciate how unusual that is.
Imagine a 2009 period piece. LOL
@@pizzatime2001 I mean. tiktok teens *are* big into that eras fashion
Rockstar always likes setting they're games in period pieces. Gta 1 and 2 60s london, gta vice city 80s miami, gta san andreas 90s los Angeles riots, red dead redemption 1911 old west, la noire 40s post war los Angeles.
@@pizzatime2001 saints row 2 bruh
From an elder Millennial to younger Millennials and Zoomers: I got you. Let's set things up better for our kids and grandkids than they were set up for us. We both grew up online, which broke down generational barriers. We have a historic opportunity to be the first pair of generational demographics in North America that don't shit on those weaker and younger and poorer than us.
Millennials: nothing in life matters 🌧️
Gen Z: ✨NOTHING ✨ IN ✨ LIFE ✨ MATTERS ✨
Millennials: Do you think things will ever get better?
Gen Z: No. *TikTok dance*
@@ragalyiakos Gen Z: No, **club penguin dance**
[Blasts the '80s remix' of Numb at full volume]
@@ragalyiakos Big Sarah Scribbles vibe
😂😂😂 amazing hit the nail on the head
I told my mom this week about when I changed, explaining Iran Contra and the AIDS crisis and Newt Gingrich. And how nothing was done. Everyone basically got away with it. While we were ridiculed.
Newt Gingrich is #1 on my "go back in time and kill as a baby" list.
yes, #1.
@@justincenter4061 oh boy! Ahead of hitl...Reagan? Wow!
@@FireDarkness39 Ahead of Stalin, Mao Zedong, Woodrow Wilson AND Leopold of Belgium too!?
@@vistagreat9994 yeah. Death to neoliberalism.
@@FireDarkness39 and Imperialism and Maoism and Stalinism and Expansionism?
Death to Isms?
Y2K Zoomer here and something odd I've noticed is that for people around my age, we have a sort of nostalgia-by-osmosis for the 90s as well. We weren't alive for it, but between the fact that most people feel it was the last time everything wasn't awful, and the fact that millennials are the only living older generation most of us have any real respect for, we have more familiarity with and nostalgia for 90s culture than would really be expected.
I grew up in the '90s and I loved it. It's hard to convey just how optimistic things were at the time. We really believed that with the fall of communism there would be an end to war, to poverty, and the world wide web was going to connect strangers from around the world and usher in a new era of brotherhood, love, and understanding. 20 years later: viking dude standing at the podium of the Senate.
@@tomtimelord7876this is funny given the USA has been destroying countries to end communism and socialism and what we ended up with?? REFUGEES FLEEING THOSE DESTROYED COUNTRIES.
THE END OF POVERTY?!?! 🤣CAPITALISM REQUIRES POVERTY. It’s not a bug, it’s an INTENDED FEATURE of capitalism.
This was all brought to us by the NEVER TRICKLES DOWN, Greed is good, Reagan Revolution that turned the largest wealthiest middle class in history into the Robber Baron’s 2nd Gilded Age IN JUST A BOOMER’S LIFESPAN. In 50 years the top 1% of the USA stole 50 Trillion dollars
and with private equity buying up hospitals and nursing homes they are targeting the Boomer Generation’s 76 TRILLION DOLLARS OF WEALTH meaning Wall Street is going to get most of the boomer wealth in END OF LIFE HEALTHCARE AND ASSISTED LIVING FACILITIES THAT WILL COST $10,000 PER MONTH!!!! Because they know healthcare and even pet care IS THE INDUSTRY TO FINANCIALLY EXTORT AND RAPE the American people.
I was born in 1984 and can tell you that I miss the 90s for being the 90s. I became an adult in the 2000s and loved the responsibilities that came with it. It felt so freeing to be in charge of these responsibilities. I love being an adult as long as it doesn't come with unnecessary, cruel hardship from a system designed by the very few to benefit them. So it's not like I just long for my childhood and early-ish teenage years.
That's a Diane Nguyen quote
"I care so much about so many things"
Sad stuff
Asian Daria!
I love her character and wish we had more like her in media to explore. She was so relatable to me.
Oddly enough, if you tell someone this is the best it will ever be again, they'll probably get more pessimistic.
Yeah, I was thinking that. We look back and think, we should’ve made the most of it, we didn’t know how good we had it, but as he says at the end, we hated it at the time. Going back to tell ourselves that this was the best it could be, and we were that miserable already... honestly I could even see it precipitating some suicides in some cases? I know from a very early age I clung onto the promise of the future as the only thing that kept me going through a lot of stuff. If I’d had foreknowledge about how bad it would get, I don’t know what I would’ve done.
"This is the worst era of my life!"
"The worst era of your life so far!"
@@kaitlyn__L Unfortunately, I know what I would've done, given I've had a history of suicidal tendencies and do still battle with those lingering feelings from time to time...
Well, can you blame them?
Bernie losing the primary after winning the first couple of states was crushing. To zoomers, there had never been a Hope as promising as a Sanders presidency. He built up just enough steam to break hearts.
As that may be, for a lot of older folk on the left found it was highly encouraging. Things have been deteriorating since the early 80s (if not earlier) and to see things starting to swing left a bit, you're giving us some light at the end of the tunnel. Don't give up, keep voting for candidates like Bernie and we'll get there. We're looking forward to something like an AOC presidency. For many people my age (almost mid thirties now), Obama represented that change, but his time in office was a disappointment. Personally, I was more skeptical because I followed policy pretty closely. For some of the Gen Xers, the Bernie run was a real breath of fresh air. Check out Sam Seder (of The Majority Report) talking about it as a Gen Xer sometime. The continued power of the Baby Boomer generation has been extended by their longevity and the size of their generation. Even so, people only live so long and COVID has been accelerating that schedule (my condolences to everyone that has lost someone), so I think things will shift in 4-8 years. Don't give up hope, it's only your first crushing defeat, we've weathered many more and will still be with you when we finally get one.
@@zvxcvxcz thanks for your thoughtful reply!
@@zvxcvxcz AOC 2024!
i literally haven’t stopped thinking about that primary 😀
i think i’m gonna be laying on my deathbed thinking about it lmao
It's such a shame so many people don't want to take the chance to make a place better just because it could be worse, so they stay at the spot, because it was familiar.
An innuendo studios video on Daria!?? I thought we already had Christmas
that "fuck you got mine" line is weird for me as a warehouse labourer... cause my bosses attitude is that, but my coworkers go "shit sucks for you man, your wage has been capped at half of what mine was and your dollar is worth substantially less... sorry kid."
but hey at least I don't have a bunch of debt, that's nice.
Yeah, as an X'er, I've been promoted and then downsized 6 or 7 times since 2000. I'm literally making the exact same wage as I was 20 years ago. Accumulating wealth? Ha. But yeah, scraping to keep ahead of the debt cycle is the new goal.
@@TheGameCraftDragon yea bro I feel that, I kinda just started doing the bare minimum. Fuck em.
It isn't a personal 'fuck you, got mine,' it is one that has been manifested in their voting for representatives that favor consolidation of wealth. The gained their wealthy relatively easily in the post-WWII era when the US was reaping the rewards of victory. They easily got stable, good-paying jobs. What happened next is where they voted to screw you. This is the era of "trickle down" economics, Reaganomics, in which they cut taxes like mad. This allows accelerated accumulation of wealth and on average who had the most wealth when they start this game? The oldest of course. At one time the highest marginal tax rate was over 90%, in 1964 it became 77%, and then 70% in 1965. It was mostly around 70% until 1982, when it was dropped to 50%. It has been between 28 and 40% from 1987 to today (2021). They perpetuate the myth that government is bad and the free market does things better. The idea here is to get governments to stop doing things and hand lucrative contracts to their companies. E.g. this is why they (including DeVoss) try to privatize schools in Michigan. It's not because they actually think they are better, it's a grift to transfer public money to private corporations.
I think this (admittedly lengthy) video (mostly audio) of Sam Seder on The Majority Report does a lot to elucidate the kinds of machinations that lead us to where we are today.
ua-cam.com/video/iSNHI9rpX58/v-deo.html
And it's not necessarily your boss, not everyone in the generation advocated these policies and favored the candidates that supported them. It has been the overall effect of the generation. I'm leaving out a lot of detail for the sake of brevity in this already lengthy post.
Reference for highest marginal tax rates: www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates
Okay, this one almost made me cry a few times because of how close to home it hit. Thank you for really encapsulating a ton of the things I feel. Even as someone who's on that precarious cusp of Millennial and Gen Z (b. 1995), the feelings are still there. A million times, thank you.
Not to make people feel old but seeing that peoples' graduation year was my birth year is a crazy concept. Like, I know time is a thing but seeing it like this really puts time in perspective.
Amazing video! Being a Gen Z kid, I had little to no relation to the 90s and this was an amazing explanation of it.
As somebody a few years younger than the creator, he is absolutely right about how the 90's were; I'd say a combination of 9/11, the War on Terror, and the 2008 Recession that we still haven't really recovered from is what gave us all this nagging sense of hopelessness. But you Zoomers give us hope, and we'll fight like hell for you so that when more Zoomers are available to join the fight, we can fix this hellhole world.
@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 i mean, either way the problem is solved for us.
Seeing them on true crime docos freaks me the fuck out. Like, I was born in 1989, you're too young to be a victim, and you're too young to have done it and now have a life sentence!
@@SeanStrife cringe
"My goal is not to wake up one morning in my 40s with the bitter realization that I wasted half by life in a job that I hate because I was forced to choose a career in my teens"
Seriously, that quote carried me through highschool in the late 00s! And I've kept that in mind all these years. And now I've been unemployed since university and am trying to make my dream of being a successful writer happen all on my own and it sucks, but at least it's better to follow my passion than whatever is happening to the job market right now. I do hope I do actually have a future, but, like every millennial, I don't know if it's ever really going to happen.
Or if it does... it'll happen in our lifetime. We got raw dogged.
Best of luck to you!
Either this show can see in the future or literally nothing fundamentally culturally changed from the 90s until now, even as careers are becoming less and less attainable
@@k.umquat8604 Thank u!
The irony is -- as the video pointed out -- the terrible fate that we were scared of, waking up in our 40s in a dull career, would be an UPGRADE over what a lot of us got.
A decade into a part time job (and I'm extremely lucky -- at least I got a *somewhat fulfilling* part time job), with no advancement opportunities, no way to save money, no way to predict whether I'll even get enough hours for rent next month, being constantly rejected from job apps despite having one of the "good" degrees (STEM!)... god, a soul-sucking desk job sounds so nice right now.
As awful as it was going to be, as cynical as it made us as kids, it was still at least a promise of stability. And it was ripped away from us.
Good luck with your writing! We can use all the writing we can get these days.
I turn 30 this year. I feel like I'm constantly getting it from all sides and the "fuck you got mine" bit really got to me. I have boomers on facebook attacking me for not being able to own a house and I have teens on twitter telling me to get back in the kitchen and be a mom.
I’m Gen Z but I see Twitter stans mock 30 year old’s all the time and say shit that is (borderline) misogyny because they think it’s funny. I find it hilarious that they don’t realize that they will turn 30 too and very quickly.
Suggestion: Run as fast as you can away from Facebook. I *promise you* that you will feel significantly better about almost everything if you just step away for a couple days. Don't delete your account at first if you don't want, but just delete any shortcuts to the app or bookmarks in your browser and keep away from it. Facebook is a deadly cancer upon human society.
How the fuck are Zoomers endorsing traditional patriarchal gender roles? Wouldn't that be anathema to them?
@@Theomite they have somehow gone passed gender liberation and fully circled all the way back around to misogyny
My generational experience as a millennial has been both wondering why so many of my friends and classmates are doing awful, and how any of them are doing so well. It's the worst kind of economic anxiety, where every opportunity is already dry by the time you hear about it.
Yiu're just too right about this. We need more statistics published on the TYPE of jobs that people get nowadays. Are they no benefit, low wage, tempoarsy, contract, non-related to held degree, gig-economy type of jobs? Release the stats! We dont' care about how MANY jobs were created. We need the number AND the TYPE of jobs created.
Snowball effect is real. A few lucky breaks, especially "early on," tend to beget more success later on. The most successful former friends and classmates I know are-- to a person-- the ones who launched well right out of the gate. There are no real comeback success stories in my world unless you're willing to shift the definition of success, and by a lot.
@@chavesa5 As one of those guys who came out of the gate strong, I feel a rather significant amount of guilt over it. I mean, it’s relative, I graduated at the height of the recession, the programming job I had laid me off and it took me nearly a year and moving to a new city to find my feet. But I did find my feet. And so many of my friends did not. And, at some level, I’m aware that the work I do is accelerating the capitalistic divide. Now I use a lot of that money for cheap dopamine by supporting artists and streamers, ‘cause at least in that tiny moment when my silly donation shows up on their screen and it looks like I made another human being smile, the guilt that I’m helping build a world where people don’t matter, is quieted. So the success, while certainly better that not having it, doesn’t fix the underlying ennui.
@@TubeTAG Don't mistake this for a personal attack, but your comment fills me with nothing but antipathy.
Your guilt means nothing. "Poor little rich boy" doesn't fill me with any desire to connect with you unless I were interested in trying to milk you for resources, which you would spot and treat-- correctly -- with disgust.
And that's not your fault. I'm sure you're a good guy who does the best he can within the framework he's got.
Really, I do believe that. Sight unseen. You are not my enemy.
But the problems are systemic and just because you're not a monster doesn't mean you're not part of the problem.
And frankly, "just about a year" is not struggle. I know you weren't positioning it as struggle, but it's still hard to look at it and not remember year four of what was meant to be a stopgap job and suddenly realizing I was living that scene from 12 Years a Slave where Solomon Northrup is singing a hymn at a funeral and coming to terms with this being his life. The system actively punishes those who are not capable of succeeding on the first or second try.
Systemic issues need to get fixed before we'll be able to mend that divide between us.
And I'm sorry, but I don't see it happening within our lifetimes.
Die comfortable and guilty. It's not an exaggeration to say "that's all you can really do."
@@chavesa5 That's fair. Apologies that I made you feel that way. I'll keep that in mind next time and will try to calibrate better, or perhaps better just keep my comment to myself.
The song at the end is The Vestibules - The Grunge Song
Had to Google for a good bit, got a listing that had it as a Weezer song lol
Thanks, this should be on the video description!
Thank youuuu
Haha, I Shazam'd it like a good millenial, it took it a while to find it.
@@Apethantos alas, I watched this video on my phone so I couldn't Shazam.
Thanks a bunch
The credits song is "The Grunge Song" by The Vestibules, for anyone wondering.
The line about the Jobs. Like. I had people mocking me for my major, saying there was no jobs in those fields.
They were right, but there wasn't any in their fields, either. Lol.
I was told that I'd never get a "good job" because I didn't further my education, but then there are people with degrees and a mountain of debt and letters after their names and they work with me in a call centre making the same money 🙄
Can confirm. I've got one of the "good" degrees. It's just as useless as the rest.
Because we zoomers didn't really grow up with a future, hopefully we'll be able to break out of the system and avoid the nostalgia trap, and cause real change in the process.
That is, if we can survive until our 30s.
Here's hoping! Priority number one is just my friends and I making it through the year, priority two is fixing this shit. Trans rights are human rights ✊
Oh god can you imagine being nostalgic for 2020??? I hope we avoid that lol.
Ren Rolo hahahhaa “oh boy I sure do miss feeling existential dread every day knowing that the world I lived in was (literally) burning and there was nothing I could do about it.” That’s assuming we last long enough to look back on this stuff
exactly!!! i srsly can't imagine living past my 20's.. i'm not suicidal or anything i just can't imagine that there's anything out there for me anywhere
@@brown-eyedcheese5440 If neoliberal capitalism survives into the 2050s I guarantee we'll be seeing Hollywood movies desperately trying to whitewash the merciless brutality of the US's pandemic experience the same way 1980s films like _Rambo_ whitewashed that of the Vietnam War.
As a Gen Z member, what you said about nobody believing in the future anymore struck a deep chord with me. Today I actually had a conversation with a Senior that ended up with her saying that neither of us will make it to twenty. Spending a term living with the constant weight of wondering if your best friend will be written off as subhuman at some point does something to you that I can only describe as acceptance.
We’re the generation that recognized that we are going to die because of our parents and grandparents.running the world dry and leaving us to pick up the mess.
We’re just waiting to see if the bombs go off when the clock hits 0.
As a middle millenial born in the early 90s, I totally bought into the road map. Somehow, mine panned out and I got my "dream" job (not really cause no one wants a rockstar trombonist), made good money before the pandemic killed all classical jobs. Even when you make it, you see so many friends that didn't, you see a full 3rd of Americans diving headfirst off the bridge into fascism, you see the neverending wars, the complete farce politicians put up in order to try and convince people that they care about them, that every action they take isn't dictated by their need for ever-increasing power and the corporate dollars lining the pockets of their reelection campaigns. Well you see all that and wonder how everyone isn't just taking to the streets to burn it all down and start over, going to scream at these dunces in office until their ears bleed and they finally understand the damage they've done to billions of people, just going out there to fix shit once and for all.
And then you remember that we collectively can't go out there and fix shit, run for office, because we're broke and one paycheck away from being homeless. It's fucked up, and my older colleagues don't fully understand why we're all so angry.
"The 90s were [...] the only sustained period in 75 years where the US wasn't in a forever war against an infinite and loosely defined enemy."
War on Drugs poking its head in here.
You're not wrong, but it wasn't a literal war in any sense. Sure, you have armed agents of the state shooting people on thin to zero pretext, but there's still a difference between invading foreign countries and violently policing your own communities. Less bombing, obviously, but also fewer people who can be convinced that the Enemy is an existential threat to the American way of life.
@@timothymclean oh! PlayFrame friend.
poor and black people are a very defined enemy in the United States
You're the smartest guy in the room! Have a cookie.
I suppose that the practical difference was that it never positioned itself as a slide into absolute annihilation. The Cold War presented a nuclear threat that would plunge the world into the apocalypse at the mere whim of distant leaders presented to the "West" as unfit for office and unpredictable in their hatred of the "us" in the "West". The War on Terror did much the same, with indiscriminate bombings and destruction wrought by much the same.
The War on Drugs never threatened to consume all of society, never threatened systemic seemingly senseless and wanton destruction: it was always presented as isolated incidents and individuals. That said, it certainly trafficked in that powerful imagery: people here are bring up the African American community but distant drug lords "who don't look like us and are eroding our values and youth" *hint hint nudge nudge*, also used that same doomsday rhetoric. The War on Drugs was forever war expansionism come home to roost, while always presenting itself optimistically.
Nancy Reagan sitting on Mr. T's lap telling kids not to do drugs seemed reasonable, but you wouldn't have the same for George Bush and not becoming Al Qaeda...
When discussing these wars it's important to note the spirit of the times, both the Red Scare and the War on Terror both created a sense intense paranoia that the War on Drugs did too, but it never spilt over into the majority psyche; they're not the same, not quite identical, but they certainly are birds of a feather...
It’s hard not to wish we could go back, in part, to grab the Gen-X teen by the shoulders and shake ‘em, yelling, just like their parents, “What right do you have to be disaffected? You don’t know how good you’ve got it!” But where their parents would say, “It was so much worse in my day,” we’d tell them, “It will never be this good again.”
I get literal chills at that point. Reminds me of Lindsay Ellis describing the feeling she gets when watching Rent
I was thinking more "Reality Bites".
But the thing is, we Gen-X teens, or at least the later Gen-X teens, the ones who were not much older that Daria, knew that while we might have it good *now*, things were not going to be so good by the time we became adults. There was a huge recession in the early 90s, right while I was in college, and I and all my friends KNEW that the "go to college and you're guaranteed a high-paying job" we'd been promised in high school was not going to be the case for us. At all. And it absolutely wasn't. We all ended up working minimum-wage jobs (which even in the 90s didn't offer a living wage, although yes, it was closer to a living wage than now) that had nothing to do with our major. The 21st century recessions have overshadowed the early 90s recession, but we did not at all have it as good as you seem to think we did. Our Boomer parents had it good. We didn't.
My favorite "Millenials Are Killing ____" article was when they accused us of killing MAYONNAISE of all things! Like mad that we prefer mustard and other flavors and connecting that to the end of American culture as we know it 🤦🏾♀️ I often reread it for laughs and to remind myself it was real 🤣😭
true, mayonnaise is disgusting lol
Killing mayonnaise by making aioli on the cheap.
I like the fact we were killing places like Applebee's and Buffalo Wild Wings, myself. It's like "I'm sorry we can't afford to go out to chain restaurants and eat mediocre food, or if we can, we don't have the fucking time to do it because we're doing whatever we can just to survive."
Mayonnaise’s belgian anyways and i make it myself. Tes i kill the mayonnaise industry because homemade is more delicious
I mean Veganism do be more popular with younger generations though
As a GenXer it's been fascinating to watch the transition from the hopeful 80s to the cynical 90s to the sort of tentatively hopeful again 00s to the sincere-but-traumatized 10s. Fascinating in horrific kind of way, but I'm curious where the generation mindset (if such a thing exists) is going next. We're off to a great start! /s
I'm sad that I likely won't live to see the system that caused all these cycles of batshittery broken and something more humane put in its place.
Yeah, I think COVID is gonna be for the Zoomer generation what 9/11 proved to be for my generation: the Millennials, and I was in that age range where I remember just how happy and joyous the 90's were... and then being traumatized by 9/11.
@@SeanStrife that was trump, at least for me.
@@SeanStrife Yeah, that's what I meant by 'great start', covid/trump is going to leave lasting scars just like the 2008 recession, 9/11, etc, all tectonic shifts that dramatically reshaped worldviews.
2020s is going to be Clown Core.
@@SeanStrife Covid was only the stage. An empty vacuum as well as a heavy, sobre atmosphere.
On the stage bursted out many of the hidden, ugly truths of decades past that were never allowed to be solved, and they're all one. More people now that ever can see how _"anthropogenic"_ climate change is inseparable from the laws of white supremacism, particularly the decades of propaganda that stalled and ridiculed environmentalists, vegans, "waiting until the Science comes in" of the topic of carbon pollution intrinsic to economic activity.
See I was born in ‘95. I was literally 4 years old when the year 2000 rolled in. The 90s might as well be considered a mythic lost period because that’s what it sort of feels like for me, even if I live during those twilight years as a infant/toddler and live during the last years of quite before 9/11. My child life was throw into the weird world that was resulted from the rise of far-right conspiracy and religious fundamentalism and the War on Terror and the eventual Great Recession and the decaying politics of the moderates. Hell my dad was practically deployed during the worse of it.
So, in the end, I really don’t get the appeal to things like the 80s and 90s. The supposed better world. Because when I look back as an outsider, they all feel just as bad as I had it. I can’t grasp what was this glorious golden past because all my life all I even knew was the cynicism and frustration and for the most part hatefulness of this world that I was raised and continue to live in and look back on how it all began. The Obama years and the eventual train wreck of the Trump years were nothing more then a twisted version of the 90s and 80s respectively trying to regrasp the world. In the end, it felt all so superficial when looking back in history at all the ways the world was already a steaming pile of shit. The imaginary aesthetic the world supposedly had. The fetishizing of the musics, media, and styles. It wasn’t an accurate representation. It was an over glorified version. It’s probably why I have such a hateful disposition of nostalgia even if it’s my own. All I can see when looking at the safe version of the past constructed in people’s head and in my own is nothing but absolute anger. A “how dare you try to sell me on your bullshit again when all it did was forge the world I had to live in for most of life” kind of thing.
“Why are you celebrating and reminiscing on the “Golden Age of Rome” when Rome is literally falling because of that supposed ‘golden age’” is probably the best way to put how I feel.
It’s probably why I am so infatuated with the future and the present. I don’t see any glorious past awaiting us. I don’t see any promise in returning to how things were or the promises of past beliefs and ideologies saying they will get it right and have the better world they promised. There time is already over. All I can hope for is when a better possible world will come and hope to find a way to bring it.
holy shit. this hit harder than I was emotionally prepared for.
Same
yup. was not prepared.
I was like oh this will be a chill video because I woke up too early for school... and now it’s existential crisis mode
As a Gen Xer that was born in the tail end of the defined time, I've always related more to Millennials than either earlier Gen Xers or, laughably, Boomers. Though you described Gen Xers as what I've usually classified Boomers, I can't help but see the evidence that demonstrates the accuracy of your statement. I've always seen the thing that defined my generation as cynicism, and the thing that defined Millennials as despair, but I have come to realize that there is a Venn diagram of tremendous crossover between the two generations I've talked about and the things that defined them.
Ian, every time I watch one of your videos, I think "why is this guy the most articulate, intelligent, and creative essayist on the internet." You so concisely capture the disenfranchisement of a generation and the nature of the incoming one that I'm starting to think that you're some sort of savant. You seem like the kind of person with whom I could have a real conversation about the world. Seriously, keep up the good work!
Feels more like we're living in one long episode of Sick Sad World
This comment is everything
I was born in the early 2000s making me a zoomer. The 90s stereotypes of Anglo-American life have been continually shattered in my mind as I've grown up. In fact, I'd say most of them shattered for me in just one very unusual week in march of 2020, where in the span of just one week, my school experience an active shooter threat (nobody got hurt), and then half my friends went into isolation on the same day due to a positive COVID case and then the school shut down, and it was announced that grades were frozen so summer was essentially three months longer, but you could barely hang out with your friends. It was also the week that Super Tuesday happened in the USA, which was an incredible shock that literally left me in tears seeing Biden's victory on that day. It was one of the most eventful weeks of my life, one of those weeks where decades happen.
That one week of March was the beginning of a new era, the 2020s and imo the cut off date for Zoomer vs the Post-covid generation. If you can't remember that week, you are not a Zoomer.
That week I realized was the week where I in fact would not be able to get a high school job to fund university. I wouldn't get a stable High school experience as Millennials and Gen Xers got. I wouldn't be able to move out of my parent's place until well into my 20s due to the global depression. I wouldn't get to see the progressive democrats take power and set up a better future.
Gen X here, that whole trama-bonded analogy hit me hard. "Oh no, this isn't working. This hasn't been working for many many years." This whole video hurt my heart.
Yea I literally started crying a bit at that part
@@samseymour7004 Same
As a person born in 2000, who’s never watched this show, this hit hard.
lil older but, saame haa lmaooo 🤑🤮🤮🤟 _god._
...
_and if you haven't heard of happyroadkill yet..._
me as well
"It will never be this good again." I'm shook, crying, and a late millennial here watching my kids play with blocks on the floor, knowing full well you are right.
I was shown Daria by my mom who watched it when it came out. I was in middle school at the time she showed me and I found the show both an incredibly funny product of its time, and way too relatable to be from the 90s.
I watched Daria as an adult when it came out and loved it so much I bought the whole series. One of the strengths of the series is that it really is more universal than it first appears: a lot of what Daria goes through and how she handles it seems pretty familiar as a male high schooler from the early 1980s.
This is easily the best CO-VID you've uploaded yet, Ian. It's emotionally charged, but pragmatic. It's well written, well paced, illustrated wonderfully, and SO well delivered. You're speaking from lived experience, and it shows. Keep up the incredible work, my guy.