Since the baby boom ended in 1964, there are still a substantial number of boomers under 50.
17 > 3. Substantial is not the word I’d use. Plus, in the “Generations” theory, the boom ended in 1960, which would put all of them over 50.
I think it’s a safe generalization to make in 2011 that all boomers are over 50.
It wouldn’t have been anything without the boomers.
Summer of Love: 1967
Woodstock: 1969
Well, no one gave the world weed, but we made it part of our culture.
Well, they raised you and seem to have failed miserably at it. One man’s mother is another’s monster.
I was going by the traditional definition of born in 1946 through 1964, in which case there will be boomers turning fifty in 2014 - in fact, several million of them. But it’s okay if you’re using a different definition.
Isn’t the Silent Generation people who were kids and teenagers in the World War II? In other words, people born before the baby boom, but too young to fight in WWII? That’s a pretty coherent definition.
I don’t want to condemn an entire generation, because you can’t do that, but I have noticed a kind of smugness in my parent’s generation; a kind of self-righteousness, almost; a “we marched in the streets for our rights and what are you doing?” sort of thing, along with what seems to be a definite level of moral certainty and an increased, I don’t know, self-centeredness? Somebody posted in a thread not too long ago, I’d have to look for it, about Rolling Stone’s top hundred songs of all time, and there were only a very few…less than ten, I think, listed from after 1980, and most of them were from the 60s.
Maybe this isn’t a specific indictment of the generation; maybe it’s a standard generational thing. It could be that all parents, throughout time, despair of what they see as the lackadaisical nature of their children’s generation, and all children resent the parental control of the culture, and that that’s a universal thing. But it just seems, from my perspective as someone in his thirties, that culture and the media are still dominated by the boomers, and that my generation seems to get overshadowed by the interests and concerns of people over 50.
Right.
Just ask the younger members of the cohort who graduated into the stagflation era of the late 1970s, or the recession of the early 80s. It really wasn’t any better than what some of you got.
That’s how I parsed it at first, but he must mean the boomers’ parents and own kids. But that just goes to demonstrate how he misses the point. If boomers suck, then their parents are decidedly not all right; if they hadn’t been so prolific there wouldn’t have been the boomer media phenomenon in the first place.
I don’t like to brand any entire generation or population one way or the other because it’s prejudicial. But a lot of what doesn’t work so great in our lives today is the result of collective decisions made on our parents’ watch (and probably every prior generation as well back to Colonial days).
I don’t know. I’ve seen it defined different ways. Wikipedia said 1925-1945. So Depression Era kids maybe. But I don’t see much commonality between the generation growing up in the Depression, and the ones growing up during WWII and the rest of the 40’s. The guys getting the shit shot out of them at Normandy were born in the early to mid 20’s. The guys who signed up the day after Pearl Harbor were already back from their tours. The guys who went to Korea were born late 20’s and early 30’s so really grew up in the War years instead of the Depression.
And I don’t think Baby Boomers have that great a definition. The late 40’s babies formed the 60’s counter culture. I was born in 56, and hit adulthood in the 70’s with counter culture 2.0 already being rolled out. The guys from the 60’s took off their jeans and put on suits as soon as the war was over so they could suck the economy dry in the greed era of the 80’s.
So I think major events like wars distinquish generations in some way, but it’s not some kind of abrupt change.
Interestingly, in another thread, there’s a discussion of entitlement. I said there that the boomers were the first entitlement generation, while some said they felt no sense of entitlement. Maybe entitlement means something different now because of current politics. I was talking about being entitled to vote, to express yourself, to make choices, to have equality. These things were often desired in the past, but there ‘practical’ reasons preached, and accepted, for why those actual entitlements weren’t fulfilled. I don’t think it had anything to do with jobs and money and government benefits. And I think we picked it up from our parents who felt some kind of entitlement to the American Dream because they had suffered through the Depression and sacrificed for WWII.
Mostly though, I want to slap these youngsters silly who think so much of themselves because of all they’ve been given. I know them, I work with them, they’ve worked for me, and I raised a couple of them. They think there’s an app for everything. And if not, they give up. They think reality TV is realistic, and entertaining.
Now let’s not use too broad a brush either. My generation was selfish, shallow, and two-faced. For the most part they didn’t fight to end the war in Vietnam on principle. They didn’t want to get drafted, and the chicks at war protests would put out. Then they start acquiring things and acting as politically conservative as our stupid parents. They had kids and decided drugs were bad after all and became the inquisitors themselves. But in all generations the great accomplishments come from only a few. And the majority at the time doesn’t necessarily represent the legacy.
No generation is really comparable to the next in recent history because of the great changes that affect our lives. But you tell my generation to fuck off, and you’ve got a fight on your hands. We aren’t that old yet, and we aren’t soft.
Not entirely. A few of us have been lucky enough to have one of you nice young ladies or gentlemen let us use your computer, after patiently teaching us how to log on and access the internet.
I agree with this. 1940 - 1960 seems socially and culturally more accurate. A starting date of 1946 is too late, because it leaves out most or all of the seminal musicians associated with that generation.
Well, not quite. He’s not allowed to troll, but keep in mind, “trolling” doesn’t mean, “He posted something that made me angry.” This is the Pit. The whole point of this place is to post things that make other posters angry. The OP isn’t trolling, he’s just saying something you don’t like. Get over it.
Secondly, yes, you can say “Fuck you,” to a general group, and not run afoul of the rules, even if members of the group may be posters here. You can, for example, say, “Fuck you, Republicans,” or “Fuck you, people who watch reality TV,” or what have you. You cannot say the same thing back to a specific poster, even if you’re a part of the maligned group.
Lastly, if you think someone has broken a rule, that doesn’t give you license to break it, as well. Don’t respond to the post, report it and let the mods deal with it. Not that that would have done you much good in this particular case, because as noted above, the OP is not in violation of any board rules.
I’d say that it was the war itself that was the commonality. You’re right that people born in 1925-26 would have been old enough to enlist before the war ended, but only just. You’re talking about 18-20 year olds. But I think the commonality was being a child of war…of knowing that your parents, your older brothers, and so on, are going off to fight in the war, and I think that it was the knowing that, and the fear and uncertainty that that led to, that defined the generation.
Baby Boomers were kids born after the war. Hence the “boom” part of it. Trying to change the definition so that the Boomers can steal credit for musicians born in previous generations is soooooooo typical of the Me-Me-Me Boomers.
This. Marching in the streets didn’t end the war. It only got Nixon elected. Twice. Hell it probably helped get Reagan elected. Why would anyone want to be an activist, when the word has been co-opted by a bunch filthy ragmops too stoned to shave and who still expected to get laid.
Uh, no. The Boomer definition came from the baby boom that happened after the second war was over.
Kids were better educated back then too…
Fuck the ones who helped get us in to two useless wars and fuck the greedy assholes who drove the economy in to the shitter. The rest of you can stay.
Yeah, I know all this, and sorry for the breach. Our long-time pet and companion of the last 19 years is dying and will likely have to be euthanized soon. It’s creating a surprising amount of emotion in me, to the point of feeling depressed. I think I’m tending to lash out on this board out of proportion to the perceived offenses. In my favor, I’ve killed many more than I’ve published. I think I need to just back away from the Pit and the political fora for awhile.
Probably it didn’t. You know who did, though? The Viet Nam vets against the war.
I remember when I first really noticed, we were just doing the thing, marching. Spotted a guy by the side, up ahead of me, fat, bald, belligerent, screaming at us that we were all a bunch of cowards. And then he saw the guy marching in front of me, wearing his campaign hat and the Purple Heart pinning his empty right sleeve to his shirt. Screaming guy opened his mouth to scream again, and then spotted the vet. And it was like he had been punched, his mouth stayed open and he just stared.
I didn’t talk to the vet, didn’t know what to say, was still very uncomfortable as a military brat with my “disloyalty”. But he showed me the way. My participation was a mere firecracker, puny, insignificant. His was a bomb.
Wherever you are, thank you for your service. I’ll never forget you.
I think this pretty much says it. I’ve nothing against Baby Boomers as individuals, but there’s an entire industry devoted to Boomers telling themselves how great they are, and it gets kind of old. Particularly when you consider that, as a generation, they really didn’t do anything noteworthy. Partly, they’re suffering in comparison to their parents generation, who accomplished some truly amazing things, and suffered through genuine hardships. There’s a very strong sense of overcompensation, of this need to measure up to the previous generation, that leads to a grandiose inflation of their own largely mediocre accomplishments.
Not that I’m trying to set my own generation up as superior to that. My own generation should be lucky to have only mediocre accomplishments - great achievements tend to imply great obstacles, and I’d just as soon be a forgettable chapter in history, than have to fight another WWII, or survive another Great Depression. But I’m really, really hoping that we don’t end up bragging to our kids about Lollapalooza as if it’s a historically significant landmark.