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I've had a couple Gen X'er friends tell me the generation is collectively stuck in the past. Are there any plausible theories why that might be? Was it a lack o

I've had a couple Gen X'er friends tell me the generation is collectively stuck in the past. Are there any plausible theories why that might be? Was it a lack of meaning in the general narrative that made growing old too painful for many to face or something?

p_j_w 5y ago
>I've had a couple Gen X'er friends tell me the generation is collectively stuck in the past. Are there any plausible theories why that might be? Isn't this true of most generations? It seems like a pretty universal human attribute from what I can tell, at least to some degree. Is the idea that it's a stronger pull in Gen X?
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  I've never heard anyone who's not an X'er describe themselves that way. I don't think Zoomers really could be stuck in the past, given that they don't have much depth of memory yet (and the rapidity with which trends shift in that community). My own generation, the millennials, do remember the '90s, but we tend to remember them as a rather weird and embarassing, if simpler, time. I'd characterise us as pessimistically forward-looking, maybe that's a function of my friends group though. Which leaves the Boomers, and while there's certainly a lot of nostalgia in that community, I've known more that were looking forward to their retirement than would go on about the good old days. But of course, this is all anecdotal.
StevePerkins 5y ago
It could be that our pop culture has been frozen in time as "THE pop culture" for 50 years now. Rehashed, rebooted, remade, and reimagined over and over again to become your pop culture too. How am I supposed to NOT feel "stuck in the past", when the The Matrix is coming out next month? When there's a bunch of Star Wars and Star Trek and Indiana Jones (!) next year. We're on our third or fourth Spiderman franchise, and every other teenager that I walk past is wearing an Iron Maiden or Metallica t-shirt? The most exciting new video game on the horizon is Knights of the Old Republic. Geeze, Tom Brady is the defending Super Bowl MVP! Sure, somehow I went from "liberal" to "bigot" without actually changing my social views, and somehow we determined that comic book movies never exist before Robert Downey Jr. But otherwise, I look around... and this really DOESN'T look all that different from the 90's, you know?
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > Rehashed, rebooted, remade, and reimagined over and over again to become your pop culture too. On the plus side at least we got '90s rock instead of '80s hair bands. (Though I find U2's 1980s music better than their 1990s stuff.)

p_j_w 5y ago

>I've had a couple Gen X'er friends tell me the generation is collectively stuck in the past. Are there any plausible theories why that might be? Isn't this true of most generations? It seems like a pretty universal human attribute from what I can tell, at least to some degree. Is the idea that it's a stronger pull in Gen X?

SuoDuanDao 5y ago
I've never heard anyone who's not an X'er describe themselves that way. I don't think Zoomers really could be stuck in the past, given that they don't have much depth of memory yet (and the rapidity with which trends shift in that community). My own generation, the millennials, do remember the '90s, but we tend to remember them as a rather weird and embarassing, if simpler, time. I'd characterise us as pessimistically forward-looking, maybe that's a function of my friends group though. Which leaves the Boomers, and while there's certainly a lot of nostalgia in that community, I've known more that were looking forward to their retirement than would go on about the good old days. But of course, this is all anecdotal.

StevePerkins 5y ago

It could be that our pop culture has been frozen in time as "THE pop culture" for 50 years now. Rehashed, rebooted, remade, and reimagined over and over again to become your pop culture too. How am I supposed to NOT feel "stuck in the past", when the The Matrix is coming out next month? When there's a bunch of Star Wars and Star Trek and Indiana Jones (!) next year. We're on our third or fourth Spiderman franchise, and every other teenager that I walk past is wearing an Iron Maiden or Metallica t-shirt? The most exciting new video game on the horizon is Knights of the Old Republic. Geeze, Tom Brady is the defending Super Bowl MVP! Sure, somehow I went from "liberal" to "bigot" without actually changing my social views, and somehow we determined that comic book movies never exist before Robert Downey Jr. But otherwise, I look around... and this really DOESN'T look all that different from the 90's, you know?

throw0101a 5y ago
> Rehashed, rebooted, remade, and reimagined over and over again to become your pop culture too. On the plus side at least we got '90s rock instead of '80s hair bands. (Though I find U2's 1980s music better than their 1990s stuff.)