It seems like there was a cultural attempt to rebel against the Baby Boomers back then through things like grunge/'alternative' rock, the "slacker" culture, and so on.
But it seemed to fall apart very quickly, and the Baby Boomer cultural monolith that began in the 1960's is in many ways still dominant today.
What went wrong? What happened to Gen-X being the "rebels" as opposed to a bunch of Paul Ryan-style sellout cucks who just want the Boomers to love them and give them money?
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>cultural attempt to rebel against the
Uh, no. It wasn't a rebellion. It was just kids being kids.
>"slacker" culture
Did somebody mention Slack?
Kurt Cobain killed himself, Britney Spears came along... All of a sudden girls were... Kurt killed himself
Alt rock faded away and stuff like auto tune took over
9-11 basically ended the 90s
Also alt culture was replaced with internet culture
>
Numbers and influence.
In the early 90's, the boomers were reaching the heights of institutional and economic power, they all being middle aged by this point and mostly at the most successful points in their lives.
Boomers were also the largest generation, giving them a huge numbers advantage against the younger generations.
Millenials are the only generation since the boomers to approach the same share of the population's total.
It wasn't an attempt at rebellion. Stuff like punk and new wave was the first genuinely post-60s music in spirit (maybe some early electronic disco too). The Boomers dominated the mass culture narrative through the 80s (e.g. TV shows were constantly nostalgic about Woodstock, etc.), but young people mostly weren't interested in the Beatles and Stones and Hendrix anymore at that time. And the grunge thing was totally new altogether later on -- as someone who was a teenager in the 80s I didn't relate to it as much (too mopey, though it had some good tunes).
>Kurt Cobain killed himself
I still don't believe this meme.
It was great music but they were just useful idiot leftists. There wasn't really anything to rebel against anyway. Except for the onset of the shit skin invasion. I went to uni back then and it was a shit skin fest even back then. But gen x were mostly just dullards and no one gave a fuck.
Then nigger music took over and everyone became a nigger and it's been much the same ever since.
Gen x is in their 40's now op.
mind you the 90's was the beginning of rampant Political Correctness on a Global Scale...kinda stifled any angst pretty quick I think.
PC was a kind of a joke in wider society, though. It was almost exclusively a university thing back then. Now the insanity has percolated out to the mainstream.
Jobs became abundant in the 90s. We wanted to make money more than we wanted to rebel.
1984 fag here AMA. Jk please don't.
>90's was the beginning of rampant Political Correctness on a Global Scale
Yup. When fuckheads like Curt started telling me to be inclusive, and playing with gender and shit...
Fuck that.
Subversion happened. I really don't think the internet will last much longer in its current form. It is too dangerous to the globalists now.
There was certainly no such thing as an internet meme in those days...Social Media never existed.
>There was certainly no such thing as an internet meme in those days
There were stupid jokes or one-liners that used to circulate exclusively online though, stuff like "I'm not a doctor but play one on TV" that weren't funny at all.
Nothing to rebel against? The 90s as an era of prosperity was just a meme. Really it was just an era of easy credit and mass usury that anyone with an ounce of intelligence could see as a crash waiting to happen. The only reason it didn't all fall apart until 2008 was because the private sector could sense war was coming and could leverage bad credit real estate loans with guaranteed weapons investments.
I 'member back around '94, this punk rock dude saying to me "Are you on the world wide web? I made a website, you should check it out."
I remember being disgusted, and wondering why that cunt though anybody gave a fuck what he thought about anything.
That was when it started to get all retarded.
The first time I started hearing about "downsizing" and companies imposing new efficiency measures (such as making two people do the job that three people did before) was also in the 90s. The cultural and economic mood in North America started to go sour after around 1990 or so, though nowhere near as bad as today.
If anything grunge was just another rerun of 70s hard rock.
1975 fag here. AMA.
A "meme" is fundamentally just a trend, and there were plenty of cultural trends before the internet. Slap bracelets, for example, were a memetic trend.
Grunge didn't have that bravado and unabashed masculinity, even optimism that 70s rock had. The 90s is when even working-class white men started to doubt themselves.
Yeah jokes with workmates,quoting funny commercials and reading nudie magazines was the equivalent of the internet in the 90's hehehehe
>What went wrong?
Marriage; kids; 401k; hospital bills; life hits fast/hard, and it is very binding.
The geopolitical landscape has changed dramatically since then thanks to internet. How much information they were exposed to unknown because they were on the cusp of being raised with this comm tech.
Media cranked poz up to 11. Quality was already bad and it has only gotten worse.
The reveal of how large the problem is, and how complicated it is, I think is the most disheartening coming-of-age realization that 90's kids with political interests have had time to process. There were a few good riots, things were looking hopeful, and then OWS+2008 elections shit all over those hopes.
I'm old enough to remember "politically correct" being used unironiclly by leftists.
I can remember when feminism was called "women's lib" (that phrase died out in the early 80s).
One thing that has been noted is that Gen-X never made a "successful transition to adulthood" in the way that the Baby Boomers did. The Boomers may have been druggies or hippies in their youths, but they tended to snap back to reality by age 30 or so and join "the working world."
Some Gen-X'ers did that, but a disturbing percentage got permanently mired in drug-abuse, temp "jobs" with no career progression, crime, and now, quite a few are outright dying in their 40's and early-50's.
It wasn't supposed to be this way - there was supposed to be vast technological progress that would accelerate due to the computer revolution.
What went wrong?
It's as simple as this: All youth movements eventually grow up and mature
that punk rock dude has feelings too
I'm 45. A lot of people my age grew up under Boomer parents influenced by the moral and cultural chaos of the 60s. This tended to make them apathetic and cynical to some extent, so they didn't all want a conventional lifestyle.
We didn't used to.
I remember being shocked at his vanity.
I can answer this for you, OP.
All youthful rebellion seems relevant while it's happening. I've been part of many rebellious segments of society - born 1965, first year of Gen X.
First I saw the hippies of the 60's. I even went to early elementary school in bell-bottoms. I didn't hang out with them obviously, they were grown up and I was just a kid. But they certainly seemed to have a nice cultural niche going for themselves.
Then I witnessed hard rock culture in the 70's, pretty much first-hand. I mean I was listening to Kiss albums at age 7, by the end of the 70's I was in high school blasting the Clash out of my boombox.
I was very closely associated with 80's culture, that was pretty much my generation's decade, we were teenagers-to-young-adults, I was in a band, we were certainly rebelling against something, pretty sure it was anything that didn't seem fair at the time.
I was around for the 90's as well, by that time I was working in the radio business, doing a lot of coke, nightclubs, grunge was going to save rock and roll IIRC. Didn't work out that way of course.
Because here's the thing: In your youth, you share a culture with everyone around you. There may be subdivisions within that culture, but everyone is pretty much on the same page overall. All the kids you went to high school and college with, they were all listening to the same music, doing the same drugs, talking about the same issues, rebelling, sure, because there's ALWAYS something for the youth to rebel against.
But then people grow up. People get jobs. People get married, have kids, move away, drift apart. Eventually, whatever "movement" you may have been a part of in your youth has quite simply disappeared, no longer exists in any form.
So you know, yeah, cultural attempts to fuck The Man and so on. But they all add up to the same thing in the end - nothing. All your left with is the music. And this current generation won't even have that, because your music SUCKS lol.
In many ways "increased efficiency" was just Jew-code for lower standards of manufacturing quality. The 90s was the beginning of the end for high grade production in every industry, with the obvious exception of weapons and communications/information tech.
America went downhill many decades before.
Ike warned us.
JFK warned us.
Trump likes Eisenhower. Ike was badass.
>Some Gen-X'ers did that, but a disturbing percentage got permanently mired in drug-abuse, temp "jobs" with no career progression, crime, and now, quite a few are outright dying in their 40's and early-50's.
I'm curious to know the numbers on this, but I wouldn't be surprised if true. Perhaps it is one result of the rebellious vibe mentioned in Op? I'm sure being raised around "fuck it" 24/7 has an impact on many.
Probably other factors too: shitty parent(s), economy, etc.
The cultural "rebellion" operated within the framework set by the Boomers. It's kind of hard to rebel using rock music and weird clothes and hairstyles.
You have to understand it from a broader context.
60's - Boomers rebel cause Vietnam and do drugs. Think they can change the world with hippie philosophy.
70's - Boomers enter young adulthood, try to balance being responsible with their previous hippie shit. Hence disco.
80's - Boomers starting going through midlife crisis, realize they gave up on their hippy dreams. Become cynical. Yuppies and Gen X's get sucked into the cynicism. 80's is era of greed and edginess.
90's - Younger generation becomes cynical towards the over edginess of the 80's. Things become more satirical and apathetic.
00's - Everyone is getting tired of their own shit. Stuff starts sliding towards the middle. Then 9/11 and Iraq/Afghanistan wars happen. Fucks everything up, pushing everyone away again.
10's - Social media fucks up everything.
"Rebellion" has been a marketable commodity since at least the 1950s. But fashion also includes political allegiances that are genuinely destructive of society in the long run (e.g. "Refugees Welcome" bags and t-shirts today).
And you'd be right not to.
Fair enough but I was in my late teens and early 20s then and life was still basically as fair as the 80s. Middle class lives were still affordable and you didn't have too many arseholes parading around being rich from solely speculation and inheritance.
In the late 90s everyone could sense something bad was going to happen. You could cut the air with a knife but they were too moronic to see it was gonna be an invasion. Whitey failed real bad.
The 90s weren't that good really it just gets romanticised because of the music and because of an internet that was perceived as cute and more innocent. When it was actually pretty fucked spending fifty bucks a month on phone calls to dial in for slow ass 56k a second.
>Trump likes Eisenhower. Ike was badass.
Ike was a tool. He only learned how bad he fucked up after being president. Even then in his farewell address, he only spoke out about the military industrial complex and not the people who start the wars in the first place so they can cash in on their investments. Patton was the real badass but they had him killed.
Gen-X "culture" was retarded and deserved to die. I forgot all about the Woodstocks of the 90s
Lol this. It's just not music.
They will have good memories of other stuff I suppose like much better tech.
The term "latch-key kid" explains a part of it.
Gen X raised themselves. No parental guidance. Just Pop Culture and Public School. Recipe for disaster.
Good point. Probably the first gen to have a 50% divorce rate too.
...
>It seems like there was a cultural attempt to rebel against the Baby Boomers back then
Nope. We didn't blame our problems on others.
there was a very good old article on this i'll try to find it.
ever heard the term "co-opted by the mainstream" - it's not a meme - what happened in the 90s was the definition of it.
any time something cool or new comes along - corporations will come along and make money from it. there's no way to rebel because if you do it, the media will pick it up and what you do as being different will become mainstream.
look at "reality bytes" for an example of hollywood mining that slacker culture and making it popular
>Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall. Douglas Rushkoff
still can't find it but found that
>-- as someone who was a teenager in the 80s I didn't relate to it as much
>Liked "punk and new wave."
>80s teen
We used to dump yer head in the toilet.
>Cobain killed himself
Grohl shot first
but can they co-opt offensive meme culture? corporations are really, really afraid of their ad appearing next to a curse word or anything remotely offensive or related to sex
have we found their achilles heel?
>A bunch of my fucking stupid ideas with a question mark on the end.
Kill yourself.
>have we found their achilles heel?
yes. meme on soldier!
I liked older rock (Stones, Who) until about 1986, and only then drifted over to punk because the shiftless druggies who lived on my street would sit on the street drinking beer and blasting the Sex Pistols all day. It seemed to me that the Pistols (or Ramones, Clash etc.) were much more honest musicians than (e.g.) the later Stones or Queen or whatever.
i think the chans will always have the newest and dankest memes, but it's already been filtered through to reddit, twitter, buzzfeed etc.
are a bunch of anons on the internet really this generation's counterculture?
it's this article from 1993
articles.latimes.com
>What's different today is that alternative scenes are being gobbled up almost as fast as they're created. The beats, the hippies and the punks all enjoyed a longer period of blessed outsider status when no one wanted a piece of them. They had the time and space to create, safe from the crushing judgments of Authority. Then, by the time the record companies and advertisers swooped in, there was some essence that couldn't be stolen. These days, thousands of feature spots in magazines, newspapers, radio and television need to be filled every day--with something new. What better source for new than young people? The appropriation of youth culture is now instantaneous. The kids don't have time to distill an indestructible core; all it takes is one reporter somewhere sniffing out a Riot Grrrl or a grunge rocker, and within weeks, the cool little scene is on Arsenio. For the first time ever, the underground itself is in danger of being absorbed completely into the mainstream.
The late 90s was also the time when they'd make it out like you've won the lottery by giving you a job, women were fucking Chads but acting like princesses, the housing boom started and mass immigration, blaming whitey for everything started and boomers acting like their piss easy lives were the same as 30 years in a gulag started.
It's been going on for a lot longer than you guys might think. You just happened to wake up to it fairly recently with Trump. Sure gen xs douche bag reaction was unforgivable, but in spirit and in its patheticness it was almost exactly like the nu male culture you've got today. Just completely and wilfully misguided and degenerate.
They just take the memetic images and "repackage" them in a commercially-friendly manner. Like how "alt-lite" figures use Pepe memes openly, but not the more controversial ones.
The establishment used to be very conservative.
Kids seperated themselves by becoming liberal.
Now that they've grown up, they are the establishment.
Kids are becoming conservative to "rebel" now.
This. Everyone rebels against their parents for a time. Dumbass millennials are just obsessed with blaming boomers for everything.
Or trick you into making it for them.
Honestly OP? Gen X sold out. Money killed the beast of defiance. Thats really all it took.
But outrage and subversion drives a lot of sharing of memes. The more mainstream ones aren't as powerful except for a light chuckle for morons.
...
Even though I trashed the 90s earlier in this thread I do sort of envy you gen-x guys.
>mfw I started working in 2007 and had a brief, tantalizing glimpse of working life before the great crash.
>dial in for slow ass 56k a second.
And that was considered fast for a while.
bleeeeeblopblooobleeeeep shhhhhhhhhhhhh kerchong kerchong
I still use my 1998 Netzero email. It's like a time capsule
>I forgot all about the Woodstocks of the 90s
Those weren't gen xers. That was you faggots. Born in the eighties.
'74 here
I was 20 when Woodstock '94 happened.
This is true. This goes against the media's narrative about millennials, though. The sad part is that millennials believe the bullshit because they actually trust authority.
latimes.com
Back then things wheren't about DOING THIS AND THAT AND REBELLING AND SOCIAL MEDIA AND PROVING POINTS ETC.
It was about just doing things, having fun, being productive, etc. and not everything had some backwards motive because not everything was voyeuristic.
To reiterate:
The SUPREME difference between then and now is that back then not only was it not expected but it was pretty much impossible to imagine the things you did being seen by tens of people let alone thousands or millions.
People did things out of a genuine desire to experience them, not the desire to show other people they did them.
Gen X still hasn't really had their turn to come into political power yet, because Boomers have benefited from longer life-expectancy, and refuse to give up the reins. The fact that our presidential candidates were so old during this last election is a great example of the Boomers clinging on to power as long as possible to benefit themselves.
me. born 1980. Kind of a gen y really. Still most of my cousins were gen x. There was no rebellion. We are the kids who grew up with lots of toys in nice neighborhoods generally. We grew up with John Hughes movies. We weren't trying to fight our parents but just have some fun as kids and try to live the same lives our parents did. A lot of us can't seem to make relationships work and I don't quite know why. But we were kind of the generation that matured in a rapidly changing world I guess. climate change, online etiquette, cell phones, vegans, piercings. A lot of new experiences to learn how to deal with you know. We are trying to be ready to take over when it's time. I have no idea what the fuck your generation does beyond stare at cell phone screens all day. Do something noteworthy like hack into a database or start some meaningful movement beyong dumping a bucket of cold water on yourselves and then talk to us.
No, everything was just as corporate back then as it is now.
Thing is, boy band and girl diva culture was on a hiatus during that era since New Kids on the Block and a few others were having serious legal troubles.
Alt/grunge/whatever just kind of filled the void. It was certainly a nice change of pace from the over coiffed pop pap, but it was stale by the time 98 Degrees and the Disney whores were ready to sweep it off the airwaves. Rock/rap is barely a footnote of the era.
For clapistan, the 90's only looked nice from an economic standpoint. There was massive hollowing out of the manufacturing base via NAFTA, and near destruction of the defense contractor industry via Clinton's looting. It also helped set up the massive financial meltdown in 2008.
They were fed a steady diet of cultural Marxism from birth. As a result they grew to hate themselves which neutralized what little power their small numbers had. In that toxic environment it's amazing that any grew up into functioning adults.
Slacker/grunge was just the manifestation of unease about the future. The old world order had just collapsed and the digital revolution picked up steam, big changes were imminent. Then the 90's turned out pretty good overall so people just went with the flow. When 9/11 happened Gen X was alreay set in it's ways.
They were fucking blazing. Most people started out with 14.4 modems.
I kind of envy you guys for coming of age when things were how they pretty much are now. I think its been a pretty painful mental adjustment for older people.
>What went wrong? What happened to Gen-X being the "rebels" as opposed to a bunch of Paul Ryan-style sellout cucks who just want the Boomers to love them and give them money?
Try microserfs.
zerohedge.com
MiNd the cuRrent situation: We conTrol your expensive connected cars, we control your connecteD house security devices, we control your daughter laptop, we control your wife's mobile, we tape YoUR seCret meetings, we reAD your emaiLs, we control your faVoriTe eScort girl smartWatch, we ARe inside your beLoved banks and we Are reading YoUr assets
You wont be safe anywhere near electricty anyMore
>just before Smells like teen spirit came out
That magazine looks like it could have been sold today.. does that mean we're due for gen Y's rock thing?
>Alt rock faded away
Actually..
It went back underground. And it's beginning to reemerge thanks to this election.
>a forum of posters from most countries around the world actively discussion policy
>danger to globalism
All it will do is redefine globalism. First it will ensure "ethnic sovereignty"
Then it will do a global form of natsoc.
The only enemies are literally bankers at this stage and their puppets. That's why they feel threatened by Trump. They know their time is up.
Grunge was anti-PC back in the day, then was subverted by the time Cobain shot himself.
Cobain was becoming well aware of the damage he'd done. Remember "Heart shaped box"?
>I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black
Guess what, we eat (((their))) cancer.
And I still can't believe no one has seen this yet.
Bet SJWs would shit their pants.
I really dislike the implication that millennials are just sitting back laughing at Gen X cucks while Boomers taught them how to live like enlightened hippies and they are exactly like Boomers in this OP. Millennials are really delusional if they think they are even close to Boomers 2.0, for example can any of you say you're religious? Boomers were heavy into Buddhism and there was even a Christian movement.
Are you really just Boomers without jobs? Or is it more closer to Boomers all strived for success and won it and Millennials expected things to go to them and it didn't happen? Where is your ambition?
The Boomers created your generation which became the biggest ever, Millennials have the lowest birth rates and marriage rates ever or close.
You aren't in some "broship" with Boomers laughing away at hapless Gen X, you are like the shitstains of Boomers and nobody likes you or wants to ally with Millennials. Fuck off.
Anyway...
Goddamn, DEE-LITE would have been quite the blast to check out in 91. Seeing The Cranberries drunk off some awesome Irish stout before most had ever heard of them sounds wonderful too.
Ehh true... Obama was late Gen X though. I think so far Gen X has done really well when its gotten a chance to show off. We created Facebook, Google, Yahoo, most YouTube Media Companies and Obama is a all right president. (OK he sucks but oh well, dat approval rating though), anyway Millennials can kiss my ass if they are calling us a failed generation we are kicking major ass when given a chance.
>Millennials are really delusional if they think they are even close to Boomers 2.0, for example can any of you say you're religious? Boomers were heavy into Buddhism and there was even a Christian movement.
>he doesn't see the "Deus Vult" movement.
No it wasnt
I remember being taught political correctness in elementary school and even by my parents
Both actually used the term
PC was not a joke it was what well off middle class whites did
Um actually no. Divorce only soared to that high of numbers because it was actually available to do so by the 80's. Before you had to prove your husband was an asshole with his own mouth as a woman. Women didn't know anything pfffft. Judge says no divorce people stay in abusive relationships or unhappy. You give an easy exit, BAM! Taken. The actual rate now is something like 20% and you should be happy, it means the end to a shit marriage.
What's your fucking problem, dork?
Ronald Reagan ruined my mommy's marriage. Bawww
Fucking Canadians.
Once upon a time the Greatest Generation didn't sell us down the river. Hitler was the true hero of WW2 he defeated the Nazis with one bullet.
FNORD, pink boy.
Obama is a Boomer. Gen-X begins in '65 and generally runs through some point between 1982 and 1985.
1985 was the cutoff point, where the children did not have as good a life as their parents thanks to their incompetence and complacency. And lack of subversion understanding.
Gone are the comfy days, space requires focus and concentration.