On the one hand,

On the other, GenXers reading this like

In 20 years, Zoomers will be going through this when Gen Ligma or whatever is calling them out for being cringe. You're probably on to something about RSD making you more susceptible to falling into these rumination/doom-spiral patterns; it's hard to break out of once you let it become a habit, and I have no real advice for that. I can definitely commiserate, though; I have a tendency to hyperfixate on things that I know I really shouldn't, and it's always hard to snap out of it.

As someone who is technically part of both the flannel slacker generation and the avocado toast latte failure generation, I guess my coping strategy has been to keep myself distracted from it all as much as possible. Sometimes it even works! ...but I really do feel like an impostor most of the time. Too young for the GenX greybeards to accept me even as I chitter away about "hey guys, remember the Commodore 64? Oh, you had the PET? What about the VIC-20?" and just old enough that the Millennials know something is a little bit off because I remember slightly too much of The World Before The Internet, I can talk at length about going to the post office to take out money orders to buy NES games from mail order catalogs, and I wasn't in preschool during the Challenger shuttle disaster. (And yet some of my Zoomer coworkers love those archaic tech stories because they have this romanticized ideal of Matthew Broderick hooking an analog modem up to his rotary phone.) If the generational stuff weren't enough, I present as too masc for the cis women to do anything but politely give the pained "oh, hun" smile, and even while boymoding, I'm too fem to not be off-putting to male coworkers who haven't yet decided that I'm just some specimen of "80's guy" that was recently thawed from a glacier. Middle age is going great. I don't know how the fuck I'm keeping it together over here.

If it's any consolation they've been targeting Gen Z for years for being "lazy" and "know nothings"

say what you will about millennials, but we built the torment nexus. we invented the digital crack everyone is on right now that they're using to belittle our accomplishments.

we've done a lot of stuff that matters to us, haters gonna hate cuz they have nothing better to do. you can find plenty to nitpick about if you look closely enough at any demographic. the online mean girls need to get a life honestly.

Seems to me zoomers have been targeted with all the same hate as millennials have. This 'good zoomer movies being produced' moment is like the first time I've seen the media give zoomers any kind of adulation that wasn't some kind of backhanded compliment.

By the way, I've seen articles about zoomers and gen alpha appreciating early internet art styles & memes and creating their own in those veins. I think that sort of nostalgia is driven by the yearning for the cozy internet that so many regular millennials and xennials built together, before the enclosure began to bite down with the iphone and facebook.

One piece of this I think about is how the generation before us millennials (boomers) keep redefining what adult and youth means. A friend of mine recently applied to a "youth support grant" that was open to people 39 years old and under. Ten years ago a similar grant open for youths would have been for those 30 and under. I look forward to next call when youth will be 50 and under in a few years.

The boomers are holding on to the social title of adult, which means that the rest of us are defined as perpetual children. This is not good for mental health. But of course it makes sense when so few of us do the "adult" things like own homes or have pensions or careers.

I think quality of life is on the decline, and we millenials have been among the first (though not definitively 'the first', as it's a grey area) to really feel it in a big way. However, I don't personally feel our generation was targeted as the failure generation, I just think 90%+ of our generation and beyond has been utterly screwed over by the world.

I gotta also say, I've seen and really appreciated you pushing against generational division, because it is absolutely is stupid and manufactured. Totally behind you on that position.

Honestly, i'm living a pretty decent life

I have a lovely partner, I have my pets, my friends, my stories, and i'm actively working to improve the lives of everyone in my town

I think people try to put others down because they feel inadequate in their lives and are going for a cheap, easy way to feel better about themselves

Way i see it, nobody is a failure in this system we are trapped in

It's a strange way to view life

I deal with it by mostly reminding myself that every generation sucks. Without fail. And occasionally when that doesn't help, drugs.

My generation is known for complaining about drinking from the hose and playing outside till the streetlights came on. That's it.

I'm same as you wrt using a generation to identify generalities about, most likely watched ABC sitcoms, listened to XYZ music and wore some general style of clothing based on that timeframe. Otherwise that's about all it's good for as far as I can tell.

I speak for gen z when I say that every single one of us would trade every wholesome kane parsons chungus meme in the world to have had the opportunities and material wealth millennials had, instead we get a funny twitter meme and a 5% home ownership rate

I'd fucking love to be an avocado toast heckin pupperino guy if it means I could have been in the job market five years earlier

I want to share a quote from "adult children of emotionally immature parents" because it really stuck with me, having being told over and over not to rely on other people to meet my emotional needs :

When I suggested to Ben that he could try opening up to Alexa, given how supportive she was, he told me he thought he should be more self-­ reliant, saying, “I should be able to weather this on my own. Isn’t it up to me to meet my own emotional needs?” What a lonely thought. I told Ben that we all need other people to meet our emotional needs for comfort and closeness. That’s what relationships are all about.

now I know we're not partners, we're just strangers on a forum who regularly post here. But I do want to emphasize that the familiarity here does lend to some comfort and closeness even if we arent friends. Ofc some people can't be trusted to reciprocate, or will be actively harmful -- but you know, I think what you posted is not inappropriate, and certainly not "too much." I guess I relate heavily because I was always told that my emotions were too much.

Anyway, I consider myself a Zilennial, although most people would call themselves a Milennial at my age. The generations are so serious you arent allowed to do something like have your own interpretation of them 🙄

The generational hate doesn't bother me I guess, I have always found it to be ridiculous. Just everything associated with the culture of generationalism. Like for example, saying that milennials would save us all. That didnt pan out, so then it became gen z would save us all. That didnt pan out, no surprise -- because life isnt a tragectory of bad to good. People of the older generations are still mad about it though.

Then there is rhe whole "gen z slang" thing that was literally just 4chan and appropriated AAVE, this rumor also being perpetuated by the older generations.

so to me a lot of it is outside the range of just being a little cultural marker of what was happening when you were born, to a way of basically saying "Kids these days!!" like the increased hatred of mils to me really speaks to a sense of malicious parental control, like "you failed me, now its your younger brother who will take over the buisiness!!" just overall unscientific thinking imo.

Outside of the internet the only people I've met that engaged with generationism seemed to be looking for something to be mad at. Showing/feigning disinterest with a ok boomer vibe or the ''what about the generation that raised them'' line.

90's kids will remember that even though we shared the same societal environment it didn't give us inherent traits LOL

also not quite sure which gen I belong to as edgecase plus the us of online gens don't 100% align with over here

I'd try to sit with your feelings and figure out why it bothers you so much. I'm the oldest millennial and can clearly see where our systems failed us and continue to fail younger generations. I don't take that as personal failing.

I think there is a certain age range, mostly millennials but not all of them and some Zs, that were raised to exist in the 90s, when things were getting more expensive but the boomer life still seemed attainable, but you actually came to adulthood in the aughts when things started falling apart fast. All the "avocado toast" shit was just older people failing to admit what was happening. Younger people were mostly free of those illusions so they're coping a little better.

Basically, you're the rug-pull generation.

reading star trek fan newsletters/fiction from the 80's and gay themed "zines" in the 90's made me aware that this was a thing that each successive wave of generations considered and i suspect it's a result of marketers trying to find a market.

maybe now that we're slighlty more aware of each others existence, it'll become less of a thing.

Endless cycle of human culture. I pay it no mind and look down on people who see the world in such narrow ways.

Here's how I dealt with it:

I was going to school for a fancy professional career, was losing steam from mental issues and also looking at the publish-or-perish, hierarchical reality of the sector. Dropped out of college and lived on a shoestring for a few years, during which time I found the local anarchists, read a bunch of anarchist and Marxist theory and history. Got into gardening with anarchist friends and did all my own cooking from scratch, mended clothes, got used to secondhand stuff, living with roommates, surviving on a very low baseline in a low-cost-of-living city.

Finally entered the workforce and ended up doing a bunch of different things, but they all were jobs where I could tangibly see the result of what I'd done. Agriculture, food service, logistics. Especially at the mom-and-pop businesses, I was able to look at the numbers and figure out exactly how much labor was going in and how much revenue was generated. It felt like demystifying the division of labor, and breaking through the alienation just a tiny bit, to see customers buying what I made (or hauled and repackaged). Along the way I made it into multiple radical networks, and have a few business models for skipping unionization entirely and jumping straight to workers' co-ops or even a business that's run by and for a commune.

Working part-time at minimum wage, I was able to get by. Working full-time, I am able to save up faster than I would have thought plausible for a decade, even while harboring people who are not fully on their feet. I am maybe 5 years from being able to retire with a modest but self-contained and ecologically friendly lifestyle, plus about 3 more years for each dependent I accumulate If I wanted to go live on a rural commune, I could just do that.

For a while I was a failson. But now I can say how much value I've created, and I've worked at least 10 jobs in several different sectors, and I've lived with dozens of different people. Most people can't draw a clear reasoned line to a number of what they objectively contribute to the economy. In addition to being knowledgeable of a whole bunch of subjects (math, physical sciences, psychology, geography, history) at a collegiate level, Boomers cannot touch me. The most that someone can do is say they make a higher number of dollarinos than I do.

We're in a pivotal point in human history, and I feel like I've gotten all the right opportunities to pursue meaning and paradigm shifts instead of empty affluence. And if anyone tries to rub affluence in my face I can scoff at it.