older millennials next in line for intergenerational hate

Gen X? just happy we got a mention

I’m just shocked someone remembered we exist…




…and a little bit annoyed tbh…

I’m mid GenX, and frequently have to trot out the saying, “regulations are written in the blood of innocents” to people a lot more ignorant than I am. And I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.

I was born at the tail end of Gen X but we were definitely getting up to some crazy stuff.

It was a normal afternoon to take our bikes off the highest jumps we could build in the middle of the road, constructed from the neighborhood wood pile. When a car came speeding through we'd yell out "car" and quickly move our stuff to the side. We used skateboards on vertical ramps built from whatever, and roller skates on shoddy pavement. Our playgrounds were made of reflective metal hotter than lava attached to towers that seemed to reach 20 ft above the ground.

We built dangerous tree houses with rusty scrap in the ravine behind the neighborhood, next to place where the neighborhood's older kids were surely taking all the drugs and hiding from their D.A.R.E. officers.

I used to load my sisters in the back of a red radio flyer wagon and we'd all ride down the neighborhood's steepest hill, occasionally tipping at high speed and then sliding the rest of the way down likely removing several layers of skin and rolls of gauze from my mom's medical kit in the process.

In primary school, I don't think there was ever a moment without at least one kid on crutches or with a limb in a cast.

While it did harden us up, and provided some amazing memories, just about everyone I know who was a kid at that time knows of some kid who died while digging a tunnel, or got hit by a car, or spent half of his early teenage years in a cast, or who always seemed to have a finger splint.

Somehow through all of this we moved from thinking this is normal childhood stuff to blaming anyone and everyone by way of lawsuits.

There was nothing "safe" about that time. The debate seems to hinge on whether a dangerous childhood results in better adapted adults, perhaps by culling a few unlucky kids who hadn't learned their own limits, and who know how to be creative in the absence of almost any artificial or algorithmic stimuli.

Kids these days don't even squash coins on the train tracks.

Still, they've got dodgy Temu e-bikes to kill themselves on now.

And, at last, it finally happened: we've been bundled with boomers. The forgotten generation, just lumped in with the old fuckers. My back hurts.

The good old survivorship bias.

Gen X here…. After arguing and having many disagreements with many many boomers over the years, we are not the same. While I have had similar disagreements with younger generations they are fundamentally different because we are old enough to see the mistakes the boomers made but young enough to see the world is very much different and that rampant capitalism and greed is often the blame. Case in point, student loans. I am all for all education should be free and things like crippling student debt should not be a thing. Every boomer I have talked to still thinks either education should be a privilege or that you should be able to put yourself through college and get a masters working at McDonalds or Walmart.

Leave Gen X out of your generational sputterings

True, but also fun and growth involves risk.

We want to remove the kind of risk you don't recover from, but a lot of folks seem to want to remove any risk that could possibly cause injury.

I like old people who argue that they didn't wear seat belts, sat in the cargo area of a wagon and say heavy old cars are safer. It's like we know better but because they did it it's okay. Don't they realize that you use the knowledge as the advantages you'ved learned in order to make live better?

Im supposed to be mad about it? Or are you mad about it? Is that you in the picture? I’m confused. Did I do it wrong?

All the rules are written in blood.

"Back in the day we got beat by our father's and thats how you knew he loved you, kids these days, smh"