[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

On one level I think the woke thing is strictly down to the millennials, but a lot of the most strident academics pushing this stuff are older than me. So it's an unholy alliance between the boomers and the millennials. With poor Gen Xers left wondering how the fuck did we go from giggling along to Butthole Surfers records to suddenly having to watch everything we say out of fear of offending someone we don't even know, and almost certainly wouldn't like if we did.

if anything, the early love of debauchery was handed down to gen-xers by boomers. earlier genxers grew up looking at the degenerate glory of the 70s and trying to emulate it. and then, there was AIDS.

but see, there were always also puritanical genxers. see: ian mackaye &co.

when i was still living in dc the city paper published this glorious little article:
https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/...on-the-killjoy
it went unnoticed outside the dc metro i think, but i once met the author who was saying he caught a lot of shit for it. someone named in the article called him to tell him to “eat a bag of dicks”, etc. hahahaha.

the writer was an older guy—a boomer by the look of it. and he maybe had a very specific idea of what rock music was about. but he’s doing it in ideological terms that had already carried into many genxers. sometimes i see similar expectations in someone older, like that village voice critic... christgau? who doesnt like stereolab cuz he thinks marxism and rock dont mix lolol.

take a character like hank whatever in californication: he’s supposed to be a gen-xer, weep over cobain, etc, but his dreams are all pre-aids rocknroll boomer fantasies.

see if you spot the same generational and ideological fault lines i did in that article. for me it’s a very significant artifact even if it wasn’t impactful. it shows forces at play like a mineral sample shows the geology that formed it. im interested in the geology.

but anyway, this little woke intifada doesn’t have to conclude so badly. once the pendulum swings back maybe we’ll all be a little more inclusive and less abusive without having to be so paranoid at some future orgy.