Its getting uncomfortably accurate
Meanwhile mid-40s walking through world ending pollution:
This place is so much better without all the cigarette smoke!
I also appreciate the restoration of our ozone layer. I remember there was a time (when above a certain latitude at least) my skin would fucking burn in less than 5 minutes under direct sun, it’s a lot better now but it seems weird we all just kind of collectively forgot about that time when we all nearly ended the world to such a degree that we could feel it outside, then we all reversed course and fixed it mostly.
I wonder if we would be more motivated to fix our current issues if they caused skin burns.
The weird thing is that it worked too well. Like Y2K, it was fixed so it became a nothing burger. Now everyone thinks it was an overreaction and don’t want to keep fixing things.
I remember people talking about not curing covid as fast because then people wouldn’t take the next pandemic as seriously.
The holes in the ozone layer were over the poles. You never experienced it.
This is a great point on how regulation can work and how we, as a society, need to do better celebrating our accomplishments.
Both can be true.
The world ended like sixty times already this decade.
The screaming twenties just have no brakes.
I vote for “the screaming twenties” to be the official name for this decade. Brilliant.
I’m tired of living through “interesting times”.
Except it’s not interesting anymore. It’s been a cycle of the same bullshit over and over again.
Young me in 2012 “I want to live through interesting times” 🤔 rather than being bored. Little did I know.
“Shouldn’t have wished to live in more interesting times” -Tav, Baldur’s Gate 3
That’s the point though - it wasn’t a good thing
Everytime I see this I think “Gen-X would like a word.”
I mean, yes millenials, but we were alive for all that plus more, most notably a childhood filled with “the russians might nuke us tomorrow.”
And frankly the boomers get to throw in JFK assassination, etc along with all the Genx stuff.
We’re just an unfortunately stupid and murderous race, and plus also the universe is very happy to snuff us out if we let it. Not a good combo for a stable boring life.
As a millennial born in the Balkans: economic collapse, hyperinflation, dictatorship, economic collapse, war, revolution, y2k, global economic crisis, end of the mayan calendar, semi-dictatorship, (self-imposed) exile, brexit, covid, war v3, climate crisis getting real, revolution again? (idk I don’t live in my home country anymore), whatever the hell is happening now
Interesting times indeed
End of mayan calendar ? Now that would be interesting…
Was it really still an official calendar system? In what country?
The big end of the world in December 2012 was based on the Mayan calendar.
Among all the apocalypses in the last 30ish years, 2012 was the best one so far. Mystical end-of-the-world prophecies have really lost popularity since.
It was a really dumb one, though, all based on a misunderstanding of what that calendar represented. We basically reached the end of an era in the Mayan system. Like, we don’t usually think rolling over from 1999 to 2000 would cause the world to actually end (as long as our computer systems aren’t all l abbreviating dates).
Like, they ran out of rock, so they stopped their calendar there instead of continuing.
economic collapse, hyperinflation, dictatorship, economic collapse, war, revolution, y2k, global economic crisis, end of the mayan calendar, semi-dictatorship, (self-imposed) exile, brexit, covid, war v3, climate crisis getting real, revolution again?
We didn’t start the fire.
Meanwhile gen-x: So have we. Plus growing up during the Cold War, Iran hostage crisis, and 9/11.
Yes it sucks.
You could afford a house and got a free or cheap education
The state has sold off everything in your lifetime to keep your taxes low, including housing. Which you bought and now own.
Millennials are generation rent with a government renting back what it sold as taxes rise.
And the cold war is still going on, what is it about Gen X that makes them think it stopped. Putin is at war in Europe right now. The cold war only ever paused.
Proxy wars didn’t stop with Vietnam, the cold war didn’t stop with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
You get to experience the events of the world while being comparatively rich.
You got to experience the only decade or so without a cold war threat while millennials experience the threat of Russia and an increasing threat from China.
And millennials were told as children the world would burn if we did nothing. Gen X and the Boomers did nothing.
Yes it sucks.
But you had it good, and politically you’ve fucked us recently. After being previously politically apathetic.
We’ve got a world to repair and it remains to be seen if Millennials will actually move past apathy into fixing it with Gen Z or continuing to fuck it up like Gen Z.
You still had to be not poor to take advantage of all that. College was cheaper, but nowhere near cheap. Homes were possible, but many lost them in the crash. It wasn’t like the boomer and earlier days where you could support a family to retirement on one job needing only a GED.
You still had to be not poor to take advantage of all that.
Yeah, randomly shitting on individuals of older generations is just not productive.
Yes, the society as a whole benefitted from better economic conditions, borrowed from tomorrow, and pulled the ladders up behind them… but we don’t know that user. Plenty of people in “the good times” did not have it good.
For all they know, that particular GenX or Boomer was destitute and desperate.
For all they know, that particular elder was in the protests and on the picket lines and fighting this shit every step of the way.
We need solidarity. Every generation, every age, everyone and anyone who is willing. Don’t blame the individuals for the groups.
At least four end of days. Y2K, Maiyan 2012, Rasputin’s 2013, and that Christian Fundie quadruple moon eclipse one.
GenX here… first time?
I mean… per the meme, very much not our first time.
We got lulled into thinking everything was going to be fine. Then we got whacked with all the tech outsourcing, dot-bomb, 9/11…etc. but at least we had cheaper college first and that gave us a foot in the door without as much of the crushing college debt that millennials never got.
I love these “millenial” memes because you can always tell about how old the meme maker is.
There are millenials that are in their mid 40s, and there are zoomers that are almost 30. Assuming they were just going for a round number, the creator could have said 50, 45 or 40. But no, they chose 35, presumably because they are around 35.
If I had a dollar every time some looney came up to me saying it’s the apocalypse in X day… I dunno like 12 dollars?
Which isn’t a lot because inflation is getting out of hand.
But it’s weird that it happened twice.
Still better than what most of the people before us lived through. It’s just that our parents were especially lucky with the time period they lived in.
And squandered the shit out of it.
The idea that people before us lived worse lives is one often used to obscure the clinical nature of standards we attribute to quality of life such as lifespan, infant mortality, food security, and housing. This is because it allows corporations to trivialize the impact of doubling the workload by normalizing the 40 hour work week and housework and child care, what used to be two people’s worth of work, into one.
Are we living ‘better’ lives? On paper, sure. Are we living happier lives? That’s hard to say.
Most of the people worked 24/7 on their farm and had to give most of their crops to their feudal lord from which they were completely dependend for land and protection against bandits. And later people worked 7 days a week 10-12 hours in factories.
And alone the medical development clearly is a great improvement in happiness. Just imagine that newborns surviving until infancy was the exception rather than the norm. And women died regularly during childbirth. Tooth problems were causing tremendous chronic pain and often lead to death. Only cancer was a lesser problem because people simply didn’t live long enough for it to be very prevalent.
I am not saying things could be better now. But we don’t have to romanticize the past. For me it is rather motivating to see how far we have come already and that we also can overcome the challenges of our time.
I dunno I prefer not being murdered for practicing (or even converting from) the wrong religion, dying of plague or famine, or being enslaved for economic convenience. But maybe that’s just me.
Yes but I’d much rather prefer wandering through a bountiful forest to a stream crammed with fish, build a lean-to from what’s around me, and sleep cozy and warm under pine boughs on a moss mattress.
Agriculture broke us.
And be always afraid of being killed by a tiger or other predators. Constantly worrying about not finding enough food. Having insects crawl all over and inside you while sleeping or a snake choking you to death.
Yeah I call bullshit. What’s stopping you from living your dream if it’s that great?
Private property laws and the collapse of the biosphere
That really doesn’t narrow it down, if we are talking about the past or present.
The rise of the middle class was definitely a historical anomaly. Most of history has been the top 1% oppressing most everyone else.
I still remember when crackpot thought the world was gonna end in 2012. When that time came. I just looked at my cat and said ‘hey kitty, we’re still here!’
I’m pretty sure we did all die that day. We’re clearly in hell at this point.
Being born in the early 80’s… we’ve seen a lot.
I was working in Tech when the Tech Crash in 99 happened, working in the only large Investment bank that went bankrupt in the 2008 Crash and living in Britain when Brexit won the Leave Referendum.
Seen it all happen from a “safe” distance. Damn you’re unlucky in a way.
That’s unlucky as heck. I always think about how I decided last minute to go to get an associates instead of going to the typical four year. I ended up graduating and getting a job right before the financial crash. A pretty significant amount of my friends were still in college and couldn’t get jobs for years if ever (at least related to their degree)
Well, after my first crash and being out of a job for 6 months because of it, I’ve always been very prepared for that kind of situation so when Lehman Brothers went down I was just fine because I had plenty of savings (and was even asked back after a month because the division I was working with was bought by a Japanese Brokerage and remained operating) and similary when Leave won, not only had I “just in case” financially protected my savings from the hit on the British Pound if Leave won, but I could and did chose to leave Britain before the actual Leave date because I expected that country to increasingly suffer from the effects of leaving the EU.
So in a way, after the first one it wasn’t too bad.
You know the saying “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”? This is literally what it means. You suffer hardships you can learn from, and you adapt. Lots of people seem to think it’s about physical suffering, but in reality it’s more about overcoming adversity in general.
Yeah, that’s also the conclusion I came to.
