A Brief Gen X Aside
For the last ten years, the online culture war has pretty much been waged between Boomers and Millenials, skipping entirely over the cohort nestled right between them, Gen X. The 'MTV Generation', often viewed in popular culture from the late 70's to the mid 90's as slackers, lay-abouts, and nihilists, Gen Xers were disengaged from the realm of politics for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this is generation that grew up being told by everyone in both the political establishment and pop culture media that they lived under the threat of imminent nuclear doom and devastation thanks to the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Secondly, this was the generation that began its childhood with huge, boxy computers that very few people could afford and operate, phones anchored to the walls, and pedophiles cruising playgrounds in panel vans offering candy, and ended their adolescence with a laptop in every bedroom, cell phones that could be carried around everywhere, and kiddie diddlers asking "a/s/l" over America Online Chat rooms.
Ours was a generation of nothing but change accelerated to a speed that only DC's Flash could keep up with. Part of me is convinced that this is a key component in the punk genre music of the era (the best stuff of the genre, at least), a chaotic confusion that infected even the musically inclined creatives of the day. Their message of anti-establishment 'Fuck off'ism is peppered with bits and pieces of "What the fuck are we doing here, man? I'm asking because I don't fucking know, I had a pager 2 years ago, it cost half a month's salary, now it's an obsolete piece of shit and somebody just texted me a grainy picture of their crotch."
We are a generation so beaten about the head with mixed messages and demands of 'get with the times' in combination with 'respect your elders' that we want to just howl at everyone younger and older than us to back the fuck off, chill out, and give people a chance or two without either being bigoted (aimed at Boomers) or fucking cancelling someone because they hurt your goddamned fee-fees (Millenials).
We are also the generation to whom 2 of 3 current members of the Triumverate of Big Tech Evil belong, unfortunately (Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Sundar Pichai of Google). Millenials, sorry, but The Zuck is on you folks.
The Boomers throughout the 70's, 80's, and 90's brought us the 'Moral Majority', a collaborative union of parents' groups, religious organizations, and academics who tried to collectively censor art of all stripes, condemn hobbies, and waggle their freakin' fingers at anyone living on the edge of or outside of their perceived societal norms.
The Millenials have spent the last 15 years or so and continue bringing us their version from the left, frequently referred to as 'SJWs' and 'Cancel Culture'. They're doing the same goddamned thing with the aid of the Internet, and co-opting a lot of late-stage Xers and Xennials to help this push for a boring, static world devoid of any kind of diversity of THOUGHT.
Meanwhile, the latchkey kids and punkers and slackers of Gen X, who broadly accepted that the world they were being handed over from Boomers was fucked up beyond all recogniztion (fubar), are left wondering, "Is there even a middle road to walk anymore?" Xers were brought up to accept that everyone is equal, because in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nobody's skin color, genitalia, sexual attractions, or religious or ethical convictions means a thing. We shrugged at everything and said "Whatever" not out of a sense of postmodern irony, but a kind of defeatism and idea to just enjoy every day that we're still alive.
And just when we should be ready to take the reins of political control, the Boomers won't let go, and the Millenials try to horn in, often using cultural power when they can't get political influence. Why pass a law to fuck us over when they can just un-person us, right?
This is why Gen Xers are, more and more, pulling away from all of it. We don't see a way to come out clean on the other side.
So we shrug. We say "Whatever."
And we wait patiently with our earbuds stuck in our heads, blasting 'Milo Goes to College' or 'Legacy of Brutality', watching the generations on either side of us decimate each other and themselves, praying to a God that a lot of us don't believe in anymore that we'll have just enough survival skills to get by in the wasteland that gets left behind in the aftermath.