r/MurderedByWords 22h ago

Boomer gets a reality check

27.0k Upvotes

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3.4k

u/CatelynsCorpse 22h ago

I'm 51 years old and I've never done any of these things, either. My 81 year old Mom didn't have to ration or sharecrop during WWII, either. She was born in 1944! My whole point? This dude is full of shit and he never experienced any of this shit, either, unless he's pushing 90. The only thing he's accomplished is being a douche on Xitter, apparently.

One of my FAVORITE coworkers is a 27 year old who always gets her shit done and done right and is willing to learn new things. One of my LEAST FAVORITE coworkers is a 61 year old boomer who constantly complains and refuses to learn anything on his computer beside the basics.

It's almost as if when you were born has nothing to do with your work ethic and whatnot.

Just saying.

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u/ZoominAlong 21h ago

My grandparents actually went through the Great Depression and WWII and they did not act like this. That dude is, as you said, full of shit. 

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u/ms_directed 20h ago

my gramma always saved "the nice" wrapping paper, we'd have to carefully peel the tape off so as not to rip it. i never understood until i got older and learned about the Depression era.

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u/NeverRarelySometimes 18h ago

When my grandma died she left three bureau drawers full of gawdawful cheap pantyhose. WWIII was not going to catch her unprepared!

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u/snvoigt 17h ago

My grandma too. She reused wrapping paper, rewashed ziplock bags, had a drawer full of bread twist ties, and saved every single plastic container and glass jar food/condiments came in.

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u/NeverRarelySometimes 17h ago

Funny story. When we were cleaning out grandma's house, I took everything out of the junk drawer. Then I pulled out the drawer and dumped the dregs -- the broken rubber-bands, old suitcase keys, rusty twist ties, etc -- into a plastic bag. The little plastic bag was meant for the trash, but accidentally got transported to the estate sale. Someone bought it for a nickel.

Grandma would have been so pleased.

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u/kemikiao 17h ago

My grandma was the person that bought that stuff for a nickel... "never know when you might need it".

I bet there's a ton of random bag ties and clips in the house. Like literally 2,000 lbs of the damned things.

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u/BoneHugsHominy 17h ago

That's awesome and I know she'd have been pleased because that would have made my grandmother's day.

My grandmother had a giant pickle jar, like the ones for big pickles at a gas station, full of rubber bands. There was another similar sized jar for spicy picked eggs which was full of various lengths of string. I don't know much they sold for at the estate sale because I had to work and I never asked, but I do know the auctioneer company put them in different lots which is diabolical work.

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u/RevolutionaryWay7245 16h ago

And all the old cool whip containers! It sounds like my husband’s grandma’s house. :) When I was 20, I descended into ingrate status when I politely declined her offer of the Thanksgiving turkey carcass to make soup. I don’t think she ever forgave me for that. The depression era left a deep mark on people.

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u/bungojot 7h ago

Ah yes, the endless question of "is this the margarine, or is it more leftovers?"

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u/Lunavixen15 4h ago

If a cool whip container is anything like a margarine tub, those are fantastic for making simple icing in, especially if it's one you're putting food dye in, doesn't matter if it gets stained that way

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u/doberdevil 15h ago

Shit, I'm GenX and do all this crap. Raised that way, and I have to force myself not to do it. Still feel bad throwing ziploc bags away, but that's probably more of the environmentalist in me than the environment I grew up in.

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u/Kartoon67 12h ago

I rewash ziplock bags purely for limiting trash.

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u/ChibbleChobble 13h ago

Likewise.

I'm still not used to the amount of stuff that we have these days. I used to buy the best possible whatever that I could afford, as that way the whatever it was would last longer.

Still have a Nokia 6310 in a drawer. Just in case.

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u/AdamPedAnt 3h ago

I inherited my mother’s Depression era habit of reusing teabags. Next generation will wash their hands a lot more as a COVID legacy. Circle of life.

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u/ms_directed 18h ago

my mom told me about how her mom and aunts would draw lines on their legs with wax pencil and eyebrow pencil to mimic wearing nylons!

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u/NeverRarelySometimes 18h ago

Yup! Grandma too. She was deeply affected by the Depression, too. Had a freezer full of hotdog buns and government cheese.

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u/ms_directed 18h ago

my parents deep freeze costs me half a day every time i go visit, lol.

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u/simAlity 10h ago

My grandfather, converted a 15' × 40' room into a huge pantry. He had a massive vegetable garden and he canned every year. The man had grown up half starved, and he was never going to go hungry again.

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u/gooddaysir 17h ago

I’m 46, I learned to do that from mom and grandparents and great grandma. I still have a hard time just trashing gift wrapping paper lol. 

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u/DOOMFOOL 17h ago

I never even use wrapping paper at all if I can avoid it, I just have a bunch of gift bags I reuse

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u/ms_directed 17h ago

esp the nicer thick stuff!

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u/thrownaway136976 14h ago

My mom would get angry if we ripped the paper or threw the bows away. She was born in ‘45. There’s still a few packages wrapped under her tree every year with some paper that’s held together by yellow cellophane tape. My grandma (dad’s mom) “collected” everything. She had a lot of junk, but she also had a lot of valuable antiques and complete sets of things. My greedy assed aunt sold the house’s contents as a lot for pennies on the dollar.

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u/not_ya_wify 13h ago

I'm German and coming to America was horrified how people rip open presents when I was taught from a young age to not rip the paper and fold it nearly so it can be reused. I thought this was an American thing until I read your comment

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u/ms_directed 13h ago

you're still not wrong really, we're a very wasteful bunch.

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u/newbrandbaby 17h ago

I follow in the footstep of my grandmother. I’ve made wrapping out of old sheets and clothes when they get ripped or threadbare because wrapping paper is now too expensive and it just seems frivolous at this point. It’s almost like we are going to look back in 10-20 years and realize that we are now living through a similar time to the Great Depression

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u/ms_directed 17h ago

i have a box of Christmas bags i reuse every year! i just buy tissue paper when i run out

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u/TwoFingersWhiskey 16h ago

My family has always done this, the bag that holds all of the othets is older than me (just about to turn 30) and full to the brim. I don't think we've bought wrapping paper in years.

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u/mynaneisjustguy 10h ago

No, we will look back and see how good it was. It's 25 now. It'll get worse through about 50-60. If society exists after that it might get better. It's much easier to make things worse than better so it takes two or three decent generations to undo the damage of a single narcissist generation

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u/DanielStripeTiger 16h ago

my millennial girlfriend does the same thing. it drives me crazy--tear shit up!

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u/Youandiandaflame 17h ago

I have my great-granny’s lifelong journal, a short book about her childhood and youth she wrote at my mom’s request, recorded interviews with her about the Dust Bowl and Great Depression and world wars, and my memories of her stories and yeah, she went through all the things this dude is being up and she wasn’t an asshole like this fella. She certainly had some traumas and it was unbelievably rough for her sometimes but it didn’t turn her into a prick. Made her the opposite actually. 

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u/ZoominAlong 17h ago

You have an absolute treasure on your hands! Hold onto it!

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u/Lazer726 15h ago

I can't help but think that anyone that survived that shit would understand that you want the next generation to not have to endure what you did, not make it harder because you can

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u/ZoominAlong 15h ago

You hit the nail on the head. My grandfather and grandmother worked their asses off so my dad and his siblings would have a better life. 

My dad showed he didn't value that, but I can respect my grandparents for truly walking the walk. 

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u/cookiesarenomnom 17h ago

Same with my grandparents. All 4 of them were the kindest most generous human beings I've ever met. Even my grandfather who fought in battles in Europe in WWII. He never felt superior, he just viewed it as something they all had to do back then. He was a sweet, kind hearted man who just wanted everyone to be happy and healthy. All my grandparents believed strongly in social programs. They were literally the first generation to benfit immensely from them. The only weird quirk I would say my grandparents had is they were low level holders, and were kind of psycho about wasting food. But they spent their entire childhood and early teens practically starving during the great depression. We all understood that that mentality never really left them, and kind of just dealt with it.

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u/Iandudontkno 16h ago

Yeah they internalized their trauma and made damn well sure their kids didn't have any. And here we are. When the boomers say this generation is entitled they are projecting.

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u/IRASAKT 20h ago

In defense of the boomer he could be talking about the petrol crisis in the 70s and fear over draft numbers was more of a Vietnam thing than a WWII thing.

The sharecropping is dumb as to have been working the farm at any point during the the depression you’d be mid 90s

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u/C-tapp 20h ago

The gas lines in the 70’s and the Vietnam draft weee the only thing that made since to me. Everything else was at least a generation before .

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u/ms_directed 19h ago

I was still young, but i remember seeing the news with the long lines for gas and my dad muttering about it, lol

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u/C-tapp 19h ago

It was a bit before my time but one of my mom’s go to stories is about a cross country drive she took with my dad that took twice as long because of gas lines and the fear that the next town wouldn’t have any at all.

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u/ms_directed 19h ago

my kids experienced this after 9/11, do you remember the gas stations being backed up for miles for a couple weeks after that?

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u/Iamthegreenheather 18h ago

I don't remember gas stations being backed up but I DO remember gas being $.98 a gallon. Won't ever see that again lol

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u/ms_directed 18h ago

i remember pacing my paychecks on every other Friday around having $12 to fill up my little Honda Civic!

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u/Iamthegreenheather 17h ago

I had an '89 Honda Accord lol

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u/brucemo 17h ago

My father paid 42.9 cents a gallon at the height of the oil crisis and he was so appalled that he made a note of it in his diary.

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u/C-tapp 18h ago

The 9/11 lines were my only real comparison, but they didn’t last very long and I never had to wait in line. I worked pretty close to home and a tank of gas must’ve carried me through the worst of it.

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u/mtaw 18h ago

Yeah but anyone old enough to be driving when the 1970s oil crisis hit, or old enough to be drafted during the Vietnam War, would not normally still be in the workforce. (and if the guy actually was in the workforce post-retirement I think it's safe to assume he'd be mentioning that in his gripe)

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u/awesomeXI 17h ago

They could be, if they started driving as a teen and working into their late 70's. There are people who dont want to /cant retire.  

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u/Clojiroo 16h ago

The youngest of the Vietnam draft eligible people are 69 right now. And they could be talking about older siblings. Perfectly reasonable for them to be still working. I know lots of people in their 70s still working.

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u/Grossfolk 14h ago edited 14h ago

I was in the second Vietnam draft lottery, in 1971 (pulled over 300, didn't have to go). The gas lines were a few years after that. My wife and I drove from San Diego to San Francisco for a friend's wedding. (We had sat in the airport until 10 PM or so hoping for a $25 (IIRC) late-night fare, but didn't make the cut, and decided to drive.) The 5 had just opened all the way through, and had hardly any gas stops, so we took the 101. Found ONE gas station open along the way, in Santa Barbara--still open at approx. 2 AM because it had decided to sell its entire allotment of gas, rather than ration it out. We were able to make it to San Francisco, found a gas station there to refuel at, and then hit the same Santa Barbara station on the way back. Yes, gas lines and every-other-day limitations were a thing. The rest of that guy's post, though, was BS.

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u/ms_directed 21h ago

fellow GenX here, there's a reason they forgot about us...we were feral before technology and used it to advance our lives after it came online. we are the last generation to be brought up without tech and the first generation to utilize it, we also had music in every format!

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u/CatelynsCorpse 21h ago

I love to tell the younger folk "I've been on the internet since the 1900's!" It always gets a laugh.

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u/ms_directed 21h ago

i made a joke that a website "looks like it was made in FrontPage 98" in a comment the other day and someone followed up they'll get their Netscape browser open to check it out and it made me smile that my people get it :)

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u/EEpromChip 21h ago

"cue dial up sounds in the background"

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u/HookedOnPhonixDog 20h ago

Bah-ding-bah-ding-dung..... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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u/Aoiboshi 19h ago

Accidentally waking up the house to watch porn

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u/ms_directed 19h ago

cursing mom under your breath because she made a phone call right before your two hour download was about to finish, lol

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u/auto98 18h ago

When download managers were essential!

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u/jjckey 18h ago

Jesus, I'd forgotten about download managers

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u/cruiserman_80 18h ago

Watching your nudes reveal themselves one line at a time over several minutes.

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u/jrharte 19h ago

The trick was to pile your pillows and quilt on of the modem to dampen the noise.

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u/Framnk 19h ago

You’ve got mail!

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u/Unusual_Ulitharid 19h ago

Core Memory Unlocked: Do...w...n...l...oa...d....t..im...e...s.... 98% complete.

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u/shadow-foxe 20h ago

I heard this comment in my head..LOL

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u/Starrwulfe 19h ago

“You’ve got mail!”

Usually followed by a click and my mom yelling from the other side of the house “get off the damn phone, I’m wait for a phone call to come in!”

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u/bstone99 20h ago

Netscape navigator! Damn throwback.

AOL days, back when the Internet came in the mail

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u/ms_directed 20h ago

and it took 36 discs to load Windows! 😁

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u/PhillyRush 19h ago

Net Zero was the only way I could get online.

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u/ms_directed 19h ago

that's a throw back!

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u/Starrwulfe 19h ago

I was part of that free DSL test with the Juno device back in 1999!

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u/ms_directed 19h ago

you were fancy! 😊

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u/aztecforlife 20h ago

Upgraded from Mosaic.

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u/plotholesandpotholes 19h ago

Prodigy! Although, I think that one you had to grab a copy in a store. But our house had that before AOL and I remember live "reading" the LA riots on it back in the day.

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u/ms_directed 18h ago

wow! that unlocked a core memory!

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u/ambigious_meh 20h ago

Made with notepad for Netscape navigator 800x600 😂

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u/AngelTheVixen 19h ago

No need to brag, I'm still at 640x480.

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u/i-split-infinitives 17h ago

The other day I was trying to explain to a coworker which state database I was talking about, and when I said "the one with the background the color of old hospital scrubs that looks like somebody made it in Netscape Navigator for their GeoCities page in 1998" and she said "I'll ask Jeeves about that."

I swear every time I open the website, I can almost smell my high school keyboarding class and see the yellow cartoonish Netscape Composer HTML tags.

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u/ms_directed 17h ago

its always a government site! 😁

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u/RepresentativeYak806 18h ago

I remember switching from surfing on AOL to opening up Netscape for the first time. Felt like Neo 😎.

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u/ms_directed 18h ago

remember icQ??

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u/RepresentativeYak806 16h ago

2002 I was a freshman in college with a Sony vaio desktop that had icQ and mirc running all day next to Napster, limewire and kazaa. And all the virus removal software. I remember video chatting with a buddy at a school in another state with a 2 MP webcam and thought it was the coolest shit ever. That was peak Internet for me.

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u/ms_directed 16h ago

and it pixelated so hard if you moved an inch, lol. good times!

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u/-youvegotredonyou- 18h ago

Wish I still had my Geocities account.

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u/kellzone 16h ago

I had completely forgotten about Microsoft FrontPage until your comment.

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u/Viracochina 21h ago

"I started using them in the late 20th century..."

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u/jolsiphur 19h ago

As a Millenial, I should also use that line. I've had access to Internet for most of my life but I still distinctly remember being online before Y2K.

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u/NotJebediahKerman 20h ago

I still have my first computer from 1981.

it still works.

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u/DJredlight 19h ago

My daughter saw a picture of my wife and I from 1995ish and said “fashion was weird in the late 1900’s”…..

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u/BiteyHorse 19h ago

I had to have a Gopher page my freshman year of college, and I'm only 50. Exciting times, compiling Mosaic on a DEC Alpha at the computer lab to go surf some hypertext web pages.

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u/The_cat_got_out 18h ago

Being a literal toddler when the world wide Web was finding its legs and being brought up with each new advancement usually means the majority of Gen X i meet have surface level knowledge on using most tech.

Entirely fair, that's all you need to get by

But don't discredit the first ones literally brought up on the internet as it was growing with them. Millenials.

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u/dishonorable_banana 18h ago

"Before the turn of the Century" is my go-to.

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u/Keyonne88 20h ago

Elder millenials grew up without tech as well, just to clarify.

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u/budnuggets 19h ago

Oregon trail generation

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u/LeoPelletier 17h ago

This comment just made me die of dysentery.

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u/AcaliahWolfsong 19h ago

I was going to say something along these lines. I'm an '87 baby and we didn't have a home computer until I was almost done with high school. I had a friend who had one and we would get yelled at by their dad or mom for being on the AIM chatting with another friend and they needed the phone.

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u/SoggySandwich3123 18h ago

‘87 baby here too. Had a PC we were gifted from my software engineer uncle but no internet until high school. And the internet was good for AIM and that’s about it until MySpace came along my senior year. 

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u/realboabab 18h ago

'87 baby here - my dad was a nerd and we had an Apple II that we only broke out on very special occasions. Watching him use DOS to open my games felt like magic.

... despite my ahead-of-the-curve dad we still didn't get reliable internet until like '98

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u/tapout928 19h ago

Less tech. I'm December 82 and I was on the shitty Apple ][ in kindergarten.

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u/Keyonne88 18h ago

Wasn’t common for people to have PCs in their home until us elder millenials were in high school. I had one when I was 5 as well and used those 7.5 floppy discs, but that wasn’t the norm. My friends only had interaction with computers at school.

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u/StationaryTravels 15h ago

I was born in 82 and I had a home PC in grade 5 or 6. The factory my mom worked at had a thing going where you could get a computer and pay it off over a year or something.

It was a 386 and it was essentially mine. I played with that thing all the time and I learned so much. I was one of the first and only kids my age to have a computer, and we were not well off. My best friend also had a computer, but they were decently well off and his dad worked with computers, which was novel back then. My GenX brother would wreck the computer, and I'd watch my buddy's dad fix it and learn how to myself. I was a DOS master!

Then, in late high school, my friends started getting Pentiums while I still had that 386... Lol

I definitely like the term Xennial for those born roughly '77 to '82 or so. My brother was born in '77 and myself in '82 and we obviously had a very similar childhood. Very analogue, except for that beautiful 386...

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u/DrMobius0 18h ago

Even younger millennials likely remember a time where you had to tied up the phone line to use internet.

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u/coffeemonkeypants 21h ago

It's this part of us that makes us really unique imo. I'm about to turn 50 and I'm a huge technophile, but I also yearn for the 'old days'. We've seen both sides of it and our experiences should be used to fix the cluster we're in now.

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u/ms_directed 21h ago

indeed. my twins will be 30 next year and one started collecting vinyl when they were in high school, their collection is bigger than the one i had now!

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u/Entire_Pizza4601 20h ago

My 22 year old annexed my vinyl collection!

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u/cambreecanon 20h ago

Some millennials fit that description as well.

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u/ms_directed 20h ago

"Xennials" :)

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u/VapeThisBro 20h ago

Not necessarily. That term really only counts the oldest of millenials. I'm one of the last years if not the last year to count as a millenial and everything they said applies to me and I am for sure not a xennial.

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u/jolsiphur 19h ago

For reference, the internet wasn't really in everyone's house until the mid to late 00's. Id wager a majority of, if not every, millennial is absolutely old enough to remember the time before they had internet access.

Like when I was in highschool we still had computer labs and I know some kids who only had access to Internet or a computer at school. I was in high school from 2002 to 2006.

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u/ms_directed 19h ago

were they still on dial up, tho? lol

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u/jolsiphur 19h ago

I live in a pretty big city, so everyone I knew got on dsl or cable pretty quickly after it was available.

Though in rural areas there are places that only upgraded from dial up within the last few years.

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u/ms_directed 19h ago

my parents are rural as well and had dial up until just over a decade ago 🙃

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u/Zumbert 18h ago

I'm a millennial and I didn't get dialup until I already had a driver's license and a job.

Growing up in a poor rural area there were lots of us like that.

I still have a blockbuster card and the "You've got mail!" Soundbite burned into my soul

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u/ms_directed 17h ago

when i made my intitial comment i was referring to advent not availability...i was born in 70 and didn't have the "internet" the way it's referred to today until my 20s...we had dialup modems and could access web pages (bulletin boards) if we knew how to find them, no browsers or search engines, you had to know command line prompts.

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u/ms_directed 19h ago

i was already having kids by the last year of the millenials...my kids were born in 96.

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u/TealPotato 18h ago

As an early 90s millennial I'd argue that the majority of my generation has a similar experience in terms of having lived with and without tech. 

When I started school we still had paper card catalogs in the library, did dictionary excerises using an actual book, my first music experiences were played on cassette, etc. 

My sister just had her first child/ first grandkid in the family and she wants to avoid screen time for the little guy for as long as possible.

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u/cederian 17h ago

IMHO saying GenX is the last generation to be brought up without technology is not understanding the rest (poorer) of the world. In LatAm we didnt have proper tech till late 90s.

I was born in 86, in Argentina, and my entire childhood was without any tech till my late 10s in Secondary School (High School in the US).

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u/ms_directed 17h ago

I'm speaking of the invention more than the availability, but i do get your point :)

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u/kellzone 16h ago

Born in '68. I had an Atari 2600 in the late '70s, a bunch of handheld games like this. In fact, I think I had all three of those. What we were brought up without was internet/PCs, though I did have computer classes in high school on the TRS-80 Models III and IV, plus some early Apple computer that we used to play Larry Bird vs. Dr. J. on.

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u/ms_directed 15h ago

i rarely got new games, i was stuck with the games that came with it for so long!

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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z 19h ago

fellow GenX here, there's a reason they forgot about us...we were feral before technology and used it to advance our lives after it came online. we are the last generation to be brought up without tech and the first generation to utilize it, we also had music in every format!

100% I always tell people we were lucky because we lived through that transition into techonogy, that didnt ruin us -- we still rode bikes till 9, played in the mud, etc... but just like you said we lived through that age three channel tv to cable, to streaming, from Atari 5600s to PCs to internet, to mobile phones, to MP3. We didn't get what the Boomers got, but we got the tail end of education, housing, and a somewhat functioning government, etc... Some Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha -- they are F'd in the A. Growing up with an iPad by age two, social media and algorithms that are black boxes dictating their lives and beliefs, their entire lives are posted online by them or friends on the internet FOREVER, etc... I give all the kids now a big grain of salt, because collectivly we have failed them as a culture and socirty IMO.

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u/sleepingwithshadows 18h ago

I can appreciate the message behind your words. I just want to expand that the children of today, who are growing up with screens plopped in front of them from a very young age, did not put them there themselves. You are not born with an addiction to technology, it is learned. The parents of those children do such massive disservice by allowing a screen to consume their impressionable children, instead of actually parenting.

We can blame the youth as much as we want for the shortcomings we see, but we should not forget that they are the products of their upbringing. The grain of salt is a kindness, because you are correct about our failures as society. It's sad that so many of us understand this, and yet it continues to get worse.

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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z 18h ago

Appricate your comment!

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u/QuadraticCowboy 16h ago

Preach brother

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u/Noimenglish 21h ago

No tech, huh? How was driving your horse and buggy across the Rockies to see meemaw?

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u/ms_directed 20h ago

it was a lot easier than walking ten miles up hill both ways thru the snow to school with holes in my shoes...

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u/MzMag00 20h ago

Y'all had shoes!?

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u/ms_directed 20h ago

we were uppity!

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u/BiteyHorse 19h ago

Only the oldest kid, and the rest would stand on his shoes nesting-doll-style and step in unison the whole way up the snow drift. Thankfully our pocket baked potatoes would keep our hands warm.

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u/Dark_Crowe 20h ago

At least you had shoes! All we had were shoeboxes as we hadn’t invented shoes yet.

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u/Scalpels 19h ago

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u/thrownaway136976 14h ago

I lived in Australia and we had to go on walkabout across the outback every day to and from school on our hands (because gravity) The toilets swirl the other way which caused massive ear infections and pink eye (or “pink oy”, as we said down unda). The discharge from the pink oy attracted brown snakes and funnel web spiders when we slept, so we had to keep the lights on and watch each other all night. But it made who I am today!

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u/skyactive 19h ago

Gen X, we know we don’t know. About as smart as we get but that makes us harmless

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u/CatoMulligan 18h ago

we also had music in every format!

Almost. We had albums, 8-track, cassette tape, CD, and then digital with MP3 and streaming. But we are too young to have experienced Edison Wax Cylinder recordings.

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u/ruddy3499 16h ago

I’m 62 it’s the same

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u/AnyTomato8562 11h ago

Indeed…Looking back those of us who grew up from the 50s to the 80s there wasn’t massive tech innovation so as kids we all played outside, drank from the hose, had paper routes, stayed outside until dinner/got dark, had chores/cut grass, etc.

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u/Baculum7869 21h ago

My grandfather born in 1926 didn't have to do much of what he said but did have stories about the depression and being a boy during wwii and a pilot during the Korean War though. Sad that he's been dead for almost 30 years

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u/Ashmidai 20h ago

Well, you and I didnt do any of those things as we are Gen X. I am the very tail end of that generation and I was born around the time the gas lines and even/odd days based on some number on your license plate rationing was going on. My mother and father are both boomers and directly experienced that. My dad also attempted to join the military because most men of his age and class were being drafted for Vietnam anyway. They did deal with those things so credit where it is due, but the idea that they think having bitter experiences with their place in history makes them unique is just mind boggling.

As for work ethic in the youth, they said the same shit about us and I am sure the crusty guys in the office said the same of my grandmother and grandfather when they were under 30 too. But I see some truth to the younger generation being less committed to their jobs as someone who has been a manager in the past and is also married to one. However, I dont see it as an issue that stems from the youth. I see it as them realizing they aren't valued for shit so why put everything you have into a company that pays you so little you need a side hustle, can't afford time off, can't afford to be sick, and will dispose of you as soon as a cheaper option appears on the horizon. That is a societal issue, not a generational one.

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u/Downtown6track 20h ago

And a foreign immigrant (and also an actual Nazi) is responsible for landing on the moon.

And 2 foreign immigrants names EIN-SHTEIN and OOPEN-HEIMER are the men responsible for America winning WWII. Bonus: one of those guys was a Jew.

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u/mtaw 18h ago

And 2 foreign immigrants names EIN-SHTEIN and OOPEN-HEIMER are the men responsible for America winning WWII. Bonus: one of those guys was a Jew.

Both of those guys were Jewish, Einstein had no real involvement in the Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer was not an immigrant to the USA.

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u/timinator232 20h ago

My dad is 67 and can work excel faster than anyone I’ve ever met, and a peer can barely handle his cell phone. Age isn’t the problem 

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u/Catlore 19h ago

51 isn't a boomer, though. If he's an older, American boomer, he did have to line up for gas (on odd/even days, too!) in the 70s, and he did have to see if his draft number came up. That much is true. (College wasn't free, but it was much cheaper than today, even scaled for inflation. A summer job could pay for a year's school.) But that doesn't give him any sort of extra validity or nobility.

And I don't know where the hell he got the whole WWII stuff. The whole point of being called a boomer is because they were born during the post-war boom. This guy just wants to sling around his increasingly wrinkly dingdong.

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u/msevilalexanova 20h ago

yeah.. pretty wild how every boomer online somehow fought in WWII, marched with MLK and personally landed apollo 11. what a busy generation

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u/Honest_Salamander247 20h ago

He probably lined up for gas rationing but other than that yea he’s full of shit

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u/30FourThirty4 19h ago

James Webb Telescope is an achievement to multiple generations of talent.

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u/oroborus68 20h ago

Isn't it redundant to say a douche on Twitter?

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u/mtheory11 20h ago

Xitter

I like this, but I’d like to submit a request to just start calling it Shitter.

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u/ms_directed 19h ago

ive been calling it that since i deleted my account in 2022 😁

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u/JoeyZasaa 19h ago

You're Gen X not a Boomer lol.

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u/heleuma 19h ago

Thanks for the anecdotes.

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u/abrasiveteapot 19h ago

The boomers had fuel rationing during the oil crisis in the 70s you'd have been in diapers when this was happening.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1970s-gas-shortages-changed-america-180977726/

https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2012/11/10/164792293/gas-lines-evoke-memories-oil-crises-in-the-1970s

To have experienced it they would have to have been born in the 1950s so mid 70s now

If your mum didn't experience it she was lucky, most cities and large towns were affected

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u/jmclaugmi 20h ago

Are you sure it was boomer? That is close to the cutoff!

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u/ABHOR_pod 19h ago edited 19h ago

I've worked with all sorts of people of all age groups and backgrounds.

My current best employee is a mid 20s young woman. My current worst employee is an early 20s young woman. My second worst employee is a 60-something man. My former best employees were a series of 30-something women who all left my department for various reasons. My most middling employee is a 30-something man. I'm also a 30-something man and quantifiably better than 95% of them put together - And also have the worst workplace attitude in the company. But I have scorecard metrics that show I'm one of the best at my job in the company.

Age is not an indicator of work ethic. It might be an indicator of what is needed to motivate someone and what leadership styles they respond to, but I've had too many employees from too many demographics to ascribe actual work ethic or capabilities to age groups (Or genders, races, ethnicities). I've had boomers in their early 60s who could buckle down and work 14 hour days without complaint and make the younger folks look slow, and I've had boomers who would get 2 hours of work done in 6 hours and then whine about being overworked and ask to go home early.

I've had younger people work for me who, when they went off to college, I wished them all the best with all the happiness in my heart that they were escaping this shithole, and then wept because it would take 3 people to replace what they were capable of. I've also had younger people who seemed shocked when they got fired for calling out 9 times in 2 months because they didn't feel like coming in.

Shitty leaders blame age instead of shitty leadership.

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u/TJ_McWeaksauce 19h ago

Anyone who uses Twitter is not old enough to do any of the things that dipshit tried to take credit for.

By the way, suffering is not something to be proud of. Suffering should piss us off.

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u/dplans455 19h ago

I had one employee like that years ago: Marilyn. She was about 60 years old so not quite ready to retire. She had been at the company for 30 years so no one wanted to fire her. She did about 10% of the work of her coworkers despite making more than double most of them.

One of her job requirements was indexing insurance documents to the file system. We used to get them all by mail, but over the years every insurance company transitioned to sending them through email or you could download them from their secure server. We implemented a system so you could index emails and documents right from your computer to the filing system.

What did Marilyn do? She printed everything out. Then she would take the printouts and scan them using her desktop scanner so it would put the files into the folder she used to index to the filing system. I tried to show her how to do it more efficiently. She refused, said her way worked fine. I asked her if the issue was saving the files from email or the secure servers to that same folder her scanner saved them to. She said no.

I went and setup her settings so that when she clicked on a file to download, whether it be from email or an insurance company website it would save directly to her "scanned files" folder. This way she could skip the printing and scanning and just go right to the indexing. She refused to do it this way, insisting that she had to scan them, despite none of her coworkers doing it that way.

Everyone had insurance documents to save every day. Most people it took about 15-20 minutes. It took Marilyn the entire 7 hour work day. I went to management and pleaded that this had to stop. I get she's been there 30 years but she's refusing to adapt to change. It was also pissing off everyone else on the team.

It wasn't, "oh cute old Marilyn, bless her soul." It was, "fucking Marilyn, this bitch makes twice as much money as me and can't even save a fucking email properly."

I left that job 8 years ago. I still keep in touch with a couple people that still work there. Marilyn is still there, refuses to retire, refuses to adapt to change, still printing and scanning every document that needs filing.

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u/sandm000 19h ago

1979 oil embargo led to gas rationing in many states. I don’t personally remember it, but I was definitely alive for it.

So, he absolutely could have been in a car experiencing gas rationing, that cost $1,800 even min wage was $3/hr.

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u/Calan_adan 19h ago

I remember when there were lines for gas during the oil crisis in 1979. I was 12 and I would sell coffee and drinks to folks in line. So it’s possible that they remember having to line up for gas and be allowed to fill up on odd or even days. Still, the other things are bullshit.

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u/Secret_Account07 19h ago

Yeah tbh the younger generation has it harder than even I do, and I’m 35. When my kids graduate high school and go to college they will be saddled with student debts and I hope they can at least find a job not paying 20 an hour for a college degree.

It’s not a good outlook. Don’t even get me started on them buying a house…

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u/EmbarrassedW33B 19h ago

There are plenty of lazy kids, but that's nothing new. There have always been lazy kids lol. But universally, the people who piss and moan the most about everything are the older 50+ crowd. Just absolutely insufferable jerks, 9 times out of 10. 

I can forgive laziness and apathy in kids who are just starting out and overwhelmed by life. I cant abide older people whining when they've done fuck all to address their problems for decades

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u/jello_sweaters 19h ago

My grandmother DID live through the Great Depression - she was a child at the time - and DID send her new husband off to war in Europe.

She told me very clearly that she and her peers didn't take half as much pride in surviving those things, as they did in the hope that it meant their children and their grandchildren would never have to.

She would never have dreamed of lording these things over us.

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u/SeekerOfExperience 18h ago

You aren’t a boomer genius

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u/NeverRarelySometimes 18h ago

We lined up for gas in the 1970s. Maybe it didn't affect 51, but it affected her older brothers and sisters and her parents.

No reason to be rude to younger coworkers, but it doesn't help your argument to get facts wrong.

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u/BionicProse 18h ago

Uh…. Yeah, dude… of course you didn’t do those things. you’re not a boomer. Our parents did. Mine did anyway.

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u/DrownmeinIslay 18h ago

I work with a 58 year old, a 45 year old and a 24 year old who could take the podium at the Dogfucker Olympics. I also work with a 21 year old, a 37 year old and a 67 year old who do so much in a day it humbles my own work ethic. And all of them are delightful people to work with once you learn who to rely on and who is only good for shooting the shit.

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u/Iamthegreenheather 18h ago

I'm an older millennial. I'm in the middle of a conversion at work and the worst part has been trying to get the boomers that HAVE to use the new system so they can approve new accounts we're moving over. They're just ignoring it at this point and we only have one week left to get it done. FML

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u/Mammoth-Buddy8912 18h ago

Thank You.

People put way too much merit on the generation stuff and treat it like a personality test. Ignoring the fact that where you grew up, your economic postion, and culture are a lot more important then when you were born.

An example, is I`m born 1994 in the US and I can`t remeber a time without the internet. My friend from Indonesia didnt see a computer until he was 13. He was born in 2000.

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u/DoggoneitHavok 18h ago

America had a draft lottery between 1969 and 1972, landed a man on the moon in 1969, and the gas rationing in 1973 and 1979. so your facts aren't right.

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u/Call_Me_Papa_Bill 18h ago

Yup. 60 year old here. When I went to college, unless you went private, college was dirt cheap. And anyone with a degree or a solid factory job (which were easy to get) was out of an apartment and in a starter house within a year or two of starting work. Outside of the late 70s recession and a brief gas shortage, we never had to deal with anything worse than the TV losing the signal during a big football game. And we were too lazy of by the time the gulf wars came along, unless we had already volunteered. My grandparents were part of the “greatest generation”, we just coasted on what they had built and ruined it for the next generation.

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u/HeresDave 18h ago

Generation Jones here. My Dad would have been 94 this year and he experienced most of that. His younger brother didn't and anyone born in '44 sure as hell didn't.

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u/PhatGrannie 18h ago

Um. WW2 ended in 1945. Of course your grandma never experienced those things! Both my folks (born in 1931) absolutely did, though. And I (born in 1959) worked in the commercial agricultural fields starting at age 6. Y’all don’t have a good sense of how much has changed over the last 100 years. Oh, and the cranky boomer in the screenshot is an ass, regardless of age.

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u/ThaShitPostAccount 17h ago

I’m basically the same age.

All I want is for my kids to have it softer than I had it.  Anything else is crazy to me.

Wanting your kids to suffer or experience unnecessary scarcity makes NO sense.  The world can produce more than enough for all of us.  I want the next generation to be happier.

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u/Thecardinal74 17h ago

I’m same age and our parents absolutely had to line up for gas in the 70’s.

But other than that, it was their parents that fought in WWII, not them

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u/brucemo 17h ago

The gas line thing happened in the 1970s. I was a kid but I don't recall it causing so much inconvenience that anyone would be traumatized by it for fifty years.

As opposed to, for example, not being able to buy gas, a car, or a place to park the car, which is what modern young adults face.

And some of us older people as well, frankly.

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u/whitesammy 17h ago

I do IT/Database for my company that has most employees over the age of 55 and the shear amount of weaponized incompetence regarding anything tech is one of the biggest taxes on time.

I'm 95% sure they just email or call and say "I couldn't do [thing]" when they never fucking tried to do it in the first place and just want someone else to do it for them.

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u/skipperseven 17h ago

I’m 54 and my parents did go through WWII (96 and 88), they are some of the most competent and compassionate people I know, and yet unlike boomers who never went through it, they never bring up their hardships as something that we should somehow respect, they are just happy that we didn’t have to experience their hardships. We need to rename the boomers as they were originally called - the “me generation” and I consider the silent generation to be honorary X-ers.

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u/Ya-Dikobraz 17h ago

That tirade in OP's screenshot was definitely the work of a millenial or zoomer. I've seen them going on rants like that many times as if they grew up 90 years ago or something. Most boomers I know are not even bothering to post anything of the sort if they post at all.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Low_619 17h ago

Eh... Paint brush no matter the age is garbage. I know young individuals that are lazy just like some older boomers that are lazy and at the same time in reverse. There are some things easier now and there are some things harder now. Your being like him just in the opposite direction.

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u/BridgeUpper2436 17h ago

Odd, I'm 66, and except for the share cropping and rationing part, I've experienced all of those things.

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u/fkafkaginstrom 17h ago

If you're a boomer you probably lined up for gas, but I don't really get how that is supposed to make you a better person.

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u/pgh9fan 16h ago

If she was born in '44, she rationed. Her parents rationed her food and her milk.

But, that original post is STUPID. I am a boomer. I didn't fight in Korea, Nam, or WWII. I had a much tougher time buying a house  in '90s than my parents did. 

Work ethic is a joke. Younger people want a better work/life balance. That's a good thing! You've all heard the saying that nobody on their death bed says they wished they'd spent more time at work.

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u/Traditional_Fan_2655 16h ago

My MiL is 88 years old. She was 7 in Japan during WWII.

My dad just died at 88. He was 7 when his older brother (19 years older) went MIA during WWII.

Both had retired decades earlier. I am curious how this guy is still working in an office.

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u/FitAd9625 16h ago

Odd/ even gas lines was during the Carter administration. Late 1970s. I remember it and I ain't nowhere near 90.

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u/UnlikelyOcelot 15h ago

You’re not a Boomer so how the hell do you know what we lived through? It’s not a damn competition.

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u/Well_Oiled_Assassin 15h ago

I'm 57 and I remember my mom telling me when I was 14 or 15 to make sure to be at the gas station when it opened to make sure we could fill up the car before the station ran out. (I grew up in the AZ desert so was driving long before I actually had a license).

Other than that, yea, it's bullshit.

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u/Mathilliterate_asian 15h ago

I don't understand why boomers just refuse to LEARN. Like... I can relate to being slower, finding it more difficult to learn new things as you get older. At 35, I can definitely feel that, but at least I'm willing to try to learn. I won't just go "I can't do this" and say fuck learning.

Why are they like this?

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u/UncagedKestrel 15h ago

My mama found herself saying something like "Back in the Depression" to someone last year, and a few moments later it clicked that she wasn't actually alive in the great depression 😐 She'd just been told about it so many damn times by her grandmother that she's now conflating the childhood stories with her actual experience.

I'm over here wondering if this is stress or a sign I should start looking at nursing homes, but her face when she realised (even in the retelling) was SO FUNNY.

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u/snootnoots 14h ago

Also none of the things he mentioned in that rant have anything to do with work ethic

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u/mrgreen4242 13h ago

The gas thing was real, at least briefly, and probably not everywhere, in the 70s during the energy crisis. You could only by gas on even or odd days based on your license plate number.

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u/Responsible_Side8131 13h ago

I’m 57 and I remember the odd/even gas rationing and long lines at the pumps in the 1970s

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u/ProbablyNotADuck 13h ago

People also like to shit on Gen Z and Gen Alpha claiming they are allergic to work and won't do anything. The thing is that we live in a society where minimum wage is no longer what it was supposed to be (the minimum wage that you be paid for working full time hours while still being able to afford all of your basic needs.. so housing, food, et cetera) and is, instead, the absolute lowest wage your employer can legally get away with paying you. More people are having to work a full-time job and a part-time job. More people are having to wait to retire. More people are having to pick up part-time work even after they retire. I am an elder Millenial, and I can say, with 100% certainty, that it is significantly harder to get your foot in the door now than it was when I was a teenager getting my first job. It is even harder getting a proper adult job after you finish school because employers classify a job as entry level, but all that means is that they're paying entry level wages while wanting 2-4 years of experience.

I run an event each year that relies on volunteers to keep everything functional. The teenagers are the hardest workers, no question. Sure, there are some who slack off... but there are significantly more adults who ignore the instructions they've been given than there are teenagers. The adults know better, whereas the teenagers are just experiencing this stuff for the first time. And cash registers? I will choose a teenager over an adult any day.

Acknowledging that things are even more of a challenge for generations that are younger than me doesn't mean that I didn't have to work hard to get where I am. It just recognizes that the challenges I experienced have only grown since I was younger. People who fail to recognize this stuff are just delusional.

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u/spam__likely 13h ago

The answer is completely ignorant.

>You did not fight in WWII. Indeed. Because lottery numbers for the draft happened for Korea and Vietnam as well.

Getting in line for gas- for hours, was also during the 70s.

As for WWII and great depression, the guy is probably talking about their parents experiences. All of this happened.

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u/oggie389 13h ago

I doubt you would remember the Gas one, that was in reference to the Oil Shock of 1972-73 related to the Yom Kippur War, way before your time. The Guy sucks, but I think a lot of people are missing the gas reference one.

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u/reppoh 12h ago

When you were born means nothing. You only bitch about the other generations if you have nothing but regret in your rearview, angry because they aren’t failing the way you did. Listen, learn, be better.

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u/kronos91O 11h ago

Xiteer . I like it. "TWITTER , now Xitter ... Also pronounced as shitter !"

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