I was a toddler when my younger brother was born, and I believed him to be a sort of special pet—forever a baby, like a perma-puppy dog breed. I was sad to learn he would develop into a regular person; despite showing preliminary promise, he was ultimately just one of us.
Decades later, I experienced a similar letdown when I read that Gen Z is accidentally sharing Instagram posts to their Facebook accounts. This faux pas is something I would expect of boomers, not the shiny new generation I was counting on to solve climate change and enact gun control legislation. I’d thought they were different.
Alas, humanity is intrinsically inadequate—but even the worst school has a valedictorian. So what’s the best generation?
⚠️ Disclaimer re: Generational Warfare ⚠️
During a heated mother-daughter fight, a high school friend of mine locked her mother out of their house. When her mother tried to enter through the doggy door, my friend stabbed her (non-fatally! 👼), claiming that she’d mistaken her own mother for an intruder.
I prefer fighting to the condescension of men proclaiming respect for their elders in the form of sexual attraction, as if a boner for a GILF is noble.
This mother used Feria and drove us through the suburbs in her Sebring convertible to track down the source of glamorous searchlights crisscrossing the sky. (They turned out to be from a Hollywood Tan.) But even being a “cool” mom doesn’t mean you can bridge the generation gap. There’s a congenital conflict between all generations that naturally leads to existential mortal combat. When my grandma saw her first grandchild, she said she felt like an old dog meeting the new puppy; it’s that defensive instinct that causes drama like attempted matricide, sonic child-repelling devices, and blocking student loan forgiveness in the Senate.
We focus on our differences, not similarities, because what else is there to talk about? Bruce Handy, while trying to wiggle out of the boomer category, argued that each generation having its own innate persona is “a marketer’s version of astrology.” I’ve got news for you, Handy. In this house, we (millennials) believe in astrology.
I prefer fighting to the condescension of men proclaiming respect for their elders in the form of sexual attraction, as if a boner for a GILF is noble.
My grandpa shrank as he aged, getting shorter but not skinnier. When we dropped his pants off at the tailor for hemming, they called to confirm the astounding measurements (a 20:1 waist-to-leg ratio).
My grandpa shrank as he aged, getting shorter but not skinnier. When we dropped his pants off at the tailor for hemming, they called to confirm the astounding measurements (a 20:1 waist-to-leg ratio).
The Greatest Generation
Tom Hanks (boomer, b. 1966) has made so many movies showcasing this generation‘s WWII antics that one critic said that he was “working out his daddy issues.” Meow. Tom thinks they’re the greatest—but are they the best?
If the elderly are “immigrants from an earlier world,” we’re all a little xenophobic. 😞The doctor in my grandpa’s nursing home had an especially resentful attitude, like a scapegoated customer service agent forced to troubleshoot a defective product. Admittedly, this generation is past its prime. But maybe we can learn from them? Most of our modern transfer of knowledge takes place via Yelp reviews. Instead of trying to interpret digital cave scrawlings warning of overpriced appetizers, why not just ask an old person? I made an appointment with an eighty-year-old therapist, ready to be guided by an ancient mystic. But in response to my go-go NuvaRing-fueled millennial lifestyle, she just gave me advice cribbed from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: “A man needs to pull away like a rubber band . . . ” (FYI, that actually DOES work.)
Idk about these guys. Wendell Berry said millenials have a collective “hatred of all things inherited” and mania for youth. So maybe I can’t be an impartial judge, but it’s interesting that they defeated the Nazis, yet mysteriously ran out of steam before they got to civil rights.
While better than “boomer,” the alphabetical generation names are boring. Take some inspiration from the past (the Era of Good Feelings!) or from Japan, which has the Relaxed Education Generation and the Bubbles.
Baby Boomers
Acknowledging a baby boom is uncomfortable, like counting back nine months from your birthday and learning when your parents conceived you. To name an entire generation for this demographic phenomenon—centering the idea of our forefathers ferociously reproducing en masse—is sick.
So I’m automatically on edge when considering the boomers. Admittedly, the Greatest Generation timed their copulation well. Their boomer children's lives coincided with the peak of the United States’ power and prosperity. They’re rich! And statistically, the rich have a tendency to believe in a “just world,” in which everything happens for a reason. 🌈
Most boomer behaviors can be attributed to this dreamy worldview, like using phone cases that are also wallets. They cram them with Eddie Bauer credit cards and Costco IDs and flop them open willy-nilly. The blissful recklessness of putting all your eggs in one phone case! I prefer to lose my phone or wallet one at a time. But despite Vietnam, boomers have faith in happy endings.
T-Mobile sends out “deals” every Tuesday. It’s a form of spam, but my family plan administrator (and father) thoughtfully weighs each option as if they’re reaching out to him one-on-one. The boomer ability to take things personally is almost religious, born from the belief that they’re the center of a grand plan—rather than being hardy vermin in a forgotten corner of the likely-simulated universe. If, as a result, they must “drown in the [internet] froth we have learned to surf,” so be it.
Recently, though, I’ve noticed a shift in my father. He’s changing from a justice-driven activist who once took AT&T to small claims court over $63 into someone with a more blasé outlook. “Ego chill” 🧊 is the peaceful realization that you‘re going to die and nothing matters, often seen in hospice patients—or my healthy father, who doesn’t understand his neighbors’ concerns about a local development projected to increase traffic 30% by 2045. His official position is that he doesn’t care what happens because, in his words, “I’ll be dead by then.” What a luxurious mindset!
It’s hard to say which is the more frustrating boomy outlook: apathy or clinging to power. Analysts say that boomers “still have not peaked” in terms of political control (an ominous phrase that brings to mind the Brood X locust hatching). We have a few more years of submitting to boomers, for better or worse.
👼⏳🫧🍼📀👼⏳🫧🍼📀 👼⏳🫧🍼📀👼⏳🫧🍼📀
Gen X
Circa the Glossier Series B round, a Gen X coworker of mine erroneously referred to the then-ubiquitous millennial pink as millennium pink. The pity I felt! I couldn’t make eye contact with the elderly fool for days.
I hadn’t felt that uneasy around a Gen X-er since Craig and Lisa hired me to babysit at their boring house. The only entertainment was their inhumanely bohemian TV setup (only three channels!). When Craig drove me home, he mumbled along to Headbangers Ball compilations or “Once in a Lifetime” while touching his long-closed ear piercing. Between verses, he made impossible demands: “Jesus, please tell me you know who The Lemonheads are.” “Never get old.” I guess it was the sense of potential he was missing, because I wouldn’t recommend youth as a day-to-day lifestyle. Seatbelts cut across your neck, and you have to be polite when an adult man sings in front of you.
$145 equaled three items at Abercrombie. They were expanding their preppy-porn marketing into a radio campaign that had The New York Times wondering: “What does a college student tugging off his boxers sound like?” I didn’t know, but I was very interested.
If Gen X is so into authenticity, they should dump Winona and appoint Redman, with his iconically bare-bones Cribs tour, as their king.
When we pulled up to my house, Craig sometimes paid me, sometimes didn’t. After a few months, I was running a $145 deficit, so I worked up my courage and gently implied that maybe? he had forgotten. He said he didn’t think so, and reached across me to open my door: I was dismissed. They never called me to babysit again, and they still owe me $145.
Craig’s tediously psycho midlife crisis feels on par for Gen X. I only included them in this reflection as a courtesy, because it’s sad when they clamor for attention in the mainstage millennial/Gen Z face-off. But maybe we can toss them a minor victory—are they at least better than boomers? Hard to say; Schopenhauer ranked boredom as equivalent to pain.
$145 equaled three items at Abercrombie. They were expanding their preppy-porn marketing into a radio campaign that had The New York Times wondering: “What does a college student tugging off his boxers sound like?” I didn’t know, but I was very interested.
If Gen X is so into authenticity, they should dump Winona and appoint Redman, with his iconically bare-bones Cribs tour, as their king.
Millennial
I’m not a joiner, to the point that commuting feels as dumb as doing the wave at a baseball game. We’re all parading in the same direction in our little business outfits? It’s humiliating, and so is being part of a generation represented by our corniest members (Gryffindors ad*lting).
Perhaps as a psychological reaction to being repeatedly scammed—along with the 2007 recession, we missed out on stroller sleeping bags—millennials delayed childbearing and lingered in a juvenile phase where we grasped for comfort and found normcore. Normcore seemed like proof that all possible styles had happened and we could just relax for a while. There are still traces of it today, but it’s not cute anymore. As Sean Monahan put it, “There was something ironic, and maybe somewhat infuriating, to have cool downtown kids dressed like suburban moms. I don’t know if it’s as interesting to have suburban moms dressed as suburban moms.”
But that doesn’t mean suburban moms are uninteresting. I love a Mormon mommy blogger who survived a plane crash.
It’s not. And while everyone’s kids are adorable (mostly), their presence destroys the cozy illusion that we were it: the culmination of millennia of human evolution, rather than just one link in a long chain of breeders.
But we did a lot for online shopping technology! One-click checkout, yum.
Gen Z
Millennials find Gen Z interesting primarily in relation to ourselves. We re-part our hair while processing the painful fact that many of us have been hitting the snooze alarm on our potential, and Gen Z is our wakeup call.
Living through a complete trend cycle for the first time, courtesy of Gen Z, has forced us to face our mortality. I’d believed my 1998 mall purchases would be eternally cool: an infallible investment wardrobe of butterfly clips and flared cargo pants. Surely, at this point in human history (the end!), we’d solved fashion.
But that doesn’t mean suburban moms are uninteresting. I love a Mormon mommy blogger who survived a plane crash.
I lost my mother’s trust after a What Not to Wear session (a primitive version of this trend) in which I confidently forced her to buy bootcut jeans, only to change my denim beliefs to skinny shortly thereafter. She was mad.
But in my final semester of eighth grade, the number-one boy in school showed up with his elegant butt cut mutilated into a front-spike. In that moment, I understood that history does not stop. We, or at least popular boys, live on the cutting edge. The next leap into the future came in 2005, when my friend brought shocking skinny jeans from the Lisbon H&M back to the Midwest. Those eventually fell out of favor, then came back in. Life is but a denim ouroboros.
Eyebrows are also trend-cycling. Survivors of the twentieth-century brow famine are speaking out, but Gen Z doesn’t wanna hear it! It can be frustrating, like watching a toddler try to tie their own shoes, but intergenerational advice typically doesn’t translate. It’s ok. They say wisdom is embittering; let Gen Z brow anarchists be blissfully ignorant a little while longer. They can always get transplants.
Gen Z taught me that generational progress is less like the evolutionary chart, with monkeys transforming into a perfect finished product, and more like a moon phase chart that perpetually repeats itself, over and over and over. “Deadass” is kinda cute though.
I lost my mother’s trust after a What Not to Wear session (a primitive version of this trend) in which I confidently forced her to buy bootcut jeans, only to change my denim beliefs to skinny shortly thereafter. She was mad.
E=millennials²
As individuals or generations, the idea that we’re special is a delusion driven by the narcissism of small differences. But main character syndrome exists for a reason—it’s impossible to experience the world except through the prism of oneself. The best generation is relative, determined with a simple formula: subtract two from your own. Millennial - 2 = Alpha.
To show my work: the existence of anyone older than me serves as a sharp existential provocation—it seems unpleasantly plausible that I too will age and die. My immediate successors, Gen Z, are threateningly hot on my heels. But two generations removed from me feels more like science fiction (Born in the 2020s?! Sure . . . ) than a real threat. Plus, the enemy of my enemy is my friend: I’m excited to watch Alpha babies dunk on Gen Z.
But in closing, I offer a talisman for intergenerational harmony: the Hangover Part III soundtrack. Hansen, Danzig, the Cramps, NIИ, A$AP Rocky, Harry Nilsson: a sublime medley that couldn’t exist without help from every generation. 🎷🌈🧓❣️👶
