Old Yeller'd - Generation X

We have spent a fair share of our time bashing baby boomers and all of their 'self-congratulating and riding a few good years for all it's worth while simultaneously ruining the planet' bullshit. I think it's natural; it's an evolutionary thing; the generation before you gets the blame for fucking things up, and the generation after you catches shit for not getting 'it'.

Now however, the baby boomers are apparently eating healthy, riding bikes while antiquing and taking pills so they can Fuck in bath tubs, they have come full circle and are for the most part in their twilight and irrelevant. I'm sure Tom Brokow or someone of his ilk will write a few books about how wonderful they were, and their sacrifices made the world better for all. In a way he wouldn't be wrong, unfortunately he won't focus on the pompous, greedy, scared and downright dangerous period from just after the 60s to present day.

However, this isn't about them, it's about us, my generation, Generation X. We are now on center stage and it is our time to Fuck the world up so the next generation, the creatively named Generation Y can look at us and place humanity's impending doom squarely on our shoulders. Sadly I am not sure I can blame them.

We fucking suck.

We had a good run through the 1980s and mid 1990s, rallying around a cynical 'Fuck the system DIY ethos' that spawned creative arts scenes, innovative technological breakthroughs, urban renewal, suburban flight, and a push for sustainability, and a break from traditional power structures.

Unfortunately, much like the boomers, we are entirely too smug and satisfied with our former selves, touting our virtues while spitting in their face with our actions. We have become a generation of carnival barkers, shills, exploiters and marketers. We have managed to take everything that is good and pure and found a way to market the shit out of it. Always searching for a pay day and justifying this insatiable greed because 'if it wasn't me it would have been someone else'.

I am not saying that our willful opting out of the material world and bullshit that we saw from our parents had any sort of long term potential, but jumping into that world feet first might be even worse. There is nothing that we won't try to collect on, we mine and analyze every lick of personal data we can get and use it to market shit that nobody needs to people who don't want it. If it was the behavior of an individual he would be locked up and tagged as a creep, but because it is under the guise of information sharing and opt out clauses, it is somehow acceptable.

We rape and pillage our most sacred memories and jam them into commercials and soulless remakes. We have taken away human dignity and continually destroy everything to make sure the kids know about Coca-Cola. It is like we took the outrage from the NIKE Revolution advertisements, bottled it and added crack cocaine and Red Bull to it. We are fucking predatory with that shit. We are willing to sell our souls for a fucking buck, we even market drugs we don't need for ailments that don't exist and justify it with our salaries and chrome appliances.

We have lost our moral compass. We are the pushers, the stalkers, the thieves, the charlatans. We have created a fully fledged consumer culture, we saddle our children with it, and created a soulless generation, with little to no options. Where can they turn? Anything they create for themselves that is worth a shit, we will surely find a way to shove down the collective culture's throat in an attempt to sell Hondas.

We can no longer blame the previous generations for the ills of the world, we are in the driver's seat and come hell or high water we are going to tow the company line to make sure that every American doesn't have a Pepsi in their cup holders.

We have no shame and that in and of itself is a shame.