chapotraphouse

Beautifully put. The thought of it is very emotionally stirring.

There’s a sex pest movie line that was seared into my brain and occasionally pops back in to make me cringe. I don’t even know what movie it’s from, but it was a popular one.

American Beauty is the pinnacle of this

Yeah, it's true. But I honestly think it's a problem of the society (insert joker meme) we live in and we can't pin it to a single generation.

There were anti-capitalist boomers, hell, some of the media that helped shape my anti-capitalism was made by Boomers. Captain Planet, Mother 3, both made by Boomers.

Gen X might have their horrible shitheads like Elon Musk, but they also produced a lot of anti-consumerist people too.

In my own generation (millennials) we may have our burnt-out worker masses crying out for change, and our Hasanbis, but we also have our Ben Shapiros and Charlie Kirks shilling capitalist propaganda.

Hell, even Zoomers might have Greta Thunberg, but they also have Mr Beast.

I think we see the capitalist side of generations as they get older because those are the people who get rewarded and pushed into the spotlight by capitalism.

I think boomers became fond of Minions because they saw themselves as Minions for capitalism; toiling but forcibly accepting it because there was no alternative and none perceived to be possible.

Ya it’s annoying but I think those feelings of ennui are valid. One merely needs to connect those feelings to their material basis and you’ve got a large potentially progressive demographic as capitalism further decays. Obv it’s better to have ennui than to be impoverished in the global south, but it’s still a negative symptom of capitalism, and expression of that should be encouraged.

One of my least favorite kinds of media is the kind where boomers and Gen Xers whine about how terrible working their stable jobs is and how their lives feel aimless,

I was young enough to be around to fucking hate the "generation meh, REALITY BYTES" privileged ennui shit from bored well-to-do Xers that became adults before I did, having few materially tangible things to complain about but getting preoccupied with poisoning themselves with irony.

Turns out even with livable conditions capitalism is alienating and awful. They focused on that part cause they had lvsvle conditions.

He's seen some shit.

I'm OK. We're OK. Stop asking.

Many, many GenXers became junior boomers and still are.

OK Soda has been remembered more for its unique advertising campaign than for its fruity flavor. The name and advertising campaign attempted to poke fun at the "I'm OK, You're OK" pop-psychology of the early 1970s. OK Soda was intentionally marketed at the difficult Generation X markets, and attempted to cash in on the group's existing cynicism, disillusionment and disaffection with standard advertising campaigns. OK Soda's concept was that the youth market was already aware that they were being manipulated by mass-media marketing, so this advertising campaign would just be more transparent about it.

Excerpts from the OK Soda manifesto, written by associate creative director Peter Wegner, were printed on the cans, and were also available for a short while on OK Soda's website. Some of the sayings were:

What's the point of OK? Well, what's the point of anything

OK Soda emphatically rejects anything that is not OK, and fully supports anything that is.

The better you understand something, the more OK it turns out to be.

OK Soda says, "Don't be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for everything."

OK Soda reveals the surprising truth about people and situations.

OK Soda does not subscribe to any religion, or endorse any political party, or do anything other than feel OK.

There is no real secret to feeling OK.

OK Soda may be the preferred drink of other people such as yourself.

Never overestimate the remarkable abilities of "OK" brand soda.

Please wake up every morning knowing that things are going to be OK.

Well now I just feel bad for Gen X too.

Composition and taste edit

OK Soda had a more "citric" taste than traditional colas, almost like a fruit punch version of Coke's Fresca. It has been described as "slightly spicy" and likened to a combination of orange soda and flat Coca-Cola.

Everything else about this sounds awful but the flavor seems, dare I say it, OK

My favorite thing about OK Soda is that it never made it to mass market, which means they probably thought the marketing campaign was too cynical even by marketing ghoul standards. The band Dillinger Four made a song about OK Soda and realized that most people were confused because it was only available in some test markets, so most people had never even heard of it at the time.

Ive always thought of the midlife crisis as being about you finally hitting the point where you've got the money and the time to do the thing(s) you've wanted to do since you were 12.
I know the only reason I don't have a cool motorbike is money and time

You have a good point here, but you have to wonder how many of the people who say they loved the era actually did. Someone who takes things at face value like that and doesn't discuss whatever introspective thoughts they have wouldn't tell a lot of people if they found their life underwhelming or empty.

I was young and the ideal age to consume 80s and 90s products and I especially fucking hated the 90s as I lived them

I’d add that widespread media tends to be written by very privileged people

I think one major societal issue we have that is an impediment to building socialism is that fact that media is created by and about privileged people. Think about how many shows are about doctors, lawyers, detectives, successful entrepreneurs, etc. Or shows about writers or teachers where they don’t actually experience financial hardship. Compare that with how often you see a show like Maid or Roseanne. The majority of Americans barely get by financially (at best) but the dramatic over-emphasis in media on highly compensated professionals or people who have plenty of money creates this illusion that financial precarity is the abberation in American life and not the norm.