The Generation That Time Forgot

Okay, so when I made my mid-year resolution (as it were) last year to write more on Monster Dad I had a brilliant idea. I knew that even if I could get back into the swing of writing again it was unlikely that I'd be able to generate enough content to satisfy the four-to-five-posts-per-month target that I kinda-sorta set for myself. The problem? I generally only write detailed, long-winded posts that tell a complete story and which tend to take a long time to think out, research and (especially) write. I've noticed that many other blogs tend to be more in line with the current short-attention-span world we're currently living in. Everything today has to be immediate, quick, to-the-point and bite-sized. Blurbs and Tweets are where it's at. My brilliant idea was to expand my horizon (and blog post output) by joining in on the modern world. I've seen other bloggers post a photo with a caption (or sometimes just a photo, without so much as a caption to go along with it) or similar short posts that are insanely quick to generate and post, and at the same time very digestible for an audience looking for quick and instant gratification before moving on to the next thing. I decided that I would start to share things like this on Monster Dad. Any time I saw something that struck my fancy and seemed to fit into the admittedly wide subject area of Monster Dad I would simply create a short post and share it here. This has always been the kind of thing I've done on Facebook (there IS a Share button right below every post on Facebook!), but it always seemed like the opposite of what I wanted to do here--namely to generate new and original content that was actually mine. But content is content, right? I figured that I could still write my usual one, two or three long posts per month and at the same time boost my numbers by adding  a bunch of quick and easy posts. It seemed like a good way to be more relevant and even potentially improve my standing in search engine results and such. But a funny thing happened on my way to becoming a "blurb poster"--I simply couldn't bring myself to do it. For whatever reason I just kept generating my own content, even if it was at a snail's pace. I'm happy to say that I'm still committed to writing around eight months after making that commitment, but also kind of disappointed by my total output. So today I'm finally going to publish my first "blurb post"! Ironically enough, since I've also decided to explain in detail why I'm posting something very short and easy-to-digest, this will still end up being a standard, long-winded Monster Dad post by the time it's done. How quaint!

The Huffington Post recently put up the story Generation Xers Have The Most Gen X Response to Being Left Off The List. Interestingly enough this piece is actually based on a Twitter post by Bill Evenson, and most of the body of the story is made up of Tweets and memes responding to that post. Sounds like this is another example of generating content by sharing something someone else did and making it your own. [Confession: I am NOT currently on Twitter. I signed up for it about a decade ago and then realized that it simply wasn't for me. I know that at some point I'm going to have to join in on the fun, but now it's complicated because of having a closed account and all.]

Anyway, the story is about a graphic by CBS meant to define all of the generations from "The Silent Generation" to "Post-Millennials" by birth year. The graphic was supposed to illustrate a story about crises being experienced by the various generations. But that little graphic ended up being a story unto itself thanks to being noticed and pointed out by Mr. Evenson. As can be seen above, CBS simply skipped from Baby Boomers to Millennials with no mention of the people born between 1965 and 1980--a generation known as "Generation X". As a member of that generation (born in 1969) I was curious about why CBS decided to leave us out. It certainly seems like an oversight. I mean, there were definitely people born between 1965 and 1980. I don't think anyone would refute that fact. And it doesn't seem like there's any real reason to dis, dismiss or deny the existence of Gen Xers. Or am I missing something?

I remember when they first started to refer to my generation as Generation X. It was the first new "generation designation" since the Baby Boomers. It seemed like a pretty cool designation too. I mean, it had "X" in it! It was a time of grunge rock, Nintendo and the early days of the Internet as a regular thing that regular people used. It was a pretty cool feeling knowing that I was a member of this newly-named generation. But now we're the old folks. We're the ones seeing the Millennials taking over the world and complaining about them. Perhaps it was a Millennial who created the graphic that started all of this. Perhaps he/she did it on purpose to belittle Generation X via omission. Or perhaps he/she was just being a "lazy Millennial" and was more concerned with where they were going to hang with their friends after work--or wondering why they even HAVE to work in the first place--to check their graphic before submitting it. Who knows?

Whatever the case, we now have this story to ponder, muse about, question, make fun of, laugh at, post Tweets and memes about and share ad nauseam on social media. I wasn't actually planning on writing about this story myself (it's already written about in HuffPost after all). My intention was simply to share the story and link here, let everyone who sees this have access to the original story and count one more post as being "written". But when you get right down to it, I'm still Monster Dad and I still have my own style of writing. Is it a style likely to get me legions of loyal readers clamoring for more and more posts? Probably not. But it IS me, and I AM a Gen Xer.