What characterizes the Obama generation? To its boosters, like Jonathan Pontell, author of the "Generation Jones" construct, they(people born in the mid-1950s to the mid-'60s) are "practical idealists," tempered by growing up in a world in which many of their parents were more interested in self-fulfillment than they were in their children. That meant that, as latch-key kids stuck in front of the TV or left to their own devices, they had to master their own destiny at an early age the best they could.So funny. Throughout the history of the United States every generation amounts to approximately 20 or so years. But not the Jonesers. They're so special they deserve their very own 10 years.
"Where the Boomers naively tried to change the system and the Xers in a sense walked away from the system, my generation used the system to get what we wanted," Pontell told a reporter. "It's like the Boomers never realized they were playing the game, the Xers folded their cards, and my generation was wise to the game but said deal the cards anyway."
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
They've been quiet over the last month. Too quiet.
..but here's another 1/2 assed attempt at justifying a possible existence of a "Generation Jones".
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5 comments:
I got dissed on Trunk's blog for dogging gen Jones. Of course, the person who dissed me (Hi T.O.) had been following my blog but chose only to address my wincing at gen jones on a highly trafficked site. (nice.)and only after trunk said i had a good point. (nice.) I'm over it though, but thought I'd dial you in - in case you missed it. T.O. as in trend observer had quite a bit of passion for gen jones, which gave me cause to pause, but it still annoys the crap out of me. as if generation x hasn't suffered enough of an identity crisis - now a healthy chunk wants to secede. and it just reinforces the lack of belonging, the lack of generational awareness, the lack of interest in identifying. i'm just so tired of it, and the fact they claim the president as their own - to promote their existence. cheap. cheap. cheap.
name their movie. name their band. what is their collective persona. they will always borrow from boomers and xers - an identity that is nothing more than amalgamation.
am i crazy, wek? (and, i'm not asking anyone else!!!!!)
great label by the way. if you dog gen jones on a gen jones site your blog will get lots of traffic. they'll start stalking you. hahahaha
I get a bit tired of this 'Generation X walked away' crap. Gen X's numbers were waaaaay smaller than its predecessors (as it came about shortly after The Pill). When Gen X started getting out of school, there weren't the raw numbers like the Boomers or Jones, which overwhelmed >their< predecessors. Fourteen years ago, when you were the young person, the recent grad in an office, you were IT; offices definitely skewed Boomer and Jones in those days and they had no use for young people.
There just aren't that many X-ers; we didn't walk away, we were ignored as a 'market' for 'consumer culture.' X-er music had quite the brief heyday, but I think someone looked at the numbers of college kids sometime around '95 and said, 'What we need is to bypass this flyspeck of a generation and concentrate on those who we'l call Millenials' -- you get your pre-fab bands coming in around this time. So X-er music goes by the wayside from the airwaves by about '01, '02 -- passed over for greasy kid's stuff!
Yeah, Gen Jones is a good marketing ploy. But it doesn't really exist.
Jen- I can deal with the stalkers. I've had to deal with lots of weirdos from my work on my other blog- Operation Yellow Elephant.
Rockie- no doubt, we didn't walk away from anything. We were left out like the fat kid in kickball. That's a big reason why I'll always feel some very small pride in being involved with the tech revolution......until that crumbled like a house of cards. But the impact will forever be felt.
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