Gen X As Punching Bag: Why The Internet Is Beating Up On The Most Overlooked and Underestimated Generation
Speaker 1 0:00
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Carolyn Cochrane 0:28
taste.
Kristin Nilsen 0:29
Welcome to the Pop Culture Preservation Society. Today is another refreshing PCPS Light episode with little to no planning, researching, or editing, but still full of great taste. Today we're talking about a thing that we've noticed that is happening over on the social medias, and that is that suddenly Gen X has become everybody's punching bag, often mistakenly so. We seem to be getting blamed for a lot of problems that we did not create, and we're being blamed mostly because no one has ever truly understood us, mostly. I mean, I was gonna say mostly the people younger than us, but that's not true. The people older than us also don't understand us. That's right, we are very misunderstood. And let's just say it right now, we didn't start the
Carolyn Cochrane 1:22
fire, but that
Carolyn Cochrane 1:22
record
Kristin Nilsen 1:23
saying that absolutely we didn't start the fire, and for me it started with a post on threads that I saw. This is just one. We're just using this as the launching pad to talk about this one post, because it, it all of the posts mirror this same one. I'm not going to tell you who posted it, it doesn't matter, and she has gotten beat
Carolyn Cochrane 1:43
up, and she's become a little apologetic, I think Jerry, yeah, she got a little education in different generations
Michelle Newman 1:52
very, very quickly, she got educated, she's pretty funny too, her comebacks of like her, like, okay, guys, settle down, she's very funny, I had to appreciate that she kind of owned it. So, what did she say? Kristen, what got
Carolyn Cochrane 2:06
everybody riled? That
Kristin Nilsen 2:07
is what she said. She said, "This is the original post. I think that Gen X and Boomers are paying the price for how they fucked up the economy, because millennials and Gen Z now can't afford childcare or housing, and now they're watching our kids and housing us, L M A O, laughing my ass. Oh, well, the comeback was swift and fierce. I read every comment, I was like, what, what? So I just kept on scrolling. All I saw 100 it was like hundreds and hundreds of comments, from my estimation, it looked like 100% of the people responding were Gen Xers, going, "What in the actual F are you saying? to the point where she was like, "Oops, okay, wait, wait, wait, and she literally then posted, "Maybe I was mixing the older Gen X with the boomers, my mistake, and this is common. Don't you see that? Like, people can't really differentiate between Boomers and Gen X.
Michelle Newman 3:09
I was just gonna say, I think there's a blur between all generations when you get to that kind of defining year line, right? So, especially with Boomers, when you get to like 1963 1964 boomers who were born in 1963 1964 and then the 1965 1966 and I know, Carolyn, that's you too, that's my sister, it's, and it, there's a blur, because we will get a lot of comments from boomers saying, wait, those were our toys, or those were, that's my, you know, that was my crush, and I'll say, right, absolutely. We love all generations are welcome. A
Kristin Nilsen 3:45
lot of boomer listeners,
Michelle Newman 3:46
yes, and all generations are welcome here. But there's definitely a blurry line at the, you know, the Gen Xers who were born in 1980 You know, that's a blurry line for the millennials that are born in 8182 My first daughter was born in 95 so she's both a millennial and a Gen Zer, right? She's right on that line, kind of like you are Carolyn, with so she kind of can go in between. She, she kind of is a proud, you know, both a proud member of both generations. So I think, yeah, I think that's important to know.
Kristin Nilsen 4:20
And those boomers that were born in 63 and 64 they did go through some of the same Gen X malaise, right? They had the same parenting applied to them as we had applied to us, and that's where a lot of this comes from. A lot of what a lot of attributes that we assigned to Gen X came from our parents and how they, the benign neglect, shall we say, and so I think those people born in 63 and 64 had that same experience, even though they are technically boomers, but you guys, you're part of us, so you know, but this poor woman who posts this, everybody is jumping on her, and they're giving her examples of where she's messing up, and then she says, she says, okay, okay, okay, I understand. I meant, I meant the older Gen Xers that were able to buy a $30,000 house in their 20s, but I hear you, I hear you. Now we're all, we're all not, we're all shaking our head. None of us bought a $30,000 house in our 20s, that is a fallacy. I don't even think my parents bought a $30,000 house, right? So they're just she's making stuff up out of thin air. These are stories that are created in order, like in order to direct their anger somewhere, I believe. So I responded to her on that one, because that one I right now I'm just a voyeur until she says that one, then I was like, girlfriend, you have got to check your sources, like, don't go spouting off on the medias, and then think that you have the facts, you don't. And so I responded to her, and I said, Are you making up these numbers? I am a privileged, over-educated elder Gen Xer, and I bought my first home in my 30s for $200,000 and it was the smallest house on the block. No one would buy it because there was no room for a family. My boomer parents bought a home in their 20s, but even that wasn't $30,000 The only reason our parents didn't house us or take care of our kids is because we were feral, aka our parents were not there for us like that. We took care of ourselves in extreme ways.
Michelle Newman 6:19
Yes, yeah, it's like the saying Gen X raised on hose water and neglect.
Carolyn Cochrane 6:26
Yes, that's like a mic drop, Kristen, because you said it all right, really in that whole in your reply, because I, I never even thought about going to my parents when after I graduated, or anything like, you know, while I was struggling to find a job, you know, keeping three jobs sometimes just to be able to pay the rent and maybe go out for a margarita for happy hour or something, but right, never in my wildest dreams, nor did anybody in our generation, I didn't know anybody that went back and lived at home or anything like that, so
Kristin Nilsen 6:58
one person,
Carolyn Cochrane 6:58
yeah, so it wasn't even on our radar, but yet at least two of my kids did. One of them, I don't think, will come back home, but yeah, so two of them have, but
Kristin Nilsen 7:08
they don't think twice about
Carolyn Cochrane 7:09
it. No, because we were always there, where our parents, just because of the nature of the beast, so to speak, weren't always there. So we had to figure it out, just like you said, we were more, we were fearful. We just had to figure it out on our own, or have our friends help us out, but certainly not go to our elders
Kristin Nilsen 7:28
in our, in our circle, just like you. I did not know one single person who went home and lived with their parents, not one. And the reason that this, we were able to do this is because oftentimes we would fill an apartment, like a two-bedroom apartment, with six roommates. Or Mike lived. Mike had 10 roommates at one point. He was paying $95 in rent, because they split. Yeah, they had a house, and they had like 10 people in the house. You just every time a new person, like, was out of a job or needed a place to stay, a new person would like, start sleeping on the couch, and they would contribute $20 to their rent. It's
Michelle Newman 8:04
like a hostel,
Kristin Nilsen 8:05
it was like a hostel. And so this was our, this was our way of living as young adults, instead of going, well, I can't afford an apartment, so I'll move in with our, with my parents. Now, there are lots of reasons for them to do this. The world has changed dramatically, and our children carry burdens that we did not. Some of it coming from Covid, a lot of it is economic, but the economic situation was horrible when we graduated. Also, they may not have access to 10 people to bunk with. From my vantage point, I don't see any young people, I don't see people that are Liam's age who are willing to live with 10 people. I don't see them willing to live with people they don't know. I have tons of friends who lived with random people. I don't know this person, but it was a friend of so and so, and they just lost a roommate, so I'm moving in with them. So it was sort of like this game of Jenga, where we moved around and lived with all sorts of people, instead of moving home with our parents, and kind of to what you just said, Carolyn, we - these are our children, and we are taking care of them. We did create this.
Carolyn Cochrane 9:17
Oh yeah,
Kristin Nilsen 9:18
we create it. So I'm not blaming them by any means, we did this, and I think we've said this many times. It's possibly because the pendulum swung. We were taking care of ourselves to such a great extent that we can't take care of our children enough,
Carolyn Cochrane 9:36
right? And nobody maybe took care of us the way we think maybe we should have been taken care of, so we want to, wanted to do that for our kids, because I'm thinking, you know, even as a parent, if one of my kids said, "Oh, I'm going to move in with nine other people and I don't know seven of them, I'm going to be like, "I don't like that. No, maybe you're not, so
Kristin Nilsen 9:57
yeah, yeah, whereas my parents wouldn't have even. Known who my roommates were. I'm just like, here's, did you want my address? Here's my address,
Carolyn Cochrane 10:08
exactly. And I want to say, too, about that thread, and what I've also seen on social media is, I think, I don't know if there's after a certain age some of these younger folk just think we're old, like they just slumped everybody into old, and not really being able to differentiate well. A boomer in what they were, what they experienced growing up, is kind of pretty different than what I might have, you know, we would have experienced growing up. But I feel like sometimes people are like, okay, you're older than 50 or 55 well, then you're just old, you know, past $1,000
Michelle Newman 10:44
pass a certain threshold, and then you're all the same, yeah, and you bought, you all bought a house for in your 20s for $30,000 I didn't even want to buy a house in my 20s, I was too busy, like having fun and doing cool stuff. I also think it has a lot to do with how each generation is parented, just sort of like you guys were talking about, so for instance, what's the generation before boomers? Silent, silent generation, like the silent film stars. Yep, like that's my mom, like so. But then you have to think about how my mom was parented by her parents. So then you think about the boomers, that certainly, and I understand that everybody's parent has been parented differently, yeah, but however, I do think you can say that for the most part, you know, parenting styles are dependent on what's available to you and your resources and how the economy is doing and who the president is, and you know all these different things, what kind of technology you have or don't have, so I also think that when we're talking about now, how we parent our own kids. I mean, you can just keep going back. I mean, in Generation X, our parents were all probably part of that silent generation, so that influenced how we were all parented by the, you know, raised on hose water and neglect type of thing, and you know, the latch key with a key around my neck, and you know, going home and eating ding dongs and free toes for dinner, but for my mom got home from work
Kristin Nilsen 12:07
butting dungs and free day,
Michelle Newman 12:10
but, but, but, so I think that it's all, it is all it is, it's all enmeshed, is that the word I'm looking for,
Carolyn Cochrane 12:18
like
Kristin Nilsen 12:18
it is,
Michelle Newman 12:19
it's because generation, and yeah, it's yes, it was the parenting style you have, which was dependent on their parenting, which then goes back two generations, probably. Yeah, so I think that that is something to consider.
Kristin Nilsen 12:30
Yeah, it apps, it's 100% part of the issue is that we all are products of our parents, and the other thing that we can throw into the mix there is that if you are a child of the 70s, those Silent Generation and Boomer parents had an awakening where they were becoming self-actualized. They were thinking about, I don't know, what were they thinking about? Well, they
Carolyn Cochrane 12:54
were thinking about themselves a little. They were thinking
Michelle Newman 12:56
about themselves, and that's not a bad thing. I mean, okay, listeners, we have a great, great, I think it's a two-part episode. Correct me if I'm wrong, y'all, but it's on Kramer versus Kramer, where we talk a lot about how in the 70s and the whole divorce rate going up, and I'm, I'm of the three of us, I'm the one sitting here who definitely had, you know, a broken family, and and so that was Gen Xers in the 70s that was way different from generations before the divorce rate went up, and all that stuff. Well, that, that's our parents' influence on us, right? Because they're getting divorced. My mom was trying to, you know, I had, I went to the babysitter's house all the time, or whatever, because my mom was working. So, yeah, so even though it's during our generation, when I was alive, it's things that are happening during that time, yeah, to our parents that are influencing that, that we can say why we were,
Kristin Nilsen 13:51
and that is a hallmark. So the 70s and the 80s being when suddenly households were dual income households for the first time in history, and there was no fault divorce for the first time in history, and people were divorcing en masse, and it was a lot of women discovering that they didn't have to, they didn't have to fit the mold that was provided for them. That's a good thing. We are the victims of that, but that was a good thing. All of that is good, but I think what younger generations, they don't have the full picture of what that meant, because at that time these, this, they can't even imagine this. Their childcare was not a thing, right? There was no childcare, there was no childcare center, there was no, like, rich people may have had a nanny, but I didn't know any rich people, and so that's where the latchkey generation came to be. That's why we all get a key around our neck, and we went home to an empty house, and ate dink docks and Fritos for dinner. I mean, does that.. does the woman who posted that, does she know that, you know, our moms couldn't even get credit cards until. So you know that what the mid 70s, I mean, there there's just a huge, how do I want to say this, disconnect, I think it's a disconnect, yes, they don't have the full history of what was happening, so I think you can also connect, I think it was early 70s when women could finally get a credit card without their husband signing for them, that also coincides with no fault divorce, so for the first time women have access to their own money, they have access to jobs, they have access to divorce. When they're like, this is not what I want, this is not the life I signed up for. It was something that was assigned to me, and I'm saying no to it. And once you can have a credit card, if you don't have a credit card, how do you leave?
Carolyn Cochrane 15:40
Right,
Michelle Newman 15:41
you can't leave
Carolyn Cochrane 15:42
now, exactly. And so, again, disconnect, that's the perfect word. Yeah, to explain some of these, where, like, you said in your comment, Kristen, like, where are you getting this information from? Like, this is so far from what was really happening. And also, I want to say, just in a bigger picture, I feel like blame has become such a, but you guys, I'm not with it today. Blame has become such a reactionary event. No, that's not the word.
Kristin Nilsen 16:13
It's a go-to mechanism.
Carolyn Cochrane 16:14
Yeah, like we can't just all say this sucks right now. What can we do? It's like this sucks because, and we have to be able to point a finger at someone, and when Kristen mentioned the idea of this episode, you said something like Gen X bashing, and so when I was get doing a little research, and I thought, okay, what am I going to talk about when I'm, when we're recording, and I put Gen X bashing, like in quotation marks, you guys, a lot of things came up, I mean, there were Reddit threads, there was a New York Times article, so this isn't really something out of the blue that we just concocted from this one thread. This is a kind of a commonplace now, and we're just the easy target, and people are like, you know, oh, gas is so much, whatever, I can't afford this, can't afford a house, can't afford childcare. Well, I've got to blame someone. I'm going to blame this particular generation.
Kristin Nilsen 17:07
And I think we're an easy target for a couple of reasons. We're the chronic middle child. We are the smallest generation. Boomers are huge, millennials are huge, Gen X is huge, Gen X is tiny. Wait, did I say Gen Z?
Carolyn Cochrane 17:20
Yes,
Michelle Newman 17:22
you mentioned,
Kristin Nilsen 17:22
yeah. Okay, you guys get it. We're not editing that out. You know what I'm talking about. Gen X is small. We are not large in numbers, maybe because our parents were too busy getting divorced. Birth
Carolyn Cochrane 17:33
control, I mean,
Kristin Nilsen 17:34
of course. Yeah, the birth control came in. Okay, so okay, so what was my train of that. Oh, yeah, we're the smallest. We're the smallest generation. We are also the.. I'm just.. I just got to get through this generation. We had no one to complain to. We didn't complain because there was no one to complain to, and there was no one to listen. We went home to an empty house, and when our moms came home, they were tired, right? It's hard to work a full-time job and parent - everybody knows that, right? Everybody listening knows that. And so we didn't. That's why we grew up so fast, and we sort of depended on each other and ourselves in extreme ways. So, what that means is you don't really complain, you just get the job done right. I have to get an apartment, I have to make a living, I have to get a paycheck. I guess I'll work at Arby's. I'll do whatever it takes. And we didn't ask for help because there was no one to help. Now, if our parents are listening to this, they're feeling very horrible. It's not that our parents were like, "fuck off, that's not it. It's just that there were expect the expectations were different. The expectations were that when you turned 18 or when you finished college, you were an adult, and I'm not responsible for you anymore. And we understood that. We understood that, and we didn't go to them. We are going to be parenting forever close to over, and we were all, you know, if we have the dollars to help, we will help. We didn't have access to that, and so all of that is to say, coming back to my original point, we get beat up on because they don't know our story, because we don't talk about it, because we don't complain, so they don't really know what it was like for us, and there were a couple of articles that I came across. I'm sorry, I don't have the sources. I'm gonna find the sources, and we'll put those in the show notes, but I can't, I can't tell you what it is right now. But there are some really good points, because I too looked up Gen X bashing to see what would come up, and there were so many really good points that people made that these people who are complaining they don't know, they don't understand. So, here are some points we made from our episode about the pit. If you listened to it, that was just a couple of weeks ago, right? Okay, this is a quote: Gen X witnessed the transition from ana. Log to digital, making them pioneers of technology adaptation. So, think about that. They want to look at us as people who are out of touch, and they are the ones who have these skills, but we are the pioneers of technology adaptation. Again, quoting, they navigated from dial-up internet to smart technology without formal education in digital literacy. This adaptability is often underestimated, as tech-savvy millennials and Gen Z are glorified for their digital fluency. Gen X quietly mastered evolving technologies, ensuring smooth transitions in workplaces and homes. And we did a little complaining, right?
Michelle Newman 20:38
Now we're complaining, but he didn't complain that, because it was so cool, though. Like, we didn't complain because it was super exciting. I mean, at least, at least for me, right? You know, hearing that, yeah, as I tried to dial it, yeah, I was like, oh my god, and in like three more minutes I'll be able to check and see what the weather is in California. Yeah, that was one of the first things I did, you guys, when we got AOL. I had such a blast, like I could just try, I like would figure out how, like what's the temperature in Kentucky.
Kristin Nilsen 21:14
That was such a vital information.
Michelle Newman 21:16
Yeah, just because it was so cool that I could do that on Mike, on a computer, like that was, and
Kristin Nilsen 21:22
think about that, you know, we oftentimes talk about the things that we've been robbed of because we don't have discovery or anticipation, and that's the beauty of that moment. We had the discovery moment, where we could check the weather in California. Now everybody takes that for granted, there's no joy in it, and
Michelle Newman 21:38
yeah, it was probably AOL weather,
Kristin Nilsen 21:40
yeah,
Michelle Newman 21:41
right,
Carolyn Cochrane 21:42
like
Kristin Nilsen 21:42
that's so funny, yeah, there's a lot of most of this is centered on economics, actually, and there are a lot of economic points about about boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials, and how that all differs, and we tend to get lumped in with boomers who sometimes people talk about them having, you know, unearned wealth, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna talk about that. I'm not going to comment on that. I'm not going to opine on that. We'll let other people discuss that. However, what they miss is the difficulty that Gen X had when we graduated into a recession, just like people are graduating into a recession right now. Maybe it's not officially called that, but come on, it's a recession. Okay, so here's from that same, from that same article. Caught in a cycle of economic recessions, Gen X faced unique financial struggles. They entered the workforce during the early 90s recession and now face anxiety over retirement amidst economic uncertainty. Despite these challenges, they are perceived as financially stable, overshadowing their financial resilience. Resilience, people, the focus on baby boomers' retirement and millennial student debts often leaves Gen X out in the cold. One thing I do have to point out is a huge, huge difference is that a lot of boomers were still recipients of pensions by the time Gen X came of age, that's a thing of the past, so we were really the first people to be like out of luck, you're on your own, have you been saving?
Carolyn Cochrane 23:08
Right, I mean, I think that's something that's missed out too, is we weren't really taught, I mean, I maybe had a past book account, kind of a savings account, but you know, we weren't really taught about retirement stuff when we were,
Kristin Nilsen 23:21
oh my,
Carolyn Cochrane 23:22
in our
Carolyn Cochrane 23:22
first jobs, and now, like, our parents, even speaking for my dad, he worked for the same company the entire, his entire career, so 40 years with the same company, and he knew he'd have his pension, and so even them saving for retirement wasn't even a thing, so I didn't really learn it from watching my parents say, oh, I'm gonna put this in my IRA, or whatever. So, and so, no one taught us that, and I regret that. I wish I don't want to say this. That is the one thing that I tell my kids. Well, two things: one, wear sunscreen and start saving, like the minute you have any opportunity to put money into a 401 k, or whatever.
Kristin Nilsen 24:00
Start, even if you have to check the box. Yeah, check the box. And I remember my very first job after I graduated from college, which was teaching aerobics, because there were no jobs. So I have a bachelor's degree in psychology, and I'm teaching aerobics. Okay, that's what was happening at the moment. No disrespect to aerobics instructors, but it's not what I was trained to do, right? And I remember filling out my paperwork, and I'm skipping the box that says 401 k. I don't even know what that is. I have no idea. And my boss was like, "You need to check that box.
Carolyn Cochrane 24:37
Oh,
Kristin Nilsen 24:37
and I.. and I didn't want to check the box because I was making $6.40 an hour. I needed every dollar. I couldn't afford to have them take any money out. And she said, 'Trust me, any job you get, you have to check that box. I did it because I trusted her, but I was a little salty about it, and I didn't understand. She was like, 'I know you don't think about retirement right now, because. You're 22 but someday you will need that money, and that's because we would be the first people. She's like, "You're not getting a pension for teaching aerobics. There's no pension here. You gotta check that box.
Michelle Newman 25:12
One day, Kristen, when I don't know, in another, you know, five, six years, can we go? The three of us go out to dinner or drinks, and you pay, and you're gonna be like, this is my money from aerobics, my aerobics, like this was it'll be one drink, we'll each get one drink, but we'll, but we'll be, well, cheers to you, because we'll be like, good thing you've saved, good thing you've checked that 401 k. You could take your friends out for drinks, and you know, 2031 This is
Kristin Nilsen 25:49
this is another great point from that article. This is something I didn't even think about, but it's true, and it will also elevate our episode about the pit. They say media tends to underrepresent Gen X, focusing instead on the nostalgia of boomers or the trends set by millennials. This oversight leads to a lack of relatable content for Gen Xers. Their stories and experiences are often glossed over, leaving them feeling invisible in mainstream media. As the generation that grew up with media evolution, their narratives deserve a spotlight to inspire and inform future generations. So they're now being informed about our experience because they're not seeing it on TV or wherever.
Michelle Newman 26:32
I mean, no, you can not current shows for sure, but you know they're still now we have access to so many shows from the 70s and 80s that you know represent, definitely represent most like
Kristin Nilsen 26:45
that's what I mean. Current shows that show what it's like to be a 55 year old woman right now. I mean, right now I actually meant back at Guy, she's not, she's a boomer, she's not a Gen Xer, but you know, I would say that older women don't get to tell their story very often, either, right, but there are very few shows that show the, the, the family that is taking care of their kid who's trying to move back into the house, but then they have the ailing parent, the Leanne Morgan show.
Carolyn Cochrane 27:13
I was gonna say that, yeah, I can think of, but at the same time, my kids aren't going to choose the Leanne Morgan show to watch, so even if it's available and there's media out there that's not going to be their choice of entertainment,
Carolyn Cochrane 27:27
yeah,
Kristin Nilsen 27:28
there's another article here that I want to share with you that's called three reasons Gen X is the only generation that gets forgotten again and again and again and again, and it is really, it opens your eye, it even opens my eyes. I think more people need to pay attention to this, so that our kids have an understanding of what it was like for us, and I know they roll their eyes, but I think because we are out, this is coinciding at a time when we are hopefully at the peak of our careers right now, many of us are at our peak earning potential. A lot of people are still struggling and working paycheck to paycheck, but if you were in your late 50s and you're approaching retirement and you checked the box, if you checked the 401 k box, hopefully you're at the peak earning of your whole life. And so that's what the kids see, and they think that it's been like that for the whole time they don't know that it took you a really, really long time to get there, like within the last five years or whatever. So three reasons Gen X is the only generation that gets forgotten again, again, again. Okay, so this is a quote from the article: Gen X is often called the forgotten generation, as well as the latchkey generation, as they were often left unsupervised at home or after school until their parents came home from work. This was due to increased numbers of dual income households and parental divorce. Yeah, we talked about that, right? This instilled independence and resilience. We are as resilient as anybody has ever.. I mean, maybe the cavemen were more resilient, I don't know. And then we talked about the silence that comes from that, because we just depended on ourselves. So then they go on to say that they checked out an online community of Gen Xers just to see what they were saying about this topic, and one member named Bizarro Max opened up about a story he recently heard from a leadership expert, and they discussed the generational strife between boomers, millennials, and Zoomers, making a hilarious point about why Gen X seems to be frequently forgotten, like they talk about the strife between those three, they don't even include us in it, they don't even include us. So Bizarro Max shared the three reasons why Gen X is ignored, according to this leadership expert. So they said, this is a quote again, Gen X. I didn't forget you, even if the rest of the world has, but I have no advice for you, for a few reasons. First, you don't need it. You are the most independent and self-sufficient generation in the history of mankind, and there is literally nothing I can teach you, so. Second, even if I did have something to tell you, you wouldn't care. Third, the reason we ignore you is because the rest of us are all terrified of you. If the zombie apocalypse ever happens, we are all hiding behind you, because somehow you will know what to do, and that is so true. So true.
Carolyn Cochrane 30:21
Yes, I mean exactly. I think that getting back to when we shared apartments with five or six or 10 people, we just figured it out. We just knew how to figure it out. Or when we were playing our neighborhood games, we have, we talked about that, like we solved the problems we were having if we were, you know, playing kickball, and somebody had to go home, whatever, and we had to take all this out, Kristen. But anyway, that makes sense. Opportunities to just figure it out, because there wasn't any other choice. And so, yeah, I would want to be on Team Gen X if all of a sudden, you know, it's the apocalypse, and we've got to figure it out.
Kristin Nilsen 31:00
Yeah, and think about in those games, there might have been things like really bad things that happened. Were you being bullied? Were you being left out? Was did something unjust happen? Yeah, all of the above. And sometimes the figuring it out meant that you just like receded into the background, or you extracted yourself from the situation, or you avoided that person. What you did not do was go home and say, Mom, I'm having a problem with somebody in the neighborhood, could you give me some advice on how to deal with her? Right? Like, think about it. We, I say this, I'm sure there are things that I don't know about Liam's life, but I would say for the most part, parents know a lot about what's happening out in the neighborhood when they're playing with friends. We know about the dynamics, we know who's mean, we know who's been left out, and sometimes we feel the urge to meddle, and we want to fix it, but we just, to your point, Carolyn, we just took care of it, even if that taking care of it didn't mean kicking ass, it meant just, well, I'm just gonna go home, I guess.
Carolyn Cochrane 32:02
Yeah,
Kristin Nilsen 32:03
and we didn't say we just walked home, and mom's like, "Oh, hi, how was it? Fine, fine, just fine. And you go to room, you get your ding dong, and you go to your room. But it also made me think of Carolyn, and I had a really, really long recorded conversation about Stranger Things that we never released, and we're gonna, we're gonna send it out to people eventually, because this whole idea of the zombie apocalypse coming and everybody's gonna hide behind us, because somehow we will know what to do, that is exactly what the finale of Stranger Things was. It's almost like a metaphor for who Gen X actually
Carolyn Cochrane 32:38
is. Yeah, you are spot on. That is exactly right. I think that we are going to have to release that episode that we talked, where we talked about all of that. It really dovetails with what we're discussing right now, and I think it played out on, you know, on national.. never mind. You guys, I have nothing to say. I have nothing to say. You're saying CPS like Sprite. I, yeah, gosh, I guess,
Kristin Nilsen 33:01
yeah, you and I recommend, even if you weren't a Stranger Things fan, even if you didn't watch any of the seasons, or maybe, like me, you dropped out after season one or two, I highly recommend going back and watching just the finale of Stranger Things, with the idea that you're watching it as these kids are Gen Xers, and then see what it makes you think. See how they are the protectors, how they are the leaders. They're all children, they're teenagers down to children, like let's say 17 down to eight, and it is the 17 year olds who are like, come on, get behind me, I will protect you, I will kill the monster, and notably, the people who are out front with the big weapons are the girls, and the boys line up behind them, and that's a great thing, that's a good thing, and I have a theory about that, that I said this, and if we release it, this is what I said, my theory is that that is a tribute to the moms of the 80s, because the moms of the 80s were on their own, they had no, they had no help, maybe they got child support, but remember we were the canaries in the coal mine, we didn't have real custody arrangements, things were not hammered out, we didn't have people trying to help parents navigate the two household children. It was an awful lot of dads leaving, and maybe you see him once a year, maybe you don't, maybe you see him on the weekends, but maybe you don't. It was all on mom, and again to those of you who had wonderful dads who were doting and saw you all the time, that's awesome. I'm so glad for you, but no, for a lot of people that was not the case, because we didn't have any protocol yet. Canaries in the coal mine,
Michelle Newman 34:55
everybody's just nodding their head, nobody's saying a word, everybody's just nodding their head. I'm also cute. An eye on the clock, though. I'm like, okay, that's.. I'm not gonna say anything, because I don't want to bring up anything new, because we're..
Kristin Nilsen 35:05
yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that might be it. Everybody, go watch Stranger Things. Um, we'll keep you up, we'll keep you up to date on how on the Gen X bashing, and if that does.. if you do come across it, all you have to say is, you don't know, you don't, you don't know, you don't know
Michelle Newman 35:20
Jack, and then throw a ding dong at their head.
Kristin Nilsen 35:23
That was my dinner, my dinner at your head, because Grandma was at work. Thank you so much for listening today, everybody. In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast, courtesy of the Cast of Threes Company. Two good times,
Carolyn Cochrane 35:41
two happy days, two little house on the prairie. Cheers, cheers. The
Kristin Nilsen 35:46
information, opinions, and comments expressed on the Pop Culture Preservation Society podcast belongs solely to Carolyn, the crushologist, and Hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time. The PCPS is written, produced, and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional WJM Studios and our beloved Mary Richards. Nanu Nanu, keep on truckin' and may the force be with you, you.