FUCK this generation

Do any other 18-25 year olds hate their generation as much as I do? God, I'm so embarrassed to be a part of this age group.

We're spoiled, self-absorbed, gadget-obsessed pieces of shit. We're the fattest generation in America, ever, and each generation is even fatter than the last one.

Culturally (talking 2000s+) our music has sucked, our TV shows suck, our fashion is retarded. Mostly the only pockets of anything semi-decent at all is stuff we stole from previous generations. We look back to our childhood and the glory days of the 90s because we can't manage to create anything HALF as decent these days.

Educationally, we get As for doing shit work. In grade school you can practically graduate just by showing up in class once in a while. Teachers and parents are deathly afraid to criticize anyone, and this turns everyone into a spoiled self-obsessed little shit who can't handle any criticism. Everyone grows up thinking they're "special" or "gifted" even if they're a retarded little fucker fit for nothing but scrubbing crappers.

EVERYONE goes to college these days. A college diploma is practically what a high school diploma was 50 years ago. Professors give out As for what shouldn't even get a D, ESPECIALLY to the minority students.

Economically we go into a company, acting like we're BIG SHIT even if we've had no real experience whatsoever. We expect to be able to come in late in jeans and T-shirts, browse the internet for half the workday, treat the existing employees like shit, and then leave early while still charging 8 hours and demanding a ridiculous salary.

I hear that some people even have the nerve to call this generation the "Lost Generation". Fuck NO.

You know what the REAL Lost Generation went through? World War I, going through the most hellish conditions imaginable. Boo hoo hoo you think Iraq and Afghanistan are bad? Take a look at the trench warfare in World War I: getting infected with gangrene, living with huge rats, and constantly having machine gun fired at you.

Then after the 20s, suffering through the Great Depression. Look at photos of Hoovervilles. This current recession doesn't have shit on it.

Then after the 30s, another major war: World War 2. THAT is what the real Lost Generation went through. God, FUCK this generation...

>>25 and >>22, I agree with both of you.

In a sense, all of America has become "rich"; what we call "poor" in this country can afford to buy its children all kinds of stupid, useless gadgets and overpriced clothes. Not only is this a waste of goddamned resources, but it doesn't even make anyone happy.

>>25 is completely right in saying that this additional free time, combined with widespread access to personal computers and the internet, is giving many people the opportunity to do something useful with their lives.

The fact of the matter, unfortunately, is that most people aren't going to do anything useful with their free time. Does this mean we should take it away from them? No, for as >>25 as said, some of them will do something interesting. Those people who can't figure out how to turn their free time into something meaningful, however, are doomed to sad, boring, pointless existences. I think everyone goes through a phase like this, where they eventually realize that working just to see the weekend is a fucking pathetic way to live life. Consumer capitalism just exploits this hopelessness - if enough TV shows come out, if enough gadgets and fancy toys are made, it's ok, I can live to see Iron Man 3 or what-the-fuck-ever. Of course, I'm exaggerating a little, since no one actually goes out and says "life is worth living because of this TV show," but you can't deny that we're being made to think this way. The thing that defines is how and if they're able to resist it.

In the best kind of society:

People are given jobs that are fulfilling on some level by default. Anyone who has worked with their hands, even if it's just to, say, assemble the parts of a home computer that they purchased, can tell you that it feels good to create something tangible as a result of their labor. Given the right social context, even "demeaning, repetitive" jobs, such as those in factories, can be rewarding. All it takes is a line as simple as "Here, we are producing the trains that will connect our country" and the promise of a living to provide for one's family to motivate someone.

Kids should be working younger, and being given more difficult and more rewarding jobs. Where I live, many of the young adults of this generation graduate college without having worked a single day in their lives! The few that did have jobs were working in a fast food restaurant, and hated it. Kids aren't taught the value of hard work, and by the time they're old enough to start thinking about college, they think of any kind of manual labor as "grueling, backbreaking work, a hellish existence - I'm better than that!" The colleges are there to exploit this childish expectation that they'll all end up in some fantastic dream job, and before you know it, you have a bunch of arts and literature majors working at Starbucks, and a bunch of computer science majors working rent-a-coder positions at random businesses. Everyone's overqualified, everyone's unhappy, everyone's in debt - but hey, maybe I can become a high school teacher!

Wouldn't it have saved people some time to have given them some kind of real job from the beginning, while still allowing them the free time for our contemporary Asimovs and Tourings to flourish? All you have to do is provide people with computers and internet connections, they don't need stupid toys, and they don't need pointless entertainment made for them. Let them figure out how to spend their free time themselves.

People don't always know what's best for them until they're told to do it. The classic example is the kid that is disgusted by vegetables until his parents force him to eat them, after which he realizes that they are palatable or actually tasty. When you're a teenager and even a ways into young adulthood, you'll do all kinds of stupid things. Sure, they'll be wrong sometimes, but years later, we all have to face the moment when we realize that "hey, my parents knew what they were doing after all!" Unfortunately, this quality seems to continue on to adulthood - most people wouldn't realize why one way is better than another unless they were made to do it.
The way I see it, if you have to force people to live simplistically and work hard in order to get them to understand the benefit of it, there's nothing wrong with taking over some small aspects of life.

If no one takes charge of things here in America and forces this kind of immense social upheaval, the whole country is just going to rot in its own filth.