I remember once reading a Frank Miller rant in one of the Sin City comics, where he was describing boomers as being overly liberal, like “social justice warriors”, referencing what boomers represented in American universities. I was reading it some 20 years after the comic was released, and it was quite funny because by then boomers were associated with being overly conservative and greedy real estate hoarders and short-term-profit CEOs, with complete disregard for everything else (not that this was anything new, it just felt like they had doubled down on the worst features of the previous generation).

I always viewed Gen X as a mix of cynicism and pop culture, and in those battles that arose online, mainly between Boomers and Millennials, Gen X was the “chill” gen. However, now that the majority of CEOs are Gen X, we are seeing an unprecedented mass surveillance and data-collection economy, like fucking Gen Xers want complete control over everyone. And yeah, I hope Gen X is remembered for that, just as Boomers are being remembered as completely out-of-touch greedy conservatives with consolidate wealth instead of for the cultural changes they led in the 60s and 70s.

It seems that in early Web 2.0, Millennials were associated with “social justice warriors”. Inclusivity and visibility seemed like very Millennial concerns, but when I see places like 4chan and 9gag, I realize it’s not kids there, it’s a bunch o resented people in their 30s and 40s, the Culture War is a very Millennial thing, it was industrialized, became a performance, and when in power, that generation will probably be remembered for hate.

It seems like we are not remembered for when our generation was the opposition, but for what it did when it became the establishment. What do you think?