Anarchy Bang: Introducing Episode 46 – OK Boomer

From Anarchy Bang

Aging. In the nineties it seemed the average age of the anarchist horde was in the late teens/early twenties. By the WTO (happy anniversary) it was more like college aged or mid twenties. Today the bell curve is flattening out and an average seems well into the thirties. I remember a friend opined that as the economy stopped absorbing people the age range of an anarchist would continue to rise. Whether it is politics, the economy, or a change in counter-cultural norms the anarchist is aging. What does this mean? Does it mean that generation gaps are occurring in the anarchist space? Does it mean we have more money and conservatives in our midst? Are we experiencing the same OK Boomer moment the rest of the culture is? This is the second of the last four episodes of this show and we hope you can join us in conversation!

Join in the conversation!

Sunday at noon (PST or -7 UTC) at https://anarchybang.com/Email questions ahead if you likeThe real time IRC is a chaotic mess (and pleasure). There are better ways to connect to IRC but it involves some readingThe call in number is (646) 787-8464

There are 51 Comments

I think the above can be tagged at many aging anarchists as well as well as the outdated sub-cultural structure of contemporary anarchism that has not adjusted to the high speed web 2.0 meme age. Right Wing reactionary ideology is much more endogenized in this current media video game structure then late 20th century based anarchism. This obviously has to change. It may even be the case that anarchism and anarchy will never develop a structure in time for the current media age and will end up remaining not as discursively relevant until a new media age comes along that is more natural to anarchist anarchy based sensibilities and orientation.

The genrefied musical youth culture is basically over and the genre that anarchism came out of is outdated and all but dead. This is also a much more character armored speaker based culture as opposed to a come as you are writing based culture which is better historically for the big beautiful @. There's the meritocracy structure of video games which again anarchism has not properly naturalized itself in. Again I think anarchist and radical culture could reload and at least develop something new for the coming zoomer culture(2020-2039) but it will have to shed A LOT of what it is now and I've gotten into the things that have to change in great detail.

There may well be an polyecon institutional fix that is coming on the horizon so this should make things a little easier for anarchism and non right wing discourse but there is still a need to start shedding and transforming right now and that starts with kicking old outdated Xer talking points to the curb.

these days, where they either think that people from different generations are much more different than they actually are, or their concept of "a generation" erodes the dramatic inner-generational differences that exist. In other words, generations are bullshit. I'm a millennial, but many other millennials are completely unrecognizable to me, i don't understand how they think hardly at all.

I adhere to the old-school solipsistic concept of individual experience fashioning our values, however with the added piquancy of unique exceptionality. There are always the collective herd falling for the popular ideologies of their generation, and the present Xer Iďpol has given us gay rèdnecks, but enough of that, the bold unique individualist willalways shine through as the elite minority Wildean poet.

OK MILLENNIAL

OH NOOoOo, THE MOST DISGUSTING BRAINWASHED GENERATION WAS THE SILENT ONE, OTHERWISE SELF-LABELLED BY THEMSELVES AS " THE GREATEST GENERATION" THOSE "SILENT" SHEEP WHO FOLLOWED THEIR MEGALOMANIACAL LEADERS THROUGH TWO WORLD WARS AND INSTIGATED THE COLD WAR AND THE MEATGRINDING VIETNAM WAR. WITH THEIR SMUG ARROGANT RULE AND CAPITAL, DAMN THEM AND THEIR COLLECTIVE PARANOIA AND MASSE NEUROTIC RELATIONSHIPS AND 3XPLOITATION

This whole trend is so funny... Zoomers being just what their Xer parents used to be back in the '80s, hating (rightfully) on the Boomers being everywhere in the establishment...

Like, of course Boomers were a generation of infantile careless self-absorbed maniacs that believed History has started with them. But LOOK AT UUUUU, ZOOMERS and tell us how yer doing anything better, plz!

Taking blows in 3... 2.... 1...

Being a younger Xer myself, I know what it's like to grow in the shadow of one big, arrogant generation. It gets weirder when one big arrogant generation is growing up and you're one of the grandpas/mas looking at them become the Society from their late teenage. I wouldn't say it's that frustrating, but maybe... a tad worrying that so many self-entitled people sprung out and gained power so fast, without knowing the dreary times the Gen X have known. Like... it's insane that you can get nice comfy jobs as security guard, for instance, while being a long-haired beardo when I was being refused so many jobs during my teens just because I had long hair.

I dunno... at least what Zoomers could learn is how they arrived in this world at some very goddamn good context in history, where nice-paying jobs with benefits abound, they get full cultural leverage for your minority identities, rich social networks and an incredible tech infrastructure that can support every damn aspect of their lives.

I really hope they won't fuck up during their '30s-'40s as bad as the Xers and especially the Boomers did.

because the tech infrastructure only allows them to see the aspects of reality it wants them to see, and the economic system enthusiastically funds anything nice and positive that helps recuperate it. It could be that since the zoomers are exposed to a conservative ideological infrastructure through technology, maybe their counter cultural rebellion will come during their 30's and 40's when they see that jordan peterson was actually a type of neo-nazi.

it saddens me that millennials are mostly incapable of doing what the boomers did during the 60's. I've known my folk to be very "rational" and sarcastic, duh you need to work! Why would you think about living without it?! BUT RACISM MAN THAT'S FUCKED UP, HOSTILITY AND PEOPLE WHO MAKE YOU FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE, THAT'S FUCKED UP!

Yup, I got my initiation into reality politics living with the people who preceded the Anglo-Saxon materialist migration. Now, I only see shallow empty shells for people of the Western tendency. THEY ARE ALL peurile PhILISTINES No matter what generation, AND WILL NEVER BE ANARCHS!!

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-hidden-mechanisms-that-help-those...

all this stuff i already knew, but the barriers of western capitalism have not gone away since slavery and colonialism, they have just gotten more vague and informal, and it became that way because capitalism never funds a "sinking ship", its all about not being awkward and having that pristine youthfulness and sexual image. Of course there's also the "innovation" train which can technically help anyone with a good idea, but you have to be very lucky in order to get rich that way. Not that anything those people make is really useful to the human race anyway! When i talk to non-anarchists about this kind of stuff, i generally just point out that facebook makes some people really rich and a lot of people very miserable.

These kids are very likely to become yet another bunch of wasted morons not unlike their parents. What's left, as usual, are the singularities of the individuals, the loners, the doomers, the misfits... who're due to their own lack of social skills or their far too evolved consciousness, made impervious to the pressures of the commodity system.

"Being a younger Xer myself[…]"

Who apparently likes making assertions? Have you looked at any data to support what you're saying or are you content to build arguments around a vague "damned ungrateful kids" rant? What context are you even referencing where "nice paying jobs with benefits abound"? Compared to what? When?

I'm an Xer too, btw.

10-24 years older than I am!

Well, i guess by society's standards, pretty fucking old! The children of the hippies who lost their parent's idealism...

trolls usually only live a few years at most, therefore I'm ancient. also time is a flat circle

about "cushy jobs" are incorrect, they're only cushy in the sense that they aren't early 20th century (or modern 3rd world country, LOL) "proletarian" jobs. The problem with the job market for young people now adays is that job security and ability to pay into a pension is ancient history. The arrogance of the baby boomers is explained by this: a lot of baby boomers can't survive in today's strange and kafka-esque internet based work force, and the baby boomers that did well during their youth had relatively awesome job security and high wages. So if the modern kids aren't happy with their jobs, they naturally just blame the millennials and zoomers...

It's cool... what I meant to express above was less the character of these jobs than how easy youngsters can get them, along with the materialistic social status, in comparison with how sour things were for the youth during the '80s-'90s. That's gotta do with the lame yet unavoidable fact that the Gen Y and especially Gen Z have just been filling up the professional void left by the boomers in an "updated" system where the focus is on the "tertiary" sector. The neat credit ratings of youngsters is also a huge factor. But even with all that, no one thus far will have the social candies the boomers had during their youth, for sure.

im curious why you say for us y's and z's it's "easy to get a job". Anytime i've applied for a job within the last ten years, there was some wierd process for getting one and being aggressive wasn't terribly helpful. The current job i have i got through familial connections, which always seems to be the easiest way to go, knowing people with connections to the company you are going to work for...

Ok I may be generalizing (something not to do on Anews, as per an old meme!). That depends a lot on the social context. The one I had on the top of my head are over-developed big cities where most of the capital and population are concentrated. My experience of the countryside tells a somewhat different story... like youngsters going into drug dealing due to the lack of decent jobs, n shit. There are privileged kids but their privilege does come from those family backgrounds.

Like Nettle said, this generation talk gets quickly flat, boring and superficial. It helps explaining one or two things, tho we're mostly all losers at the economy no matter the age. That, unless you do blockchain lol.

born in 89', so i wouldn't know know anything about the hiring process during the 80's and 90's like you talk about.

Hiring process was shit. Helped by retrograde employers who'd only hire picture-perfect White people who side with the boss on everything. Sexual abuse all over the place. You know what it's like to be competing with hundreds of other applicants for very average jobs? That was the '90s. Thankfully I learned to set the bar higher when it comes to jobs.

I remember a large portion of the 90s as a child, people were so douschy and authoritarian. That whole psychology wasn't questioned very much. It seems weird how people like aragorn seem to be nostalgic of that era in terms of counter-cultural activity, yet maybe now the current era being more milquetoast and id-pol is part of the reason radicals have lost their edge? Not saying that the more brutal psychology has left, it has just changed.

Aragorn's stance is understandable as the counter-culture -which still existed in the early '90s- had this strong nihilist, anti-social, and also really joyful, attitude. I can bet that today's punks wouldn't be able to understand '80s punks, for instance, as they were doing shit that only some Euro anarchos do, these days. But yes, anything outside of the counter-culture was sheer douchebaggery and macho shit. But then a song and an album were released... ;)

There's a lot to learn from that period. The CC of the day was basically split between that and the larger cyberspace movement which was obviously recuperated historically facilitated rubbish. The former had the post left big 3 in full bloom(Black Bey and Landstreicher). It would be nice to have something like that again though it will have to be violently anti-IDpol and very much break with the now old left.

economics is a dry subject, I know but the most cursory glance at data will tell you that there's fewer jobs per capita and they're shittier, lower paid relative to cost of living and of course, far more precarious so … it's been a very consistent trend since at least the 70s, across most of the "developed western world" for lack of a better term?

It's called neoliberalism and/or financialization and/or total class war victory for the rich. This is … just empirical data, not my opinion. So yeah, whatever the hell anon is smoking up there, I don't want any of that shit.

These X Gen j7st make me EXPLOXDE!! THey are usually those MORONS you see hitting little white balls around or throwing a fishing line in from an expensive speedboat and GOING FREAKIN HYSTERICAL when the little ball gòes in a hole or a fish gets its mouth torn out by a hook? FREAKIN HYSTERICAL,,,,,,WTF is wrong with the mental processes of these MORONIC DESTROYERS of wilderness with manicured golf coarses and high powered boats doing highway speeds on serene lakes. Is it STUPID LITTLE DICK SYNDROME or what??,,,,WTF are they trying to prove, AND THESE PEOPLE GOVERN THE MORONS WHO VOTE THEM INTO POWER....

What both Leftists and Alt Right don't know is that the managers are mostly a bunch of morons, some of the even may be illiterate and that wouldn't change anything. Big business is led by herd mentality and conformity. There's no individualism out there. It's just "get with the program, don't ask too many questions, then you'll get your BMW in no time".

Fuck humans, period. All of them. Including myself. (Okay, maybe not the Uncontacted?)

Gotta say, I really do despise "generations" talk. I'm not a class war/ red anarchist by a long shot, but where is the class analysis in all this generations babble?
Boomers coincide with post-war capitalist economics and millennials coincide with whatever technocratic capitalism we have now; are either groups to blame for their respective eras?
Are there not forces at work that override individual aspirations?
Should either older people or younger people be dismissed out of hand merely because of being old or young?

*grumpy older anarchist keeps expecting anarchists to be better, keeps getting disappointed*

:P

drinking game where you have to caveat any statement where you actually understand economics with "I'm not a red anarchist BUT…"

and we are all to blame for everything we do, frankly i don't even blame a lot of the main perpetrators of the system, they're all victims of their own illusions.

I can't bring it on myself to get rid of my hatred of EVERY SINGLE HUMAN! But of course i won't let my misanthropy color all of thoughts and behavior. How could you slip out into the night and kill people if you did that?!

"How could you slip out into the night and kill people if you did that?!"
Weeeeeell, that's what politicians and religious leaders have always done indirectly with their policies and morals, and psychopaths do daily. Duh, I'm surprised you would ask such an absurd naive question. I AM ANGRY ANON 22:23, AND TO UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PSYCHOPATHY IS IMPORTANT. many CEOs of corporatipns are hidden psychopaths. OMG, I just remembered you mentioned you got a corporate job by familial connections, YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS MAY BE PSYCHOPATHS OOOOOH NOOOO. GET OUT NOW, I FEAR FOR YOUR LIFE OR SANITY, LEAVE NOW. Or is it tooooo late, are you becoming a corporate moron incrementally? And I had so many great expectations for you. AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHH!

Also,,,,,,DIE CORPORATE CEO PSYCHOPATHS AND THEIR MINIONS!!!
Because its the corporate mentality that is the overriding enemy and which permeates all generations and modern culture.

just all in a good days trolling, none of these words we do here really can describe reality, i hope you understand that. Fuck "generations".

I AIN'T NO CORPORATE SOCIOPATH, YOU TAKE THAT BACK.

is that it would be so much more fun to meet the people behind the scenes, see how they live and interact so you can learn from it. I know some anarchists i really wouldn't like and take themselves way too seriously, but i wouldn't really be upset with meeting some people like that...

and ya know, i would love to share more information about my life and what i do with my time, but it's just too weird doing that online, its like you are feeding some imaginary police officer information, well, that's kinda what it feels like to me. Thecollective wrote an interesting piece on greece, gonna read that and comment on it and take a little detox...

I'm actually just your therapist except I'm not getting dollar one?!?!

i sent an email to an address it did not bounce back so someone got it XD

political totalitarianism. Life is very different to those born in the 1960s. The internet is being enclosed too. We had some modicum of privacy and anonymity without trying to hard. Cashless society, camera everywhere even at gigs, clubs etc. There is only the forest left and I bet with 6g 7g there will be remote energy powering cameras in such areas too. I would hate to be in my 20s today. Generation upon generation has failed the newborns. We all know it and yet all it would take would be an orchestrated global protest which is still possible through the internet...before it is enclosed... it is still, just about, a digital commons but once it is totally enclosed...and all countries operate under one global banking system... there will be fuck all chance of mass revolt. There ONE thing we have is numbers: there is way more of us than them.

Unfortunately those numbers are spending most of their time not living a life that would prepare them for such a conflict, so even if you get your way, it would be LAMBS TO THE COSMIC SLAUGHTER!!!

and decent calls too. When personal stuff is discussed in a mutually respectful manner with good humour thrown in, a human podcast worth listening too is the outcome. I hope this format continues even though, Aragorn!, understandably, is bowing out. Hey Chisel, are you a MILF coz you sound dirty? ;-)

it's not aragorn bowing out, it is the show ending.

is that the new troll tactic? bunch of flowery compliments with little digs sprinkled in?

cheap imitation winky face with a dash nose
a disgraceful touch to an insulting comment

all people are dirty. and hwo knows who'd you'd like to fuck besides yourself?

Your dirt is based on a morality. MY dirty is Stirnerian, it is silicon implants, THAT IS DIRTY!!

Add new comment