“Generational trashing is actually eternal human behaviour,” wrote the novelist Douglas Coupland in an essay for The Guardian earlier this month. And he should know: he coined the term “Generation X”. Baby boomers, he recalls, once poured scorn on Gen-Xers like him, who themselves grew up to be sniffy about the [avocado-and-toast eating habits of “snowflake” Millennials. And now it’s the turn of Generation Z, with their TikToks and identity politics, to be judged by their elders.
There’s actually a scientific term for this: the “kids these days” effect, which can be traced all the way back to the writing of the Ancient Greeks. “Since at least 624 BC, people have lamented the decline of the present generation of youth relative to earlier generations,” according to the psychologists who named the phenomenon. “The pervasiveness of complaints about ‘kids these days’ across millennia suggests that these criticisms are neither accurate nor due to the idiosyncrasies of a particular culture or time – but rather represent a pervasive illusion of humanity.”
The rest of the article isn’t about people forgetting how to mend a fence and generally being incapable.
Again. This fence thing didn’t have to be generational. You. Went. There.
The only really relevant thing in that article is
The rest of the article isn’t about people forgetting how to mend a fence and generally being incapable.
Again. This fence thing didn’t have to be generational. You. Went. There.
Think about that.