I have written a few columns about the life benefits of being a Gen X. It’s delightfully funny to me that no one really paid us much mind until Millennials and Gen Z started calling out Boomers and, happily, true to the name they gave us, we were left out of the conversation. Now, ironically, we are all feeling a new sense of pride about being the forgotten generation and making “But we don’t care” look good.
I will never tire of being the generation that bridged the rotary phone to the smart phone. While I decry the years of staying out ’til the streetlights come on, I am also more and more enamored of A.I. products and tools even though younger, digital natives probably still laugh at the way I use them.
For starters, because I was raised by members of the Silent Generation and threatened with bodily harm if I did not show my manners, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I did not say “thank you” to Siri, Alexa, or Jarvis after asking one of them for some personal assistance. I usually remember, after a moment, it’s a computer or a large language model but I can’t help it. It’s a voice, it’s talking to me, and it just provided me a service. Thanking someone (something?) is burned into my psyche. I even asked Siri to always say “You’re welcome” to me because it felt rude that she didn’t. Sometimes she changes it up and says, “My pleasure,” which always makes me smile.
On the plus side, I do love this meme I found on Instagram by #seebangnow…
You might notice I ended that sentence with an ellipsis, and I recently found out that younger generations are “afraid” of it. It’s irritating to think I’m supposed to stop doing what I’ve been doing all my life because digital natives presume to know what I’m thinking, and it is somehow scary. The America that invented “safe spaces” needs to get over feeling that a few dots on a text are somehow threatening when, in fact, it’s just how we old people convey a simple pause in thought.
We are people who grew up writing notes… with pens and pencils… on paper, ended them with LYLAS* then made cool self-folding envelopes out of them and passed them in the halls, i.e., 1980s texting. We did not have emojis to illustrate one or more of a hundred different feelings and reactions, so we just said what we felt and did double underlines and double exclamation points for super emphasis, and dot-dot-dot to indicate an incomplete thought.
While I can see how, without tone or inflection, “Have a nice day…” might appear sarcastic, it also might mean the texter is, perhaps, just trailing off while virtually walking away with a friendly wave, because that’s how we did it in the 80s.
Once again, we X-ers see the Information Age as a time of wonderful conveniences… rather than a lifestyle… and although we have assimilated and learned to appreciate these conveniences in everyday life, we still don’t see the need to completely erase everything that came before. I know it’s normal for young people to think old people are obsolete and old people think young people are clueless but it would be nice if we could all just live and let live… << Don’t be scared; this one means “continuing to ponder”.
If it makes some feel better, I have stopped rolling my eyes at the posting-endless pics habit. While young folks take countless selfies and send them to their friends, we old people used to get dolled up for school photos, then ask our parents to spend a small fortune for printed out versions. Of course we had to add wallet-size pics, which we would then cut apart, autograph, and hand to our top eight friends to put in little plastic sleeves in their wallets or purses. It may have only been one time per year, but it pretty much shows we all have a little narcissist in us. We just do it differently from age to age.
*luv ya like a sis