My husband is Gen X. Born in 1969, he couldn’t possibly more squarely right in the middle of Gen X. He was exactly the same age as the characters in Reality Bites when Reality Bites was released. Meanwhile, although the occasional divider will put me in Gen X, I was 13 when Reality Bites came out and could not even begin to identify with these supposedly iconic characters. I think my friends and I spent the entirety of the movie throwing Junior Mints at one another. Born in 1980, I am lumped in with the very tail end of Gen X, according to some sources, and classified as a (very old) millennial according to others.
But regardless of what the Pew Research Center or anyone else thinks, I 100 percent consider myself a millennial. Millennials hate voicemail; I have 234 unheard voicemails on my phone at present – what more compelling argument do you need?
There’s also the extent to which I live my life online. Like it or not – and I like it more often than I don’t – Facebook is a huge part of my social life. My husband has a Facebook profile and will post the occasional rant, rave, or photograph, but a typical conversation between us goes:
Me: “God, can you believe what [mutual friend] posted on Facebook? And then what [other mutual friend] responded? It’s just crazy.”
Him: “I haven’t checked Facebook in a week; what the hell are you talking about?”
Last week was kind of a rough one for me on Facebook, though. First there were the Confederate flag/statue debates, and then there was marriage equality, two hot button issues on which I discovered many of my friends and I did not see eye to eye. I have opinions on both of these issues, although as a white heterosexual I don’t pretend that I have a huge personal stake in either matter – the Confederate flag offends me, but probably not on the same visceral level it would if my ancestors had been enslaved, and the right to marry (and divorce) is one of which I have already availed myself more than once.
The Confederate flag … I don’t like it. I’m not ever going to fly one. I don’t think it should fly over government buildings. But obviously I don’t think it should be outlawed. Monuments are trickier to me, as they are representative of people and as such are much more complex than a flag. I go back and forth about what I think about the monuments, and I can see arguments on both sides, most notably the argument that says that we should really focus our energies on bigger issues.
Marriage equality is something I wholeheartedly support, but again, not all of my friends agree with me on this, and in fact, I actually lost at least one Facebook friend when I turned my profile picture rainbow-striped.
I don’t mind hearing other people’s viewpoints on the flag/monument debate or marriage equality. I actually like having friends with differing points of view, as long as they’re not hateful about how they express themselves.
*Starts waving American flag* That’s what makes America great – the diversity of opinions and the many ways in which we are allowed to express them. HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, EVERYONE!
