i love seeing best friends goofing around in public. i love seeing couples laughing together. i love seeing little kids walking hand in hand with their parents. i love seeing dogs running happily back to their owners. i love seeing closeness and positive relationships, and knowing all that love is out there
do older generations not get fatalistic humor?? like the other day my friend’s parents were hanging around and we were joking and i was like “well no matter what i can always fling myself off the nearest cliff” and they didn’t laugh then later the mom pulled me aside and was like “maybe you should get some help, sweetie” like stfu?? help? in this economy? i don’t think so, debra
I honestly don’t think they get it as a coping mechanism, they think it’s a cry for help rather than actually helping.
i’d even say it’s past just coping and is also now a category of Stuff Kids Got Used To When No One Was Looking; not everyone using that humor is even covering up something bigger, we just stopped thinking fatalistic = taboo/unspeakable somewhere along the line, and most parents don’t seem to know why or how ~
My boss opened a door and missed me by inches, he said “whoops, almost killed you there!” My result of “Oh, if only.” Led to an awkward end of shift debrief.
This generation shares the same humor as the goddamn Addams Family and the previous generation is the White Sixties Family™ that lives next door and runs away screaming at the end of the episode
I will say that it’s interesting because this kind of humor is very, very prevalent somewhere else…
the military.
Which is honestly a place you would expect fatalistic humor to be common and used as a coping method. You’re one “oops” away from death on the flight deck, one inch to the left and you don’t have a head anymore because the jet that just landed now owns it as a wing-tip decoration. So you joke about it because lowkey you’re fucking terrified it’ll happen, but you’re also desensitized to the danger itself because you face it every single day for 12 hours at a time.
Anyway so we all know the mindset you adopt in the military because of the danger, so to realise that an identical sense of humor has been adopted by normal people should probably tell you something very important about the amount of stress modern young folks experience in daily life.
That last one… it’s true
It was also common in previous generations that had to deal with say, war and economic depression on a massive scale.
One of my favorite movies is Singing In The Rain which came in out 1952, right on the tailcoat of two world wars and a looming cold one, and for all it’s a cheery happy musical, it’s got this really bleak witty humor too, things like “call me a cab!” “okay, you’re a cab!” or the scene where Don says he’ll be homeless by the next day and Cosmo cheerfully tells him not to be ridiculous…the bank bailiffs don’t open till Monday.
And then quite probably one of my favorite opening lines, where two young girls are watching Lina on screen and one says
“She’s so refined. I think I’ll kill myself.”
Which really resonates with a lot of the things we say now when talking about people we find personally attractive, meaning not only is fatalism not a new trend, but those two girls at the starting sequence of Singing In The Rain are totally there for Lina, not Don.
You’re welcome.
I like everything about this post
My landlady (age 75) says I have her mother’s sense of humor. Great Depression, anyone?
My family has moved past worrying when I joke like this and now jokes with me. The only thing I can afford in this economy is a sense of humor
Being both a millennial AND a veteran, it’s blaringly obvious why I am the way I am.
I’m fucking….dead……“the only thing I can afford in this economy is a sense of humor” @succulentcutie
this may be an Unpopular Opinion (even on tumblr) but like the 8-hour workday is just Too Gotdamn Long
like even sitting in an office for eight hours a day isn’t particularly pleasant (or healthy, as we are beginning to see) but when we’re talking about doing *actual work* for that same amount time it gets pretty fucking brutal
doing literally *anything* (even leisure activities) for eight hours straight tends to be less than enjoyable but when we’re talking about things like construction, landscaping, factory work, and hell, even foodservice and retail, eight hours is a fucking ETERNITY
i might just be a lazy weak-willed bitch but honestly i think i’m not entirely wrong
this was being worked towards by leftist labor unions way back in the day after the time of FDRs new deal. people in the 40s and 50s were already starting to realize that we no longer actually needed an 8 hour work day or even a 5 day work week.
even with the comparatively primitive factory tech of the time we were already creating a huge amount of excess production back then and companies were making massive amounts of profit. So it already stood to reason that companies should either let their employees work less and thus each employee could work a shorter shift without lowering the yearly compensation of each employee, or in cases where businesses provide an active service they would shorten the shift but hire more people to cover the necessary operating time. but of course that would mean less money for people at the top so companies fought back hard and we ended up with nixon’s bullshit and so on and now its considered the norm for us to spend the vast majority of our lives doing work that really just amounts to waste.
The IWW realised this and were fighting for it all the way back in the 1930s. This is a take with a lot of historical and theoretical grounding, OP, so you’re standing in good stead.
I’d also like to add it’s also been studied and scientifically proven that after 6 hours, we have an extremely noticeable drop in productivity. Sweden saw nothing but benefits from a 6-hour work day, including worker productivity, happiness, and half the amount of sick-leave used when applied to nurses.
“Obama did a Bad Thing, too!” – Okay, I acknowledge that. Now, since we do not have a time machine, let’s focus on stopping the Bad Thing that the current President is currently doing.
“Hillary would do a Bad Thing, too!” – Okay, but we can safely leave it up to the denizens of that alternate reality to deal with the Bad Thing that President Hillary Clinton is hypothetically doing. Again, let’s focus on stopping the Bad Thing that the actual President is actually doing.
Astronaut bird 