Fifty and out: How Gen X became the biggest work losers | Hacker News Reader

Fifty and out: How Gen X became the biggest work losers

the-independent.com

25 pointswyclif11 comments

https://web.archive.org/web/20250409073703/https://www.the-i...

The print industry was dead long before AI came about.

That may be true but the latest media to be hit by the internet is film and TV. YouTube and TikTok are eating their lunch and streaming isn't making up for it. The same happened to music with the rise of streaming but it occurred a little earlier. AI generally isn't the cause of their demise but I suppose the fear is that AI will just make things worse when it's more broadly adopted. The internet has mostly destroyed media jobs and the only people making money from it nowadays are the platform companies.

The question is whether the creative industries will survive the AI era.

I predict artists will struggle until the novelty of AI wears off. AI requires existing art to imitate, so I don't think it will last longer than a few years after churning out the same old stuff. Fashion is fleeting. It may last longer if biz execs are slow to react to reduced efficacy of advertising due to boring AI content.

Hey! and when that is all done, the surviving gen X creative talent, can have another go it's not like we were ever in any real rush in the first place but ya!, bieng the sandwich generation, stuck between old parents and little kids has been strange, but we do have experience, growing cunning awareness, and are just going to adapt some more chumbawumba

GenX deals with lots of shenanigans. Born and raised in the old world and forced to adapt to the new.

gen X's parents were born and raised in the old world, and largely did very well by it. We the X'ers on the other hand , have never had a moment of stability, unless you call extended periods of unhinged partying, stability, which I think we did, but dont quote me on that......

Those that adapt survive. Gen X exemplifies this because they've always had to adapt. Boomers and echo boomers are soft and have to question everything while Gen X just knows because they've always had to DIY.

!!! Finally, the media is moving on from moaning about boomers and millennials while completely ignoring gen X! I wonder what stereotypes they will inherit; 'losers' seems a bit simplistic.

(My theory is that the media's complete gen X blindness is because most editors are gen X; as those editors start to cycle out and get replaced with millennials, the ire of the media will turn on gen X (and on zoomers), and no-one will ever mention avocados again.)

We Gen X'ers fancied ourselves the Invisible Generation ever since we coined the term -- the entire point being that we didn't have an actual name of our own.

I will note that as far as the millennials are concerned, we are boomers. When they say "ok boomer" they include us. That's not entirely fair, but it's true that we didn't do a great job of preventing the boomers' excesses from creating the problems that now face the millennials.

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