“So first came the Industrial Revolution Generation, and they were total badasses. They were like, let’s invent everything! And then make unions, so that people stop getting their hands cut off or whatever!”

“Lightbulbs! Railroads! Modernity!”

“All of it. Then there’s the World War I Generation, who are like the Generation X of their time. They’re kind of lost.”

“Well, I mean, the whole World War I thing doesn’t really speak in their favor, right?”

“Right. It’s like, some duke dies, and Europe is in flames. What?”

“And it doesn’t really fix things anyway.”

“I know. So my theory is that they then sort of treated themselves to the roaring 20s. It was like their decadent 1980s, but with flappers instead of Cuisinarts.”

“Okay. And then come the Greatest Generation.”

“Right, and they just do everything.”

“Forged in the crucible of the Great Depression!”

“They fight World War II, they win World War II, and then they come home and set up a totally patriarchal family structure. They’re like, ‘I beat Hitler, so I don’t have to give my wife oral sex. It’s a one-way street, and that’s how I like it!’”

“And they raise the biggest generation of all, the Baby Boomers.”

“Who also get down to business. They’re like, ‘We got the last generation of jobs with pensions, suckas!’”

“But aren’t they also sellouts? I mean, they grew up in the 60s, and they thought everything was going to be different.”

“Right. But then they were like, ‘Oh, actually, I kind of want a house and a car and a monogamous relationship.’”

“Where have all the flowers gone?”

“I don’t know. And then comes Generation X, and they’re just like, ‘Fuck it all. Work sucks, so we’re just going to be fulfilled by our grunge music and our minimum-wage coffee shop jobs.’”

“Reality bites. And then comes Generation Y, the Millennials, and they flip back to idealism. They think they’re going to change the world.”

“They’re like, ‘The Internet rules! Everything is different! We’re going to clean up all the messes all the other generations left!’”

“But probably they’ll end up selling out like the Baby Boomers.”

“Probably.”

– Jay Gabler (X), reconstructed and embellished from a conversation with Jessie King (Y). Photo from abbylucien.tumblr.com via fyeahhippies.tumblr.com.