Higgenbotham wrote:
> In the instance of this thread, we find John, a Boomer, feeling
> like he is in charge. He feels generational theory is his
> specialty and he's got all the answers, nobody else, and certainly
> not an Xer. So we see behavior here that we don't see when John is
> outside his element (in the Financial Thread, for example, it
> exists but to a far lesser extent).
OK, let me tell my side of the story, because this is total
bullshit.
I've known you for years, and I've asked questions of you in your
areas of expertise because I have respect for your expertise.
A couple of days ago, I was speaking to a young Indian couple. Even
though I write about India a lot, I don't for a moment assume that I
know even a tiny fraction of the information about India than these
people did. So I respect people's expertise and reasoning, and it
make no difference to me what generation they're in, so your
"certainly not an Xer" remark is totally absurd.
As for generational theory, I know more about this subject than
anyone in the world. So yeah, I guess saying that makes me
arrogant.
But Xers don't respect knowledge and expertise, ---- certainly not
in a Boomer ---. The fact that you selected streaking as typical
of Boomers is revealing. Streaking was a publicity stunt by
a few nutcases, many of whom got arrested. No one I know would
have streaked any more than they would have created a fraudulent
synthetic security to defraud people with.
Some of the Xers in this forum -- vincecate, CrosstimbersOkie, Tom
Acre, perhaps yourself sometimes -- think of Boomers as nothing more
than buffoons and clowns and idiots that you can screw around with,
jerk around, manipulate, humiliate and control to your heart's
content.
When you call me "arrogant," what you mean is that I'm not acting like
a buffoon that you can just screw around with. What you mean is that
I didn't fall for some fatuous argument that you made and respond to
it by some online equivalent of streaking, which is how you want
Boomers to act, so that you can say to one another, "See? There
goes another clown/idiot Boomer. Let's fuck him over."
Xers don't care about what's right or wrong. Xers care that I play my
role. If you make some dumb argument and I disagree, and then it
turns out I'm right, a Boomer would respect greater expertise. But an
Xer has no respect for expertise and would look for a way to screw the
Boomer who's right.
I've had lots of experiences like that in that since the Xers have
come to power. I posted my experiences with Digimarc in 2007. That
company's software was a mess, and I worked 80 hours a week to get it
back on track, and I did. But since I then knew more about what was
going on than the incompetent Gen-X supervisor and her incompetent
Gen-X manager, they fired me for being "gloomy." Then the whole
division fell apart, and a year later they had to sell their assets to
another company that was better managed.
So in the end, it made no difference that I worked hard, that I was
right, that they were wrong, and that they destroyed their own
company. All that mattered is that I didn't act like the buffoon that
they wanted, and they punished me by firing me, depriving me of
income, which is a disaster at my age, while they continued to earn a
salary being completely incompetent. And yes, I'm pretty pissed off
about all that.
A few months ago, an Xer hired me to do some work for his web site. I
put in over 80 hours of work , and after I was done and billed him, he
blew me off and told me that he had asked me to do the work, but
hadn't agreed that he would pay me anything. This is a typical Xer
treating a Boomer like a buffoon. Nothing like this ever happened in
the 80s or 90s.
Writing for this web site, I have to deal with all sorts of crap from
people in all generations who call me names because they don't like
the conclusions. But Xers are the worst because they have no respect
for expertise and knowledge. The worst was Sean Love, who never had
any intention but to ridicule and humiliate me. I tried to reason
with him for years, to no avail. When the final dénouement came in
the TFT forum, I just started calling him a "nasty little Gen-X
twirp," and the only thing about that phrase that I regretted was that
I hadn't used it a lot earlier. If you or anyone else posts crap,
then I'll either ignore it or disagree with it. If you don't like
that, then tell me where I'm wrong. If you can't tell me where I'm
wrong, but you think I'm arrogant for being right, then fuck you.
Since I'm not willing to play the part of the buffoon that Xers can
just screw with to their heart's content, I have no way to deal with
Xers, and now that they're "in charge" (to use your phrase), I'm going
to be screwed every time. I keep joking about the fact that I hope
the first Chinese missile lands on Cambridge, but in fact I'm not
joking. I have no place in this world any more, and I would welcome
death. You Gen-Xers can just bumble your way into one crisis after
another without me, and I wish you luck, because in view of the
incompetence I keep seeing on a daily basis, you're going to need all
the luck you can get.
John