Comment by martythemaniak
23 days ago
Story of our times: Gen-X counterculture jerk grows up railing against The Man. Grows up, gets rich, famous, becomes The Man. His mind, however, is stuck in the past, still thinks he's a rebel, still thinks he's railing against The Man. In reality, he has become a sadistic asshole hurting others for his self-righteous pleasure. But no amount of pain inflicted on others will make him feel good, he dies a miserable crank.
Adams, Musk, Andreesen, Stephen Miller, Chappelle, Maher. They're everywhere.
"Once you wanted revolution
Now you're the institution
How's it feel to be the man?
It's no fun to be the man."
- Ben Folds, "The Ascent of Stan" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caCuRqedslY
While a little reductive and caricatured, as a Gen-X counterculture type myself I can confirm that there's quite a bit of accuracy in this comment. And a lot more examples in more boring parts of the world than these famous people you are mentioning.
With that said it's not exclusively a Gen-X thing to go from counterculture to establishment while preserving the same root personality driver of narcissism and selfishness. It's obviously recognizable as the trajectory of the Woodstock generation as well.
Yeah, probably unfair to name GenX exclusively - more of a late boomer/early gen-x phenomenon. Perhaps it's just the new mid-life crisis, "corvette in your 40s" is beyond silly these days, but rich, powerful 50-60 year olds thinking they're badass rebels is super common.
Yeah, if the same thing doesn’t happen with millennials it’s only because there is no true counterculture anymore.
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You also have RATM telling people to follow the government instructions re: COVID
And Eminem tone policing what people say because it might be hurtful.
Yes, exactly. Their minds grew with them, they didn't become ossified in their 20s
So true! And Maher is probably the worst of the lot.
That's a pretty wild take. Maher's views have been basically consistent, the others have not. Musk has also veered hard-right
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For the record, Scott Adams was unambiguously born in the Baby Boomer years. (So was Bill Maher.)
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I thought there were people whose lives followed that trajectory in many generations, but it's just the one. What a relief! /s