Would Young People Today Know What a Good Old-Fashioned Bank Robbery Looks Like? (Generation Gaps.)

Hi Everyone,

Eli's "Girl Pants" thread had me thinking. In the thread, a joke was made about remebmering not wearing nylons (women's panty hose) on one's head, and the implication is because doing so would automatically brand the wearer as a criminal.

Then I was thinking about it and thought, "Wow, I wonder how many of the younger posters would even know what that joke was referring to."

"Back in the day," it was common knowledge that "bad guys" supposedly often wore nylons over their heads to help conceal their identity (not the most foolproof method, I know) when committing crimes like armed robbery. In fact, this seemed (to me at least, in my limited exposure) to be the most common "real" crime depicted in comic books and cartoons.

How many others here have watched multiple times as infamous superheros like Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman foiled countless robbers? But now days, robberies come in the form of phishing and data breaches rather than grown men wearing women's stockings over their heads, so how would young people be able to recognize that reference?

As you can tell from my avatar, I'm a huge fan of Soundwave from the 1980's (original G1) version of The Transformers cartoon. A few years ago, someone here wrote me and asked, "In your avatar, why does Optimus Prime have a microwave in his chest???" This made me laugh out loud, but then also put me to the task of not only having to explain who Soundwave was, but also the fact that he transformed into a CASSETTE PLAYER (which brought up a whole new set of explanations.)

One of the things I've been thinking about in my daily single life with God is that He often connects me with people from different generations than my own. Communication can sometimes be difficult because both myself and the other person find ourselves struggling to find enough common ground to build a foundation that leads to heavier topics like faith.

I don't watch TV anymore (though I'm a YouTube junkie,) and I rarely watch movies (but sometimes I'll binge on all the movies I wanted to see at one time in the past year,) but I do try to read and keep up with at least a few headlines of popular culture, just so that I will hopefully have more common knowledge with which to be able to talk to others.

For this thread, I am defining "Generation Gaps" as the times when people don't understand each other's historical or cultural references due to differences in age and times when they grew up. What are your thoughts about "Generation Gaps"?

* What generations do you find yourself talking to most? Older, younger, or the same as you? Which ones do you seem to "click" with most?

* Do you find it hard to talk to people of different generations than yourself? Why or why not? What would make it easier?

* If you'd feel comfortable doing so, please share some times in which you felt a "generation gap" with another person and how it was handled. Did you come to an understanding, or did both people walk away in opposite directions, each shaking his head at the other?

I often ask God to try to please help me talk to people with empathy and respect but without talking down to them. I seem to be in situations where people talk down to me quite often (usually because I'm a single gal without children,) and I'm hoping that "when I grow up," I won't turn around and do that to others around me. But, it's definitely a work that's still in progress.

What about for the rest of you?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences!

I'll bet some of the people who read this will never look at a pair of nylons the same way again. (Fun generational fact: panty hose can be an accessory to armed robbery!)

oh wow.
well on facebooks some of my friends want to laugh at how they are 'elderly'
and they are always posting old peoples memes.

Like share if you remember milk coming in glass bottles kind of thing.
And pictures of telephones where the receiver is off the hook which is how you blocked someone in the 1980s.

I try to get all their jokes but sometimes I fail to see why its funny. Are they laughing at my expense? Or they just cant handle new technology?
Or maybe just poking fun at how old they are. Sometimes you never get the in jokes. Or maybe you dont really want to....

I mean. I dont post blonde jokes, maybe cos Im not blonde. But maybe if I was I would post them.

I am noticing Librarians tend to post librarian memes about books that only librarians would get. And only a librarian would know they are funny....but everyone else it might just go straight over their heads.

I think the only reliable funny pics you can post on FB that everyone will get are ones featuring grumpy cats dressed up.

There is a card game at the bookshop thats called Millenial AF and I dont really get it or relate to it because I am apparently Y generation.

But thats ok. I dont get exploding kittens either. Its a UNO knock off.

I've worked in retirement villages and now I work in primary school. I think I prefer primary school as theres less complaining and ribbing about my age at how young I am. At the school all the children are curious at how old I am but I dont really let on. Or I tell them what year i was born and they have to figure it out using their maths skills

Look through an annotated version of any classic book and you'll be amazed at how much of it is pop culture references that are completely lost on modern readers.

Shoot, my brother watches anime and sometimes the people making the subtitles have to insert a whole paragraph explaining some comment a character made.

And yes seoulsearch, there IS an xkcd for everything.

I have a lot of thoughts about this topic, because communication is something important to me.

Cultural references are a handy shortcut to explain something and a way to make the explanation more vivid. The problem is if we become too reliant on them we lose the ability to communicate with people who are not in our culture. "I spun out of that driveway like the Trans Am in Smoky and the Bandit!" paints a clear picture of me accelerating out of a driveway so fast the tires lost traction and skidded... if you've ever seen the movie. I've explained to somebody how a computer works by using the analogy of a chef in a kitchen, but for some people who have eaten fast food and microwaved burritos all their lives that analogy wouldn't work.

Cultural shifting is the reason people wind up old and lonely. Not because there is nobody to talk to, but because the elderly person can't understand the kids and the young people can't understand the old fogey. What's sad is they could understand each other if they took the time to explain and listen and try.

Staying inside my own culture, talking to my own set of close friends who already understand me, I don't have to learn anything. It's the easiest way, which is why so many people take it. It's a lot easier to ignore people you don't understand than try to understand them. But I don't learn nearly as much that way.

"Ever go fishing with an old crank telephone? Give the fish a call, they'll answer!" Having to explain a joke usually kills it, but that's one joke that is actually more fun when you have to explain it.

I agree with the statement, but, I do not understand the cartoon at all. Must be way over my head.

Nah, just before your time. =^.^=


Neil Armstrong used to tell remarkably lame jokes about walking on the moon. When people gave him a blank look he would say, "Ah well, I guess you just had to be there."

Ha - this brought back memories. I think my favourite transformer was Mirage, but I had forgotten about Soundwave until you mentioned that he transformed into the cassette player. He was one of the Decepticons, though!

You know how it is, sometimes a girl just can't help falling for a bad boy. (Especially when he comes with his own accessories.)

If it's any consolation - as a balance, Optimus is my second favorite.

But I won't say by how much.

P.S. Mirage was awesome!

What we're dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law

i remember at my home church, we were hanging out with the youth, and someone was talking about the car she wants. then she said, "i ride deep!" aaaaaand the youth leaders were so confused cuz we had NO idea what that meant. she then explained that she would have a lot of friends in the car with her. then she said we were lame for not knowing. we then explained to her that in the real world, we don't talk like that lololol.

I seem to live in that weird middle ground where I'm too online and techy for the older generations, but I never really got into the whole social media thing (because I detest small talk in person enough I don't want to subject myself to massive amounts of it from the whole world, and stupid arguments when multiple stupid people think their opinion with no basis in fact is worth inflicting on the internet at large) and I think that keeps me distanced from many in my generation and younger.

Also I'm one of those who believe that things like morals, facts, and the purpose of things is more important than what you happen to feel about something. That seems to be an attitude belonging to a former time, oh wait there's a great Chesterton quote for that:

“It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.”

(Actually there's lots of great Chesterton quotes, my favorite resource for them: https://www.chesterton.org/quotations/ )

And that may be the complementary phenomenon is that while there are generation gaps, there are also the bridges that cross those gaps usually those things that reach for the universal rather than just the here and now. Sure we may need footnotes to understand why Shakespeare's nonsense was brilliant, but we don't need those footnotes to understand the envy, indecision, greed, treachery and other themes of his plays.

Don’t we just love bad boys?😁

Defaulting to "you're so lame for not knowing that" is MUCH less fun than "Oooh, you've never heard of that before? Lemme explain it!"

Ive been a bad boy.............. wait, did I say that right?

Oh great.

Who wants to be the one to have to tell Eli to go and pick out his own switch?

Again. 😐

some new words I learned, younger generations are talking stuff like

'shipping' as in having friendships, relationships, fellowships etc.
'cis gender' apparently it means if your are female you are feminine and if you are male you are masculine, but you are not cis if you are all mixed up.

older generations talk about stuff and say weird things like
'it grows like topsy' meaning it grew all by itself overnight
'blast' 'oh bother' instead of more colourful swear words


I think there because of so many baby boomers just taking the majority share of the population, theres a huge gap between their mostly priveliged way of life and the way younger people live now...which is where the 'OK boomer ' thing comes from as people are just sick and tired of all the assumptions people have about the younger generation having no future...they didnt really ask to live in this world thats come about now the boomers are in charge.

I had to run this through an astrology program before I could make sense of it. The program said you're full of Taurus. The "boomers" I know are mostly willing to do what needs to be done, a LOT more than the current teen-through-30's people I know.

oh boy......................