OT - Grumpy Old Man Thread

[bayareabadger]

Well if Ive taken all your stuff theres a problem.  I cant find it.  Could someone please help me find it

Yes, but you’ve gotta buy me lunch afterwards. Sit down restaurant too.

[Gigem]

I look at my own adult interest and can credit myself with fostering the more mature interests of my older generation: watching sports, going to live events, road trips, wine club memberships, sports bars, and reading mid-century novels.

I bring this up because last weekend, while catching up with two college buddies who’ve remained friends largely by joining in with me on those very interests – road trips, sports bars, reading similar books – and it turns out they’re both avid collectors of Pokémon and Magic the Gathering. It was something about them I really hadn’t paid attention to.

I related their card collecting interest to what I was thinking about back in March: Millennials and Gen Zers don’t have the wealth to fund Boomer generation interests of golfing, yacht clubs, casinos, motorbiking, traveling Europe, etc. Instead, they stick to the less expensive interests drawn from their youth, which also allows them to draw on their fix for nostalgia. Even with the collectible value of Pokémon Cards surging to the point of pricing out beginners, many Millennials have childhood collections that allow them to enter the trading frenzy. However, it turns out collecting Pokémon Cards has become very expensive. Pokémon Cards have become an addiction. For the last few years newly released Pokémon product lines can’t meet demand purchasing demands.

Where Boomers got their gambling fix at the casino, Millennials and Gen Z get their fix by opening Pokémon booster packs – from Medium: “Pack Addiction: How Pokémon Cards Hijack Your Brain’s Reward System.” I had no idea the Pokémon card market was such a mania these past few years – from IGN: “10 Billion Pokémon Cards Were Printed Last Year — and It Still Wasn't Enough to Stop Shortages and Scalping.”

I skipped a couple of pages, but how is Pokémon any less credible than collecting baseball or football cards ?  Baseball cards were a big deal to the boomer generation and before. There just wasn’t much else to do. Three channels on TV and your favorite baseball players. 

[Honestbuckeye]

I call them asshole takes.   Not calling SF an asshole. But what a shitty rant with no evidence. 

You drop something like that on the forum, and don’t have the balls or evidence to support it.  

It’s what makes social media sick sometimes.     😒

[FearlessF]

could make a man grumpy
perhaps

[CatsbyAZ]

I skipped a couple of pages, but how is Pokémon any less credible than collecting baseball or football cards ?

Less credible isn’t the best way to frame a discussion on the difference between the two – collecting Pokémon cards Vs baseball/NFL/NBA cards. And given the surging value on Pokémon cards this past half decade, it’s certainly a higher stakes gamble (more on that in a moment).

The difference starts with one is based on reality, featuring real people and their statistics. The other features fictional creations geared to capture the minds of nine-year-old boys. Millennials were children when English version Pokémon cards were first released in the United States in January of 1999.

As Millennials started hitting their thirties about a decade ago, that’s when I first observed grown Millennials latching onto the IPs (Intellectual Properties) of their childhoods more so than the previous generations. Some of this might be because Millennials seemed to have a lot more childhood IPs to latch onto well into their adulthoods. If not, it’s a matter of Millenials just not wanting to ever grow up. How else do you explain Disney Adults(?): “These are childless adults, some of whom accrue debt to finance repeated pilgrimages to the Magic Kingdom.” Collecting Pokémon cards plays into this same Millennial chase for Nostalgia.

Collecting Pokémon cards also plays into a gambling fix. The Boomer of yesteryear walking out of convenience store with a coffee refill, pack of cigarettes, and lotto scratch-offs is now a Millennial walking out with a Monster Energy can, vape cartridges, and a booster pack of Pokémon cards bought at the counter. Opening Pokémon card packs are becoming the lotto scratch-offs of the younger generations. Both are sold at check-out, offer the brief rush of striking a potentially four-figure reward, yet rarely deliver, and win or lose the same customers return for more several times a week.

Baseball cards were never as widely treated as the State Lottery. Or a forty-year-old's outlet for refusing to grow up:

[betarhoalphadelta]

I skipped a couple of pages, but how is Pokémon any less credible than collecting baseball or football cards ?  Baseball cards were a big deal to the boomer generation and before. There just wasn’t much else to do. Three channels on TV and your favorite baseball players.

To me, I can't speak to Boomers because I'm the tail end of GenX. But I do remember collecting baseball cards as a kid. 

I also think if I met a man my age who was STILL obsessed with baseball cards as an adult, I'd find it a little bit sad and depressing. 

I remember a lot of things from my childhood that were appropriate for a child, and would be silly to still have as part of my identity now.

I think what @CatsbyAZ is talking about is millennials who are trying to live a perpetual childhood, whereas perhaps past generations were a little more of the mindset that when you are no longer a child, you put away childish things?

[847badgerfan]

Developing a cough and cold.

Love the grandkids. One of them was a little sickly, but not bad. 

The kid behind us on the plane was coughing and sneezing the whole time.

I blame his parents.

Grumpy.

I wanted to get on the water today. Nope.

[utee94]

Spent much of Friday and most of Saturday on the lake.

Not grumpy!