The One Where It's All Our Fault...Apparently

Friday, May 28, 2021


For the last wee while I've been seeing this post be shared over and over again on Facebook and last night I just snapped and what follows came flying out of me as a 3am Facebook post-then I realised it was a bit long for a status update so you can have it here instead. This isn't even the first time I've written a post in response to a meme, maybe I need to relax haha. You can read the first one
here

It’s hilarious, all these school kids preaching to us oldies that we fucked up the planet! Back in the 60s and 70s not a plastic bottle to be seen it was all glass that were reused, pop bottles taken back to the shop. No plastic bags, loose food was brown paper bags, all sweets were bought in 1/4lb put in a paper bag. Mothers used shopping trolleys to carry heavy stuff or used a linen bag. You walked to school from 5 years old to 16 years old not jumping into mummy’s 4x4. No McDonald’s or Burger King plastic toys, no polystyrene food boxes for you to litter the streets with, we had to use newspapers to wrap out hot food in. Our milk was delivered at 5am 6 days a week by a milkman who drove and electric vehicle! And glass bottles were returned and washed out and reused. Same with the pop man. Holidays were in a caravan not an aeroplane to far off destinations. So I think these youngsters need to take a look in a recycled mirror and think “was it my wasteful generation who are fucking up the planet”?



Gimme strength folks! We didn’t invent this shit? The generation that this post is having a go at grew up whilst all this new stuff was being invented and trotted out as “the next big thing”! We were fucking children when the pop bottle man stopped coming, we were kids when the tattie mannie disappeared, we were fucking kids, not corporate faceless megalomaniacs hellbent on leaching all the nutrients from the earth and turning it into fucking plastic bags that seem to mutate and split and grow when they come into contact with each other (seriously I clear out our bag corner weekly and then I look back and there’s fucking more of the bastard things EVEN THOUGH I DO ALL MY SHOPPING WITH CANVAS!

Now, don't get me wrong here the generation before us is always gonna get blamed for something. When I was growing up we blamed our parent's generation for blowing a bajillion holes in the ozone layer (seriously you did not NEED that much hairspray to look that bad)!

My niece’s generation blames my ilk for the prevalence of side parts, skinny jeans, and the overbearing naffness of the live laugh love aesthetic-whilst the media blame us for deforestation, human rights violations (because apparently, all we eat is avocado and somehow that funds human trafficking), killing the mortgage market (because we spent all our money on avocados), killing the diamond industry (oh dear, how sad, nevermind) and a load of other old shite 🤷🏼‍♀️.
And I’m sure my parents' generation probably blame their parents' generation for some other shit-but dickheads like John here are gonna come and blame an entire generation of people for killing his way of life when they were children when the transition happened. GTFOH!

Or maybe this rant is all an elaborate ruse and a whole legion of 9-10 year olds stood up one day and collectively told their parents “well actually mummy/daddy I think we should switch to plastic for everything, and don’t be ghastly I demand a cheap holiday to Tenerife instead of Skegness this year (for what it’s worth my favourite childhood memories are from the Norfolk broads-I can go to the Caribbean for the same price now-and that opens up a whole other story about shit British summers, global warming, overpricing etc) fuck off the greengrocer let’s go to the big Tesco you can drive to and don’t have to speak to other people at”!

Don’t blame people for shit they had no control over! Lay the blame at the door of big businesses who are actually the problem-they produce the most pollution, they create the most landfill, they pump the most chemicals into the atmosphere and then they slap “biodegradable/eco-friendly” on their packaging, clap themselves on the back and then blame you for not doing enough! But if you just can't help yourself and you must, must lay the blame on a generation different to your own, may I recommend not using the generation that is actively trying to bring back all those things you miss so much?

Milk deliveries? Yep we brought that back. Canvas/Linen bags? Yup us again. Recycling, paper bags, zero waste refill stores, banning single-use plastics, staycations, charity shop clothing, reduce-reuse-recycle...all being brought back and championed by the generation being so scathingly attacked in the previous post. 

Oh and don't even get me started on the irony of the original post where it laments an imaginarily wasteful generation and then uses their recycled mirror as some sort of thinly veiled insult! 

Anyway thanks for allowing me the rant, now I'm off to clean out and recycle some old candle jars to store my bamboo cotton buds, and reusable wipes- oh yeah, we brought the flannel back too! 

Much Love
Aj 






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