This tried really hard to be every Christmas movie in one but it sort of missed the point and the heart of the genre.
Score: 0
Characters
The characters were hilarious. They were stereotypes of stereotypes. Unfortunately, that didn’t make them all that interesting beyond a few gags.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
This was stilted even for a satire of a stitled genre. Other than the gags and wordplay, which sometimes came off as a CollegeHumour skit gone too long, the dialogue wasn’t great.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
Over the top visuals with some surprisingly good sets and costume design.
The music was sufficiently cheesy and played well for gags.
Score: 0.5
Fun
When the wordplay or satire hit this was a lot of fun, but it really didn’t make me care about the characters or want to see how it ends.
My mother in-law was not impressed and the three year old was bored.
Score: 0.5
Overall
A valiant attempt at satirizing Christmas movies which doesn’t succeed at doing more then pointing out things about other movies. There were a few really good jokes, but it didn’t have heart or wonder.
Here is the absolutely 100% genuinely definitive guide to Western generations.
The Lost Generation
Dates
1880’s to 1900
What they’re known for
They fought in WW1 and mostly felt lost in the horror of it.
Definitive attribute
Sad and disillusioned.
The Greatest or GI Generation
Dates
1900 to 1924
What they’re known for
They fought in WW2 and survived the depression. They were just happy to survive.
Definitive attribute
Doing the right thing or putting their families in front of themselves.
The Silent Generation
Dates
1925 to 1942
What they’re known for
Not fighting in WW2 and being quiet. They mostly wanted to avoid getting called communists. They spent a lot of time working on their careers.
Definitive attribute
Working too much, unionizing, saying “Honey, I’m Home.”
The Baby Boomers
Dates
1943-1964
What they’re known for
Complaining about their grand-kids. Creating unsustainable business practices that later generations can kill. Thinking the post war boom in the economy was normal.
Definitive attribute
Not understanding the crap they left for their grand- and great-grand kids.
First generation to be accused of playing too many video games. Creating monolithic tech companies.
Generation Xillennial or I’m not a Millennial
Dates
1976-1989
What they’re known for
90’s nostalgia. Insisting that they aren’t Millennials. Complaining about Millennials. Something about participation trophies.
Definitive attribute
Not being Millennials or X and really not wanting to be.
Generation Y or Millennial
Dates
1990-1995 or anyone younger and deserving more scorn than the current speaker
What they’re known for
MASS MURDER, Not voting, being entitled, lazy, loud, GET OFF MY LAWN
Definitive attribute
Being really poor and shit on.
Generation Z or IGen or Post-Millennial or Plurals or Digital Natives
Dates
1996-2010
What they’re known for
Being mistaken for Millennials. Not having a buzz worthy name. Cell phone addiction (despite being on it less than their parents and grandparents.) Not being hated as much as Millennials. 90’s Nostalgia.
Definitive attribute
Being sick of this shit… all this shit.
Generation Wikipedia doesn’t have an article and people haven’t named us
Dates
2011-????
Definitive attribute
Asking WTF were you thinking every 3 minutes.
Being hated by Gen X and Millennials in the same way that the Silent Generation and Boomers hated Millennials
Definitive attribute
Being the generation that will have to come up with solutions to the serious fuck up that our government, education, society, and most of all environment is headed towards.
There you have it. Any names for the generation born post 2011?
Éric
P.S. This was a work of satire. It is effectively cruel, simplistic, and idiotic to judge an entire generation of people on such narrow lines. But maybe I’m being a little too sensitive. I am a Cancer after all.
Brainwashing is no longer considered the reason most people join cults. Instead, it’s theorized that it’s a combination of indoctrination and acceptance that leads people to follow dangerous or benign cults.
Having a child, you go through a similar experience and the two are scarily close.
*Warning* This is meant as a humorous article pointing out the obvious and making exaggerated claims, not as a serious scientific debate.
The human mind depends a lot on its body functioning and reacting in a predictable way. Changing its patterns and starving the body of sleep or food can completely alter the way the mind reacts to situations.
For that reason, cults will often wake up their members every couple of hours to meditate, pray, etc. They will also under-feed or change the eating habits of their members for the same reason.
When you have a child, it does the same thing; waking you up multiple times a night and making sure you never have a warm meal or a meal on time again.
4. Isolation and Inclusion
The first thing that a cult will do is try to isolate new members. If they don’t have a strong support structure, they’re more vulnerable to what appears to be a warm and inviting environment. Once the members are isolated, they make sure that the other members become a new, self echoing, support structure.
When you have a baby, it comes first. A lot of the people you saw all the time disappear into the background and you find yourself meeting other parents at Ikea or the Disney Store.
At first it’s like everyone has abandoned you and then you meet other parents and they understand how you’ve suffered. Suddenly you have a completely new structure of friends.
3. Constant Fear
Cults, and extreme political parties, often like to reinforce how awesome they are by contrasting to an enemy. It could be another cult, another culture, the government etc. Sometimes it won’t be a person or group of people but an event or idea. Conspiracies, end of days, etc.
As a new parent, you will be bombarded by advice from scientific articles, friends, family, and random strangers. Each and every one of which will contradict each other or itself. The advice will be dire and terrifying. One friend will send you something like this, “Using a soother will warp your child’s gums and their teeth will be crooked and ill developed” and another will send you this, “Using a soother lowers the risk of SIDS.”
EVERYTHING will kill your kid or scar them for life and every parent will fight to the death for the thing they believe in.
2. Rituals and Repetition
Cults ingrain ideas and habits by repetition and rituals. Songs, chants, and speeches are common but so are exercises, flagellation, or repetitive actions.
As a new parent, what was once a fun cute rhyme is now a mandatory ritual. A favourite song becomes constant background noise.
Things start needing to be done in a specific order that you were daft enough to not write down and when the diaper is changed after the feeding instead of before, you’re lost to singing extra made up verses of their bedtime song.
Not to mention that watching hours of Pepa Pig, Paw Patrol, or Dora makes you wish for the flagellation.
1. Charismatic Leader
Really dangerous cults have an extremely charismatic leader. Someone who can, with a smile and a well-placed word, make you feel like the most important person in the world. A person so lovable that everyone wants to be around them.
A baby will scream, poop, puke, pee, scream, pull your hair, and hit you with every body part. At two AM you’ll wake up, hearing them make a noise and you’ll beg every deity you’ve ever heard of that they don’t wake up.
Despite all that they’ll look up at you with those big eyes and make a cooing noise that will melt your heart and you’ll instantly forgive them. Their smile makes you feel utterly filled with love and when they snuggle into you, you feel a love like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. (Snuggling may actually be a baby’s way of trying to burrow into your chest to steal your heart.)
One big difference, thankfully, is the fact that parenthood rarely results in mass suicide.
The world we know ended quickly but it started with signs. Small innocuous little reminders on how to wash our hands, to push a door with our foot, cough in our shoulder, or that shaking hands kills plans. One day they just started to appear with a little logo saying Pandemic Planning and Preparedness meant to make everyone feel safe with alliteration.
It worked too, the world stood at a level 6 pandemic for almost a month before the riots. It would have gone higher but they had neglected to add a level for, “Oh god, Oh god, we’re all going to die.”
Those who survived the longest avoided human contact and hid in their houses, The internet was buzzing with Tweets, Texts, Mails, Walls, Posts, and all kinds of other things till one day it just went silent. No one had anything left to say we all knew it was the end of our world. Not our planet, she would shrug us off like fleas and in a hundred thousand years all traces of us would be gone except maybe shopping bags, those would last a long time.
In the last days of human civilisation those of us who were still alive and hadn’t been driven insane tried to rebuild. We tried to make a better life; we used renewable resources, recycled, and even managed to live for years after the flu. Sadly it left us sterile and this capsule is the last of what we and our race could accomplish.
Along with this narrative you’ll find the plans for our wind turbines, water purifiers, and basic agriculture. If there is human life on this planet somewhere that has been able to survive and you find this I hope you learn from our mistakes.
Now let me tell you about the last days of the twenty second century and what happened to a misguided but great civilisation…
