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THROUGH_THE_BOOM_TUBE

                                             March 13, 2022


    I just wanted to check a few details about the
    recent Doctor Who series (with Jodie Wittaker
    as the first female Doctor) and learned a few          MARY_SUE
    things I'd unaccountably missed from a few
    years before, such as the announcement that
    the next Doctor would be played by Jo Martin,
    a black woman...

    It took just a quick duckduckgo search to
    learn this from some web pages up at CNN.

    And you know, I can remember back when I had to
    learn about Science Fiction from weird little
    fanzines (often mimeographed, later xeroxed...)


         I was thinking a little about some of
         the remarkably stupid commentary I'd
         seen up on youtube about the Whittaker
         Who, and I was wondering idly to myself        A moment's reflection
         "Were science fiction fans *always*            though reminds about
         this stupid, or has it gotten worse?"          some of the remarkably
                                                        dumb fen of ages gone
                                                        by...

             I submit that the fact that I asked        Throughout history,
             myself the question, rather than           Dumb has never been
             just assuming the answer, is a             in short supply.
             symptom of my own generation.  Say
             what you will about Boomers, but we
             tend to be aware of the ironies of     I think I'm supposed to
             belonging to an aging youth cult.      identify myself as a
                                                    "Boomer"-- going by the
                As I once heard Abbie Hoffman       dates up at wikipedia
                comment back in the mid-1980s:      I'm in the tail end of
                "It's almost getting to the         the boom.
                point where I want to say
                'never trust anyone under 30'."     To me, it's always felt
                                                    like I was a member of
             Another first for us Boomers:          the first generation
             uncomfortably aware that               that had to deal with
             complaining about "kids these          following the boomers.
             days" is a stale cliche.
                                                    In the mid-1970s I was
                                                    already getting tired of
                                                    hearing "Hey man,
                                                    whatever happened to The
                                                    Sixties?"



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