is a cunt
This cunting comes with a caveat; this excuse for ignorance becomes valid in relation to various obscure cultural references , such as underground psychedelic bands of the late sixties or middling footballers of the fifties; they’re generally not known for a reason. It’s quite a narrow subject of interest to the general population.
You hear this phrase quite a lot from millennials, who almost say it with pride, as if knowing about anything before their date of birth, or decade currently made fashionable (such as the eighties because of Stranger Things) is equivalent to being an old codger. You’re now a relic.
The Battle of Britain was fought with tanks, innit?
Nah, don’t matter… before my time!’
I thought this cunting would probably be better if it came from me as I’m one of the younger cunters and in the limbo between Gen X and Millennial.
I find that what near-contemporaries or those just a few years younger really mean is ‘i don’t read books/papers/journals/watch documentaries/ am generally incurious about the world’.
A lot of these people are quite well-travelled, even if they all tend to travel to the same places and far from sober and think that simply by travelling they become better people, but return just as ignorant and conceited as when they left; the delusion is just even more embedded.
May don’t seem to have picked up any more common sense, which I find odd, but then I remember that many are treading a path so well-worn and Anglophone, so cossetted by airports and hotels and top-ups from mummy and daddy, they don’t need to learn life lessons.
Also, they don’t need to know who either Charles Dickens or Darwin were because they’ve been drunk in Phuket, drunk in Bangkok, climbed on the ruins of Angkor Watt and then drunk in Sydney.
The modern quiz show is where these worldly bon vivants proudly display their ignorance;
‘Before my time, bruv!’
‘Before my time, mate!’
‘Before my time, moosh!’
Did you really need to be alive in the middle ages to know which angel led a rebellion against God in the Judeo-Christian bible?
May as well say, ‘naah, don’t believe in God, ha!’
I reiterate the point that certain pop songs, TV programmes etc. do not really merit being known about by the younger generation, and sometimes ‘before my time can be employed diplomatically.
A good example might be Watney’s Party Sevens. I only know about those from working with blokes who talked about them. I certainly wouldn’t say ‘before my time’ with pride.
By the same token, I’m not one to scoff at a late millennial/ gen Z who has never heard of Depeche Mode or The Foo Fighters, although you can bet they know about Nirvana.
I know a few contemporaries who might, but I put that down to insecurity. It isn’t important they know about pop and rock bands from the eighties and nineties, whatever I may think of them. Even within the scope of musical history they are ephemera, as are most pop acts.
Still, the pride of the ‘before my time’ crowd we see in the media and those leaving education reminds me of Orwell’s line from Nineteen Eighty Four,
‘Nothing exists except an endless present. and the party is always right’
Eh? George Orwell? Before my time, bruv.
Nominated by Cuntamus Prime.
(Just a quick note to say there will be an additional Nomination at 11am today and 11am tomorrow. Thanks – Day Admin)
