The Lost Generation

Compact Magazine ^ | 12/15/25 | Jacob Savage

[EnderWiggin1970]

For fifteen years I’ve scalped tickets to pay the bills. But in January 2016 I almost managed a real career. I was thirty-one, I’d been in Los Angeles for five years writing scripts. There had been minor successes, a couple of small projects optioned, and I’d recently started writing with my best friend. We were writing constantly, making each other better, building momentum.

Success felt close. Back then it always did.

We’d written a pilot script that a veteran showrunner had agreed, in a very theoretical, very Hollywood sort of way, to “come on” to. That project had fizzled, so we were surprised when an executive emailed us out of the blue to meet. The showrunner explained he’d submitted us for an upcoming writer’s room he was going to run—the exec had loved our pilot and wanted to hire us.

This was it, the moment our careers were supposed to take off. We’d put in our time—I’d been tutoring SATs and reselling tickets to make ends meet while I wrote—and five years seemed par for the course, based on the slightly older guys we knew who’d made it.

But of course, by 2016, we were already too late.

The showrunner emailed us back apologetically. “I had initially thought I might be able to bring you guys on,” he wrote, “but in the end it wasn’t possible.”

We met with the executive anyway—a Gen-X white guy—who told us how much he loved our pilot. But the writers room was small, he explained apologetically, and the higher-level writers were all white men. They couldn’t have an all-white-male room. Maybe, if the show got another season, they’d be able to bring us on.

They never did.

[Chipper]

Read this earlier. Quite the depressing read. Ladder got pulled up on a whole generation in way too many professions. No way to undo the damage done in the past decade.

[packrat35]

I lot of older established writers who were white were dumped and that is when the quality of movies and TV were down hard.

[Alberta's Child]

Maybe the ladder got pulled up, or maybe the younger generation just isn’t up to the task in many of these professions. In almost every profession I deal with regularly, I see unmistakable signs of decline and an embarrassing acceptance of mediocrity.

[Chipper]

Did you even read part of the article?

[econjack]

I wish there was an unbiased metric by which we could measure the quality of writing then versus now. To me, present-day writing is significantly lower. Indeed, I think the education of people who write and broadcast has deteriorated. I often see TV news people or personalities confusing “who” and “that”, “then” and “than”, and a boatload of other gaffs. English teachers would rather read symbolism into a phone book that teach proper English. Sad...very, very, sad...

[Jeff Chandler]

I strongly recommend reading the article.

[Chipper]

It isn’t necessarily the education of the people, it is a change from hiring based on merit to hiring based on quotas.

[Vermont Lt]

This crap has been going on a lot longer than 2016. I did not get a couple of promotions early in my career (1987 and 1988) because the company felt they needed more minority women in those roles. I eventually “broke through” and did just fine.

Then in 1990 the company brought in new HR people who made everything about race, and how the company had been running everything wrong for 20 years. It made working there a nightmare.

So, this social engineering is nothing new.

[Alberta's Child]

I did read it. I couldn’t relate to it because it’s all about the media and entertainment — which are useless fields that have been in decline for as long as I’ve been alive.

My comment was addressed at your “way too many professions” observation.

[rlmorel]

I found this nugget from that article interesting:

“You are all just laughable,” wrote The New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones. “Have you seen the data on professorships?” “White males are 30 percent of the US population but nearly 40 percent of faculty,” tweeted a tenured professor at GWU. “Hard to make the case for systemic discrimination.”

These are exactly-EXACTLY-the SAME people who decry anyone who points out that over 40% of the violent crime in this country, Murders, Rapes, Armed Robberies, Aggravated Assault, etc. are committed by perhaps 3% of the population.

[alexander_busek]

I've noticed how, in many English-language television series, the characters will make egregious grammatical or syntactical errors. I suppose that that could be attributable to the writers consciously trying to replicate actual spoken speech (with all its flaws).

One of my "pet peeves" is when someone emphatically assures someone else, "I promise that's the truth!" or "I promise I didn't..." (where the correct word would be "swear"); perhaps they are averse to using the verb "to swear" or believe that it means only "to curse." Another is "at the same token" instead of (correct) "by the same token"; I am assuming that they are conflating it with "at the same time."

Perhaps the most-common error (and one for which I can offer no explanation): "As far as XXX," while eliding the necessary "...is concerned" or at least "goes."

I wish there was an unbiased metric by which we could measure the quality of writing then versus now.

I believe that the quality of writing in the sense of "style," "complexity," and "avoidance of worn tropes and cliches" has actually improved in recent decades. But on the very basic level of "adherence to the rules of proper English," a deterioration of quality is definitely visible.

Regards,

[Governor Dinwiddie]

He could be an electrician. Or a welder. Or a plumber. Or a mechanic. Or a carpenter. All he has to do is learn a trade. He will get paid while he trains. No pity for people stuck in ruts of their own making.

Frankly, I don't consider a "Hollywood writer" as a real job.

[cgbg]

Great post.

Saul Alinsky nailed it—make those in power live up to their own set of rules.

In almost all universities and in many professions and other organizations the leftists are the ones in power.

[cgbg]

“He could be an electrician. Or a welder. Or a plumber. Or a mechanic. Or a carpenter. All he has to do is learn a trade. He will get paid while he trains. No pity for people stuck in ruts of their own making.
Frankly, I don’t consider a “Hollywood writer” as a real job.”

You are defending de facto Jim Crow against white men.

[Sirius Lee]

"I promise that's the truth!"

I rather fancy: "I can vouchsafe as to its veracity."

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Yeh. That's right! You found me out, you wascal!

[cgbg]

I do not find this subject at all amusing.

[marktwain]

I saw lots of discrimination against white men from 1985 on.

It was especially common in government and large industries.

They had other pressures, to keep it from getting to the level it has in the Universities and Media. They had to accomplish things and deliver product.

Media believed they were immune. They have lost. Some of the best talent on podcasts and influencers are white men. They are people who made their own jobs.

[rlmorel]

What is interesting is that the decline in quality (at least the perceived quality in the media space would be revealing if graphed against the drop in white males employed in that space over time, or better, correlated to the increase of diversity hires over that same time frame.

Last I checked, the Media had a 25% approval rating.

Just out of curiosity, I asked Grok to check:

MEDIA APPROVAL RATING 1990-2025

MINORITIES EMPLOYED IN MEDIA

Granted. This is only AI, and it is only minorities, not minorities + females. But interesting nonetheless.

Could be nothing. After all, this isn't saying that females or minorities are inherently good or bad at being reporters or newscasting.

But it might indicate that hiring people based primarily on their skin color or sex might be a bad thing for quality or accuracy.