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Summary
Gen X is the generation everybody wants to be but nobody wants to live through. Joseph Ferris, known online as Boopsy, explains why, and what that childhood costs the generation now.
Joseph Ferris built a following of well over a million as Boopsy, the Gen X comedian who tells people the big ugly things about life. He joins The Ryan Vet Show to trace the whole arc of his generation, starting with a feral latchkey childhood he compares to dropping a post-apocalyptic world into a kid's life, where the rule was go play, come back, and if you are not dead or dying we do not want to see you.
From there the conversation turns serious without losing the jokes. Ferris argues that Gen X parents from its trauma, giving kids the caregiver they themselves needed rather than the one their kids need, which is exactly the overcorrection Ryan Vet calls the generational pendulum. It lands on the squeeze Ryan calls the barbell generation, Gen X strapped between aging parents on one side and grown kids on the other, and on the motto Ferris lives by: embrace the suck and move on.
Key takeaways
1
Gen X is the generation everybody wants to be but nobody wants to go through the things it took to get there.
2
Gen X largely parents from its trauma, giving kids the caregiver they themselves needed rather than the one their kids actually need. That overcorrection is the generational pendulum in motion.
3
The fix for a bubble-wrapped childhood is not zero protection, it is giving kids real problems to overcome. If you never overcome anything, you stay weak.
4
This generation is not afraid of failing, it is afraid of being seen as a failure, because every mistake now lives in a permanent online archive.
5
Gen X is the barbell generation, carrying aging parents on one side and grown kids on the other while its own retirement math gets harder.
6
Information is not wisdom. You only convert one into the other by living it, making dumb and painful mistakes, and refusing to fear them.
Terms defined
Plain-language definitions for the ideas in this episode. Structured for search and AI answers.
Boopsynoun · persona
Joseph Ferris's screen name, drawn from B.U.P.C., short for Big Ugly Piece of Crap. It is the persona who tells you the big ugly things about life that people do not always want to hear.
In this episode: How a nickname meant to call him ugly became his brand.
the barbell generationnoun · Ryan Vet framing
Gen X described as strapped between two heavy loads: aging boomer parents who increasingly need care on one side, and grown millennial and Gen Z kids still leaning on them on the other.
In this episode: Why Ferris says Gen X is tired, and why the powerlifter in him likes the metaphor.
the generational pendulumnoun · Ryan Vet framework
The pattern where each generation experiences something, then overcorrects it, so parenting and culture swing between extremes instead of settling in the middle.
In this episode: Why a hands-off latchkey generation is now raising bubble-wrapped kids.
the archive of failurenoun · idea
The permanent online record of a person's mistakes. Because embarrassment no longer fades into a single moment, people grow afraid to be seen failing at all.
In this episode: How constant documentation turned failure into something to avoid rather than learn from.
Chapters
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The guest
Joseph Ferris
Gen X comedian and social media personality known online as Boopsy
Joseph Ferris is a Gen X comedian and social media personality who performs online as Boopsy. The name comes from B.U.P.C., short for Big Ugly Piece of Crap, a nickname a friend pinned on him in his early twenties that he shortened into a screen name because the letters phonetically read as Boopsy. He built the persona around telling people the big ugly things about life that they do not always want to hear, and he has grown a following of well over a million across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube with sarcastic, no-holds-barred commentary on Gen X, parenting, and modern life.
A self-described Navy brat who grew up on a Navy base, Ferris is a former powerlifter who moved across the country to Colorado in his early twenties. By his own account he holds a master's degree and two bachelor's degrees, a habit he traces to a refusal to settle for what he already had. Content creation is his side gig. His day job now centers on making his company AI-ready, teaching the people around him to use tools he was never raised with, which he jokes goes against everything his generation taught him about talking to a computer.
On The Ryan Vet Show, Ferris traces the whole arc of Gen X: the feral latchkey childhood that built the generation, the way that childhood shows up when Gen X becomes the parent, and the squeeze the generation is under now, caring for aging parents on one side and grown kids on the other. He keeps his own family largely out of the spotlight. His motto, and the line the conversation lands on, is simple: embrace the suck and move on.
Straight answers to the questions this essay raises. Open by default, structured for search and AI.
Who is Boopsy?+
Boopsy is Joseph Ferris, a Gen X comedian and social media personality. The name comes from B.U.P.C., short for Big Ugly Piece of Crap, a nickname he shortened into a screen name because the letters phonetically read as Boopsy.
What is the barbell generation?+
It is Ryan Vet's framing of Gen X as strapped between two heavier weights: aging boomer parents who need care on one side, and grown millennial and Gen Z kids still leaning on them on the other. Gen X carries both loads at once.
Why does Joseph Ferris say Gen X parents from their trauma?+
He argues Gen X, raised in a hands-off latchkey era, overcorrects as parents by giving their kids the caregiver they themselves needed rather than the one their kids actually need, repeating old damage in a gentler form.
What is the generational pendulum?+
It is Ryan Vet's framework describing how each generation experiences something, then naturally challenges and overcorrects it, so parenting and culture swing back and forth between extremes rather than settling in the middle.
What is Joseph Ferris's advice for the next generation?+
Learn to actually use the information you have access to, stop fearing failure and the online archive of mistakes, and embrace difficulty, because pain and problems are the best teachers. His motto: life sucks, so try to make it suck less, embrace the suck, and move on.
Ryan Vet ·Inspire forward. Welcome to another episode of The Ryan Vet Show. I am excited to have Joseph Ferris with me today. He has become viral for talking about Gen X in no uncertain terms, and that's what I appreciate. So could you start with telling us: how in the world did you come up with Boopsy, and how did that become a sensational screen name?
Joseph Ferris ·Boopsy is a really fun, really cute way to call me ugly. When I was around 22, I moved across the country and got hooked up with a new friends group in Colorado, and there was one young lady where everything to her was cute: you're so cute when you do this. And I was a 22-year-old guy, a powerlifter, a big, bulky, beefy, ugly-looking dude. Cute is for puppy dogs and little kids, of which I am neither. So I kept saying, I'm not cute. After getting tired of it, she said, fine, if you are not cute, then you're a big ugly piece of crap. B.U.P.C. But big ugly piece of crap is a mouthful, so another friend said, shorten it, give it an acronym. B.U.P.C. phonetically says Boopsy. So that's who I am now. I give the ugly part of life that people sometimes don't want to hear, but need to. It's the big ugly piece of crap telling you the big ugly things about life.
Ryan Vet ·I love that. I intentionally didn't shave this morning just to get a little closer to your epic beard, but I've still got a long way to go. I often say Gen X is one of the best generations of all time. You lived at a great intersection of technology and of the world. Gen X is often stereotyped, and you've gone right after those stereotypes. So, in your words, how would you define Gen X?
04:19A post-apocalyptic, latchkey childhood
Joseph Ferris ·It's the generation that everybody wants to be but never wants to go through the things to get there. You look at what we went through and think, those guys are crazy, I wish I could be part of that. Then you look at the story: do you really want to forage for berries until your parents get home at eight to eat? Do you really want to learn to be a field medic because a stick went into your calf when you fell off your Tarzan swing and you were too afraid to tell mom? I grew up on a Navy base. If you take a post-apocalyptic world and slap it into a childhood, that's what it felt like. We were the feral little children, nobody hovering: go play, come back, and if you're not dead or dying, we don't want to see you. That was normal. You dealt with whatever it was and figured it out.
Ryan Vet ·That absolutely encapsulates the upbringing of being latchkey kids. Your parents were, for the first time really in U.S. history, both working. And we're now seeing studies swing back: kids need to play more, get outside more. But you've also said you were embarrassed publicly as children, which you're not allowed to do anymore, no more names on the board. Can you talk about that and the character formation it created?
Joseph Ferris ·I wasn't very studious. One class, the question was, what was in the tree when so-and-so turned around, and I just put a big Cheeto. The teacher stood around me the next day: look what Mr. Ferris did. Mr. Ferris is gonna grow up to be an idiot. Thirty students around me. If that happened today, I'd be at my kid's school. Back then it was normal. It was tough love, but it worked. If I was the big dumb clod who couldn't do anything, my choice was to not be that anymore. You either kept getting made fun of, or you figured out a way out of it. Those were the only two options. It was all over, heck, even in church sometimes.
Ryan Vet ·Call out from the pulpit.
Joseph Ferris ·Oh yeah. We saw what Mr. Ferris did last week, and we all know the Lord says no. It was everywhere.
09:23Parenting from trauma and the generational pendulum
Ryan Vet ·I admire that you've intentionally kept your family out of the spotlight, but you said if something happened at your kid's school, you'd go down there. I often talk about the generational pendulum: one generation experiences something, then naturally overcorrects. This next generation is bubble-wrapping their kids because they didn't have any padding, and every corner gouged their eye. Could you talk about that evolution?
Joseph Ferris ·The sad truth, and I hate getting serious, is people from my generation parent from our trauma. We give our kids the person we needed, but not the person they need. So we're still doing the same damage, just nicer about it. I tell my kids, I know I'm gonna jack you up somehow. I made a video with my daughter once and said, this is why my daughter's gonna need therapy when she's older. She looked at me and said, dad, I need therapy now. And I cracked up. I've given my kids the freedom of sarcasm, which pushes the bounds of today's society. I like to know where my kids are, I've got the find me on my phone. My parents literally sent me at 14 from South Carolina to Colorado on a Greyhound bus with 12 interchanges. Now I ask my kids, do you want to go here, you can drive, and that protection has somehow made them a little afraid, but they want us around, which is odd to me. My hope is we find the right mixture: just enough messed-up trauma that they're still okay, plus the protection they need. You've gotta struggle, you've gotta have something jacked up so you can overcome it. If you don't overcome anything, you're weak. So you've gotta give them the problems so they can grow.
14:25Information, wisdom, and the Dunning-Kruger climb
Ryan Vet ·We live in a day of information and access. Parents don't have to ask how their kids slept because they had the sleep score before the kid comes down the stairs. But study after study shows we need failure knocked back in; a baby falls a million times before it walks, and we've taken that away. Now we've got millennial parents and Gen Z starting to have kids, raising Gen Alpha and Gen Beta. What's in store for this next generation of parents?
Joseph Ferris ·I hope they take a look at the access to information and teach kids how to use it. We have so much access, but it's all theory and no practice. You read two or three lines and think you're done, and you've got surface information but not the deep stuff. My hope is that as younger kids figure out how dumb they are, and I say that with love, they learn the Dunning-Kruger effect: when you're new and taught a little, you think you're at the height of knowledge. Then something smacks you in the face and you realize, oh, I'm really stupid. If you're intelligent, you commit to learning and climb back up, and the further you go, the more you learn how much there is to learn. Even the stupid things my parents believed, watermelon seeds will grow in your stomach, we now have access to correct. My 10-year-old did this the other day: he corrected my answer, I looked it up, and said, dang, buddy, you got me. Now he's a goblin for information. I hope that's where we go as a world.
Ryan Vet ·So how do we translate that?
Joseph Ferris ·That was a really long answer. It was a good answer.
Ryan Vet ·It was great. You've amassed well over a million followers across platforms talking about Gen X and the hard truth. How do you take that information and make it wisdom, make it live, instead of just hear it?
Joseph Ferris ·The best bet is to live it, to not be afraid to have painful, dumb experiences. I recorded a video this morning about how mistakes are the best teachers. Pain and problems are the best teachers, and regret holds receipts. Kids are afraid to be dumb, there's a study that kids are afraid to use the bathroom because a buddy might be in the next stall. If you're afraid of one of the most natural bodily functions, you're holding onto some serious societal regret and you'll never experience anything. If you don't do the dumb, you can't learn. Just don't be afraid. Push the boundaries, go experience things, have fun. The experience is the best lesson that will last you the rest of your life.
22:50The archive of failure
Ryan Vet ·This generation isn't afraid of failing, they're afraid of being seen as failures. They've lived in a world where they're always seen, always photographed. Your coach might have humiliated you, but that was a moment; now it lives in an online archive. We've created a generation of fearful people who are afraid of failing, so they just don't try at all.
Joseph Ferris ·That's the problem, the archive of failure. As a society we haven't learned to ask, they did a dumb thing as a kid, are they still that person? There's the line, don't judge me by my mistakes, I'm not that person anymore. No, judge me by my mistakes and the fact that I'm not that person anymore. If I did stupid and I'm still stupid, judge me. But he was stupid, but look at what he's become, that's a story. The problem is we love a good failure, we love getting somebody, instead of going, they're not that person anymore, good on them. Hail the less-stupid person. Hail them for learning.
Ryan Vet ·We've moved fast into cancel culture. I was reading a book, The Canceling of the American Mind, about a journalist canceled well into their career for something from high school. You say a lot of bold statements and don't win 100% of the people who watch, but you say them anyway. What gives you that confidence?
Joseph Ferris ·The fact that I don't care if I screw up. I'm comfortable in who I am, even if it's a fantastic mess. I'm going to say things that rub people the wrong way, and good, you should have the uncomfortable conversation. Growth comes when you're willing to put crap out there and have it thrown back at you. Another creator once told me why I was wrong, with the science, and I said, okay, you're right, thank you, and moved on. One of my bosses gave me the biggest compliment: you're not afraid to be coached. Either I commit to the dumb and stay where I am, or I commit to improve and get what I want. Content creator isn't my job, it's my side gig; I've got a master's and two bachelor's degrees because I kept saying, what I have is not good enough, I want more. If social media is how somebody says, he's dumb and he can get smarter, cool. Show me, teach me.
28:00The Gen X okay and your sphere of influence
Ryan Vet ·You've talked about Gen X walking around with the attitude of okay. Gen X is sometimes seen as disenfranchised, having watched corporations and government fail publicly. Could you talk about that Gen X attitude, and what might be mislabeled?
Joseph Ferris ·I don't think it's fabricated. In the '80s there were corporations letting toxic crap into the air, this big fear of acid rain, and for 15 years they basically said, so what? That put me in the perspective of, nobody's looking out for you, buddy. Do it yourself. Can I fix things going on over there? No. So what do you want me to do, sit and complain about something I can't change? We're so caught up in the social aspect: people have to know I care. But what does that do? By all means, protest, go scream your face off, that's the edge of what I'll do. Or I can try to change laws, but unless I'm going to that level, I'm working within my own sphere of influence. No one cares who I am; if I was gone tomorrow they'd find someone else like me. So when stuff comes to me, I ask, how do I adjust me? Do I want to? And if not, I move on, because there's nothing I can do to change it.
32:02The barbell generation
Ryan Vet ·In one of your videos you said Gen X doesn't care as much as we think, but you also said, we are tired. I call Gen X the barbell generation: millennials on one side, boomers on the other, and you're strapped between the two. Boomers are living longer and staying in jobs longer, becoming aging parents who require more, and millennials are staying home longer. Tell me more about that.
Joseph Ferris ·You said it the right way, the barbell generation. I have several friends who now have their parents living with them. They are taking care of the people who were supposed to take care of them, while many of us are taking care of the kids we raised. Everybody talks about the financial impact on Gen Z. Really? I'm a family of six. I still gotta buy milk, Bucko, and I probably buy five times more milk than you do. My financial strain is just as bad as the Gen Z kid trying to buy an apartment; the only difference is I bought a house and you're trying to. My retirement projections suck. The money I've saved will mean less in 10 years, and I still have to lift that. Dang, I'm stealing your barbell generation thing, being a powerlifter, it means even more to me. We're not immune to the same problems affecting everybody. And I'm tired of dealing with it.
35:38Learning to talk to the computer
Ryan Vet ·So many people say, you've been adulting long enough, it's no longer a problem, but it carries throughout life. And watching creators, we forget you're a human being with a family and a story, not just someone who posts sarcastic videos.
Joseph Ferris ·You mentioned the workforce changing. Years ago I was coding, which I taught myself, and that's no longer needed in my job. My job is incorporating AI. I didn't grow up with AI, and now my job is to teach the company I work for how to use it and make things AI-ready. I have to know everything I know, plus figure out everything this little kid was born with. It doesn't get easier, it gets harder, because the learning curve is bigger. I have to learn how to talk to a computer, which the Terminator movie says you don't do. So I'm going against everything my generation taught me.
37:18Embrace the suck and move on
Ryan Vet ·Joseph, this has been a fantastic conversation. Do you have any closing thoughts for the audience?
Joseph Ferris ·Life sucks. Try to make it suck less. That's all you can do. It's gonna keep punching you in the face, so try to make it suck less and have fun with the crap you've been dealt. Embrace the suck and move on.
Ryan Vet ·I love it. Embrace the suck and move on. This is Boopsy, everyone. You can find Joseph as Boopsy on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Joseph, thank you so much for being on The Ryan Vet Show. And to all of my listeners, until next time, inspire forward.
Full show notes
Gen X comedian and social media personality Joseph Ferris, known online as Boopsy, joins host Ryan Vet to trace the whole arc of Gen X: the feral latchkey childhood that built the generation, how that childhood shows up in the way they parent, and the squeeze the generation is under now. It is funny, then real, and it lands on a motto worth keeping: embrace the suck and move on.
In this episode:
Why Gen X is the generation everybody wants to be but nobody wants to live through
How a post-apocalyptic childhood of latchkey freedom shaped a generation’s grit
Why Gen X parents from their trauma, and what the generational pendulum predicts next
The difference between information and wisdom, and the Dunning-Kruger climb out of certainty
How the archive of failure made a generation afraid to try
What the barbell generation really carries: aging parents on one side, grown kids on the other
Why learning to talk to a computer in the AI era goes against everything Gen X was taught
