It bothers me how Generation X has been stretched out over time. It should be more people in their 60s. Coupland is 63. If you’re 55 now you were barely in high school when his book about late 20s-early 30s people came out.
Intellectually I understand why we gave up on the “Gen Y” stuff once the idea of Millenials surfaced, but I’m in that gradient where during my lifetime I went through waves of being post-Gen X, then a millenial, then all the way back to Gen X, then sorta millenial again once it became OK for millenials to have kids and jobs and be old and stuff.
Generational designators are bullshit anyway, but if you’re in that gap between X and millenials, or between millenials and Gen Z, now going through that exact process, they become annoying bullshit.
Generational demarcations are cultural, so having a hard line in between them is a bit of BS, but there were greater cultural affinity trends thanks to monoculture which has only really existed since WWII. With the way the internet is fracturing media exposure, generational cohorts may fall apart and be meaningless because there’s not one set of TV shows everyone watches together anymore, for example.
The Boomers had a ton of media from 1955-1972 to lean on for self-identification. Gen X and Millennials did the same, but Millennials and Boomers both had large-scale structural changes take place that entrenched their cohort’s cultural baseline. Gen X got screwed by the Oil Crisis, after-effects of the Boomers figuring out how to deal with Vietnam, and the economic downturn in the 70s. Boomers sucked the air out of the room and saved some of it for Millennials.
Gen X had no Moon Landing or JFK in Dallas moments that were a “where were you?” nostalgia. We didn’t get that again until 9/11, which pitches it to Millennials. Gen X had some monocultural elements, mostly phenomenal music and movies, but they weren’t as pervasive as Boomers getting TV for the first time.
I expect you might be part of the “Oregon Trail” cohort, which is the cusp between X and MIllennials - resilience of Gen X, but comfortable with dayglow colors and likely had access to an early computer in elementary school where MECC games like Oregon Trail were common. I think it’s literally people born 1979-1983. It works, though.
See, I kinda see it the other way. Generational demarcations used to be cultural and thus geographically determined back when different places had different media. Now we all have the same garbage social media, so since the 2000s it makes sense that we’re all on the same boat made of crap and hate.
For example, my parents had a moon landing, but it looked, sounded different and meant very different things. Also for example, I had no idea what Oregon Trail was or what it was about until the Internet told me it was a staple of US computer classes. If you think about it for a few seconds it may be no surprise that my equivalent was some combination of drawing dicks in LOGO, Defender of the Crown and Saboteur II.
We have local names for people born in the late 70s to mid 90s, too. After that we just use the US-designed universal names, though.
I was born in 96 when my mom was 19. I remember sometime in middle to early high school looking up the generation year cut offs and thinking it was wild my mom and i were considered the same generation; her being the start of the generation and me being the end.
Obviously thats no longer the case with current generation year cutoffs, but im now starting to see 96 included as the first year of gen Z which feels…wierd. I definitely dont connect with people of gen Z easily because it feels like…well…a different generation, but at the same time I feel a disconnect with other, older, millenials because they tend to remember the 90s more than myself. Im not sure about anyone else, but being born in 96 feels like being stuck between two generations that you partially relate to, but not really.
Late Gen X / early Millennial is called a Xennial. We’re characterized as having been born in a largely analog world and coming of age as consumer technology became more prevalent. I think it informally encompasses 1977-1983.
I was born in '81 and graduated high school in '99. I grew up hearing that I was Gen X, the slacker generation, the whatever generation, the generation where trying was uncool. And that’s exactly the experience I had. I was an adult before I ever heard the term ‘millennial’ and I don’t identify with it at all, though technically I’m on the cusp. Xennial does seem to fit though.
That’s one of the places where it landed. And certainly the stupidest sounding one.
I didn’t make up “Gen Y”, it was a thing you’d hear at the time, it just didn’t stick. Iliza Shlesinger has a comedy special called Elder Millennial, which is also a thing I’ve heard elsewhere. She was born in 83.
Out of curiosity do you mean the age of the person who posted, the person in the image, or something else? I am a Gen X and my children look about the age of the person in the screenshot.
I’m annoyed by this on principle and across the board, but I do want to point out that “Greatest Generation” all the way to “Baby Boomers” makes zero sense in most of the planet. You can sooooort of get away with Millenials to Alpha because the Internet is a bad idea, and Gen X at least applies to probably most of Europe as well as the US and Canada, although it’s still weird across the board.
But everything before that? Super specifically US-only.
Those generations are common like that at least in Germany too. It’s not as specific as you think. And even if it was then it’s made up regardless so who cares. It’s a useful concept.
I don’t think the names are particularly relevant, but the idea that people born in those years have done shared experience notably different from other times is—to the extent it can ever be true for any specified dates (which is a very low extent)—fairly consistent across at least western countries and their colonies.
Is it? I mean, to start with the obvious, not every Western country was on the same side of WW2, and not all of them had the fighting happen in their territory, which means not all of them were levelled. And not all of them were Marshall planned after. And of course not all of them were on the same bloc during the Cold War. Gonna guess the Polish have a slightly different recollection of the 70s and 80s. Which then means for a whole bunch of post-soviet countries the 90s played out very differently, too. And of course the 90s probably had a slightly different flavour if you were in or around former Yugoslavia. And that’s Europe, don’t get me started on South America, which is fairly Western, last I checked. I don’t even need to start thinking about Africa or Asia.
Post-9/11, maaaybe. Before? You’re glossing over so much stuff it’s hard to even conceptualize it.
Can you bundle people consistently based on what age they had relative to specific events in history and the shared culture that results from it? Sure.
Is the experience of each of those bundles of people homogeneous worldwide or even in any arbitrary slice of “Western world” you want to pick? Absolutely not.
Some of my earliest “formative memories” were of getting walloped in the middle of a grocery store aisle, for whining about cereal. My mother said, “pick which one you want”. I thought that meant I could pick something I actually wanted. Apparently not. My choices were shredded wheat or cheerios.
Everything else in that aisle was a decoy, with a spanking attached to it.
Gen X, I presume?
Who is the 50-something in this situation?
It bothers me how Generation X has been stretched out over time. It should be more people in their 60s. Coupland is 63. If you’re 55 now you were barely in high school when his book about late 20s-early 30s people came out.
Intellectually I understand why we gave up on the “Gen Y” stuff once the idea of Millenials surfaced, but I’m in that gradient where during my lifetime I went through waves of being post-Gen X, then a millenial, then all the way back to Gen X, then sorta millenial again once it became OK for millenials to have kids and jobs and be old and stuff.
Generational designators are bullshit anyway, but if you’re in that gap between X and millenials, or between millenials and Gen Z, now going through that exact process, they become annoying bullshit.
Generational demarcations are cultural, so having a hard line in between them is a bit of BS, but there were greater cultural affinity trends thanks to monoculture which has only really existed since WWII. With the way the internet is fracturing media exposure, generational cohorts may fall apart and be meaningless because there’s not one set of TV shows everyone watches together anymore, for example.
The Boomers had a ton of media from 1955-1972 to lean on for self-identification. Gen X and Millennials did the same, but Millennials and Boomers both had large-scale structural changes take place that entrenched their cohort’s cultural baseline. Gen X got screwed by the Oil Crisis, after-effects of the Boomers figuring out how to deal with Vietnam, and the economic downturn in the 70s. Boomers sucked the air out of the room and saved some of it for Millennials.
Gen X had no Moon Landing or JFK in Dallas moments that were a “where were you?” nostalgia. We didn’t get that again until 9/11, which pitches it to Millennials. Gen X had some monocultural elements, mostly phenomenal music and movies, but they weren’t as pervasive as Boomers getting TV for the first time.
I expect you might be part of the “Oregon Trail” cohort, which is the cusp between X and MIllennials - resilience of Gen X, but comfortable with dayglow colors and likely had access to an early computer in elementary school where MECC games like Oregon Trail were common. I think it’s literally people born 1979-1983. It works, though.
See, I kinda see it the other way. Generational demarcations used to be cultural and thus geographically determined back when different places had different media. Now we all have the same garbage social media, so since the 2000s it makes sense that we’re all on the same boat made of crap and hate.
For example, my parents had a moon landing, but it looked, sounded different and meant very different things. Also for example, I had no idea what Oregon Trail was or what it was about until the Internet told me it was a staple of US computer classes. If you think about it for a few seconds it may be no surprise that my equivalent was some combination of drawing dicks in LOGO, Defender of the Crown and Saboteur II.
We have local names for people born in the late 70s to mid 90s, too. After that we just use the US-designed universal names, though.
I was born in 96 when my mom was 19. I remember sometime in middle to early high school looking up the generation year cut offs and thinking it was wild my mom and i were considered the same generation; her being the start of the generation and me being the end.
Obviously thats no longer the case with current generation year cutoffs, but im now starting to see 96 included as the first year of gen Z which feels…wierd. I definitely dont connect with people of gen Z easily because it feels like…well…a different generation, but at the same time I feel a disconnect with other, older, millenials because they tend to remember the 90s more than myself. Im not sure about anyone else, but being born in 96 feels like being stuck between two generations that you partially relate to, but not really.
Late Gen X / early Millennial is called a Xennial. We’re characterized as having been born in a largely analog world and coming of age as consumer technology became more prevalent. I think it informally encompasses 1977-1983.
I was born in '81 and graduated high school in '99. I grew up hearing that I was Gen X, the slacker generation, the whatever generation, the generation where trying was uncool. And that’s exactly the experience I had. I was an adult before I ever heard the term ‘millennial’ and I don’t identify with it at all, though technically I’m on the cusp. Xennial does seem to fit though.
That’s one of the places where it landed. And certainly the stupidest sounding one.
I didn’t make up “Gen Y”, it was a thing you’d hear at the time, it just didn’t stick. Iliza Shlesinger has a comedy special called Elder Millennial, which is also a thing I’ve heard elsewhere. She was born in 83.
It’s all a dumb mess, I guess is my point.
The children
Out of curiosity do you mean the age of the person who posted, the person in the image, or something else? I am a Gen X and my children look about the age of the person in the screenshot.
More the messaging, than the person in the picture…because yeah, they look too young to be Gen X.
I’m Gen X too, and I’m pretty sure we were the last generation where it was considered “normal” to get beaten in public for behavioral reasons.
I’m confused with ages here, have we standardized this?
I’m annoyed by this on principle and across the board, but I do want to point out that “Greatest Generation” all the way to “Baby Boomers” makes zero sense in most of the planet. You can sooooort of get away with Millenials to Alpha because the Internet is a bad idea, and Gen X at least applies to probably most of Europe as well as the US and Canada, although it’s still weird across the board.
But everything before that? Super specifically US-only.
Those generations are common like that at least in Germany too. It’s not as specific as you think. And even if it was then it’s made up regardless so who cares. It’s a useful concept.
You are telling me Germans consider people born in the first 20 years of the 20th century to be “the greatest generation”?
Holy crap, you may hang out with the wrong Germans. Did they seem particularly excited about the recent NRW elections?
I don’t think the names are particularly relevant, but the idea that people born in those years have done shared experience notably different from other times is—to the extent it can ever be true for any specified dates (which is a very low extent)—fairly consistent across at least western countries and their colonies.
Is it? I mean, to start with the obvious, not every Western country was on the same side of WW2, and not all of them had the fighting happen in their territory, which means not all of them were levelled. And not all of them were Marshall planned after. And of course not all of them were on the same bloc during the Cold War. Gonna guess the Polish have a slightly different recollection of the 70s and 80s. Which then means for a whole bunch of post-soviet countries the 90s played out very differently, too. And of course the 90s probably had a slightly different flavour if you were in or around former Yugoslavia. And that’s Europe, don’t get me started on South America, which is fairly Western, last I checked. I don’t even need to start thinking about Africa or Asia.
Post-9/11, maaaybe. Before? You’re glossing over so much stuff it’s hard to even conceptualize it.
Can you bundle people consistently based on what age they had relative to specific events in history and the shared culture that results from it? Sure.
Is the experience of each of those bundles of people homogeneous worldwide or even in any arbitrary slice of “Western world” you want to pick? Absolutely not.
Maybe not that. But the silent generation onwards.
Makes sense. Yep, I have multiple friends my age who were on the receiving end of some “tough love”.
Some of my earliest “formative memories” were of getting walloped in the middle of a grocery store aisle, for whining about cereal. My mother said, “pick which one you want”. I thought that meant I could pick something I actually wanted. Apparently not. My choices were shredded wheat or cheerios.
Everything else in that aisle was a decoy, with a spanking attached to it.