The millennial council

I was born in 81, so I get lumped in as a millennial AND a gen-Xer AND an 80s kid AND a 90s kid... Anyone I try to have a discussion with assumes I'm wrong because I'm either too young or too old to understand. People older than me think I'm a most leftist bleeding heart liberal that has ever existed, but people younger than me think I'm a hard line conservative half the time. Quite frankly it's exhausting.

Have you tried being born in a different year?
- My plan is to claim that I'm "about 38" for the next decade or so...
- Every night but apparently wishes don't actually work no matter how many innocents you sacrifice or how perfect your binding circle.
Born in 80. Share the feeling. We are called xennials. And it's unnerving... sometimes.
- Don't be unnerved by our superior life experience!
Fucking same. But hey, at least for a few more months, I'm 42, so I got that going for me.
You probably started remembering stuff in '84 and were 9 in '90, so you qualify as both an 80s and 90s kid.
Sounds like you're somewhere around the center in a polarised society
Honestly I'd argue it was the sweetest spot to live in, we came home with the street lights and didn't have to go through metal detectors at school.
The only problem is literally no one younger or older than us cares that we struggled with the boomers for longer than anyone. Millennials call me boomer, boomers call me millennial. Fuck all of you I remember what the world was like before popups.

To be a 90s kid you had to have been a kid in the 90s, not a baby. I'm a 80s baby, and a 90s kid.

Yea I was probably too young to remember anything of the 90's. Probably my earliest memory that feels like a part of my "kidhood" is being annoyed that 9/11 interrupted my morning cartoons. Even then I wouldn't consider that part of my core childhood memories. But who knows, maybe there are people with vivid memories of themselves living their best life as a 5yo in 1999.
Shiiiit. I lost my virginity in '91, and I know I'm a "90s kid".
edit: typo
- How old were you in 90?

My favorite I've heard is a friend made the distinction of Elder Millennial: Old enough to remember life pre-internet, young enough to still be relevant.

Considering Boomers still run the world, I wish that were true.
- Only because everyone else does shit at voting. There's only 75 million boomers left in the US, and millions of those are too bedridden or too mentally incapable to vote. There's a lot more people in the 18 to 60 crowd than there in in the 60+ crowd.
Oregon Trail Generation
83 here. We're a bridge generation.
We were in high school by the time the internet really started picking up, but we're exposed to tech early enough to learn it.
We also had much jankier software. I'm finding that the kids coming out of college now in non-tech fields are less tech-literate than 10-20 years ago because all the smart devices they've grown up on just do everything for them.
- exposed to tech early enough to learn it.
  translation: playing doom instead of doing schoolwork.
- As someone working at a college--yup. A lot of students don't know how to log out, or find save files. Where would they have learned it, though? You never log out of mobile devices.
Those of us who remember the tale of the land line telephone....
- "Maaaaa, get off the phone, I'm trying to get online!"
- Ooh, remember the cordless landline phones? I'd always see how far from home I could walk before they'd cut out
- Trying to play red alert or age of empires and having to fill in a box for baud rate, but I have no idea what baud rate fucking is. Now we need to make another phone call and start the whole process over again.
- My first telephone was a rotary. More than once I didn't call pizza Hut because it had 3 0's at the end.
- I can still recite the home phone number I had from 10-20yo.
It feels like a good place to be.
At what age do you think one becomes irrelevant? Around the time your kids are out of the house?
- I have no idea lmao. I think the last half is there for a self confidence boost, since it's subjective.
  Edit: Maybe once you give up on slang from new generations?
- If my life is accurate, irrelevancy begins at 36. Too old to be hip, too young to be financially well established.

Me: I try not to gatekeep.

Also me: ☝🏼 (see meme)

I don't think it's special to be a 90's kid, and nothing to really be proud of and everything. But when someone born in 98 or 99 says they are a 90's kid... That's even weirder. You were just barely aware of your surroundings for this "glorious years".
- 90s kids got some pretty unique stuff. We were around pre and post internet. We lived through the yo-yo resurgence. We had the absolute golden years of American kids cartoons. We grew up as kids without cell phones, but were still young enough to be tech literate. Last generation that grew up with "come home when the street lights come on", and we remember 9/11.

Being born in '85, I guarantee I have more vivid memories of the 90's than someone born in '95.

I think that's only because you had more time to accumulate 90s memoribilia. If they had siblings born earlier, they would have been born into 90s hand-me-downs, molded by it.
I mean what parent would buy a tamagotchi when it was culturally relevant for a 3 year old unless they were swimming in cash. But they'd buy one for an 8 yo and the 3 yo would grow up with it.

1992 here and I never really think of myself as a 90s kid. All the things I remember happened in the 00s.

i mean that's what "X kid" means. usually if you were born in a decade you're the next decade's "kid".

That's ridiculous, 1995 and up kids still remember CRT monitors, weird ball mice, green glow in the dark toys/hats/shoes, VHS tapes, polaroid cameras, all the girls on TV having a perm, etc.

My grandparents had an 8 track collection. That doesn't make me a 60s kid.
- If everything in your youth was culturally equivalent to a childhood in 1959-1966 but you were born in 1969 (nice) you would be a sixties kid.
Weird ball mouse:

1993 What I know about the 90s is what I learned about it once I achieved self-awareness well into the 2000s

Are... Are you an AI?
- Rest assured, I am composed of flesh and blood. The same as you, fellow human!
- They said they have self awareness.
  So no, of course not.
You didn't gain self-awareness until after the age of SEVEN?! What the actual hell? Are you ok?
- Most people have only vague memories before they're 5 or 6, so that's not so uncommon. I, an elder millennial, have lots of memories from before I was 6, but only because I have a big life event that happened when I was 6 that marked a "before time" and "after time" allowing me to easily place memories before or after the age of 6. All of my memories from the "before time" are vague and hard to place at specific ages except for a specific few that I can place due to houses I lived in at the time and what my parents told me.
  I wouldn't say I wasn't self-aware in the "before time" but I definitely don't remember it as well as what came in the "after time". I'm sure that is what the above poster is referring to.
- There are many full grown adults who aren't self aware.
December of 94 here, same. All of my memories of that time have nothing to do with the trappings/culture of the decade outside of my Disney VHS tapes and the bean bag chair I watched them in

To me, being a Millennial to me means you remember 9/11. If you don't, then you're Gen Z.

The Oregon Trail generation might remember Challenger and the fall of the Berlin Wall and Rodney King, but not Reagan being shot.

What if I don't remember 9/11 (because my teachers and parents deliberately didn't tell me what was happening) but remember the Oregon trail?
- wouldn't you remember a weird couple weeks where all adults were acting incredibly suspiciously
Just got off the landline with the Gen X Council, turns out you haven't payed tour dues in 10years, so they're going to have to revoke your card until payments have been sent.
- I've never considered myself Gen X. I'm think I'm among the earliest scouts of the Oregon Trail generation. Definitely don't remember Reagan getting shot.

What's the difference between 95-96 and 93-94? They all don't remember most of the 90s.

Old enough to play Ocarina of Time when it came out.
Or at least old enough to play it at your cousin's house and ask your mom for it for christmas because you really wanted it but she wouldn't buy it for you because she was in full 90's helicopter parent mode and thought it looked too scary. I'm sure that's a universal experience.
- This
  Still remember staying up till midnight on new years watching my brother play, he said I could have a turn in the morning. I did not get that turn in the morning.
- “No mom, it’s not scary at all!”
  redead scream
  Edit: ReDead! Took me a long time to remember what those scary mofos are called!
- A real 90s kid argued over Nintendo vs Sega.
- Mood
OP was born in 93-94 and wants to still be included.
What's the difference between 95-96 and 93-94
Time.
That's the memes opinion. I'd shave off a couple years more. Roll it back to like 91. You don't get to be a 90s kid if you were only 6 or 7 when it ended.
- I was born in '90. Some of my most cherished memories as a kid are playing 90's video games: Donkey Kong Country 1-3, Super Mario World 1-2, and later, the revelation that was the N64. I didn't get to watch a lot of TV, but when I did I loved 90's cartoons like Dexter's lab and Arthur (and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing whenever I could catch it, though that was exceptionally rare)
  I vividly remember people stockpiling for Y2K and my mom turning on a radio to listen to the reports of 9/11.
  I'm definitely a 90's kid, and so is my brother who is a year younger than me ('91).

‘95 here. Never heard anyone my age claim they were a 90s kid. Sis is ‘93, I don’t think she considered herself one either.

I think the best marker for what 'decade' someone's childhood exists in is to have people list the media that stuck with you as a kid.
I see the '90s kid' cutoff being the prevalence of Spongebob Squarepants, it aired in 99, so kids hit their formative years watching it if they were born early 90s and beyond making them '00s kids'. It's like stratigraphy for media. Actual 90s kids were already too old to adopt him en masse so their media was Ducktales and Rescue Rangers, preceded by the generation raised on Bugs Bunny before they removed the bigotry, and the generation before that Mighty Mouse and Pink Panther.
As usual there is always some bleedover, for example I'm part of the beginning of the Ducktales era yet still have a great fondness for Pink Panther which was already in reruns before I was born.

Yeah bad news for anyone born after 1990 on being a 90's kid...

I don't think you understand how child culture works, frankly I doubt you have even the slightest grasp on how normal culture works and Wooohooo let me tell you child culture is a hell of a lot more complex and nuanced.
The media of our formative decades is what classifies us as the decade kid we are, and that only happens for people who live through the period old enough to contextualize abstract thought but young enough to be a separate social group than the adults.
So no, kids born in say 95 doesn't fall into that impressionary period for being a '90s kid' and all the rancid pedants like yourself that are milking this meme for clout are actively damaging the discourse.
Not that you care, none of you are actually here to advance knowledge or discussion. The internet was a mistake and I regret every cable I laid to help build it.
- Your username really checks out
- I don't know who you thought you were responding to, but you got em! I agree with you.

Born in '72 here. What is this attention to generations and acknowledgement of existence you speak of? Your words are strange and foreign to me.

Don't you have a mortgage to pay off? Hush hush to work, and leave the internet to us. Doesn't matter if you were in some usenet mailing groups already, when most people couldn't type on a keyboard.

As a late GenX 90s kid: Fuck you for forgetting us AGAIN.

But this specifically is calling out getting the title of millennial, why would you expect gen X to be a part of the meme?
- We were 90s kid first, we fucking founded the council.
We truly are the forgotten generation.
- If you'd stop being the majority of conservative social media personalities we'd stop trying to forget you, you Charlie Kirk looking goofy motherfuckers.
- Although it is fun to eat popcorn while the millennials and the boomers yell at each other.
I believe were called Xennials.
Bro stealing the remote from your little brother who was watching doug to watch MTV was not being a 90s kid. You had punk rock, give us something.
Yeah, but as a member of Gen X, we're the last to be able to own property.
Swings and roundabouts, innit?
- Sure that's possible for older GenX.
  Xennials like myself had barely a few years (in my case months) before the dotcom bubble ruined our one generational leg up.
  If I had been smart and dumped IT and went back to school for writing, I'd probably have a house, but stupid autistic me wanted to fucking be a computer person...

Being an elder zoomer be like:

I read an article that basically said we give up on trying to categorize you guys (97), you're just "transitionals". Not millennial or gen z. And honestly I get that. I only remember 9/11 because of my mother's reaction. I grew up in a weird phase for tech. And I don't feel like I belong to either group.

So I think they cracked the code!

I was born in 1980. I refuse to be in any generation, I just was born in 1980.
"Weird phase for tech" is a nice euphemism for "knows what casettes are, but didn't have to put them into computers anymore."
I agree though that it is crazy. I remember it being a big thing for teenagers being 14,15 when i was 7 or 8 to get their own mobile phone. The kids born in 2001 onwards often had their first smartphone at 8 or 9
- ...
  Putting cassettes in computer is OLD. Like... Gen X old.

If you remember 9/11 you're a 90's kid. If not, welcome to Zoomer gang -- perspective of 02 kid

I think this is honestly it. I was in 5th grade and remember all of it (and the world response to it) very vividly. I really miss being able to greet people at the gate when they came to visit :(

Wait another decade and "90s kid" won't be a title anyone wants to claim.

You're too young if you care.

I can confirm this is inaccurate. I was in a class of 93s and 94s and we were told by our science camp councilor that we were not 90s kids, but 2000s kids. That was back in 2005. The 2000s hadn't even finished yet. So shrink that first range to at least 1981-1989 and extend that second range to at least 1990-1996.

That's pretty unnatural state of affairs not gonna lie

As a humanist I think we should go with human first before or instead of these potentially divisive, arbitrary age brackets, contemporary generational labels, etc.

I agree. All of this shit is divisive.
Ok, boomer.
- The boomers divided us up this way so they could shit on us. Always remember that.

The years are wrong. To be a 90s kid you need to be born by 1991.

Typically being a 90s kid means you experienced the 90s during your formative years. Not that you were born then.
- Which formative years? Everything until 25 is quite formative.