Millennials, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Z and Gen Alpha: Generation Names by Year
Millennials, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Z and Gen Alpha: Generation Names by Year
We've all thrown around generational terms and stereotypes, but what actually defines each generation? That's where it gets confusing.
I didn't know, so I looked it up. Now I know. Thought you might like to know too, if you don't already. 🙂
The whole generation thing is just astrology for marketing departments. Xennials use to get called Gen Y, there was no overlap with Gen X and Generation Jones didn’t exist.
Actually, I think it's worse than that. The generational definitions serve as yet another way to divide people against each other. They provide convenient groups that can be blamed for whatever someone is angry about in the world. It's racism for people who are too self-aware to actively support racism.
The old “divide and conquer” works remarkably well.
Keep the poor fighting each other, so they don’t start toppling the extremely wealthy and powerful who are feeding off them.
Okay boomer.
Edit in case it's not blatantly obvious "/s"
There's are cultural difference between those born between 1965-1970 and the rest of Gen-X. I liked a comment posted on Reddit that said that the border between one side of Gen-X and the other was marked by bicycle seats. Banana on one side and BMX on the other.
As an older Gen-X, I get that. Outside of generation labeling being too generic, like astrology as mentioned, the problem is that it focuses on the birth date and not the times of childhood. Older Gen-X grew up in the 70s with its particular influences and teen years in the 80s while the other side saw more late 80s-90s while being a kid. Same "generation", but totally different take on things. And likewise can be done for any of the others. And the label "millennial" is now so broad it doesn't even apply to the original group, as it's used as a negative towards teens now when the actual millennials are 30s and parents and potential grandparents already.
It's a classification that worked once because of hard dividing lines, but now is blurred and overmarketed.
Im in the rest of category but I experienced and loved the banana seat.
Maybe so. Am not saying I agree with or endorse this terminology.
Just that I want to know what people are meant when these terms are used. And they are used a lot.
No, Gen Y was Millennials. The Xennial overlap is just acknowledging a small cohort with a very specific experience.
Not really. People's formative experiences do have a big impact on their world view. The generations are broken up into groups that experienced very different things as they were coming of age.
The boundaries are all rather arbitrary, but there is a grain of truth to some of the analysis.
You can certainly look at broad generalizations regarding material circumstances unique to a generational cohort
Famous gen xers: Elon Musk (born 1971), Larry Page (born 1973), Jack Dorsey (born 1976).
They couldn't think of some better people to represent Gen X? None of those people exemplify what Gen X stands for, and we revoked their cards. How about Kurt Cobain, Tupac, and RDJ?
Edit: Page was cool until around 2011, and then he joined the shit club Musk is in.
Elon Musk probably is more representative these days though, sadly. I'm an older Xennial (born 1980) and I can tell you Gen X mostly sucks. At least Gen X Burgers suck. The good ones seemed to have all died. So many chuds now. I mean, they are different from boomer chuds in that they aren't quite as high on American Exceptionalism. They also made weed legal most places. That's about it though.
They have that famous morose cynicism, but it all got conveniently steered into reactionary rugged individualism. They have that "I am a lone wolf, I go my own way" attitude, but because they can't think outside the current atomized box, they focus their skepticism and distrust on "government". Covid completely melted their brain too. The anti-mask shit was very Gen X driven. They like the idea of "being a rebel" but because their thinking is so individualistic, it is impossible for them to even consider the kind of collective rebellion needed to threaten the actual levers of power in our society. Instead they protest stupid shit like mask mandates. The Capitalist Realism runs so deep and fits right in with their cynicism and apathy.
So yea, fuck Gen X. People born before 1980 are mostly a lost cause. So they supposedly had a hard childhood, but its the people born after 1980 that suffered more economically because they didn't have time to get their careers established before the dot com crash of 2000 and the 2008 housing/financial crash.
The ‘Silent Generation’ famous representatives: Martin Luther King Jr, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan. Not exactly people known for their silence though.
Generation Ligma
Gen alpha? 🤢
After them will be bravo, Charlie, etc. It’s just the phonetic naming for letters, they’re in no way saying gen alpha is the best like incels believe alpha always means.
The thing is a lot of these generations only make sense in the US. Things happened differently elsewhere. There were other defining events in other countries that the US definitions don't account for, technology lagged a few decades sometimes and that also caused some differences. This makes these generational definitions kind of useless in the global context.
Gen Alpha kids are the first who will never know a time when social media didn’t exist.
The completely brainwashed generation.
I'd say what defines the latest generation really isn't about social media but AI.