worst generation

Like others here, I always thought I was generation X, but I guess I'm generation Y? I don't really know what that means - at least I can pinpoint what the press thought generation X was, even if it didn't really apply to that many people I knew...

no one is more infatuated with boomers than a boomer

lol @ iatee's graphic

if I'd answered that survey, the Reagan/Bush diagram would have a little asterisk on it that said "one respondent wrote in his father"

i wonder what sort of epochal event might have occurred in the early 2000s that might have defined the generation coming of age during that era, hmmmm

also super lolz at ppl itt discovering to their horror that they are the attention craving special snowflake brats they hate

wtc meant shit to most ppl outside of america

it isnt, in any case, an event of /demographic/ importance

How about Internet / collapse of world economy / rise of animal collective?

I think the boomers did have a sense of generational solidarity, though, and as procrustean as it may be to impose that on subsequent generations, perhaps they're either blind to following generations' having less of it or they don't approve of such anti-social tendencies. I definitely got a vibe from my dad in the 70's/80's that things had been more hopeful in the 60's and that the 70's had too many ppl just looking out for themselves w/o enough committment to social justice. Then Reagan got elected.

those were mostly the same people

i guess animal collective concerts/listservs might be demographically important, search census for ppl called 'noah lennox _____' born 2k4-2k9 or whenever

uh... aren't we talking about america itt?

u cannot trust anything a boomer says about boomers. If they thought we'd believe it they'd claim that everyone in the sixties exclusively ate harmony flowers, stopped violence with soulful vibrations and everyone loved one another w the heat of a thousand life giving suns

I think one of the stereotypes of millenials is they like their parents. I find that kind of cute tbh.

yeah well hopefully not just america, else u can all go talk about the grateful dead and spiro agnew's toilet routine

those were mostly the same people

Oh, absolutely!

I don't think the 20-year generations thing is going to work at all from the 1990s onward (and was obv problematic before). Kids born five years apart seem like they're going to have vastly different experiences.

I was born in '81 and I feel like while we were around the first to 'grow up with the Internet,' the technological pace was relatively slow and we had a lot of culture in common with people a few years older (esp. if we had older siblings or friends). Whereas now I'd be lumped into Gen Y and I am just utterly, massively confused by the experiences of anyone 5 years younger than me, much less 10-20.

The other 20 year problem is that ppl aren't having their kids at 20 in the same numbers they used to.

As a teenager I wrote and drew for the 'teen' section of the local paper (called ATTITUDE, a word that took up half the page like a WWII "WAR!" headline because they could never generate enough content). One of my teenaged peers, a redheaded Wiccan, wrote a column called THE VOICE OF X. This was 1998 or so, and she kept having to rebuff letters to the editor alleging she was too young to be a gen X'er. Seriously, half her columns were about trying to define generations in a way that justified the name of her column. It was pretty silly.

the 'president when you were eighteen' infogram is stupid, because (since we lack indisputable proof that eighteen is the year when political convictions were irrevocably formed, and has been this way the entire time anyone of voting age now has been alive) you could tell an entirely different story by shifting the goalposts - just take 'president when you were sixteen' or 'when you were twenty-one' as determining it instead

nah there is evidence that youthful political convictions generally stick but even if there weren't, the point is to observe a set group over time

To what extent do you think you fit in/identify w/your generation?

I straddle the line between fitting the stereotype and heavily relating to this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61AMJNM5BWL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Really, though, I don't know that any of this generational labeling is particularly meaningful in anything but the broadest sense (e.g. there are a lot of boomers, generation "text" or whatevs is probably gonna be more tech-savvy). If you think you've adequately summed up and/or are the voice of a particular generation, you're probably doing it wrong.

it occurs to me that the easiest way to read the top row is 'old people are racist'

xp

instead of being concerned with generations of the past I think we should think about generations of the future

for example:
the spacefaring generation
the exoplanet terraforming generation

i mean, i think the graph is interesting but i think that the goalposts are pretty arbitrary: they're assuming the weight of political consciousness falls the same way upon someone who turns eighteen the day of the new frontier speech as it does someone who turns eighteen the day they join a march yelling 'hey hey lbj etc'

i voted millenials haha suck it millenials

and i think the results for
'not yet eighteen when kennedy was shot'
'not yet eighteen during watergate'
'not yet eighteen during the iran hostage crisis'
'not yet eighteen when the berlin war fell'
'not yet eighteen for gulf war ii'
would probably confirm our biases just as effectively and yet they'd tell a pretty different story about 'generations'

oy, spot the error

http://workexposed.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/gen-y-10-charachteristics.jpg

who told them about our secret language

millenials seems the least skeptical of authority of anyone since them who fought in the great wars

People of Clemenza's generation do kind of interest me, those old enough to have soaked up the energy of the '60s and then experience the whiplash into the stupor of the '70s... perhaps it didn't actually feel like that in the moment but it certainly looks like that in (US-biased) retrospect.

The only time I remember that felt like a massive zeitgeist shift was around 1979-1981.

Side note: I seem to recall that when Douglas Coupland came out with the book Generation X the people in it were mostly born in the early 1960s, like Coupland himself. Somehow the Gen X boundary got shifted forward to 1965 and early '60s is now "late boomers." Which actually seems to make more sense to me.

http://leftoutside.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/us-population-pyramid.jpg

haha people who are zero whats up w/them

dayo, your hopes for the future are awfully sanguine. First there's going to be the drone gang war generation

generation Z (zero)

generation waterworld

voted for millenials because i hope for my son's sake that his generation is slightly less insufferable than the current young adult crowd

considering voting for gen z because they are the spawn of gen x

millenials seems the least skeptical of authority of anyone since them who fought in the great wars

I'm in that gray zone between X and Y and can't imagine anyone worse that my peers

i dunno man, do you think the kids 5 or 10 or 15 years younger than us are cooler? semi-serious question.

graph of shitty NYT op-ed writers by generation

thomas friedman (b. 1953) - baby boomer
ross douthat (b. 1979) - gen X
david brooks (b. 1961) - gen X
maureen dowd (b. 1952) - baby boomer

some other writers

jonah goldberg (b. 1969) - gen X
kathleen parker (b. 1951) - baby boomer
jennifer rubin (b. 1968) - gen X
kathryn jean lopez (b. 1976) - gen X

<drops mic>

I dunno man, that's the narrative but it seems like the Occupy movement was as millenial as it was any other generation.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 1:12 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there are literally thousands of millenials critical of the governments monetary policy, call in the paramilitaries

haha

http://www.people-press.org/files/2011/11/11-3-11-45.png

wow 64% of the silent generation is not very silent when it comes to answering poll questions

they just blink once for yes, twice for no

http://meyermktg.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/genx5.jpg

"we made it!! we're set for life!! I wish kurt cobain were around to see how far we've come..."

http://www.people-press.org/files/2011/11/11-3-11-61.png

wow 64% of the silent generation is not very silent when it comes to answering poll questions

― Neil Young’s social media channels (some dude), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 10:37 AM (12 minutes ago)

awww you're talking about my parents here!

lol silent generation is such a mean name

my dad always refers to his generation as war babies