As a fellow Gen Zer I feel like there is a generational gap. I want to see if I’m trippin or there actually is one.
Millennial here. My impression is we’re the largest generation on this platform, but I could be wrong.
Further proving we’re all more alike than we think.
Older millennial here. I came here a year ago.
If you ask me, these generation labels are bullshit and just a way to put people into a stereotypical box and make them an “other”. Not much better than astrology.
I don’t get the impression there are even precise definitions of these generational labels.
And I don’t think they make any sense at all outside of USA and maybe west Europe.
It’s inherently an american concept, which is what also annoys me as some Europeans have started importing the concept even though it makes little sense (I don’t really think it makes sense in the US either but the fact that it is imported is just extra stupid).
I think people just love putting other people in boxes. Consider people complexly instead.
i just wanted to know your age without invading privacy. a threshold is better than a number
Well, in that case, maybe this is interesting to you. I ran a user survey last year for my instance and anyone else wanting to answer and one question was age. Here’s the age group graph:
The y-axis is number of respondents, x-axis is age group. Obviously this only applies to the people that responded to the survey and thus might not apply in general to the fediverse, but it’s probably an indication. And, well, it’s mostly smoothly distributed without any major gaps or humps (slight hump at 30-34 but not sure if that’s statistically significant).
thats cool. that hump might be random as well
People 25 to 39 are more likely to respond to an age survey on the Internet?
That is also possible, but I think it’s more likely to show the actual distribution rather than a bias like that. But sure.
This exactly. At the broadest range you can say there are certain qualities that are more prevalent in one age group compared to another age group, but at the individual person level those trends are meaningless. Any individual person can be conservative or liberal, be caring or selfish, be x or y.
But but there is difference in advancements, science, tech Also doesn’t mean genz= this Millenials= that boomers!= this
They are arbitrary but they at least serve as marking posts for real generational trends. I’m not sure there is much benefit in trying to find any categorization that isn’t arbitrary, so long as the generations are large enough.
Elder millennial here. Born in 1985.
The millennials watched several thousand people die on live television when we were kids and then everything went downhill from there. I was in high school in September 2001. Old enough to just barely understand what was happening, too young to do jack shit about it. Frightened, we looked to guidance from our Gen-X and Boomer teachers and elders. They told us to sit down, shut up, do as we were told, and everything would be fine. By and large, we did. By and large, nothing, not one fucking thing, ended up fine.
I say this to illustrate that this is why, and how, we are the DOOMER generation. We got piled on with the baggage and bondage of manipulation and lies from the Boomers who climbed the social ladder and then pulled it up behind them, and their Gen-X toadies who rode their coattails half way up hoping they wouldn’t get noticed and shaken off to land back down here in the dirt with the rest of us.
And the thing that sets the Zoomers apart is that you witnessed this happening, every single crucial step of the betrayal from every authority figure from the president on down to the homeroom teacher, and by gods… You Learned.
Zoomers, in my view, seem to possess a preternatural hyper-awareness that any promise made by anyone who has something they can take from you is good for nothing. Some people say “Zoomers don’t give a shit” like it’s supposed to be an insult. HA. No. I see what’s really happening. They’re jealous. Giving a shit was a mistake. It was a mistake we Doomers made. And I am pleased, if not in awe, when I see Zoomers not falling for the bait. You have largely withdrawn yourselves from the rat race, and now it’s running out of rats. Maybe now those fucking rats can finally starve holed up and isolated in their mazes. You, meanwhile, may very well build a better way to live. And whether or not I get to participate, I love to see it.
Go get 'em, Zoomers.
dunno man. maybe that hyper-awarness shit is true, but i am overwhelmed by it. i fucking hate this government, the bullshit that they feed us, the lies, the invigilation, all of it. it makes me sick. this world sucks so fucking much and i feel pretty hopeless about it, which is infuriating. i wish i was born earlier
Tell you something homie:
Having no hope is, in my opinion, better than having false hope. You aren’t waiting around for some external savior to recognize that you’re struggling and swoop in to rescue you. You know that anything you get will arrive to you only by clawing it from the cold dead hands of the elders.
Yeah it sounds bleak but realize this: THEY don’t know that.
THEY, those fucking parasite boomers in their ivory towers, think you’re just like the millennial doomers who will roll over obediently and then do no worse than look sad and make sad noises when we get cheated ALL OVER AGAIN.
When they turned their back on US, we stayed docile, simpering, begging. When they turn their back on YOU, you are going to stab them thirty six times, slash their throats, and dig out their organs with a shiv fashioned out of one of their precious participation trophies, and eat them raw and howling.
… Or at least some of you will. And I for one hope that when it starts happening, we doomers will either stay out of the way, or for ONCE in our FUCKING LIVES stand up to protect you from the death throes of the worst generation.
You have it in you. It’s growing. Keep feeding it.
I’m also Gen Z and this was me for a while as well. Something that really helped me is not focusing as much on all of the million things going wrong that are way out of my control, and taking smaller steps wherever I can to try to make things better. That shift in perspective has made a lot of things more manageable and less overwhelming even if I still ultimately have the same negative outlook on everything that’s going on right now.
Yes, watching people die on tv does sound much worse than being drafted for Vietnam or living with the daily thought that Russia had a bomb and we could all die any day.
NOBODY WAS DRAFTED INTO VIETNAM WHEN THEY WERE FUCKING TWELVE DIPSHIT
AND, MOTHER FUCKER, YOU DO NOT GET TO INSINUATE THAT THE “DUCK AND COVER” CARTOONS WERE SOMEHOW MORE TRAUMATIZING THAN CODE GRAY DRILLS, LET ALONE SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY DIRECTLY EXPERIENCING ACTUAL FUCKING SCHOOL SHOOTINGS
FUCK. OFF. IN. HELL.
at least Vietnam veterans could afford a fucking home when they got back
You know what, STAY fucked off. I don’t need filth like you in my feed. BLOCKED.
Generation labels are BS.
At some point, a clever media article increments the previous letter, or since everything was not planned well from the beginning and the letters have run out, stamps a poorly conceived label on a group of people.
These ‘generations’ are based on ambiguous date cutoffs, are engineered retroactively, and don’t really align with any actual zeitgeist of a period. Because discrete vs continuous and other reasons. But any good scapegoat requires a convenient label.
Begun, the generation wars have.
The older generation is blamed for the world’s problems since they were ‘in charge’. The younger generation is blamed for being impulsive or wild, just not working hard enough, and maybe having too little respect. Also toast wrecks the economy or something?
The older generation is perplexed by the fracas since the people who were actually in power were supposed to be taking care of the big problems, while they were working a job, raising kids, and hoping to retire some day. They had no direct power and could not make decisions of a magnitude that would change much of anything in society.
The younger generation is equally perplexed because they have little money, status, or power, and are also working a job or three, waiting to start a family perhaps, and have often given up on retiring someday.
Everyone has been fed a steady diet of fabricated hopelessness, dysfunction, and outrage from the media for decades.
Only a few will realize the whole ‘generation’ thing is fabricated to keep you distracted. Who benefits from the scapegoating, infighting, and status quo? Someone is driving it, and benefiting from it, but it is not you.
Vote dammit
Exactly. Also, It’s being used as a marketing cohort and therefore to be despised and reviled. In this lexicon, you are the product.
Also, vote, dammit. Unite.
Pew Research Center recently commented on this https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/22/how-pew-research-center-will-report-on-generations-moving-forward/
The field has been flooded with content that’s often sold as research but is more like clickbait or marketing mythology. There’s also been a growing chorus of criticism about generational research and generational labels in particular.
Generation gaps are another great way of getting the plebs fighting each other rather than the people who actually run things (capitalists)
Geriatric millennial checking in from 1983.
I like the “Oregon Trail generation” name someone mentioned earlier too, I might lean into that one more in the future. Remember playing Math Blaster on an Apple Mac Classic in elementary school computer lab? Then you were there too!
Same year!
Mavis Beacon teaches typing. BBSs. Cassette tapes with the pencil. I had a Spectrum that used cassettes before I got my Amiga 500.
There are dozens of us!
This one. I was born in 85, but in very poor, very rural Pennsylvania. I describe my upbringing as nearly gen x, with some millenial quirks.
I like to use Oregon Trail generation too. It’s the perfect label for those of us who essentially had computers inserted into our childhoods at some point.
Computers pre-date us by a lot, obviously, but it’s more about the mass market computers (and home video game systems) that normal people could access.
Same
Ditto though '84
Gen X. Aka: The feral generation. We were left to our own devices and most of us turned out fine.
Now get offa muh lawn! shakes fist
Same. Raised on neglect and hose water.
Sorry, can’t stay. The street lights just came on.
That’s a great image, love it
You call it feral, i call it free range.
Same here.
You know what’s kind of funny. Both my parents identify as Gen X. Both of them are actually Baby Boomer’s. With the pre-requisite feral children. But I’m a millennial and it’s kind of funny that having grown up basically a feral child my generation doesn’t get to claim that.
Huh… I never thought of that in this specific way.
When we were kids, and I was born 1994, our parents both had to work to acquire enough income to afford things, making us rely on ourselves. Parents did not pay that much for babysitters back then, no? And us kids weren’t being watched by GPS or something 24/7.
But it’s a tight window, and it depends on the family how long it stays open. I know some people born in 1997 who are like this, and others who aren’t.
Knowing about 2girls1cup, 1man1jar, that creepy car zombie coffee advert, other shock content… we were desensitised to gore and shock content. We played on MS Paint for hours.
Our parents did not know what we were doing, and it was… I’d say it was good.
Semi-related anecdote…
During the debates my wife made a joke that Biden is so old he’s not even a Boomer. We then gave each other a look and pulled out our phones to check. Turns out it’s true, he is from the “Silent Generation”.
I think most of his cabinet colleagues wishes he would be.
My parents were too but they were anything but. 1920s and 1940s.
Gen-Z here, born in the 00s.
Hey there 00’s brother!
How do you do fellow zoomers?
Want the suffering to end
Another fellow 00’s sister reporting here !
Gen X
Generation X here.
Why is your profile pic an outline of me
Haha, I’ve been using old.lemmy.world for so long I’d forgotten I even had the Space Needle profile on my account. Was truly puzzled for a minute.
“How do they know I’m in Seattle? Oh, yeah.”
No, it’s because you’re wearing socks with your sandals
As someone who lives in the PNW that PNW clued me in.
Generation strange.
Sun don’t even shine through our window pane.
One of us!
Xenial, I think it’s called. I was the youngest, and I was born in 1983. My siblings are Def GenX, and I never quite identified with that group.
I never quite identified as a millennial either, I’m somewhere in between.
i dont know how its called but my shot would be xillenial
Also dubbed “Generation Catalano:” https://slate.com/human-interest/2011/10/generation-catalano-the-generation-stuck-between-gen-x-and-the-millennials.html
I prefer Oregon Trail generation.
This is how I feel too. 1984 for me.
Same here except a Zillennial. I was born in 97 so I don’t really identify with zoomers nor millenials
Gen Z. For once we are a minority on a social media platform that isn’t facebook lol
Same, and it’s honestly a little refreshing
Memes are lacking though and I finally know why
GEN X. The best gen.
We were nihilists long before the internet proved us right.
Plus we gave you grunge. You’re welcome.
well nirvana is my favorite band
I saw Nirvana in '92. It was nothing special, sorry.
No need to apologise. You’re allowed to be wrong.
– In case it’s not clear, that’s a joke. I feel like “smart ass” needs a tag like sarcasm has (/s).
It’s not really a controversial opinion that they were often awful live. This particular concert (and their only concert ever in Denmark) can be found on Youtube.
what bands do you like then?
I do like Nirvana, which only embiggens the disappointment. I saw Pearl Jam on the same festival and they were awesome.
Last month I saw Beth Gibbons (Portishead singer), Metallica twice and went to the Copenhell metal festival (saw too many bands there to mention). This morning I bought tickets to The Flaming Lips. Tonight I’ll be seeing Rammstein. Tomorrow a one-day ticket to the Roskilde Festival with the wife, where I’ll be seeing PJ Harvey, Myrkur, probably Jane’s Addiction and then whatever.
I guess that is a pretty good representation of my taste in music and also an explanation of why I’m broke.
thats pretty darn cool
I appreciate your perfectly cromulent use of the word “embiggens”, here.
Thank you
Thanks for taking me on a search journey… to appreciate Beth, and Portishead beyond Dummy. Please do recommend any specific highlights. I’ll be going through their (and her) albums now.
She has only released two albums (there could some she collabbed on that I’m not aware of): Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man - Out of Season and her recent solo album Lives Outgrown.
It’s not as dark as Portishead and the music is more minimalistic, some of it may be closer to acoustic/folk, but she sings beautifully. If you get the chance to see her live, you should go. During the concert they covered a single Portishead song and the tears were literally streaming down my face.
Another tip: If you like Portishead, you should also give the Goldfrapp album Felt Mountain a listen.
Old Millennial.
I grew up without cell phones or Internet until my teen years. Remember watching the OJ trial whenever I was home sick from school.
We were really worried about Y2K, which would have been a disaster if not fixed ahead of time.
Had to work on 9/11, and remember what airports were like before all the added security.
Also had to work - pushing groceries to people’s cars while the VA sniper was rolling around the area shooting people in parking lots.
I remember people smoking cigarettes fucking everywhere. There were cigarette vending machines.
Our 2 and 3 liter bottles had an extra plastic piece to make the bottom flat. I don’t think they were making them with feet like they do today. The bottoms were round, requiring a plastic shoe to create a flat bottom. Sometimes the bottles had a metal cap.
Hardly anybody wore seatbelts. Gas was under $1/gallon when I started driving.
This is me.
Parents are baby boomers but had me really late. I used to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in my Super Mario themed tightey whitey underwear when I was like 4 years old…
I remember in my small town leaving the house on my bike when I was 5 years old at sun up, and being gone playing with friends until the street lights came on, because that was when dinner was ready. I could easily have killed myself or been kidnapped, my parents didn’t see me for 12+ hours at a time.
I’m from Oklahoma and I remember the walls of my schools Gym shaking from the Murrah Federal Building bombing.
I was in Middle School and remember lots of high schoolers having gun racks, with hunting rifles, in their trucks parked in the student parking lot. And it was normal.
I was in A+ classes at a community college while in high school and watched a live stream of the TODAY show as the second plane hit the WTC tower…
I’ve watched the world go to shit, I have a kid that just turned 18 and I’m angry that they won’t get to live in a world that even resembles the one I grew up in.
I’m just fucking angry.
Slightly younger old millennial.
Bacon used to be just about the most expensive meat you could buy.
Bill Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden.
Terrorists were angry leprechauns who had been abused by centuries of British oppression.
Russia was kind of cool for a little while.
Born during the very last month of the previous millennium, but I don’t know what generation that is.
If you weren’t old enough to understand what was happening when watching the twin towers fall and grasp the gravity of it while it was happening, you’re a Zoomer. (And that’s a good thing)
Young millennial here. My first memory relating to 9/11 is vaguely being told it was the anniversary of some event that happened the previous year in 2002.
It really wasn’t (at least not directly—the aftermath of it certainly was) the big generarion-defining thing Americans like to think it was. The impact on global diplomacy (not least of which is the Iraq and Afghanistan wars), the increased security theatre when travelling on planes. That’s certainly a defining generational experience. But the event itself is much less so.
Some of them are alphas (?!)
I don’t think any alphas had actually been born yet to witness it let alone comprehend it.
They can even talk back!
zillenial
Nope, full Gen Z.
