Me too; I was born a few years before you, so had the pleasure of participating in the draft lottery and Vietnam war protests, the but as late as high school I remember “baby boomer” to mean people born even before I was. The US birth rate was already dropping by the time I was born, in free fall by the time you were.
I had to stop watching the video partway through, the jackass who kept breaking vases for no reason really annoyed me.
Mmm. I can only extrapolate from my own reaction how profoundly irritated the preceeding generations likely were at their depictions. Any guesses as to the generation which made this video?
Also, holy carp, clearly Gen. Alpha has never had to deal with anything not made out of plastic. They’re just fascinated by how things shatter, like bipedal cats.
Considering that the major shared cultural experiences and life events that have defined their generation only included teething, potty training, and learning to walk, I could see why they would feel a little shortchanged compared to previous generations. 
As a Gen-X, the formative events listed for us are pretty weak. Fall of Berlin Wall + End of Cold War, AIDS crisis, MTV. The Cold War was of course a huge thing, I grew up certain that my generation would be fighting WWIII. But our generation didn’t end up having to fight it, or protest it…it just kind of fizzled out leaving uncertainty in its wake. I didn’t know anyone who had AIDS and didn’t have cable until after MTV quit playing music videos so those weren’t really big deals.
Things that I remember as being bigger during the formative years would be the yuppie era along with the economic boom of the 1980s, hiphop becoming mainstream in culture, and the rise of computers and the internet.
Other shared cultural experiences would be the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and gradual decline of NASA’s manned space programs, the beginning of the Gulf Wars and War on Terrorism, grunge and Kurt Cobain’s death, the L.A. riots and peak crime in the '90s, then the dotcom boom and Y2K panic.
I had my room pretty much wallpapered in newspaper clippings. I used to cut out and stick up anything I saw on any band I liked; The Cure and The Sisters of Mercy featured heavily.
The centrepiece, however, was a full-sized poster above the bed:
The genderation lines are kinda fluid. Either I"m a REALLY late Gen X, or one of the first milinials. Depends on your perspective really. I view myself as Gen X more because to me the internet computers and the like were more a classroom curiosity than anything til highschool. Millinials to me are the first generation that grew up with the idea that computers were not just ‘the new thing’ but ‘the nessicary thing.’ Not ‘you had to have put down a serious chunk of money equivilant to purchasing a car’ but 'it’s expensive, but not ‘take out a second morgage’ expensive.
Other-side-of-the-world twinsies! By the time I finished high school I managed to cover every available inch of my walls with stuff. Somewhere I’ve got at least a few pictures of it, I’m sure. Sure was fun when I moved out and had to take it all down 
Eh, 35-50 is a good range for a mid-life crisis
It was fun that experimental art pop bands featured so heavily at the start as they were one only ones with videos 
Same boat. “Computer Lab” was a handful of most likely donated computers, of which there were enough for maybe 1/2 the class so we had to switch, usually got about 15 minutes. We went once every week or two? Not often. There were only a couple copies of frogger and Oregon trail, so there was a sprint to snag 'em. Basically if you didn’t luck out it wasn’t even worth it. I know a few times the kid next to me would get one of 'em, I’d just watch them play instead. Watching other people die of dysentery is way more satisfying than adding 2+2 so a clown lets go of a balloon or some dumb shit.
I really have trouble with the idea that the AIDS epidemic and Reagan’s criminal mishandling of it is somehow less important than the death of a drug-addled rock star.
I mean, no, I also didn’t happen to know anyone with AIDS personally at the time (I did later on). But I didn’t know Kurt Cobain personally either.
Some of them don’t cross international borders.
I remember sitting up all night watching the Labour landslide in 1997. Yes, Tony Blair was an arsehole, but watching Tory safe seats turn red (or white in the case of Tatton) and Conservative cabinet ministers losing felt good.
One of the reason’s I don’t consider myself to be Gen X is because I was too young to vote in that election.
this is a very good point, and here we had something similar - my first vote was when Schröder won the 1998 elections with a red/green coalition, ending 16 years of black/yellow government. more or less my whole life the conservatives set policies, and I took part kicking Kohl out.
(Schröder’s Agenda 2010 was as disappointing as Blair’s New Labour, though. At the end of his terms many parts of the social security system were replaced by neoliberal, uh, “equivalents”)
I used to cover my walls with rave flyers. Eventually I ran out of space on my wall, so I moved onto my door, wardrobe, drawers and desk.
When I left my parents place I was running out of space on my ceiling.
I was gonna say, I remember a lot more flannel involved.
Sometimes, dresses from thrift shops! And dancing!
When I was at school, there was another school, some miles away, that had access to A computer.
When Kurt Cobain died I literally had no idea who he was. And the music stations were all like, “The GenXers John Lennon died today.” My reaction, “Who?” I did get on the Cobain train later on, after he died, but as far as him being the one who defined our generation, it seemed to me to be a story that was being pushed after he died.
I like Portaloo on his Railway Journeys. I never thought I would ever feel anything but utter revulsion at the sight and sound of him .
LMAO, my assessment exactly of the Boomers. “We’re all different in exactly the same way!!!” I used to live in Takoma Park, MD. You know, the tiny town in MD that is an official “Nuclear Free Zone.” There’s this look there to the women - all natural fibers, purple is featured prominently, a lot of tie die, thick wool socks, clogs. Way to express your individuality!
I knew this was comin’!
Honestly, you mighta been better off
