In that case, the meeting cited was probably to re-do the generational subsets in the first place. Not at all unusual. Because, statistics. And because, statisticians.
And probably ultimately also because, now you can make a whole lot more ‘Baby Boomers…yada yada’ statements. Trend analysis - it’s an art.
Can we be Z-80s instead? I’d like that.
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Well, I’m exactly the same as you, except I was an Electron kid, not Amstrad. I don’t equate growing up with computers as a Millennial thing.
I think the new “established” status of Gen X drives a lot of this media coverage. (Rather than some sort of real cultural shift.)
Gen Xers are now running the media, and Gen Xers are now a prized audience. And of course they want to read about how lame the “next” generation is…
In fairness college is almost mandatory for a job now and the costs of college effectively mean you’re staying with your folks anyway.
A long as someone else pays your phone bill. Mommy’s Magic Purse is a wonderful place to live 
Interesing. Some of my early childhood memories are of all my friends fathers (70s ∴ primary breadwinners) becoming unemployed when he local Maxwell House cannery shut down. The attitude then was much different as even though there were no jobs to be had, all the fathers and older sons didnt fall into a spiral of negativity, or if they did they didnt talk about it. Different times I guess.
Everyone who hit puberty since the end of the Cold War is, more or less, a Millennial.
@beschizza very interesting. I find the Cold War to be such a defining part of my though process and am conscious of how those who came of age after the end of it or who have no living memories of it see the world in very different terms.
Well, then, take a statistics course? It’s a way of describing groups, the finding of similar charateristics, like birth rates over some period of time. It’s not supposed to be imaginative or evocative, it’s purely descriptive in intent. It’s not confusing.
I’m sure you know that the world is lot more likely to be understood -by- you, than it is to change -for- you. The work or understanding and comprehension is almost always on our end.
The closure was in direct response to a specific weather event that affected coffee beans; it wasn’t the entire country’s economy, and it wasn’t due to widespread fraud on a national level that went rewarded rather than punished. Trust in the government has never been the same since Watergate – which was right around the same time – and at this point is virtually gone for many U.S. citizens. We no longer have a sense that if we just work hard, we’ll be able to find another job to support our families. That is gone.
Also, yes, you’re almost certainly right that fathers in those days did not confide their fears and worries to their younger sons. And it’s not like you could have read his Twitter or Facebook page to find out what he was thinking/feeling.
Whether or not this is a fact, the 70s were a time of lots of closures of employers in many places, I mentioned the anecdote I was personally familiar with.
I don’t see this as a bad thing at all. I’d be a little ashamed of my father if he poured out his feelings in such places.
I didn’t know that, actually… Kind of interesting. And that computer in that picture looks like it comes from the future, though, clearly, it’s an older British computer…
I always thought Millennials began in 82 or so. Funny thing is, my hubby is older than me, and has a much longer history with computers than me. I really didn’t regularly use computers until the late 90s, while he got into hobbyist stuff in the very early 80s. yet, of the 2 of us, he is even less a millennial than me…I don’t think it’s just computing that is the dividing line, but maybe HOW you use a computer?
Now I have Hey, Hey 16k, stuck in my head… MJ Hibbett’s the best!
I’m not sure that’s true… in some media outlets, there is some talk of Gen-X, but in fact, the more common media narrative I’ve been seeing is one that focuses almost exclusively on A) Boomers and B) Millennials. We’re concerned about the retiring boomers, the last generation to get social security, etc, and the millennials, who are the currrent up and coming demographic. I think in much of the media, we have the boomers entrenched in more mainstream media and in the upstart, online media, it’s generally run/dominated by millennials. I’d suspect if the Gen-xers were really driving this media coverage, I’d expect at least a hat tip to that generation, but with a few outliers like this article, there really isn’t that much on Gen-x in the media right now…
The interesting thing here, is that the 80s saw a serious revival of the cold war as we saw it in the 50s, full of nuclear tensions and proxy wars. while we often call the whole period to the fall of the berlin wall the Cold War, you kind of actually get 2 cold wars, with a division of detente in between. We tended to be more worried about domestic issues and the Vietnam war, which, although a cold war event, for sure, was much more marked by domestic questioning than our activities in the 50s and in the 80s. some cold war historians actually call the 80s the second cold war. It’s kind of weird, but the Cold War was kind of on hold in some ways during the late 60s and 70s, even though it was still going on…
Okay, I’m not sure that made sense… Us and our grandparents, I think have a much stronger sense of the cold war than people born inbetween do. Or we experienced it in more similar ways, maybe?
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Whenever someone from my generation starts complaining about “kids these days,” especially when they start getting into “why, when I was that age,” I pull out “Four Yorkshiremen.”
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Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.One of my favorite Python sketches, hands down…
We are the ignored middle children.
I distinctly remember standing in my dorm room, freshman year of college, having just written to a soldier with whom I was pen pals (Gulf War Mark I), reading an article (probably in Rolling Stone?) that said my generation was the first in American history who probably would not have a standard of living as adults that was as good or better than our parents. I felt really hopeless.
A few years later, we helped elect Clinton, and then the economy got better, and I thought “whew, we dodged that bullet!”
Now I’m 40 and it’s like I’m right back in that dorm room. I’ll never have a defined-benefit pension, will never get a tenure-track job with my PhD, will never own my own home because they cost 30 times my annual salary rather than 3 times as in my parents’ day, and will pay off the last of my student loans AFTER I’m eligible to start taking Social Security benefits, if they even still exist (right around the time I’d be paying off that mortgage if I could afford it.) My “retirement plan” is to work until I can’t get out of bed, then die in a ditch.
But we’re the sandwich generation, the Baby Bust (as they sometimes called us before Gen X), and we’re mostly outside of that juicy 18-34 target market, so we’re not very interesting I guess.
(And kids are wearing all my fashion mistakes from the early 80s, on my lawn, with that music that just sounds like NOISE!)
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While American troops were not involved in the boots on the ground sense, there were plenty of hot conflicts in the Middle East, Africa & Asia during the 70s which were done by proxies/allies of the two superpowers. That plus arms buildups of both superpowers on either side of the Iron Curtain. Mutually Assured Destruction was most definitely a talking point of the 70s.
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Ignoring the fact that I’ve already said that generational labels are illusionary, if anything, the fact that you were into 8-bit computers makes you solidly Gen-X in that regard. Gen Y never knew computers without GUIs, let alone without hard drives, and if they know BASIC it is Visual Basic, not the 10 print “Hello” 20 goto 10 type.
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it’s because we’ve always been the generation that had to raise itself. not even our own parents paid any attention to us. you ever seen a film called That Was Then, This Is Now? not the best film, but pretty much nails our societal standing. '74 here, btw.
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Yes! I absolutely agree about the Cold War. Because, it was so entirely overwhelming to everything in the culture that it overshadowed even people’s thought processes. HUAC was maybe the most famous abusive behavior of citizens - but it did a whole lot more than merely influence Hollywood. We had just come out of WWII, a thing so vast that nearly every home had stars in the front windows to indicate how many of the men were in it. And it was a thing that had involved domestics attacks, and such extreme acts in return (Nagasaki and Hiroshima). Literally millions killed, all over the world. There were piles of propaganda produced and actually a genuine need for people to act cooperatively, because of the shortages of labor and goods involved. That was not soon forgotten.
But the Cold War was a different thing altogether. Because, it wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill political cluster. It erupted into a massive social revolution. And the revolutionaries were overwhelminglu Boomers. The Cold War mentality still tried to take advantage of demanding conformity and and a collective point of view. But it was, in some ways, more like today. It was less about firepower than about spying and suspicions, and suspension of civil rights. It was all about, ‘You’re either fer us, or agin’ us." There were talkshow pundits. When you think extreme right wing, you’re probably thinking Fox News. Our parents were watching Joe Pyne and reading William F. Buckley over their morning cup of Maxwell House. Those Depression Era kids who raised all the Boomers had seen plenty that made them afraid, and plenty that made them see value in conformity without question. It meant you were amongst your own, and you were safe.
Boomers weren’t like that. We didn’t directly experience all that stuff, and we weren’t afraid in that way. JFK got blamed on ‘commies’, and MLK was called a ‘commie’. We saw that phrase ‘generation gap’ coined to describe this very disconnect we are talking about here. It wasn’t a mild disagreement, and it wasn’t just me. It was screaming matches. And screaming matches with people who had no problem with the idea of committing violence on their own kids, if they thought it was necessary to ‘straighten them out’. Meanwhile, Wounded Knee, Kent State, Nixon’s plan to illegally deport dissidents to Mexican jails.
So, no - nothing we’ve seen since really compares. The big gap was Depression Babies to Boomers. The rest, to date, have been relatively minor differences.
But the headline says, ‘old people’. Who is that, anyway? The last remaining Depression Babies? Or the Boomers? Does it mean, ‘Get off my lawn,’ or ‘Get off my lawn, dude’?
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I’m only five years older than you. I was writing to my step brother who was USMC in Gulf War I (and later in GW2 and Afghanistan) but when I read that same article article my reaction was more “screw that”. Sure I’ll probably work till I drop dead and my house is too small to have a lawn (not that they are common in Tokyo anyway) but its still up to me to hustle.
This isn’t a value judgement and I’m not looking down my nose at anyone, just want say that not all of Gen X sees things the same.
