All I hear about is “boomers” this, “Millennials” that, “Gen Z” that, etc.
Why no one talk about Gen X? What happened to them? They just vanished like in Infinity War? Or are we mistaken Gen Z by Boomers?
We’re still here.
Generation discourse honestly panders to the lowest common denominator intellect. People who constantly talk about boomers or millennials are usually pretty dumb.
The reason you don’t hear much about Gen X is “we” didn’t cause anything culturally significant in an enduring when “we” were in our 20s.
A couple of factors: Back in olden times, before Douglas Coupland applied the Generation X moniker in 1991, they used to talk about the Baby Bust generation. The Baby Boom was when all of the GIs got back from the war and all started getting jiggy at the same time. Then, the birth rate dropped significantly. In my elementary school, we had combined grades 2/3, and grades 4/5, because there weren’t enough kids enrolled for full classrooms otherwise.
Also, the Baby Boom generation is defined as 1946 to 1964, which is 19 years, compared to the 16 years of what we call Generation X now, from 1965 to 1980.
Granted, is not a huge difference—71 million Boomers and 73 million Millennials vs. 64 million Gen X—but there’s fewer of us. But also, the name and the generational categories are pretty recent developments. When Coupland’s book came out, I was too young to be Gen X, the people he was writing about were adults out into world. I wasn’t part of the classic Gen X disaffected-slacker culture, and its touchstones don’t really resonate with me. It wasn’t until years later that the definition of Generation X definitively included me. That’s why you’ll often see a lot of younger Gen X identify with the Xennial label, because we have a lot more in common with “elder Millennials,” which makes the whole cohort less cohesive.
It’s almost like the generational cutoff years are arbitrary, and that society changes continuously, and not in discrete jumps. It’s almost like, too, that something unspeakably neo-liberal happened in 1980, and the real division is between the people who came of age before they pulled up the ladders to prosperity behind themselves (Boomers and older Gen X) and the people who came of age after (Xennials, Millennials, and so on). Nevermind, sorry, that’s just some anti-capitalist hogwash. /s
In the UK we’re more properly known as “Thatcher’s Children”, which gives a better idea of how disenfranchised we were growing up in the 80s.
It’s almost like, too, that something unspeakably neo-liberal happened in 1980
I really hope Reagan is burning in hell 🔥🔥
I thought millennials started at '82?
Here is GenX
41% make up the US House of Representatives 28% make up the US Senate 42% of governors
Some GenXers: Elon Musk Jeff Bezos (squeaked in) Jack Dorsey (Formerly Twitter) Michael Dell (Dell CEO) Satya Nadella (MSFT CEO)
And in 2018, about 40% of F500/Inc500 CEOs were GenX.
So, not missing. We just don’t wear our generational name as a badge. What’s the point?
We’re still being forgotten.
The boomers held on to power for such a long time that X never really got a generational chance to change things or sit in the driver’s seat. They were left waiting in the wings for their turn. The millennials were pretty pissed off for a lot of reasons and made a lot of noise, so they overshadowed X, and they’ve been maneuvering for their opportunities in the driver’s seat.
So basically X got mostly left out. Doesn’t mean we couldn’t fuck things up, though. We were the biggest trump voters by generation.
It’s the working class vs the 1%, not generation vs generation
yeah, the generation blame game is getting kinda old
Totally agree, comrade ✊
Being a “late” Boomer, I see gen x having a lot of similarities with me. Running loose in the neighborhood, doing stupid shit that probably should have killed us, absent parents who just wanted us independent and out of their hair.
We remember old shit (music, phones, computers) transitioning into new shit. I think it’s a spectrum Boomer->Gen x. A lot of similarities.
Man, it’s always weird hearing this, because as a millenial this sounds exactly like my experience growing up.
It’s a spectrum. Lots of parents in millennial days were doing the same s***, but I think it was more in a rural setting.
Back in Gen x and Boomer days this was suburbia.
Most millennials were born in the 1980s, smart phones didn’t come about until 2006+
Most of our lives were outside as kids. I got my first cell phone at 18, 2 years after I had already been working 40 hour weeks while going to school and my parents finally got sick of not having a way to get a hold of me. Comically their cell phone bill went down because the company I worked for gave them 25% of their bill when they added my phone so they didn’t want me to have a separate plan.
I still remember my mother calling me sometime that year and asking if I’d come to dinner and I had to tell her I was over 1,000 miles away because I flew to Boston.
I think I was 22 when I started staying indoors more. Took a desk job and got overweight and lazy.
I think it would be great for understanding if each generation did a little bio like this just to give a sense of where they’re coming from. Too many people assuming shit they don’t know.
Nothing happened. The generational war another facet of culture war. It doesn’t make sense because you have to ask what the fuck happened to Gen X? Why don’t they fit into the picture? Why doesn’t the data add up? That should tell you something. Your experiment is flawed. The culture war doesn’t make sense.
They’re too small a cohort to matter, and seemed to follow boomers almost exactly with their ideology
Remember the Silent Generation? Me neither
Someone has to write all these shitty articles how bad the other generations are.
You could call them The Silent Generation.
…
No, wait…
Gen x was busy voting trump to further fuck themselves 😂. Many of them did fine and own property. Millennials and Gen z are the ones that were fucked with a spiked dildo more so from the combined greed of Gen x and boomers. Many gen xers I know live by the philosophy that “my parents were that way and so am I” basically meaning they weren’t brought up to think for themselves.
Gen X here.
LOL
Boomer is honestly just used as a generic term for older people who are out of touch in one way or another. Millennial was a generic term for young people the speaker didn’t like, but it’s finally been replaced by zoomer which is more age appropriate, but it took a long time. It’s not that people are ignoring Gen X, it’s that most of the time when people use the term they just mean older/younger people in general.
TLDR, Gen X is probably lumped in with the term “boomer” (obviously the context matters, but this is the TLDR).
Don’t lumo me in with them!
I’m not lumping you into with anyone. I’m just explaining how people use the term boomer.
Don Lumo is in with them!
For some reason, the internet has mistaken gen X for boomers with the “ok boomer” meme. Anyone over 40 is a boomer to the young. Completely unbeknownst to the fact that real baby boomers are literal senior home elderly people
Not really. 60 is the youngest boomer. People in their 60s are still on the workforce.
Ronald Reagan happened to GenX.
Worse than an H Bomb
