I'm definitely too old, but as a Millennial I love Gen Z. They got their funny internet things, their doom memes, their music, and I say go for it. They're picking up and running with the rights for all, they're more open than we even are, and it's just awesome to see. People love to make fun of the younger generation but are so quick to forget what we were actually like back then.
Millenial representative #2: Completely agree. Gen Z is so sensitive, smart and respectful, I love them. I run a lot of tabletop RPGs like D&D and had an all-Gen Z group back in 2021. My favorite memory is them explaining the Ohio meme to me. The kids are alright.
I love that they picked up the baton. I feel like us millennials were the young folks when gay marriage was the main topic of discussion and we were a very loud voice in support. Now GenZ is coming up and I love that their reaction isn't "Oh should we?" It's "Why haven't we?" when it comes to Trans rights. I'm all for it, I'll be there at the voting booth along side them.
Can confirm. Fight the power, fuck the system and all that jazz. I was told it was my "maximalism of the youth", a phase that would pass, but I only become more and more radical in my views as I mature, so that was a fucking lie.
Aye. I’m almost 30 now and I feel like I’ve gotten more radical rather than less.
Makes sense though. In the 30 years I’ve been around I can tangibly see ecosystems failing and the climate going haywire. And for what? Wealth inequality has gotten worse and the idea of owning a house is almost a pipe dream.
Meanwhile everyone’s getting more hateful. LGBTQ people, women, and minorities are having rights scrutinised and stripped away.
There’s war in Europe again. The gerontocracies are still going hard. The oceans are dying. The mummies are melting along the permafrost.
We lived through a pandemic, companies made record breaking profits, yet none went to workers. Everything is turning into subscriptions, we’re literally fighting to get to repair stuff we’ve bought. We are to own nothing and be happy about it.
Humanity, society… it’s all bullshit. Everything is bullshit.
I'm over 60 and not at all represented by these old motherfuckers. It's partly their age and partly their wealth -- they can't represent people who actually work for a living.
There are various theories of how age and term limits could limit this.
Here's my fantasy, which is just that.
Set up an AI unit that's been programmed to a 90 IQ level. If these assholes can't beat it in chess three times out of five -- or checkers for that matter -- enjoy the rest of your life on the porch.
You poor? Usually people get more conservative the more wealth they accumulate. I've got barely anything to my name which might be why I slowly getting more and more radicalized on the left. That and you know reality.
I'm a liberal progressive GenXer and my workplace is full of MAGA millenials. I thought I would be OK when the boomers started to die off from heart disease, but here we are.
I was in a "generational diversity" course at work recently where we would break apart and talk about what behaviors are common among each generation and why, and how to be good leaders for each generation. We started with the "greatest" generation and the "silent" generation and worked our way down in age. Everything started so respectful and nice for the old folks, even excusing their shortcomings when one was actually brought up due to how they were raised and the tough circumstances they grew up under. By the time we got to millennial and gen z, things took a turn. Even the instructor was laying on the judgement pretty thick. "They have had everything handed to them growing up so they don't appreciate hard work", "[...] participation trophies [...]", etc
If you don't want kids to have participation trophies don't give them participation trophies. You didn't go out and buy yourself a trophy for everything, did you?
I pumped gas up hill, both ways, all summer when I was 16 and used the money to pay for college, buy a house, and invest in oil. You just need to try harder.
I guess I'm lucky to live & work somewhere where the system kinda works, but the boomers are a great well of institutional knowledge, and the kids are working hard and changing the game. The ball was kind of dropped in the late 90s & 00s, but now millennials have surpassed gen x in terms of responsibility & authority in my industry and the zoomers I've had the opportunity to train are legit. I'm not sure what happened to gen x, but they all seem kind of sad and/or lost.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I am a geriatric millenial and watching gen Z grow up has actually been incredible. It is a generation that has more compassion and self-awareness than the ones that came before them. I am proud of these kids (even though most of them aren't even kids anymore).
Idk, I would say the older half of Gen X could almost be described as “Boomer Lite”. They didnt quite have it AS nice, but still definitely way better than anyone born in the 80’s or later. Not to mention their Boomer-like attitude…
As an older Gen-Xer, who had married another older Xer far too young (because we were brought up that all we needed to do was get a job and life would be awesome) I can agree that some in my age range are definitely watered down boomers. Which is also a fair part of the reason why he's my ex husband now.
As the mother of 3 Gen Z sons, I couldn't be more proud of the amazing men they're becoming, and couldn't be more disgusted about the conditions that some of my generation and those before me have created for them.
I'm a gen-Xer who is still renting but I was never able to do a capitalism, and would be kept awake at night by all the atrocities I'd have to commit to do one.
i'm with you. late x'er here. my boomer parents' promises never panned out, my retirement plan is work until i die or check out early if i can't manage it.
getting lumped in with boomers when i have been served the same shit as the younger generations gets old, but the minds of people who never didn't have internet is still a bit of a mystery to me.
funny how appropriate the x nomer and all it implies about our generation turned out to be.
Same. I don't even know why people shit on us. We've never really been in power, probably never will be --Obama is the closest thing we'll ever have to an Xer president and even then he's technically a boomer-- it's just a fact that in comparison to the boomers and millennials, demographically we've never mattered.
Our little window for demographic leadership, based on our coming into the age in which we'd ostensibly be capable of governance, was stomped on by the boomer gerontocracy and the rage of the far more numerous millennials.
The upshot is that us Xers never really had a real go at demographic power, and to the contrary, were left to pick up what scraps we could from the absolute mayhem that the boomers left us with.
I don't understand why this whole generation concept is so popular these days. I don't think it helps anyone if it's just used for sensationalistic general statements that pit one group against the other. This is the same unthinking logic that racism operates on. I cannot see that this way of thinking would in any way help to find solutions to the real problems or even to identify the actors who are responsible for today's ills. On the contrary, it only helps irresponsible profiteers to continue their greed for profit at the expense of the general public by placing the blame on an anonymous group rather than on the individuals who are actually responsible.
Because the baby boom that created the boomers was an actual generational cohort that shared a TON of similarities and had a huge impact as being the largest slice of the male population as so many died in the two World Wars. That lead demographers into thinking all generations worked like this and it took time to have other generations to compare them to.
Pew just announced recently they are moving away from generational cohorts because while someone born in 1979 is technically gen x they have a lot more in common with millennials born in 1985 than a fellow gen x er born in 1967
What's wrong with gen x? I remember being repeatedly told growing up that we were the first generation for which things were gonna be worse than the previous. Lo and fucking behold.
Millenials were the original "avocado toast" generation targeted by boomers. We've been conditioned to protect our young from the real babies in these older generations. But there are good ones and bad ones in every generation.
Ha never thought of it this way but I like that, and yeah I feel that. No way old people, you picked on us long enough and blamed us for "The world going to shit", you aint doing that to the young 'uns. (and the fact that now they're doing it to gen z just proves they have no fuckin idea)
That is what I think about when thinking about Gen X. I have clear examples because I'm myself in the millennial range, my (much) older brother is Gen X and my parents are boomers. I'd never lump my bro with the boomers and I consider gen X as a whole pretty chill. They're all the bands I grew up listening to and carried the bulk of what made the 90s great. Boomers have fine individuals but as a whole they're nasty.
I'm from 1980, so technically Gen X, but I've always associated more with millennials. My first phone (after I moved out of my parents' house where we had landline) was a Nokia 3210 and I got my first email account in 1996.
It makes much more sense when a generation boundary is marked by some sort of significant societal shift. Like Boomers are people born after WWII ended. I guess Gen X kinda makes sense being defined as a generation that grew up after the civil rights act and the establishment of rock & roll. But it seems like there should also be something between that and the internet, because as you say there’s a difference in late Gen X. Maybe the advent of video games should be a cutoff. Someone who grew up with video games and VCRs in the 80s has a pretty different experience from someone who grew up in the 70s.
I've always been told the defining turn from boomers to Gen X was the end of the boom. Readily available birth control for men and women made family planning the norm. Gen X just doesn't get a fancy name because they never got there "define with this" phenomena
Pew and a bunch of other think tanks are moving past generational studies as it seems that you are correct that you have more in common with people within 5 years of your age than people in your "generation".
As a person born nearly a decade after you, I pride my generation (Gen Y/millennial) as also experiencing life before computers and the internet in your home, but still developing (sort of naturally) with all that (but still remembering what it felt like to be really and truly bored). Gen Zers born after a similar gap as between me and those born later, don't remember life before the internet or 9/11.
The longer you live, the more that reverses. My grandmothers died knowing damn near 60 of their grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great great grandchildren.
Nice theory, but as the parent of a teenager, younger generations don't tend to think highly of their elders no matter what. It's kind of human nature. I predict that Millennials and Gen Z will absolutely be disliked by the generations afterwards, just as Boomers and Gen X are disliked by Millennials and Gen Z. For that matter, love Gen Z all you want, Millennials, just don't expect it to return the favor. Every generation thinks it's better than the ones that came before. Ever heard of hippies? Yeah, they were gonna save the world from everyone over 30. Now we just call them Boomers.
My parents are (early) Gen X. In general I don't think you are transparent or ignored. I'm not saying this isn't your case though.
I appreciate my parents and even though they are "outdated" on some stuff, I value them immensely. For instance, if it wasn't for my dad I likely would never have gotten into omputers. And that would've led me not have my current job (probably). I owe everything to them.
In fact, in my country at least (not US), I'm pretty sure Boomers + Gen X make up the majority of the voting power due to declining birth/death rates.
(These stats are 100% pulled out of my ass, so they can very well be wrong.)
So, if anything you're the ones who hold more power (again, in my country at least).
What I'm trying to say is, things aren't as black and white as this stupid memes make them seem.
We're all collectively messed up somehow. :)
Gen X isn't naturally like this because of age, but because of political and media marketing that worked to stamp their generation with certain conservative values from a young age. If this is gonna happen to Gen Z, it will happen soon. But few tend to deradicalize once they are anti-capitalist.
Yeah, I'm honestly concerned since my parents' political views changed radically the last 5~10 years or so.
They were super loving and caring. Now they're very "paranoid" about things that shouldn't really leave them that stressed and xenophobic bordering full on racism.
Overall gender related topics topics, random news on Facebook, immigrants...
I think that, if my parents that were so understanding and caring about everything and everyone, can somehow have their opinion change drastically in 5-10 years, what's preventing that from happening to me, or my generation, down the road?
I'm not trying to say that every gen X or boomer thinks that same way though. But a lot of them have grown more "resentful" I guess...
Yeah, computers and Internet aren't their expertise so maybe they're more likely to fall for fake news and clickbaity titles designed to infuriate them and generate views.
But who knows what's coming?
Maybe there's something else coming up that my generation will be too "boomer" to understand.
Maybe we'll fuck up everything without even noticing we're doing it until it's too late.
Maybe I'm just being too paranoid myself.
The problem with that is that a same generation can tend to run in multiple decades and therefore different trends. It would make much more sense to group by decade, or better still, what the huge fad was when you were in elementary school.
I'm genX. I just got off the monthly GenX Skype call. Mostly we bitched again about boomers spreading aids everywhere just as we were flowering. Anyway, I mentioned this post, they told me to tell you that we DGAF what GenZ thinks, so long as you pay your rent.
When I say "fucking zoomer", I mean it in an endearing way. Promise.
If a Gen z kid irritates me, I just link the sounds of dialup modems to them. Much more cathartic.
I mean, I'm vocal to family and friends about stuff like this. I don't see the point in fighting strangers over it and I don't go out looking for strangers to talk to, but I've definitely said stuff to coworkers when I think the joke is going to far, basically a "hey, why don't we just drop this subject" type thing.
Still you're right I'd not really get into it unless they keep doing it.
Edit though the thing I've probably defended the most to my friends (because they aren't assholes who do racists or even really generational complaints like this) has been furry hate bandwagoning. While, like every group of people, there are problematic furries, most of them are just isolated people finding people they can identify with, who can comfort each other. No need to hate em for a fetish/role play if they aren't actually harming anyone or any animals. I'm not even sure I've heard of a self proclaimed furry who actually practiced beastiality instead of just fursonas etc, but rules of the universe say there has to be at least one.
As a millennial, I have no problem with z or x, my issue is with the generation that got theirs and made sure the following generations would never be able to. The pieces of shit who grew up preaching peace and love and then voted for Reagan. At least their kids hated them so much that we got great music out of it.
I am Gen X, and I am pretty sure that people who group other people by age are retards who desperately long to be part of a group that just has to be better than the others.
50 years from now, the same kind of people will complain how Gen Z politicians were responsible for the genocidal war.
I always wonder if this boomer/millennial thing is an American invention. Is it media manufactured? I don't see this adversarial generationalism here at all.
America just doesn't have a culture where the older generations leave things better than they found it. Boomers are generally (but not always) selfish and entitled. They hoarde wealth and vote against anything that jeopardizes it because they feel they worked so hard for it. Even if that thing could positively impact their children or grandchildren. All while telling people working 2+ jobs just to afford food and housing that they're lazy.
If anything, the media has always catered to boomers and shit on millennials. A lot of millennials have boomer parents as well.
More specifically, this talk sheds a lot of light on it. The opening statement alone is interesting: that despite the conventional wisdom it is actually better to be born into a large cohort than a small one. Because being in a large cohort brings collective voting/political power and buying power.
We used to. The boomers are the first generation in all of history that had it better than their kids. The greatest generation, and the silent generation would be whipping their asses if they were still around.
I don't cringe at the generations after me, I cringe at the old farts that came before. I am rooting for those that come after me. I am nearly 30 now, so my time is coming to an end. I want my headstone to say "bash the fash".
Gen z here. Not really wrong. But the reason I like the cringe is that it's a very slight distraction from how completely and utterly fucked the world is, and how much more fucked it gets every day, how I'll most likely never own a house, not even a tiny patch of land, how fucked we are with climate change, so on and so forth. I just want to enjoy the slight moments of weird humour we have before it's all gone forever and we all die
Don't take it so seriously. I think people just enjoy a bit of navel gazing. It can be fun to compare your own experiences with those from other generations in a tongue-in-cheek way.
You get it!! I was born 2000 years ago, and people love to bitch about the human sacrifices my generation performed, or the stoning of whores, or any other number of actions considered atrocities by modern standards. Like me, you're anti woke, and you get that society should never change and things are fine the way they are!
Being a person is complicated. This doesn't change as you get older and applying sweeping generalizations about people in certain age groups (or other time periods) trivializes the complexities of the world and the people who shape it and are shaped by it.
Nope. Every generation is seen as a failed generation when they're in their early twenties.
I'd say the previous generations have failed you, especially considering the boomers (and boomer-loyalist gen-Xers like Ted Cruz) have tried to mold you guys to fit into their society (as cheap labor and soldiers) rather than letting you change culture and take society in the direction you want it to go. After all, it's as much yours as ours.
Oh and we let big fossil-fuel wreck the climate for you, so bunches of Zoomers are going to die in a crisis famine and this catastrophic event will define their lives. Also there's the plastic crisis which is going to accelerate the Holocene extinction.
So no. Your whole generation got dealt a bum hand. There's too much mess to clean up unless we have some miracles of innovation.
Nah, speaking as a Gen Y/millennial, we're the failed generation. You guys and the folks after you are the hope. Many of us graduated into the Great Recession and then went through the pandemic. You guys are graduating into a much better economy, but some unprecedented hurdles (in recent times) like climate change. You guys are the hope and future. The difference between Gen Y and Gen Z is like the difference between the folks who came of age in the Great Depression vs. the generation that came of age in and around WWII (the Greatest Generation). I just hope we leave a hopeful world for my gen alpha nephew for when he comes of age.