Millennials

[conuly]

xkcd would like to remind us, once again, of the inexorable march of time.

A few weeks ago one of the kids said something about the generation gap, something about how us olds wouldn't appreciate something those millennials did. I took a certain pleasure in pointing out that everybody in the room was technically a millenial except Jennifer. (And then I followed up by admitting that the only generational cohort that's demographically significant is the Boomers. All other attempts to mark out specific generations and ascribe general traits to them is overexaggerated.)

Comments

[thekumquat]

Millennial seems to be used both to mean those who came of age around 2000, and those born since 1995-ish, and all those in between. Making it pretty useless as a term, just like Gen X and Y.

Similarly, people in their late 70s and over weren't Boomers, despite journalists claiming they are (most recently, in stories about over-75s losing their free TV licences).

[conuly]

Yeah, the fact that nobody is clear on what they're talking about definitely doesn't help the fuzzy laziness of grouping generations this way.

[topaz_eyes]

Back in the day (mid-1990s), Millennials used to be called the "Boomer Echo" because they're the offspring of the Boomers. Gen X used to be called the "Baby Busters" because birth rates dropped after 1965 and didn't rise again until after 1980.

So confusing, really: my oldest is either at the end of the Millennials or the beginning of Gen Z, depending on who you ask. Their dad's a Boomer and I'm Gen X, so yeah. Either way, Millennials are officially past college age now.

[jhetley]

Economics effects of the "boom, bust, echo" phenomenon:
(Full disclosure -- author is my brother-in-law)

https://www.amazon.com/Boom-Bust-Echo-Profit-Demographic/dp/0921912978

[topaz_eyes]

I have that book! In fact I thought of "Boom, Bust & Echo" when I first saw Conuly's post. I bought the hardback a year or two after it was released. It's excellent reading. I still remember "Demographics explains two-thirds of everything."

It's also sobering, considering what we're about to face in the next 10-20 years. Boomers downsizing, the imminent healthcare crisis; the federal Canadian government only debating national pharmacare now when it should've been instituted decades ago. It's not gonna be pretty.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Gen X has "some" cohort meaning, though it's based on Boomers. We were Posties, the children dealing with an exhausted society. What exhausted society? The Boomers, running schools in shifts, etc.

Demographics have changed a lot and segmentation really is more complicated than Millennial captures. And, they're numerous, much as the Boomers were.

[moon_custafer]

From what I can recall of the articles written about Gen X in the ‘nineties, everyone they were describing at the time seemed to be three or four years older than I was, and yet sometimes IIRC they were defined as “the offspring of Boomers.” My mother is a really early Boomer and my dad is a wartime baby (I think my grandfather tried to enlist but was told as a church minister he was an essential home-front worker, or something). They were in their early thirties when they had me. So I’ve never been entirely sure where I’m supposed to fit in, demographically.

[conuly]

Every time I see your icon I think of a knitted tentacle monster, fyi.

[moon_custafer]

I have knitted tentacle monsters: https://knitting.livejournal.com/3760537.html

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Gen X was so small compared to the Boomers and yet it did have these oddities of who are their parents? Both of mine were War babies, with Old Fathers and sliding scale older mothers.

It's possible there was a goodly number of such Gen X. Before, when most children weren't only or spare children, we'd be a rounding error.

[archersangel]

From what I can recall of the articles written about Gen X in the ‘nineties, everyone they were describing at the time seemed to be three or four years older than I was, ....

i had the same perception. except i thought that "gen x" people were at least 5 years or more older.

[gingicat]

Gen-X (my generation) is in fact a separate generation, bridging over all the changes in technology and civil rights.

[senmut]

Generation division is an attempt to make an us vs them. As a supposed Gen X-er, I have far more in common with my literal born in 2000 millennial kid than I ever had with my parental generation.

[redbird]

And even the Baby Boom, while demographically meaningful, is overstated in terms of the casual assumption of shared experience. Not only does the discussion (like so much else) skew white and male to the point of ignoring people who are neither, assuming that someone born at the very end of the Baby Boom (*waves*) has more in common with someone at the beginning of that cohort than with her brother who's a year too young to count as a Boomer is at best an oversimplification.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Yes, Boomer took many aspects of its meaning from the invisible *, which discounted people on the basis of color or sex unless they headlined at Woodstock.

[quirkytizzy]

I've been having fun pointing out that most of the people who complain about millenials ARE millennials, too! (We're old millenials, but still millennials!)

[conuly]

Or the people they're complaining about aren't.

[thewayne]

In one of my library classes, I think it was supervision(?) they were trying to delineate motivation methods for different generations, and I thought it was total garbage. I flowed across so many different things that motivated me that I could be categorized as somewhere between 20 and 60.

Which I guess fits in to me describing me as 'someday I'll figure out what I want to be when I grow up'.

I'd better figure it out soon as the early days of Social Security and Medicare is less than a decade away....

[conuly]

Supervision?

[thewayne]

As in an introduction to how to supervise people and responsibilities and duties and such.

[conuly]

This is something they formally teach?

[thewayne]

Yup! It was a pretty broad curriculum

[silveradept]

Generations have always seemed to be loose confederations of people who theoretically have similar defining experiences than an iron anything that demands people think alike.

[archersangel]

i'm always surprised that "millenials" are older than i think when it's pointed out.

pete buttigieg is one at 37, but i think of them as like 20. and that's because all of these articles about millenials not buying certain things or whatever seem to think that they're in their 20s, but those are the gen z people.

i wish they never started with the generation label stuff, we wouldn't be so confused now.