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
It’s almost like, too, that something unspeakably neo-liberal happened in 1980
I really hope Reagan is burning in hell 🔥🔥
Reagan is in hell waiting for heaven to trickle down.
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.
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 ✊
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.
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.
Remember the Silent Generation? Me neither
Someone has to write all these shitty articles how bad the other generations are.
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
You could call them The Silent Generation.
…
No, wait…
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!
Ronald Reagan happened to GenX.
Worse than an H Bomb
A lot of gen x got theirs. College was paid for and was cheap, lots of opportunities while they were young, got a house, a family and are just living. They will get a fair inheritance if their parents die on time, but they are also the first to see that huge nest egg disappear to the current healthcare system.
Their vote never counted. Too many boomers.
They were the first to figure out their parents had it incredibly easy, although it took them a long time. Sometimes they didn’t see it until their own kids struggled with costs and employment.
A lot are conservative but probably because they have assets and don’t like social welfare taking from them, even though their parents set it up for them to lose.
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
Yeah, this is nonsense. Gen X were the generation that had to adapt to emerging technology in the workplace, when that technology itself wasn’t designed with user-friendliness at its core, and usually without an education that prioritised that. They worked with obscure hardware and obtuse software. They then continued to adapt as the Internet became prevalent and software within offices evolved. They saw the most change, and remain in the workforce.
As time has gone on, technology has simplified for the user. As such, Gen X are absolutely the generation that taught their parents how to solve their IT issues, and the ones that continue to teach their children, with Xennials being the peak of that curve.
Anecdotally, my teenage kids fly around an iPhone, but still think a computer is the fucking monitor.
I wonder if the context of ‘tech person’ vs average person is what they meant?
A genx tech person in their field is going to be on avg further along than millenial in the same field - because they’ve literally been doing it longer, more experience, learnt more, exposed to more fundamentals.
imo the distinction is the average (non-tech) genx probably will have less tech exposure than avg millenial, millenials were coming up during the shift of the average person thinking “computers are for geeks” to “tech is cool”.
disclaimer: generation names are kind of arbitrary divide and conquer bs anyway.
Kids of today certainly lack a lot of “background” tech troubleshooting skills, but understand some of the more nuanced details of modern systems. It’s both interesting and frustrating to watch.
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
I’m GenX. If you ask my group of friends “who here has built their own PC from components?” every hand is going to go up. Including the teacher, the administrator and the financier.
Ask a group of Millennials who knows what the command line is for and see what reaction you get.
GenX is the generation that does tech support for its parents and its children.
Kind of… It’s really that weird bridge period between the two generations. 1980 seems to be the sweet spot. The further your birth year is from it, in either direction, the less tech savvy they seem to be.
I can prove this scientifically in that I am employed in tech and a lot of my friends are too.
Older millennials are firmly there with you in relation to tech.
That’s simply selection bias.
Isn’t that just cos: a) you had to build your own PC back then, and b) you have way more time and resources to do so
Exactly. I don’t know that it’s just that, but it is that. It’s not like the people are fundamentally different raw materials - a generation is defined by it’s circumstances. And those were the gen x circumstance.
(Edit: except resources. There were fuck all resources compared to today)
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
We built the tech. I was there, three decades ago.
I bought a 386 motherboard that needed a patch. Not software, but by soldering a wire between two pads. You just basically figure it out and went from there with a soldering iron.
Build the computer from parts? Sure. Soldered it like it came as discrete components? Also sure.
Tech savvy is often in context of when you were learning in your teens to early twenties and then what of that skill set is still applicable today.
Some of the genx built it, but the rest of them were too old (too busy) to learn it. The kids learned it.
X86 was not built by genx if you want to get pedantic.
I was talking about the dot-com technology of 30 years ago, not the 8-bit microchip technology of ~50 years ago.
Web “1” and web2.0 was awful. Kids of that time had to troubleshoot it on their own.
I disagree that they aren’t as tech savvy as Millennials. I would say on average its younger GenX and older Millennials that have the highest tech skills, with GenX probably ahead. That’s referring to percentage, not total numbers.
Yes, “xennials” probably have their own generation because of this, but I have met a lot more millennials that can manage UI changes over genx.
Switch a genx from windows to Mac and they are lost. Switch a millennial and they seem to be fine. I’ve seen this with phones, TVs, websites, etc.
Genx were young during “dumb” tech. VCR, digital phones, etc. millennials were learning the internet as it was moving from a hobby to its own platform, cellphones as they were first widely available then as they went “smart”, and a lot of other examples.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of knowledge was lost along the way like manual categorical systems including tabulation machines, phone books, Thomas Guides, even cabinet filing systems/card catslogs. Genx handles these things a lot better than the more recent generations.
Genx were young during “dumb” tech. VCR, digital phones, etc. millennials were learning the internet as it was moving from a hobby to its own platform, cellphones as they were first widely available then as they went “smart”, and a lot of other examples.
What’s being missed here is that Gen-X were doing the same thing as Millennials at the same time, except in the workplace rather than school. But they also had the experience of what came before.
Gen Xers didn’t just stop at the “dumb” tech, they were the ones putting the smart tech into practice at work. While millennial students were learning about the Internet, Gen X were building it.
Switch a millennial to a CLI or ask them to understand underlying technologies or networking and watch the difference between them and xennials for example.
Digital native means they learned how to click next.
Younger millennial here, some of us grew up using Linux. There are literally dozens of us!
“Xennials” probably have the most critical problem solving skills applicable to tech. But 80’s/90’s kids were dealing with really new or bad tech while 60’s/70’s kids were dealing with VCRs and ATMs.
My older Gen X Mom (late 1960s) is one of the most tech illiterate people I know….
Its pretty much Gen X who grew up programming their own games on Amigas on things like that, Milleniums grew up with iPads and game consoles.
When Gen X dies off I’d say the world’s going to have a lot less being fixed all round unless AI gets a lot better.
I, a millennial, was almost 30 when the iPad launched.
There’s quite a span between older and younger millennials. Older millennials were already in college by the time the iPad was released.
And some of the younger ones were too poor to get one. 93 here and I remember growing up using 95/98/XP/Linux rather than iPads.
Gen X here, can confirm that’s a pretty accurate take
Wow, that a very insightful and concise description, really. Now I understand more. Thank you.
I think I’m technically gen-x but I definitely feel more kindred with millennials, but goddamn, you nailed it. Describes exactly how I see my slightly older peers.
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They’re too small a cohort to matter, and seemed to follow boomers almost exactly with their ideology
