"I'm not a millennial, you're a millennial!"

September 11, 2015 8:43 AM

Many millennials – the age group generally defined as those between 18 and 34 – don’t think much of their own generation, according to a new poll. (Guardian)

Despite the size and influence of the Millennial generation, most of those in this age cohort do not identify with the term “Millennial.” Just 40% of adults ages 18 to 34 consider themselves part of the “Millennial generation,” while another 33% – mostly older Millennials – consider themselves part of the next older cohort, Generation X. [...] And Millennials, in particular, stand out in their willingness to ascribe negative stereotypes to their own generation. (Pew Research Center)

posted by postcommunism (137 comments total)

Can't say I blame 'em.
posted by entropicamericana at 8:46 AM on September 11, 2015

They must have read a lot of articles on the internet about how awful Millennials are.
posted by louche mustachio at 8:48 AM on September 11, 2015 [57 favorites]

Why has there been such an huge increase in articles about Snake People recently?
posted by zombieflanders at 8:49 AM on September 11, 2015 [29 favorites]

What the hell is a "Snake Person" in this context?
posted by Sternmeyer at 8:50 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

What the hell is a "Snake Person" in this context?

Ssssssssshhhh.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:51 AM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

See also: The Oregon Trail Generation, an article mostly without a point but as a 36 year old I remember GenX were the people about 5 years older than me and then we moved onto the Millennials, while mine didn't get a name since we didn't have defining characteristics, other than maybe being the last generation that could mostly pay back our college loans.
posted by mikesch at 8:51 AM on September 11, 2015 [24 favorites]

"The Silent Generation also didn’t want to be pigeonholed. Like the millennials only 18% considered themselves part of the group."

Breaking things down into "generations" should've ended after Generation X. A person born in the year 1980 has peers who are vastly different than somebody born in 1997. Pigeonholing them into one "generation" doesn't make sense to me at all.
posted by I-baLL at 8:53 AM on September 11, 2015 [13 favorites]

All of this makes a lot more sense if you replace 'generation' with 'marketing label'.
posted by Dr Dracator at 8:53 AM on September 11, 2015 [41 favorites]

Behold the rarest of all demographics, the Millenial Hipster.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:53 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

The wealthy Boomer-owned, wealthy Boomer-operated, and wealthy Boomer-catering media runs constant stories about Millennials being shit in order to provide an excuse for how the wealthy end of the Boomers burned the US to the ground. You're not poor and starving because the wealthy looted the world! You're poor and starving because you're human garbage! You deserve to live in a world without opportunities or hope!
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:53 AM on September 11, 2015 [100 favorites]

See also: The Oregon Trail Generation, an article mostly without a point but as a 36 year old I remember GenX were the people about 5 years older than me and then we moved onto the Millennials, while mine didn't get a name since we didn't have defining characteristics, other than maybe being the last generation that could mostly pay back our college loans.

Hey now, we were Generation Y for about five minutes.
posted by mykescipark at 8:53 AM on September 11, 2015 [17 favorites]

can't they do anything right
posted by griphus at 8:54 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty sure I'm a Gen-Xer and most of us are pretty terrible. The baby boomers are kind of shitty, too, and whatever the fuck generation my parents are sure were awful people.

You're in good company, kids.
posted by bondcliff at 8:54 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

They've been barraged by media telling them that they're trivial, parasitic, narcissists, etc., and face some of the worst, most predatory economic conditions in generations in a country that demands that anyone failing economically blame themselves - so this seems predictable.

I'm 42, and when I look at how badly my generation has been sold down the river (esp., lately, thinking about the ticking time bomb of the 401K hustle, and how many of my cohort are likely to be poor in old age), I feel terribly for these kids. For a lot of them, life is only going to get harder.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:56 AM on September 11, 2015 [15 favorites]

Hang on, are selfies a “millennial” or “hipster” signifier?
posted by acb at 8:56 AM on September 11, 2015

mine didn't get a name since we didn't have defining characteristics, other than maybe being the last generation that could mostly pay back our college loans.

Ha! I am also 36 - one of the tail-end Gen X kiddos - and lemme tell you, I'll never pay off my student loans.
posted by Windigo at 8:57 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Yeah, every generation from the baby boomers on up has been pretty terrible, but at least none of them were self centered enough to refer to themselves as the "Greatest Generation".
posted by mikesch at 8:57 AM on September 11, 2015 [18 favorites]

I thought we were Generation Y? So I just assumed the Millennials were younger than me.
posted by pan at 8:58 AM on September 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

but at least none of them were self centered enough to refer to themselves as the "Greatest Generation"

Did they really do that or did Tom Brokaw invent that term?
posted by bondcliff at 9:00 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Why are marketers so obsessed with getting the youth? I'm 30 and I know everybody younger then me has literally no money, like negative money, they can't buy your thing cause they don't have any money. They can't look at your ad and follow it up because they don't have any money. Why would you try to sell things to people who don't have any money?

I don't get it.
posted by The Whelk at 9:07 AM on September 11, 2015 [29 favorites]

Did they really do that or did Tom Brokaw invent that term?

Tom Brokaw, but I'm just being snarky. Which might be one of the defining characteristics of my generation? My god we're insufferable.

I really hope nobody uses that term to refer to themselves. The irony would be too much given the supposed modesty and humility that led to that term to begin with.
posted by mikesch at 9:07 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

GahJeezManBoyperson . . .

Can nobody recognise a baited hook when they see one?

Where can I go to buy my official Generation League™ team hats, jerseys, travel mugs, and onesies?
 
posted by Herodios at 9:10 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

As a millennial, I think our self-assessment is accurate. It's the older generations that are self-blind.
posted by halifix at 9:10 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

a hat that says MILLENNI because they can't finish anything they start
posted by griphus at 9:11 AM on September 11, 2015 [12 favorites]

Wait is that a millennial stereotype? I've lost track of the heaps of eyerolling poured onto the generation by Established Bone-Pickers.
posted by griphus at 9:12 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

My dad, who is a Gen Xer, was literally whining to my sister and me (24 and 23) about how terrible the millenials are to work with just last week. He caught himself mid-sentence and went "but oh no, not you specifically, just all the ones I work with!", but my eyebrows had already climbed into my hairline.

Seriously dude way to insult both your daughters and almost everyone in their peer networks because one of your employees is kind of whiny

a+ good parenting there

truly your generation is the greatest generation
posted by sciatrix at 9:13 AM on September 11, 2015 [12 favorites]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone offline actually mention "Millennials" or "Generation X" or any of these labels. It just doesn't happen. So when I can't go a week online without some new article (usually about the same as the last, but with fresh new ads!) it just seems so bizarre. People are far more influenced by their actual friends/neighbors/etc. than a random person born within the same 15-20 years. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:15 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I can't help but notice that Pew waited until Andy Kohut passed on before passing this.

(The headline says "Andy Kohut dies", but I'm pretty sure he only did it once, not habitually.)
 
posted by Herodios at 9:15 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I mean, yes, downtohisturtles, but how many of your friends/neighbors/etc. are 15-20 years older or younger than you are? Serious question there.
posted by sciatrix at 9:16 AM on September 11, 2015

It's hard to keep track of what generations I'm supposed to respect and those I'm supposed to loathe. Anybody got a quick reference placard or something?
posted by LastOfHisKind at 9:18 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

how many of your friends/neighbors/etc. are 15-20 years older or younger than you are?
Serious question there.

I'm not down to my turtles, but my serious answer is "damn near all of them".

Almost everyone I see day to day is 15 -20 years younger than me.

I don't call them names, and I appreciate it when they reciprocate.
 
posted by Herodios at 9:20 AM on September 11, 2015

The only broad brush generational label I've found to be true is the general Gen-X caginess and active avoidance of what could be called *~feelings~* and the general suspicion that anything you say to someone could be used as a weapon against you so it's best not to.
posted by The Whelk at 9:20 AM on September 11, 2015 [16 favorites]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone offline actually mention "Millennials" or "Generation X" or any of these labels. It just doesn't happen.

I went to an offsite for management when I worked at a big financial institution and they had a whole seminar on "dealing with millennials" so, yes, it does happen. And this was back in 2008.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:20 AM on September 11, 2015

I still think "Oregon Trail Generation" is a moniker that just barely misses the point. It's not about the software we used. It's about our exposure to hardware, network protocols, modems, the command line, and other deeper-level stuff which gave us more tech skills than the rising generation had because they never went deeper than a GUI. (my lawn. you kids.)

I kind of wrote up my thinking on this, but I think I need to do it again and put a finer point on it. Call us "cuspies," the generation on the cusp of GUIs, the first graphical web browsers, etc. We lived Web 1.0, and from our ranks came those who coded Web 2.0.
posted by gusandrews at 9:21 AM on September 11, 2015 [17 favorites]

Why are marketers so obsessed with getting the youth? I'm 30 and I know everybody younger then me has literally no money, like negative money, they can't buy your thing cause they don't have any money. They can't look at your ad and follow it up because they don't have any money. Why would you try to sell things to people who don't have any money?

I don't get it.

If you set up aspirational consumerist goals in a population, even if they cannot currently afford what you are marketing to them, once they do have money you've already programmed them to want what you're selling, so the marketing payoff happens later instead of now.
posted by hippybear at 9:21 AM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

My dad, who is a Gen Xer

Good lord.

was literally whining to my sister and me (24 and 23) about how terrible the millenials are to work with just last week

I don't buy it, for a second. It's all just guff. I've been hiring 18 to 20-year olds for 4 or 8 or 12 month terms for the past fifteen years. We've got three on staff right now and my office mates have a couple more. People are people, for the most part, good and bad. I haven't noticed any real changes in attitudes.

One that that has changed is skills the kids have. It's harder to find kids with mechanical or even handy-work experience now, much easier to find service or computer skills.
posted by bonehead at 9:22 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Yeah, that's a really interesting answer to me! With the exception of the two people I work directly under, nearly everyone I work with is within 5-10 years of my age--either about 4-7 years younger in the case of my students, or within five years of my age in the case of the other grad students I mostly work with. And my neighbors and friends tend to be in the same age range as my coworkers. I'm aware I'm in kind of an age-bubble here, so I was curious about the perspectives of other people who have different situation.
posted by sciatrix at 9:23 AM on September 11, 2015

I still think "Oregon Trail Generation" is a moniker that just barely misses the point. It's not about the software we used. It's about our exposure to hardware, network protocols, modems, the command line, and other deeper-level stuff which gave us more tech skills than the rising generation had because they never went deeper than a GUI. (my lawn. you kids.)

Um, if we're talking Oregon Trail most kids just stuck the floppy in the Apple ][c and let the sucker boot up. Most kids weren't writing programs in BASIC.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:24 AM on September 11, 2015 [8 favorites]

so the marketing payoff happens later instead of now.

Yeah but they're never going to get jobs. Because there isn't any, and they're so far in debt they'll never have expendable income.

And then there won't be anymore fish.
posted by The Whelk at 9:24 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hippybear "gets" marketing.

Think about:
a) Who is a Corvette or Harley marketted to?
b) Who actually buys Corvettes and Harleys?
 
posted by Herodios at 9:25 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

a) Who is a Corvette or Harley marketted to?
b) Who actually buys Corvettes and Harleys?

As far as I can tell: sad men.
posted by griphus at 9:26 AM on September 11, 2015 [44 favorites]

I'm not a millennial I'm Generation 2.0.
posted by grizzly at 9:29 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

As far as I can tell: sad men.

Sorry this is the agism thread.

The sexism thread is down the hall, 12b.
 
posted by Herodios at 9:30 AM on September 11, 2015 [11 favorites]

The wealthy Boomer-owned, wealthy Boomer-operated, and wealthy Boomer-catering media runs constant stories about Millennials being shit in order to provide an excuse for how the wealthy end of the Boomers burned the US to the ground. You're not poor and starving because the wealthy looted the world! You're poor and starving because you're human garbage! You deserve to live in a world without opportunities or hope!

To be fair, they've been banging that particular drum since before Millenials were even born. It's kind of an eternal, generation-free mantra.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:32 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was giving my 23-year old daughter some advice about recycling the other day (she lives in a house with others her age) and she said, "Of course we recycle! We're Millenials!" (Not without a bit of irony in referring to herself as a member of a stupidly-labeled group.)

But I've noticed that she and her friends, in college, did a whole hell of a lot more volunteer work than we Baby Boomers did. Anecdotally, I'd have to say that we Boomers are a lot more narcissistic than the Millenials are. All those anti-Vietnam War marches we went to had more than a trace of self-preservation about them.
posted by kozad at 9:34 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

We Gen-Xers ascribed stereotypes to our own generation as well. "Slacker" used to be a thing.
posted by maxsparber at 9:38 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: I'm just being snarky. [ . . . ] My god we're insufferable.

...about how terrible the millenials are to work with

For what it's worth, two of my employees are midtwenties young ladies and they're both highly competent, hard working, and a pleasure to be around.
posted by echocollate at 9:39 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

sciatrix, I feel your pain. In a conversation about unpaid internships and how bad we have it (I'm in my mid-20s too) my dad (born in the mid-1950s) told me that "your generation just doesn't wanna work".
posted by DrAmerica at 9:40 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

My department depends on the work of people 20-25 years younger than me. The only difference I see is that the millennials haven't yet had their enthusiasm and desire to do a good job burned out of them by decades of work.
posted by happyroach at 9:49 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm on that 1980 cusp of Gen-X and Millennial, and yeah, it doesn't really have a proper name, but I can tell you that in general we think pretty highly of ourselves and the other members of our class, but we take no responsibility for Jake Hennessy, out in Provo. Man, fuck Jake Hennessy. That one's not on us.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:50 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I still think "Oregon Trail Generation" is a moniker that just barely misses the point. It's not about the software we used. It's about our exposure to hardware, network protocols, modems, the command line, and other deeper-level stuff which gave us more tech skills than the rising generation had because they never went deeper than a GUI. (my lawn. you kids.)

I was just having a conversation with my friend the other day (both of us in our mid-twenties) about how I wonder if we'll have a workplace advantage over kids who are growing up today on smart phones/tablets and not actually using keyboards. We came into the workforce being able to type 80wpm+. This gave us an edge on the older workers. Soon, kids are going to start coming in who didn't spend their teenage years on physical keyboards.


About halfway through this conversation I was like "Am I seriously having a "kids these day" debate?"

I was.
posted by mayonnaises at 9:52 AM on September 11, 2015 [13 favorites]

I don't like Millennials. I also don't like GenXers, Boomers, etc. In general, I just have a deep mistrust of people, regardless if they're 18 or 81.

Awful people are born and raised on every generation. Good people are born and raised on every generation. Every generation thinks the next one gets it easy. Every generation thinks the previous one is full of shit. What else is new?
posted by lmfsilva at 9:56 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

For what it's worth, two of my employees are midtwenties young ladies and they're both highly competent, hard working, and a pleasure to be around.

Agreed. The millennials I work with are smart and capable and have some realistic expectations that have been tempered by knowing that they may not be able to afford a house anytime soon. They're old enough to have lived through the financial crisis and felt the effects but not be crushed by them. A (23 year old) woman on my team recently expressed her sincere wish, not to own a house, but to live someplace with a built in washing machine.

Everything will be ok but the old systems may fall apart. 30 year mortgages aren't tenable when you don't have enough cash saved up to make a down payment until your mid 30s. You'll be paying on that thing until your supposed non-existent retirement. Their dreams are not their parents dreams and by that standard they'll have failed, but we're not going to go Mad Max anytime soon. Property values crash because the system is bullshit and unsustainable and nobody wants to work for a corporate overlord for no job security and pension and crap pay? Sucks for the boomers who own them, great for the ones who will buy them afterwards.
posted by mikesch at 9:57 AM on September 11, 2015 [8 favorites]

Gen X here (b. 1970). The Boomers' media called us "slackers"

Now the Boomers/Gen X media calls young people lazy, etc.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 9:57 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

truly your generation is the greatest generation

Greatest? Ha! Our whole thing was being lazy, cynical, apathetic and snarky. We weren't proud of that, but you know, "meh," as we used to say.
posted by Hoopo at 9:57 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

I was born in 1982 and I like to think of myself as a Neither. Because, am I Gen X or Millennial? Neither.

Yes, I learned how to code in BASIC - on an Atari, in elementary school. We each had a five inch floppy (harhar) with our names written on it to save our work. If it ever turns up I am framing that sucker to commemorate the only time I was ever good at computers.
posted by cmyk at 9:58 AM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

I was born in 1982 and I like to think of myself as a Neither. Because, am I Gen X or Millennial?

77 here and I distinctly recall in high school we were not considered part of X. We were "Y", and the kids in college were X. I used to be with it, but then they changed what *it* was. Now what I'm with isn't *it*, and what's *it* seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you...
posted by Hoopo at 10:02 AM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

Why are marketers so obsessed with getting the youth?

Along with the aspirational answer, it also might be because it'll make the olds feel old and try to alleviate that feeling by buying youth products.
posted by FJT at 10:04 AM on September 11, 2015

Born 1971. Proud to still be a slacker.

*ironically slams a can of an artisanal recreation of OK Soda*
posted by egypturnash at 10:08 AM on September 11, 2015 [12 favorites]

*ironically slams a can of an artisanal recreation of OK Soda*

You know that's just a hipster going to Taco Bell and randomly combining all the different sodas.
posted by maxsparber at 10:11 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I've actually read Strauss & Howe's text that brought forward generational or cohort theory as a way to look at history. And I've read Coupland's book that sort of plays with that idea and pulled it into pop culture awareness.

I think the history theory is an interesting lens through which to look at how things run in cycles and how every cohort does end up being shaped by similar experiences that sort of define them across their lifespan. One's membership in a cohort has less to do with when you were born than what your points of exposure and experience and historical memory are. (As many are stating in this thread, actually.) It's a complicated thing at the individual level, really, but generalizing across a population, it's a thing that actually does exist. Groups of people who are exposed to the same influences of culture and incidents in history during formative years tend to develop the same generalized set of viewpoints about the nature of existence. And those sets of viewpoints are not consistent across time because of the cycle of life and aging.

I dunno. I'm 47, and I hang out with early 20-somethings in social situations a lot, and I could make some generalizations. But it's all through the furry fandom, and that's likely not a representative sample of ANY generation's population.
posted by hippybear at 10:14 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

can't they do anything right

They drank so much wine that they changed the way wine is sold?
posted by thelonius at 10:14 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

I don't think one can make hard rules as to the actual years that define a generation and, of course, it would be ridiculous to ascribe a specific set of traits to ALL people within a given generation, but I do think there are step-changes in culture that, surely, have to have a significant impact on the people who were living before versus after that change.

For example, the internet and all the related technology. For people in wired-up cultures, those of us born before the advent of this technology surely have a different experience of life/living than do those born after. And this has downstream influences on a broad array of things, from the amount of time spent outdoors versus indoors, and the amount of interaction we've (had to have) face-to-face versus mediated by technology, to the variability in the speed and spread of social humiliation, etc.

On that basis, I imagine I can identify somewhat more with other people born pre- internet-world-domination than those born after (all else being equal).
posted by Halo in reverse at 10:16 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

15 year long generations are ridiculous.

Personally, I think there is something distinct about people who enter the workforce during austerity times versus bubble times.

I label them "unlucky" and "lucky".
posted by srboisvert at 10:17 AM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

All I know is millennials are ditching delivery with this one weird trick
posted by The Whelk at 10:17 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

Millennial, like hipster, is a completely empty term to mean "anyone younger then me not currently in a suit."
posted by The Whelk at 10:18 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Millennial, like hipster, is a completely empty term to mean "anyone younger then me not currently in a suit."

Counterexample: bros are younger than me, and not hipsters, and not in suits
posted by thelonius at 10:20 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Anyone else remember articles from the 2000s talking about how Millennials were the best thing ever? How they were idealistic and hopeful, that they listened to their parents and trusted their government to do the right thing? I swear it was a big thing, based (I think) on Stauss-Howe generational theory, the folks who coined the term Millennial.

Found it! Millennials Rising was the book. Here's a excerpt from a review by David Brooks:

The Millennials, the authors write, ''will correct what they will perceive to be the mistakes . . . of boomers, by placing positivism over negativism, trust over cynicism, science over spiritualism, team over self, duties over rights, honor over feeling, action over words.'' Basically, it sounds as if America has two greatest generations at either end of the age scale and two crummiest in the middle.

It seems like everyone forgets like this ever happened. It's weird.

That said, they sure got that idealism stuff beaten out of them by the recessions and wars, huh?
posted by leotrotsky at 10:28 AM on September 11, 2015 [15 favorites]

18-34 is honestly so broad to be meaningless. On the higher end you have people who were in middle school when the Berlin Wall fell, and on lower end you have people young enough to not remember 9/11.

One of the many reasons why "millennials" as a thing is such a dumb concept.
posted by Itaxpica at 10:29 AM on September 11, 2015 [15 favorites]

I remember those articles! I still think its broadly true for people in thier mid 20s when the financial crisis occurred - I think its very different if you grew up in the wake of that. The pre post-apocalypse generation
posted by The Whelk at 10:40 AM on September 11, 2015

Anyone else remember articles from the 2000s talking about how Millennials were the best thing ever? How they were idealistic and hopeful, that they listened to their parents and trusted their government to do the right thing?

Meta-theory about generational generalizing: What people (or, well, the media) say about a generation has as much to do with the age that a generation is at the time as the years in which that purported generation was born.

I've recently read some articles on the post-millennial generation, whatever they are. And you know what? Among other things, they all say stuff that is remarkably similar to the hugely optimistic things said about millennials in the late 90s/early 00s, albeit adjusted somewhat for era (so more stuff about economic realism and selfies, and a bit less trust in government). They're optimistic! They want to make they world a better place, and they work hard! Etc, etc.

It seems to me that media narratives about "generations" start to arise when that generation is around late high school/college age. And it's easy to portray 17-year-olds as optimistic. They're busily padding their college resumes, thinking about all the ways they'll make their mark on the world. A 17-year-old hasn't been ground down yet.

But then those 17-year-olds graduate from college, and it turns out the adjustment to adulthood is hard. Establishing a career is hard, managing money is hard, forging meaningful grown-up relationships is hard. Not to mention the vagaries of economic cycles, student loans, and all that. So the generation that, five or ten years ago, was all optimistic and hardworking becomes lazy and narcissistic.

Were GenXers slackers when they were in high school in the 80s? I don't think they were. It was the early-90s recession, combined with the entirely predictable difficulties of young adulthood, that produced the slacker. All of the bullshit that's been heaped on millennials over the past five years or so is a product of similar circumstances, albeit with an even-worse economy. We'll probably come up with a new way to insult today's teenagers in five or ten years.

Tl;dr: It's easy for a generation to look good at 17, harder for it to look good at 25 or 30.
posted by breakin' the law at 10:50 AM on September 11, 2015 [21 favorites]

On a more serious note, I think that part of Obama's electoral success is that he may have tapped into that deep well of pragmatic idealism about our country that young people in particular wear on their sleeves. Folks have become disenchanted with him, but he's certainly leaving a legacy more good than bad. To recap. Obama ended two wars, saved Detroit, saved the economy, ended torture, killed OBL, implemented national health care, supported gay marriage, normalized relations with Cuba, and struck a 15 year nuclear deal with Iran. All in the face of an utterly obstreperous Republican party that has Lost. Its. Damn. Mind.

I mean, God damn. If a Republican president had done half that, they've have carved him on Mt. Rushmore by now.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:51 AM on September 11, 2015 [15 favorites]

Boomers: Get off my lawn.

Gen X: I'd ask you to get off my lawn, but I'm a little busy right now paying the mortgage.

Millennials: It's a revolutionary, sustainable, artisanal lawn, made from scratch using a variety of free-range, GMO-free seeds and without artificial chemicals. It's a lawn without guilt or judgment. It would be grrrreeeat if you could walk around it, OK?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:58 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

18-34 is honestly so broad to be meaningless. On the higher end you have people who were in middle school when the Berlin Wall fell, and on lower end you have people young enough to not remember 9/11.

I'm 34. The Berlin wall fell when I was 9, so not exactly middle school. (I have a crazy cool early story about that moment, involving Peter, Paul and Mary.) True, I guess I was in sixth grade when the demolition was completed, but that's not the moment anyone thinks about.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:00 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I remember those articles! I still think its broadly true for people in thier mid 20s when the financial crisis occurred

I would agree that that cohort (of which I'm mostly a part--woulda been 26 or so during the crisis) might seem optimistic compared with a truly apocalyptic worldview. But I think fundamentally we're not as much optimistic as pragmatic. I mean we were sitting there in our dorms (which in some cases, were just up the street) when the Twin Towers came down and we spent the rest of our school careers being told that Everything Was Different And Worse Now. So I mean, that's what we expected, and pretty much what we got.

I still think, though, that we are reeling much more acutely from the realization of our inability to own a home/have kids/retire than younger folks who knew those were pipe dreams from day 1. So we're a little angrier, which also can look maybe like optimism or hope through the right lens.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:01 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

As one of those at NYU when the 9-11 attacks happened, I feel like there was almost a feeling of older generations, especially Boomers, saying, "this changes everything," and my age group thinking, "why do you get to decide that for us?"
posted by Navelgazer at 11:10 AM on September 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

I didn't really think of how the whole generational labeling thing applies to me, personally. *squint* Born in 1979 so apparently some would use the "gen X" label. Or something. Dunno.
The only label I actually remember from when I was growing up was none of this fancy-schmansy foreign stuff, but the term that was more popular around here: "milky-bun-smush generation". A term that the older generations used of us because they thought we wimps obviously knew nothing of real hardships, like, uh, world wars and such. ...and you can guess that this kind of unflattering terminology made me hesitant to try to particularly identify with any generation label.
posted by wwwwolf at 11:10 AM on September 11, 2015

> A (23 year old) woman on my team recently expressed her sincere wish, not to own a house, but to live someplace with a built in washing machine.

Tell your colleague that I, too, share her sincere wish and am cheering for her to achieve it. Seriously, I would kill to find an affordable place with my own washing machine near accessible public transit. Is that really too much to ask?

god I want a washing machine of my very own so bad
posted by sciatrix at 11:14 AM on September 11, 2015 [26 favorites]

this started as semi-sincere joking but now I made myself sad
posted by sciatrix at 11:14 AM on September 11, 2015 [28 favorites]

18-34 is honestly so broad to be meaningless. On the higher end you have people who were in middle school when the Berlin Wall fell, and on lower end you have people young enough to not remember 9/11.

One of the many reasons why "millennials" as a thing is such a dumb concept.

I agree with this. I'm old enough to remember and have extensively used DOS and windows 3.1(and earlier), i installed windows 95 from floppy disks and learned HTML from a book to publish my own website on a shitty free hosting platform before the imac came out.

And i'm in the same generation of kids who have literally never existed outside of middle or high school without their being multitouch smartphones?

Like, yea, i watched 9/11 happen on tv with my parents and i already had a few wispy beard hairs.

What a weird way of defining "similar" groups of people. You could be 20 years old and born in 1995 at this point. Just... what?
posted by emptythought at 11:19 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

my dad (born in the mid-1950s) told me that "your generation just doesn't wanna work".
Born in the mid-50s and my "Grating-est Generation" father told me that "your generation just doesn't wanna work". I used to consider myself too young to be a true "Post War Baby Boom Baby" (too young to go to Woodstock, sigh), but "My Generation", well, it was right that "people tried to put us down"; we were pretty spoiled, but mostly because we were the children of the people who declared "WE WON WORLD WAR TWO, NOW GIVE US THE WORLD. AND DON'T HOLD BACK, WE NUKED JAPAN AND WE COULD DO IT TO YOU TOO". That whole "Greatest Generation" label just proved that Walter Cronkite was to Tom Brokaw as Frank Sinatra was to Frank Sinatra Jr.

I feel like there was almost a feeling of older generations, especially Boomers, saying, "this changes everything," and my age group thinking, "why do you get to decide that for us?"
Excellent point; I still feel like the Boomers were desperately in need of something to "change everything" so they could drop the mask of being "reasonable people" and go back to War, Cold or otherwise.

18-34 is honestly so broad to be meaningless.
As are 35-49 and 50-64, all demographic segments invented by marketers when they were just starting to do demographics and just wanted categories they could easily compile then sell to their clients. When I was in the Radio Biz in the late '70s/early '80s, they were already getting eye rolls from programmers who knew that the 18-34s included the main audience for The Beatles, Disco, Funk, Modern Country and Progressive Rock and woe be unto you if you were stupid enough to put ALL of them into the same musical format.

Anyway, my sincere apologies to all the generations who followed mine (although I take pride that I did NOT add to any future generation).
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:27 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

The way Millennials is defined doesn't make sense - I'd put the start at 1986 or 1987 because there is definitely a difference between the way people in their early twenties interact with technology and people in their early thirties.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:33 AM on September 11, 2015

I think I like my fellow millennials. I am pretty glad to have grown up in this generation. I feel like I meet a lot of people I admire and respect who are in my age group or younger, even.

I think a lot of millennials are socially and civically engaged, enlightened
about world events, they value learning in many different forms, they're often just hilarious, and I suspect many of us are always trying to improve ourselves so we can be better people.

As for how we as a group are faring economically...sigh. Though I'm comforted by the idea that none of us will be heating up cans of beans under the highway all by ourselves. It's difficult to grapple with uncertainty, it has been so for every generation. Some of us have developed or will develop resilience, some of us haven't or won't. Hard to say.
posted by discopolo at 11:36 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

My dad, who is a Gen Xer

Way to make me feel ancient. Thanks.
posted by octothorpe at 12:08 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I didn't do it on purpose! ....if it helps he's on the older tail end of Gen X?
posted by sciatrix at 12:11 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

For what it's worth, I work with a bunch of millenials and my only complaint is that they're all too damn smart and hardworking and make me look bad in comparison.
posted by octothorpe at 12:15 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

We Gen-Xers ascribed stereotypes to our own generation as well. "Slacker" used to be a thing.

In fact, some of us are still (somewhat) proudly keeping that label alive to this day.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:19 PM on September 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

I think "generation" is a concept that used to make a lot more sense than it does now.

Pre-internet, most people's image of the world was painted in very broad strokes: there were relatively few "anchor" experiences that were shared by large populations (e.g. WW2, civil rights struggle, etc), and you were less likely to encounter people who had different opinions of those experiences. Mainstream journalism and popular arts were really the only windows to the outside world, both of which had great incentives to reinforce group identities (bigger audiences, cheaper marketing).

So yes, there would be these demographic breaking points, and your identity often ended up largely defined by whichever group had the closest median age. This wasn't universally true, but true enough.

That's definitely not the case anymore. The internet, with its breadth of information and lack of traditional community baggage, has made "identity" a far more fluid concept; for better or worse, people can find information and peers for almost anything, and often without the generational prejudice: people won't even know your age if you don't want them to!

When you go beyond the "cultural" identity, what's left is mostly just the socioeconomic realities: in the U.S., pretty much everyone but the boomers has been shortchanged in this respect, and while they're not entirely at fault (and with collective blame being a really problematic concept to begin with) it's an obvious enough distinction that "boomers"/"post-boomers" seem like definitions that might stand the test of history. It may be that pre-internet vs. post-internet is another major distinction, but I wouldn't take that for granted because I think kids' technical savvy and adults' technical ineptitude are both highly overstated.

I'm also inclined to think there may be a "lead generation", people who experienced the direct and indirect effects of leaded gasoline: violent crime being the most visible, but also perhaps larger societal trends towards aggression and paranoia. There are probably modern versions of this that we simply haven't recognized yet, but it's striking enough to be worth mentioning.

In conclusion, everything is a land of contrasts.
posted by Riki tiki at 12:29 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

It's like no one writing these kinds of articles notices that the world is only ever artificially age-segregated.
posted by LooseFilter at 12:32 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Does this sum everything up?

hint: no.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:46 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm having an identity crisis.

Do I define myself by my age group?
My race?
My gender?
My sexuality?
My religion?
My politics?
Where I was born?
Where I live now?

It's clear in articles like this that only one variable matters. I need to put myself in a tiny little hole right quick but I just can't figure out which one.
posted by tallthinone at 12:48 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Here's how I break it up:

1981-1989 = Millennials
1990-1997 = Millenials

(LEARN TO SPELL YOU DARN KIDS!!!)
posted by Sys Rq at 1:41 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's clear in articles like this that only one variable matters. I need to put myself in a tiny little hole right quick but I just can't figure out which one.

This should help.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:43 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I feel like there was almost a feeling of older generations, especially Boomers, saying, "this changes everything," and my age group thinking, "why do you get to decide that for us?"

Did it also take you until 2004 to learn that the answer was "because we have all the money, fuck you?" Because I know that's when the penny dropped for my immediate circle...
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:45 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

1986 checking in. I don't even particularly identify with the Millennial label, personally.

My parents bought a home computer when I was 6 or so, and I started using the internet with AOL 3.0 and an ancient dial-up of some kind. I was marinated in computer tech before I was socially aware, so I tend to identify with anyone who had a similar experience. This extends to 60s-era graybeards all the way to little kids who love building stuff in Minecraft with their friends, so my personal ability to identify and share affinity with others is way more about how technologically plugged in they are.

In the office where I work, the comment "goddamn Millennials..." is sometimes uttered, to which all of us younger people in the room look at each other and raise our eyebrows. Most of us sit politely quiet, but I call it out. I have to remind everyone I work with about once a quarter that there's a lot of young people in the office, and that it's not a fair blanket judgment, especially given that those of us present are such hard workers, so please check yourselves.

To me, it doesn't seem like it's readily obvious the office "Millennials" are much different from any of our other coworkers. And one would also never hear the kids in the office calling out all of Gen-X as being generally terrible, especially not in a meeting at our fucking professional jobs. It's so rude, and just not how younger people roll. There is some profound belief in approaching everyone as a unique and individual snowflake.

Except for Boomers, of course. I can count on one hand the number of Boomers I've gotten to know who weren't secretly rotten deep down in their pitch-black hearts. But then I also don't work with any, because this is a tech startup, the tech cultural divide is real, and ageism is alive and well in 2015.
posted by Snacks at 1:52 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

I too remember all the positivity about millennials about 15 years ago, which has since soured, and now seems to be turning back around a little. Classic blowback against the blowback. See Thrillist's "In Defense of Millennials" that showed up in my inbox today - a lot of relevance to the other recent threads about labor and "entitlement."
posted by Solon and Thanks at 2:01 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

There's that practical side of my mind that doesn't care when Millennials are dragged through the mud because this whole generation business is nonsense on par with astrology and just a way to get views.

Then there's that other side that wants to out-Boomer the Boomers when it comes to these generalizations and proclaim that my generation fought two wars, gave the US our first Black president who in turn gave us the closest thing we'll probably get to a national healthcare plan, fought to legalize gay marriage and advance LGBT rights, protested police brutality and the excesses of capitalism and all while dealing with the worst recession since the Great Depression. So y'know, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

But that would be silly.
posted by bgal81 at 2:04 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

As seen on Twitter: if you where born in 1984 yer not a millienal, you're a ghostbuster
posted by The Whelk at 2:05 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

And then there won't be anymore fish.

When the ecosystem finally dies I am going to eat so many rich people, regardless of their age
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:07 PM on September 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

I work with a lot of Millenials, I guess, but the kind of millenials who are making 6 figures out of college are not the same millenials I usually read articles about, so I have no real basis for comparison. So much of the talk generally is about financial or job security issues which don't exist for the ones I know.

As a Gen Xer I don't see much difference other than that they have way more energy than me.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:17 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

In Defense Of Millennial Narcissism

Their venial sin? A realization that they have access -- or a belief that they should have access -- to a deeper sense of personal satisfaction, be it through their work, their politics, or how they go about expressing themselves.

Naturally, this is an affront to those of us who had the misfortune of coming of age at a time when you were expected to go along to get along -- i.e., every other era ever.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:30 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Ghostbuster checking in!

I'm on the old end of the range, but I don't really care if someone calls me a Millennial. My year and a half older husband doesn't like it. This came out of a rather lively discussion with his parents, who are ~10 years older than my parents. We were all in agreement, however, that insisting on particular labels is silly and largely meaningless.
posted by Diagonalize at 2:40 PM on September 11, 2015

My dad, who is a Gen Xer

Ouch.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:52 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

In Defense Of Millennial Narcissism

The stock photos chosen for that article are giving me a knee-jerk suspicion that the author is simply buying the friendly totalitarianism of job-as-lifestyle, millennium edition.
posted by postcommunism at 3:09 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

oh sweet! I'm a ghostbuster!
posted by numaner at 3:12 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

1985 here. I changed jobs last year and the amount of praise I get for my work (especially vs my old job that I held for over 5 years) makes me a bit uncomfortable. I know my output is just average but the amount of praise I get makes me think either everyone else at the company is incompetent (not likely) or that they've read one too many articles about millennials and all the praise we supposedly need. It's really weird.

Also, I have so much more in common with my cousin born pre-1980 than I do with my cousins born in 1990+.
posted by LizBoBiz at 3:20 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Article: Millennials are so feckless and self-centered and messed up and who would want to hire one

People of MetaFilter: what a stupid article, olds have been crapping on the youth since ancient times, people are just people and don't change that much

Article: A mom did her kid's math homework and another mom called her kid's principal to complain about something

People of MetaFilter: I fear for the world when these helicopter parents' kids grow up, they're going to be so feckless and self-centered and messed up and who would want to hire one
posted by escabeche at 4:08 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm surprised The Guardian would make the mistake of lumping four culturally distinct cohorts into two useless conglomerate "generations".
posted by ob1quixote at 4:54 PM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'd say the problem is that pundits' demand for generational cohorts outstrips our ability to create them. So you end up with generational edges drawn like the straight lines colonial power put on maps as they were bugging out, without regard for actual cultural affinity between the people stuck within those borders. The start and end dates were for Millennials were set down years before the last one was even born, so of course you've got a bunch of people who look at what gets defined as Millennial and say that's not me.

Even if generational cohorts are not bullshit generally, there's all this stuff that seems like it should go into the generational definition, like widespread internet, September 11 attacks, helicopter parenting, cell phones, the 2008 crash, and so on that is just not considered.
posted by ckape at 6:15 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

My dad, who is a Gen Xer, was literally whining to my sister and me (24 and 23) about how terrible the millenials are to work with just last week. He caught himself mid-sentence and went "but oh no, not you specifically, just all the ones I work with!", but my eyebrows had already climbed into my hairline.

The part about you being the 23-year-old kid of a Gen Xer is so weird—totally possible and apparently real, but still weird. My husband's Gen X and I guess I'm Y, millennial, ghostbuster, whatever, and we do not have kids yet. We are, however, enjoying Mr. Show at this moment, which I guess is a quasi-cross-generational shared passion.

I've noticed that she and her friends, in college, did a whole hell of a lot more volunteer work than we Baby Boomers did.

I doubt that’s because we’re less narcissistic. It’s probably because colleges and jobs expect it now. Some kids even have to do volunteer work to graduate from high school. That's not to say that some people don't genuinely choose to volunteer or that at least part of our generation hasn't been inculcated with values that go beyond making money—I think they do and we have—but I'd ascribe increased volunteerism in large part to those factors.

Anyway, my husband and I don't think much of most people, and I don't know that that has much to do with generational angst. I think it's about standard deviations.
posted by limeonaire at 7:36 PM on September 11, 2015

The only broad brush generational label I've found to be true is the general Gen-X caginess and active avoidance of what could be called *~feelings~* and the general suspicion that anything you say to someone could be used as a weapon against you so it's best not to.

Yeah that would be a symptom of being bullied by their narcissistic Boomer forbearers since birth.

After that bullying thread today, I've been mulling over the dynamics of this Fable of The Generations that do read true to me: The Boomers as world-devouring self-absorbed shitbirds, Gen X-Y standing by as the Boomers wreck everything but too fearful of losing their own moderate privilege to do anything about it, and the Millenials as just too fucked over to even grasp that they have been fucked over. It's about interpersonal power dynamics, but since the state of USA power and wealth during the formative years and early careers of each group is the sorting mechanism, these categories map onto ranges of years of birth.

My 30 years put my in early Millenial or late Gen X/Y range, but I feel much more like a cynical, resigned Gen-Xer and I think it's because I've been lucky enough to be pretty insulated from the economic mayhem since 2008.
posted by 3urypteris at 7:49 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

The part about you being the 23-year-old kid of a Gen Xer is so weird—totally possible and apparently real, but still weird.

Yeah, my parents were born in 1966, and I was born in 1990 when they were 24--and I'm 24 myself, now. (Sorry, it's my sister who is 23 but that wasn't clear.) 1966 is pretty early for Gen X, but it's clearly too late for the Baby Boomers--although my dad does have older siblings who are definitely Boomers rather than in Gen X or on the cusp as he is. 20 years, or even 15 years, is a long time! Lots of variation in experience within that time.
posted by sciatrix at 7:51 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hmm, I've heard another name for that time period between Boomers and the earliest Gen Xers: Generation Jones. I definitely have a good friend born around the time your parents were who falls into this demographic.
posted by limeonaire at 7:55 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hmm. I'm 78. Wonder what generation I'm from. The typewriter generation?
posted by notreally at 8:04 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hmmm. The missus just peeked over my shoulder and said, no. The fountain pen generation.
posted by notreally at 8:07 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

It's like Uber, but for ethics in generational marketing!
posted by blue_beetle at 8:44 PM on September 11, 2015

""I feel like there was almost a feeling of older generations, especially Boomers, saying, "this changes everything," and my age group thinking, "why do you get to decide that for us?"

Did it also take you until 2004 to learn that the answer was "because we have all the money, fuck you?" Because I know that's when the penny dropped for my immediate circle..."

I'm old as all hell (not quite notreally though) and I have no idea what the above quotes are postulating or describing. 9-11 didn't change things? You get to decide personally that an event that restructured geopolitics and world warfare within the space of a few hours actually did so? We boomerati imposed this factuality upon the innocent young with our powerful muscles and enormous bank accounts, what? Millennials, stand and deliver unto me!
posted by Chitownfats at 9:07 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

As for how we as a group are faring economically...sigh. Though I'm comforted by the idea that none of us will be heating up cans of beans under the highway all by ourselves

As I round the bend into my later 20s though, it really does feel like this is going to be the generation of having roommates indefinitely, for a lot of people. I mean, that's been a thing in Manhattan a few other more-expensive-than-usual cities, but the combo of everyone having trouble getting Adult Jobs and the coastal cities where most people live rapidly becoming more and more expensive, that kinda seems to be spreading everywhere.

I know a lot of people a year or two from turning 30 who still split places, and almost no one I know in their earlier 20s lives alone unless they landed a great job or are splitting the place dual income as a couple.

And I don't really see how this is going to change. Nor do I see even the well off people buying even a condo without a big windfall or inheritance. The only people I know who did either owned shares in small companies that got bought out, or inherited.
posted by emptythought at 9:25 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think we can all agree that, in the future, if your parent is a Gen Xer we would all feel better not knowing this fact because we are so fucking old.

The only difference I see is that the millennials haven't yet had their enthusiasm and desire to do a good job burned out of them by decades of work.

The great thing about Gen X is that we never had any enthusiasm to begin with.
posted by Justinian at 1:59 AM on September 12, 2015 [6 favorites]

Yeah, now ask me of my opinion of (my) Generation X.

The great thing about Gen X is that we never had any enthusiasm to begin with.

*Gigglesnort*
posted by ZeroAmbition at 2:11 AM on September 12, 2015

I think we can all agree that, in the future, if your parent is a Gen Xer we would all feel better not knowing this fact because we are so fucking old.

...Okay? Is there a way that I can talk about my demographic reality without horrifying everyone else, or should I just shut up in every conversation about my actual generation here? Serious question, because I'm not actually intending to horrify anyone, but that's the third time someone in this thread has gone 'ow!' in response to what is (from my perspective) a pretty unremarkable detail about my family. Am I doing something wrong by mentioning the passage of time? Should I just lie and say my parents are ten years older than they are? What do you guys want out of me here?

I get that it can sometimes be horrifying to sit back and go "oh my god time has gone by way faster than I thought," but I'm feeling really uncomfortable now and a little self-conscious. I'd like to know if there is an okay way of framing comments that lets me be honest about how my family and experiences fit into these generational lines in a conversation about generations, or if I should just be quiet in favor of grousing about the Boomers next time.
posted by sciatrix at 7:30 AM on September 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think it's best to just hear those comments as exactly what you say, a comment about the speaker not about you, and a comment that's basically "wow, time is going way too fast." It's just a weird position to be in, to start seeing adults who could be your own children. That's a weird and sort of disorienting experience. My experience of this is, not having kids, I can think of myself as sort of not aging, because things are more or less the same for me year-over-year. But then one of my friends' kids will pop up and they've aged TEN YEARS in the time it took me to go to the grocery store -- it's just a weird thing about aging, which crops up again and again in stories of human experience. It's not a criticism of you or your family at all. It's the fault of those sneaky kid-having people, they're the ones who introduce fast-aging children into the equation and mess up the rest of us otherwise-ageless folks.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:36 AM on September 12, 2015 [10 favorites]

Well, ageless except for the "Ow! My hips/knees/shoulders/back" and the "I still can't read that no matter how much I squint or adjust my glasses" and the "Where did this pot belly come from and why won't it go away?"

But yeah, sciatrix, I think LM has a point in that these comments are more about the commenter and the unexpected passage of time than you, and often kind of a knee-jerk reaction. I'm sorry you feel self-conscious, in this aging Gen-X'er's opinion ("Ow! My back") you're not doing anything wrong by commenting how you are.

(If it helps, think of these kinds of comments from Gen-X'ers as us getting a little warm-up practicing in for when we're allowed to really be old and cranky.)
posted by soundguy99 at 8:23 AM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Chitownfats: all that restructuring of geopolitics and xenophobia and nationalism and the knee-jerk necessity to make the dumbest most cowboy-ass policies as quickly as possible and everything else that "changed forever" after 9-11 are the decisions i'm talking about. They were universally bad ones and they didn't need to go that way and a shit load of the non-boomers saw that clear as day even then.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:28 AM on September 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

and a comment that's basically "wow, time is going way too fast."

Not just too fast, but a recognition that labels that you tend to think of as only applying to other people (like "old dude" or "my dad") can actually apply to yourself.

My experience of this is, not having kids, I can think of myself as sort of not aging, because things are more or less the same for me year-over-year.

This is very true, and something I've become a lot more aware of in the past couple of years. It's a strange feeling.

This also gets at why these very broad generational labels aren't always great -- Gen X supposedly covers about 20 years, but does someone born in 1966 really have all that much in common with someone born in 1984?
posted by Dip Flash at 8:36 AM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

They were universally bad ones and they didn't need to go that way and a shit load of the non-boomers saw that clear as day even then.

I'm pretty sure that there were a shit load of non-boomers who bought it though. I remember giving a presentation on the Patriot Act in high-school and literally getting laughed out of class. And there where a ton of old hippies running around agreeing with me.

Let's all just chalk this "generation" thing up as the marketing bullshit it is, like pink for girls and black Friday.
posted by pan at 9:48 AM on September 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm towards the older third of the 1980-2001-ish definition of Millenial. I wonder what garbage name they're going to give my sons generation.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 10:21 AM on September 12, 2015

Fred.

I'm going to call that whole generation Fred.
posted by hippybear at 10:24 AM on September 12, 2015

They're hip, they're young, they've never seen an animal! It's the nutrient jellyfish paste generation!
posted by The Whelk at 10:24 AM on September 12, 2015 [7 favorites]

from Shower Thoughts last night:
"“Get off my lawn” is a baby boomer trope because they were the last generation that had a decent chance of owning one"
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:52 AM on September 12, 2015 [13 favorites]

"Get off my communally owned and group-maintained xeriscape! Or rather, help gather some of the fruit we've grown, we got to get them before the raccoons do or we don't eat this summer."
posted by The Whelk at 12:11 PM on September 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

...Okay? Is there a way that I can talk about my demographic reality without horrifying everyone else, or should I just shut up in every conversation about my actual generation here? Serious question, because I'm not actually intending to horrify anyone, but that's the third time someone in this thread has gone 'ow!' in response to what is (from my perspective) a pretty unremarkable detail about my family. Am I doing something wrong by mentioning the passage of time? Should I just lie and say my parents are ten years older than they are? What do you guys want out of me here?

I think they're kidding. I'm about 9 yrs older than you (a millennial and happy defining myself so because it sounds adorable enough), and my parents, and most of my friends parents (not quite sure why, some bizarre coincidence) had us just shy of 35. I knew some folks with young parents. I honestly wish mine had had me when they were younger. So it's just really cool and fascinating to hear of someone whose parents had them young.

All the ow-ing, is just them grumbling. They're all just kidding. I mean, your parents had you guys at 24 and most of us who are well past 24 can't even find our other sock in the dryer, let alone a life partner to have 2 kids with. Also, our backs hurt, and some people are starting to obsess about going bald. You just shine on.
posted by discopolo at 4:43 PM on September 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm 32 and in my mind I still think of myself as basically a teenager

So when I run into people I grew up with and they have kids I'm like "Hey, no, you can't have kids, remember that time you thought Don Quixote was about a donkey"

"remember that time somebody dared you to run around the yard naked and you stepped in a gopher hole and sprained your ankle and you were laying there naked in the grass screaming"

"you thought frosted tips were a good idea dude"

"dude you can't have kids"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:26 PM on September 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm 44. My oldest son is 21, but severely intellectually disabled. It was a shock when a coworker mentioned he was only 7 months older. As it was when another talked about how old his dad was at 45. Not to mention our intern who's a year younger than my son.

In the very recent past, I wasn't old enough to be any of my coworkers' father. That wasn't even on my radar. Now there are five of them who could have called me "Dad". It's a humbling experience.
posted by double block and bleed at 7:33 PM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

double block and bleed: “In the very recent past, I wasn't old enough to be any of my coworkers' father. That wasn't even on my radar. Now there are five of them who could have called me "Dad". It's a humbling experience.”

I don't have any children, but that reminds me of a story. I was an on-again, off-again pretend nobleman in an imaginary kingdom for the majority of my adult life. (We'll ride right past any possible connection between those two facts.)

A few years ago during one of our weekends a storm hit with heavy rain, hail, and strong winds. We live in tornado country, and the light took on that strange character that sometimes accompanies tornadoes. As I turned away from looking out of the door of the 80-year-old wooden lodge we slept in, I was freaking out because we had no place safe to go.

I started to say how freaked out I was, when I looked at the scared faces of my subordinates. They were all looking to me to be told what to do. There were a few people close to my age, but for many of them I was old enough to be their father. That was the exact moment I realized I wasn't a kid anymore.

You'd have thought that being grey at the temples would be a clue, but no. "I'm still one of the kids. I can hang," I thought. I didn't figure it out until my people looked at me with that, "What do we do, Dad?" look.

Of course, in their defense not half an hour before that I had produced a Band-aid from my wallet because one of them had gotten a small cut.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:41 PM on September 12, 2015 [5 favorites]

Why are marketers so obsessed with getting the youth? I'm 30 and I know everybody younger then me has literally no money, like negative money, they can't buy your thing cause they don't have any money. They can't look at your ad and follow it up because they don't have any money. Why would you try to sell things to people who don't have any money?

In my position I see a lot of different companies trying out ideas planning for their future. The last year or so the buzzword has been all about millennials. One reason for companies starting to focus on this generation is that it is so large. They will have tremendous buying power just due to numbers alone. Gen X is much smaller. Also, Gen X is apparently seen as risk averse while Millennials are seen as savers who are hip to marketing and much less anti-corporation than Gen Xers (more open to being marketed to). I get the impression that companies feel that they have to create things that ascribe to the morals/wants/whims of millennials because they will make up a huge population of the US in the coming years. Although they know these kids have tons of debt they can work around that. They also know that a lot of parents are either funding millennials or at the very least prepared to pass down money/property in the next 20 years.

Although I'm in that late-70s Gen X/Gen Y territory I knew I was right in considering myself Gen X because I grumbled and rolled my eyes as I spent three hours writing up quotes about Millennials around the office for my job. What about us?
posted by Bunglegirl at 7:29 PM on September 13, 2015

Oh yeah? I'm so old that it took me three days to post a comment here.
posted by SteveInMaine at 10:43 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]