Nirvana (the band) is the quintessential 90s Gen-X Grunge generational angst band. Them and Pearl Jam. The other sentiments are fairly Gen-X as well.
I would say that Eminem is more representitive of Gen M angst.
Really the major difference I see between X and M is that the M is basically a more commercial friendly version of X culture. Kind of like the way bands like Nickelback are a more commercially friendly version of bands like Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden. What do I know? It’s not like kids listen to Green Day anymore, right?
I hadn’t thought about it this way until now, but this thread perfectly explains my last relationship. Apparently we were the archetypical Gen X, Gen Y couple. (Me being X, he being Y). You can imagine the hurdles we faced.
When we first started dating he told me his friends would have to approve of me if we were going to keep seeing each other. I was *horrified * by this, fortunately I got along with his friends just fine (cuz I rock! )
I couldn’t imagine asking my friends to approve who I date, and would be even more bewildered if they ever asked me to approve of theirs!
A brief comment on the “Defining Movies” - you can’t mention Generation X without Star Wars. While that movie now seems vapid and inane to me, the fact is it crafted a huge part of who Generation X is.
The criticism of Star Wars is that it replaced art with special effects, drama with explosions, and enigma with crappy psuedo-intellectualized mysticism. It remade the entertainment industry into the instant gratification delivery business it has become. And those of us in GenX were raised on a steady diet of this stuff. We watched hours of TV every day, with commerical intermissions every eight minutes.
Millenials seem different. My neice and nephew (both in their second year of college) hardly watched any TV when they were growing up - they had the internet and DVDs. We in GenX read books, where (from what I’ve observed) Millenials don’t. Yet Millenials are quite literate - their primary means of communication is text messaging, after all.
It makes sense that there are differences. It’s hard for me to believe Millenials don’t question authority, though. Isn’t that just what American kids do?
Movie that define GenX (in the sense that they are about GenX):
I was born in '86, but I think my attitude is more Gen-X than Millennial. Of course, that might be because my only sibling is a Gen-Xer. I feel like a Gen-Xer in all places but the workforce. I need guidance and to be told what to do. However, I dislike group work and like to work independently.
Unlike many Gen-Ms, I wasn’t acquainted with computers and the Internet until I was 12. Living in a rural area with older parents will do that. I latched onto it pretty quick, but I went through that whiny stage when I was 13-15. I was also a latchkey kid left to myself.
Good gravy! I’m sorry, but if someone’s parents were to show up to lobby for a better job review, that should seriously count against the employee in my book. But I stopped being a manager because of things like that.
Personally, I find that most Gen Ms are damned kids who should stay off my lawn.
Ah yes, that is true but that portion of the message is the same. You are right though, it has changed from grungish rock to whiney rockish bands.
Eminem is a rapper, I don’t think he is really angsty but I admit I don’t listen to him.
Yes, I am pretty certain Green Day is still widely popular. At least to people around my age (1985ish) its definately popular. Again, I take issue with you calling the music more commercially friendly. Nirvana, Soundgarden, STP et al all are just as commercial as Nickelback. They both started out as a small band and then make it big.
Bands like Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, Brittney Spears, 98 Degrees et al are more commercial but those didn’t have staying power. I grew up during the height of their popularity but nearly everyone has grown out of it. If you look college kids music colleciton nowadays there won’t be any of those bands. There will be bands like Greenday (Nimrod came out when I was 13 and American Idiot just came out), Goo Goo Dolls, Foo Fighters etc. etc. Just like you aren’t going to find a 30 year old with a Vanilla Ice CD.
Yeah, that had me wondering too. Gen M can’t have Nirvana. They belong to us Gen-Xers. I mean really, how old were the oldest G-Mers when Kurt Cobain died, 13? I was 17, and that was a major point in my life. My best friend and I made a collage of pictures of Kurt we cut out from a magazine. We burned the edges of the pictures with our cigarette lighters first. While wearing flannel shirts and ripped jeans of course.
I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this kind of stuff lately. It seems like I’m finally starting to lose touch with kids these days. Except my nephew, but he adored the Johnny Cash CD I bought him for his birthday, so he’s different. I find myself drawn more to the music I listened to in high school … Weezer, Green Day, Nirvana … and saying WTF to what’s on the radio. The stuff that’s supposed to be the angsty rock I often find eyeroll-worthy.
Anyway, I guess I don’t have anything important to add here. I just find this thread very interesting, and definitely fit the Gen-X mold.
There’s going to be some natural bleed-through between older Gen Yers and younger Gen Xers. Generational differences aren’t stark black and white, they’re shades. Born in 1984 to a Baby Boomer mother who already had one Gen Xer kid, I was left to my own devices a lot, probably among the last wave of kids before parenting styles changed and it became all about the micro-managing. My mother was never about structuring, and although this gave me a lot of freedom growing up, I’m resentful now that I missed out on a lot: sports, dance lessons, AP classes, etc. My mother had a very laissez-faire approach to parenting, she never even started a college fund for me, unlike parents today, who are stashing away cash while the kid is still in the womb.
But I’m solidly Gen Y in a lot of other ways. I have only a passing interest in TV, Nirvana was not the voice of my generation, and my computer might as well be surgically attached to me. I don’t remember Cobain’s suicide or the fall of the Berlin Wall. When I watch Gen X movies like Slackers, I can sympathize to a point but I’m not really feeling the angst.
Wow, that’s really insulting. I might as well say Gen X is Vanilla Ice to Gen Y’s Eminem. We’re not a watered-down Gen X who can’t live up to the original. We’re our own generation, with our own foibles and strengths. I actually think your Eminem comparison is a good one. I go through periods of loving and hating Eminem. He can be flashy, shallow, and degrading. But then he also has a biting sense of humor, a lot more emotional depth than he’s usually given credit for, and a lot of his rage and disappointment is focused on himself and the forces that shaped him.
And I can’t tell if your Green Day comment is tongue-in-cheek or not, but regardless Green Day is a very popular band right now.
I disagree with this statement. Gen Xers did not do this, boomers did. Gen X hasn’t done much of anything to change the world. In fact, we grew up in a world that was supposed to be changed for the better and perhaps part of the reason we’re so cynical is that we grew up seeing that these “changes for the better” were not as effective as boomers thought they would be.
Xers were born at a time when children in general were not “fashionable” so to speak. Nowadays you see every store, restaurant, etc. has accomodations for children and families. This wasn’t so when we were growing up. As teenagers and young adults, the sheer number of boomers kept Xers in menial jobs. Many of us were clerks, coffee jockeys, waitresses and so forth long after high school. Many Xers are even now just starting to get into a “career” in general. We were an afterthought to the “me” generation. No wonder we feel so alienated.
I think another MAJOR factor for the general disillusionment and discontent is that Gen X is the first generation in almost a century to live at an economic level below that of our parents. Our parents could buy a house when they got married, many Gen Xers will never even be able to afford to buy a house. (Not to mention that Gen Xers are in general more reluctant to get married in the first place.) Our parents got out of school and got good jobs with companies that provided many benefits and incentives to stay as well as opportunities for advancement. A Gen Xer’s “advancement” is often simply a lateral move for more money. It is to our disadvantage to stay in one job and we know it. All we have to do is look at younger people being hired for a similar or lower position but getting paid more money than we are currently getting paid.
I’m not complaining. I just think that Xers have a lot of good reasons to be cynical. I think the next twenty years will see Xers having more success career-wise and having families. I don’t think Xers will ever really control the vote the way boomers did or Millenials will. At least in that way we can remain the rebels we imagine ourselves to be.
Yeah. My husband was born in 1977 (definitely Gen-X). I was born in 1983 (technically on the cusp, but whatever). We get along just fine :).
I’ll level with you guys; when I first started reading this thread, I was getting pissed off. It seemed like another iteration of the “young people today” complaint, except directed towards people my age.
To shatter the assumptions of your broad brush:
I read. Voraciously. I also like to learn, and have never contested a grade based on anything other than the teacher being wrong. And, when I say wrong, I mean, teacher-insisting-that-the-27th-amendment-to-the-Constitution-established-presidental-term-limits wrong. (Bitter? Me? Nah…).
I don’t seek the approval of my friends for my every action; and if any guy had said that his friends needed to approve of me before I could date him, I’d dump his butt. Actually, now that I think about that, my (younger) ex said that once. And I did.
I hate working in groups; in fact, there are no words to express how much I don’t want to work in groups. Give me an overall goal, give me a time frame, and give me the freedom to do it the way that I need to do it.
Granted, I do on occasion seek approval when none is necessary (though not generally in a work environment). These situations, however, are situations that set me off (I was yelled at a lot as a kid. My husband calls it emotional abuse. I call it growing up).
I also personally display imaginative thinking. At least, I’d like to think that I do. Considering that most people don’t “get” me, or “get” the way that I do things, I imagine that it’s probably true.
I think there is a lot of pressure in the middle/upper-middle/upper class suburbia environment to do well in school, take AP courses, etc. I think a lot of it is due to fear for our own futures. I know that I’m not going to be as economically successful as my parents–or that, if I am, it’s going to require more work and/or luck than it did for them. A lot of people my age have uncertainty about the stability of their parents financial state as well. Gen-Xers, say, six or seven years ago, could be assured that their parents would be financially stable, even if they themselves were not. Our generation. . .not so much. White collar jobs ain’t what they used to be (or so I hear).
Some of this might breed different traits. Just. . .don’t go dismissing us all as a bunch of uncreative sheep.
Yeah, I was afraid it was going that way, too. Nothing got me more pissed off than Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation” which ended by slamming GenX for never having done anything. (I’m sorry you’ll never be thought of as being as great as Edward R. Murrow, but it’s not our effing fault we had no World War for you to report on, Brokaw!)
I think we’re talking in broad stereotypes here. No one is saying all Millenials are like this. I know I don’t fit the GenX stereotype - I own my own house for one thing. But I’m certainly cynical and sarcastic and unable to maintain a relationship. If you’re escaping those characteristics, bully for you - not being in GenX is a good thing in a lot of ways.
I consider myself a late Gen-Xer (born in 1978), and I notice definite differences between my generation and the current crop of college students that I work with.
In general, many of the students I see seem much more attached to their parents than we did. On the one hand, it’s good to have a close relationship with your family. On the other hand, it makes me crazy when a mom calls me to say, “My son wants to study in Guatemala next semester.” Oookay, why doesn’t your son come to my office and talk to me himself then? He’s nineteen, not seven.
To be fair, most of the students I work with come from fairly privileged backgrounds and their parents are paying a nice chunk of change for them to be here. I suspect there’s a lot less Gen-M parental involvement at the community college level. However, this is a trend that colleges and universities across the country are dealing with.
I suspect the “hovering parent” syndrome has a couple of causes. 1) Cell phones and e-mail make it much easier for parents and kids to remain in close contact with each other. Also, it’s hard for me to shake the suspicion that these late Boomer parents are trying to live vicariously through their young’uns.
I was 9 when he died but if we were using 1981ish as the starting point for Gen M they were 13. Its not as though Nirvana went off the radios as soon as he died. Nirvana remained popular at least for the next 5-7 years and probably still is.
At 37 I still suspect I fit well into most Gen-X stereotypes:
I have absolutely no ambition whatsoever (and I don’t care)
I still despise authority
I still don’t give a flying (insert your choice of word here) about anybody else’s approval
I still hold to the beliefs and attitudes I had when I was 15, 20 and 25
I find the idea of a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence makes me feel ill
I still think anarchy (of the libertarian socialist variety) is the way
Possibly I am still Gen-X. Possibly I am still a punk
Gen Millenium otoh seem to be focused on careers (never had one and never wanted one - which is why I got a degree in philosophy)
They seem to respect and trust authority figures
A tendency to be conservative
Clothing seems to have become boring (to me)
As I sit here and type this I have The Subhumans blaring on iTunes. That probably says a lot
On the subject of defining movies for Gen-M, I don’t think there are any yet. Napoleon Dynamite captures my social circle’s sense of humor well, but it was over a year too late to be cutting-edge or defining.
I think we DO have defining television shows. Ever notice how The Daily Show’s studio audience is mostly college students? Yeah. Also, I think that Family Guy is to Gen-M as The Simpsons is to Gen-X. I’ve noticed that most people in my circle, when first getting to know one another, usually have at least one Family Guy quote-fest.
Yes, and I listen to Led Zeppelin and they are still played on the radio, but that doesn’t make their music the defining music of my generation. I’m terribly sorry, but you can have Kurt when you pry him from my cold, dead hands. Or should that be the other way around? You can have the Foo Fighters though.
)
You can have the Foo Fighters though.