I did not read Douglas Coupland. I never felt it was the pop culture/consumer stuff that defines the generation, I always felt like it was more the fact that the baby boomers were self aware mass media people, and we came after them, and all we ever saw was their self awareness from the outside looking so stupid, and naturally we wanted to define ourselves in opposition, but how can you be counter to this generation that worships themselves as counterculture, and are wrong about it. It’s the paradox that youthfull rebellion of the baby boomers became the status quo, so that made it absurd, and how can you not be overly self aware if you are struggling to rebel against a bunch of fake rebels? How can you be real? It’s impossible. So all you can be is sarcastic.
So I think my generation is always summed up by that Homerpalooza thing where Bart asks the kid if he’s being sarcastic and he says, “I don’t even know anymore!” It’s all about watching 90210 because it is so pathetically stupid that you laugh at it, until it absorbs you and you just like it unironically. The reason we are defined by pop culture is because we are hyperaware of it on so many more levels than previous generations could be. We have a mass post modern consciousness. I can’t figure out how things will be next.
AwSnappity, you may have more in common with your boyfriend than with someone born in 1962. But follow the logic of your thought. Every generation would be virtually identical to the next and we know that there are shifts over time.
The book is way too complex for me to describe, but in general the authors support the idea that generations roughly fall into twenty year periods. These approximate twenty year periods tend to cluster into groups of four so that every eighty years the generations recycle and tend to have many things in common. They pattern has held true since Puritan days with the exception of the 19th Century. The Civil War was so catastrophic that it disrupted the 80 year cycle and a generation was skipped.
At any rate, it these ideas have merit, Generation X will certainly have children to be proud of. They will have much in common with the “G.I. Generation.”
I really don’t usually indulge much in generalizations, but this book makes so much sense to me.
It describes my own generation, Boomer, as beginning in 1943 and lasting until 1960. Most other references to Boomers begin with 1945 or even 1946. It has always been obvious to me that my friends and I are night and day different from my sister and her generation. She is only 5 years older that I am, but she absolutely grew up in a different world. For example, her high school years were pre rock and roll.
I was born in 86, but I have a lot more in common with Generation X than Y. I love John Hughes movies and new wave and other 80’s music and new wave haircuts and fashions and so on and so on and and and.
When were your parents born? That’s how I’ve always made the distinction, since I think how your parents grew up plays a big role in how you’ll grow up.
If your parents were old enough during WWII to serve, you’re a boomer.
If your parents weren’t old enough to serve, or were born during the War, you’re a Gen. X (my case).
If your parents were born after the War, they were boomers and you’re a Gen. Y.
So what you’re saying is that if I had been born a month premature, in December 1981, I’d’ve been in the same generation as my stepfather, who was born in 1965?
The theory doesn’t necessarily work if your parents were significantly older than the norm when you were born. My parents were born around WWI; I was born in 1961. I’ve never identified with the boomer label because I have many older brothers and sisters (who would be defined as boomers and pre-boomers) and my cultural identifications are very different from theirs.
Ditto again. I’ve met skepticism when claiming to be a GenX member, being born in 1964. But the thing is, my mother was born in 1945. So the offspring of a Boomer can’t be a Boomer, right? Isn’t that an immutable law?
I don’t like being called a Boomer. Makes me feel older than I am.
I find this extremely interesting, working together. I am a 1974-born mother of a 1993-born son. So, I’m Gen X, and he’s Gen Y. His little brother or sister will be born in 2005, making her/him a what, exactly? (Are we using the term “Z”? And what happens in 2020?) So, I can see that. He’s enough older than the baby that I’ve always suspected they’ll be more like uncle/neice than brother/sister.
The thing I’ve noticed about the littlest Yers, and I don’t know if this has been studied in the oldest ones to see how it develops, is their eye-rolling response to our (Xers) sarcasm. As in, “Yes, we know it’s all so lame, but get over it and have fun, anyway, OK?” They seem, frankly, to be having more fun than we did, even while the world around them is growing more repressive and suckier by the day (sez the doom-and-gloom Xer.) There’s a sense, not of fatalism, but of accepting that things aren’t right or perfect and getting on with life anyway, while I and my friends are still whining about how unfair everything is and how it “should” be.
My Xer cohort seems and (seemed) to be saying things should be different, so why aren’t they? Someone (not us) screwed us, and someone (not us) should fix things, dammit! “Should” only seems to be in the Gen Y vocabulary as a synonym of “can be.” Things “should” be different, therefore, I’m going to work to make them different.
It seems that this burdened yet fairly optimistic world-view is a prerequisite before the next (“Z”) generation is raised with real optimism, minus the burden. I can really see them being the next generation of nation-builders and hard workers.
Gawd, I hope so. Someone’s gotta be paying for my social security.
I understand that it’s tres chic to spit on anything Friends-related, but that disregards the cultural phenomenon that it was. For a lot of people, myself (born 1966) included, it was the first time I saw myself and my friends, our attitudes, likes, interests and struggles represented on television. It made me realize that I actually was part of any generation, and how poorly represented my generation has been overall. I don’t know if Gen X is referred to as The Invisible Generation, but we could be.
Don’t get me wrong; I am not blind to the glaring idiocies of the show, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater in a Gen X discussion.
Is there any forecasting of a shift in generational time span now that women are having babies later in life? It occurs to me, that that’s why I will have two kids of two different “generations.” I had the first at 18 and the second is coming when I’m 30. What about those older Gen Xers (35, 40) who are having their first babies now? Not to mention fertility treatments which extend fertile years even longer. Are we going to end up with sandwiched generations, where Gen 1 (2020-2040) gives birth to Gen 3 (2060-2080), and Gen 2 (2040-260) gives birth to Gen 4? (2080-3000) And will that change anything about generational theory?
Or is this whole delayed maternity thing a blip on the radar that will be reversed shortly?
I was born in 1957, and I’ve never thought of myself as a Baby Boomer. I was just a little too late for all the defining events of that generation. Neither am I Generation X - a little too soon for them. I think I’ll agree with RickJay: I’m a member of Generation Me.
What does that make me? My father was born in 1926 and served at the tail end of the War. My mother graduated from highschool in 1949. They got married in 1953 and I was born in 1963.
I remember events in the 1960s but I was a small boy then.
Music… in high school I listened to rock music like Rush and Saga, but after graduation in 1981 I broke out into the wider world, discovered the famous Toronto-area radio station CFNY, electronic, syntho-pop, and the original alternative music.
I rarely listen to any popular music from before the Beatles’ Revolver. It also seems to me that rap broke into the mainstream here after my music-formative years.
Ideas… I was strongly influenced by the ideas of the Sixties, and periodically I go through a phase of Sixties-browsing, but I never experienced the Sixties’ cultural revolution.
In college around 1984 one of my best friends was an Intelligent Right-winger, and, since I’d grown up in a traditional secular prairie-socialist NDP-type household, this was my first real exposure to conservative ideas. Around the same time, I broke away from the automatic NDP membership that my parents had gotten for me, and started to think for myself (at the time I said that the NDP was too dirigiste). I have always been socially libertarian, and tolerant of ‘alternative’ religions, marriages, sexuality, etc… as long as they are tolerant of difference too.
What Generation does that make me? I have no idea. As in so much in my life, I seem to be Standing On The Cusp midway between groups.
**Sunspace **, I was born in 1971 but I identify with what you are saying 100%. When I was a kid, I lived in a low income neighbourhood that really did resemble Sesame Street. The 1960s ideals pretty much built my world. Subsidised housing that was built on the border between a more high density “inner city” area, and a middle class subdivision and all 3 neighbourhoods formed a community. We were taught 100% tolerance. Out in the larger culture, it was all Free to Be You and Me and the Kids of Degrassi. We truly believed the world was getting better and more fair, and that people from different races, cultures and sexes are more alike inside than they are different on the outside. Not to mention that the environment was in jeopardy and that we were responsible for preserving it, and that it was supposed to be precious.
By the time I was out of highschool it was the late 80s and the baby boomers had changed their mind about all that. It turned out that what was instilled in us as kids was just a social trend that could turn around on a whim. I am still completely shocked and outraged that people get on the radio and say racist or sexist things. I was raised to believe that people who said things like that were either insane or dangerously stupid. Older people don’t see the conflict because they can remember a time when people did a lot more than have an opinion, they remember when racism and sexism was condoned by institutions. Younger people don’t even see it because it’s how things have always been in their world.
Maybe the difference is that for people a little younger, we were at the age to be really disillusioned by that. Maybe the 1961 - 1965 crowd are more borderline where they were already established adults by the time of the 80s backlash, so it did not cause that spiral of doubt in their value system. They have seen a big change, but it came after they formed their identity.
I think there are people as young as their early 20s and as old as 45 who who are like me on this issue. They can never stop deconstructing. Everything is subjective. Everything has a built-in paradox. There’s a huge concern with being original, like there is always a danger that you are a huge cliche and nothing you do is new and nothing you are is unique. I think it affects people my age (born 1965-75) most emotionally. The people a little older and a little younger are better adjusted because they didn’t spend formative years in this angst. They are aware of it and totally understand it, but they don’t feel conflicted about it, they even enjoy it.
Well, I was born in 1972, which is firmly in the middle of any and all definitions of Gen X.
For the record:
I remember a time before CD’s, music videos, AIDS and the internet.
I loved watching Dukes of Hazard before it went into syndication, and I used to love Puttin’ on the Hits.
I had brutal mall hair. Gelly bracelets, leg warmers, Fancy-Ass Quick Zips so tight you had to do them up with a coathanger, while lying on your back on your bed.
Growing up I wanted to be: Debbie Harry, Pat Benitar and Sheena Easton, in that order.
I also owned a boat load of flannel, slacked with the best of them, and identified with all of the characters in “Kicking Tomorrow” by Daniel Richler.
I’m not a huge fan of labels, but the Gen X one fits me to a ‘t’. Sadly, there’s no escaping it.
I think that’s a great point; my husband (born 1969) and I have discussed this at some length, and we have come to the conclusion that we are a generation on the cusp. We’re old enough to know how things used to be, and young enough to see how things are going to be. Older people are comfortable pining for “used to be”; younger people are comfortable with things just they way they are because that’s all they’ve known. I’ve got a foot in both worlds.
A great Canadian example is the metric system. People of my age have a fair knowledge of both systems; my parents would still prefer Imperial; young people don’t know anything but metric.
I think I am a straddler or on the cusp between Gen X and Gen Y.
My pre-teen years were late 80’s/early 90’s. I grew up loving Madonna and Debbie Gibson, tried the Mall Bang (didn’t work for me), pegged my jeans, but I also LOVED the grunge era. Flannels, T’s, and jeans, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The Offspring, Toad the Wet Sprocket, early hip-hop.
I now HATE the 80’s with a passion, except for some of the fashion comebacks recently. They were the older kids and I always felt I had to conform to them and they had such high standards and cliques (“preps”, “jocks”, etc.). I never felt comfortable following that but felt compelled to. I was always too lost, depressed, and felt I was too weird.
I was raised by hippies, not radical, but the ‘free love and drugs’ kinda hippie (hence my understanding and tolerance). I used to listen to my parents’ records when I was young: The Eagles, Pink Floyd, etc. They were rock-n-rollers, partiers, but loved immensly - they were very passionate (and paranoid) people.
I’ve never felt like I “belonged” anywhere. My husband is barely a year older than me and he loves the 80’s. He looks like the typical, cute 80’s boy too (watch Mark Whalberg in “Boogie Nights”). I just like the introverted, dark, self-loathing of the 90’s.
Actually, I was spitting on Friends. Sol was admitting to being a fan. I don’t know that Friends was the generational touchstone you claim it was. We’re nominally of the same generation, and I never saw anything in the show that particularly resonated with me or my peer-group.
