I was also. One time, my younger brothers and I were all riding in a car and we passed an Art Deco building and I mentioned that every time I see an Art Deco building with a semicircular front (like a Quonset hut) it reminds me of the Hall of Justice, which I instantly recognized as being inspired by the Cincinnati Union Terminal when I saw a picture of it. They had no idea what the Justice League even was, much less its headquarters, even though my oldest younger brother definitely watched the cartoons with me.
I don’t know if the concept is “broken” so much as I feel like for the past 30 years there’s been less distinction between generations. I think a big reason for that is due to the internet enabling the blurring of cultural norms between generations more so than in the past. Children and young people seem to spend more time around their parents, which would seem to enable multiple generations to adopt aspects of each other’s styles and norms.
So like as a Gen X growing up, I felt that we tended to spend a lot of time mostly among our peers. As kids our parents tended to just let us go out out play. We adopted tastes in music and fashion that was largely foreign to our parents. As we entered adulthood and the working world, I think there was a lot of resistance to adopting the sort of stuffy hierarchical suit and tie work 40 years at the same place model of older generations.
Lifestyle-wise, I think there’s also a lot more blurring of how people of different ages (and thus different generations) are living their lives. People are waiting longer to get married and/or have kids (if at all). People get divorced or their partner dies. A lot of people actually enjoy having lives. So you see less of people seeming to get culturally “stuck” at whatever style or music was popular when they were 20 and then spending the next several decades checking off the various milestones indicative of their age.
So I think because of that, Gen-X (like me) is the last distinctive generation where we were socially and culturally distinct from our parents. Also, not coincidentally, the 90s seems to me to be the last culturally distinct decade. At least as such that you could film a movie taking place in the 1990s and have it obviously taking place there (for example, Captain Marvel). And even then it’s mostly because of the lack of smart phones, flat TV screens and obvious 90s soundtrack and band T-shirts. In contrast, I would have no idea that Saltburn took place in 2006 rather than 2023, other than it vaguely resembles something out of a Tommy Hilfiger ad from that era.
I’m not sure I agree. I don’t have time to flush out a full thesis, but just thinking technologically and what we grew up with, there are huge differences in how we interact with the world. Gen X saw the dawn of home computers. Early Millennials witnessed the beginning of the internet explosion. Later Millennials lived through its growth. Gen Z never knew a time before the popular internet. They came of age with the ubiquity of cell phones and then the introduction of smart Phones. Generation Alpha always knew iPhones, iPads, and are now living through the popularization of AI. All these technological milestones affect how they interact and perceive the world, what types of media they consume, how they consume media, how they socialize, how they learn, etc.
These particular groups fail pretty bad at the juncture when you consider the 100’s of thousands of 18 - 20 year-olds born in 1925 to 1927 who fought in WWII globally.
Sure, you can focus on the (technological) breakthroughs to make a case for massive change in the past 30 years, but then there are the huge areas of music, film, fashion etc. where the distinction is nowhere near as clear, in large part because of the internet.
Hmm. Late baby boomer here who had a trs80 in the home as a kid.
Anyway, i think generations are an okay broad brush, but obviously miss nuance and detail. The standard generations are too large both in years and in geography, and of course there’s blurring around the edges.
I think what happened in the past is that at some point every 20 years or so young people started dressing and acting radically different from how they used to. Like one minute they’re all “greasers” with leather jackets, the next they’re all long-haired hippies.
But I think it’s often not as obvious that it’s happened until some time has passed. There’s not much difference culturally between a 20 and 30 year old compared to the differences between two people of any age born 20 to 30 years apart.
The problem since I’ve been around is that marketers have used these generational constructs to define their marketing. Gen X’s cynical nature didn’t really respond to being marketed to, but Millennials did. Now they are starting to reach their 40s and are moving out of the prime marketing window, so marketers are trying to define the next generations.
I also think the fact that they can’t come up with names any more descriptive than “Gen Z”, or “Gen Alpha” just highlight how little distinction there is between later generations.
Then change to “lived through the heart of the home computer revolution.” You get the general point.
I mean, I did that, too. and it was fairly important to my life development. I don’t think that makes your point wrong, it just highlights that all the edges of generations are fuzzy.
I’ve said that numerous times throughout the thread, that it’s a continuum. I don’t feel I need to say it again every single post on the subject.
My father was born in 1927. He tried to get into the war by enlisting when he was 17. The war ended before he got out of training.
“Gen Z” is the “Zoomers”. Alpha is new enough that there hasn’t been time yet to come up with a better name for them.
So, 100’s of thousands minus some. I know for a fact 18 - 20 yo. combat soldiers were common as mud. And not nearly everyone went into (much any) training. I’m not in the U.S., and I specified globally.
As always, the boundaries are fuzzy.
I don’t agree. Multi-generational households have been a norm in many communities for a long time and predate the nuclear family of the last century.
Not so much. Gen X still largely fit into the nine-to-five work world, wearing suit-and-tie business. The work 40 years at the same place was kinda taken away from us as business shifted away from employee loyalty and pensions to easy lay-offs and 401ks. There was much less loyalty from companies to retain and pay employees to stay, and more of a push to give minimal raises, where the only way to really advance was to change jobs. There were some movements to casualization of the work world, but they were mild.
It’s the Millennials that pushed relaxing dress codes and normalizing tattoos and the like.
And it’s the Zoomers that are breaking with the idea of the 40 hr work week and going to an office. They are the ones pushing the gig economy that is transforming the work world. Work from home is one element, but even more is the gig work for office jobs, like project managers and coders and business analysts and whatnot. Not hire a company that does those things, so the people that do those things have an employer and contracts with the work, but rather individual contracts with the workers, which means no benefits, no retirement plans, no vacation pay or holiday pay.
Gen X did alter to some extent the expectations on what it means to be an adult. They carried their childhood/teen interests through college into their professional adulthood. Video gaming in particular stands out, but also concerts and other passtimes. We didn’t buy into the previous generations’ expectations that you stop those things to focus on work and family, we declared one could do those things and work and raise a family.
You are correct that technology made a huge impact on our culture and behavior, but it didn’t eliminate age demographics. Consider children of helicopter parents, and how that generation responds to independence. Now look at zoomers, the children who lost school time to zoom because of covid and the impact on their educations but also their social developments.
And look at how social media has completely revolutionized the childhood and adolescent experiences. Constant need for connection, constant need to be online, constant worrying over the bullying, no escape, pushing childhood suicide rates up. Access to porn and the malicious effect that has had on shaping expectations on sexual behavior and attitudes. AI contributions to degrading girls with aggressive “revenge porn”.
The rise of the Incels and the red pill men and the normalization of ideas about how women should be degraded for sexual pleasure. We have yet to see the full impact of that on where our culture is headed, but it isn’t a good place.
I submit that all the junctures fail miserably due to transitions being fluid, not abrupt.
But generations operate more than just on music tastes, film, and fashion. Maybe those were critical distinctions before, but events and experiences shape attitudes of the peer groups much more significantly.
Yes, but I think that was meant as ubiquitous home computers. It wasn’t until Millennials that we went from maybe there being a home computer that you could learn basic on to a GUI and the advent of email that drove daily interaction, followed by the WWW and easy access to the internet in the way that previous methods lacked. I suppose AOL and Compuserve were a step in that transition.
Besides, that just makes you “Generation Jones”, not a real boomer. 
Nah, generational names aren’t really defined until afterwards looking back. That’s how they find the hook to give them a name. GenY, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha are all just rolling off Gen X until the opportunity for new names to solidify. Millennials has caught on for Gen Y, and Zoomers is taking off for Gen Z. Alpha is just driven by a mercantile need to call them something and the progression is easier than following “zoomer” with an unknown label.
I’ve never heard of “generation Jones” prior to this thread. Who created that, when, and what does the name refer to?
First coined in 1999, according to Wikipedia .
Sorry, it’s come up numerous times on this board in relation to Harris, especially. It refers to the transitory group from Boomers to Gen X.
TIL
(plus letters for discourse)