Well, there were the other names like Latchkey Generation and, more popular, MTV Generation. My understanding is “X” was used to reference the unknown, the desire not the be defined. Douglas Coupland says he picked the name from a book where there was a “X” category of people that wanted out from the desire of social climb, wealth, and fame. For me, the first definition resonates and fits at least my experiences with the ethos of my generation. I’m not sure it ever was a placeholder as it comes directly from Coupland’s book. We already had Baby Busters and MTV Generation for us in the 80s. Coupland’s book wasn’t until 1991, and that’s the name that won out in the end.
Our generation’s richest and most infamous member certainly thinks so.
Same here. Dad 20, mom 24. So we learned a bunch of what I consider “Depression” mindset as kids. Folk didn’t have as much, and things were worn/kept/handed down until they wore out.
I bet it is common for people to envision “generations” in terms of their childhood. My oldest sister was bone in 56. In my mind, there is a commonality for people who were kids from the tail end of the 50s, through the 60s, and into the early 70s. Didn’t fight in Viet Nam, remember the advent of color TV, were “free range”, tho warned of “Stranger Danger”, grew up with the Cold War participating in in air raid drills. Something definitely changed with Reagan.
This has been debated over and over again. For some reason people attach some mythical significance to the letter X (cf. X-rated, OSX, X-Factor, X marks the Spot). And there’s been a lot of retconning since it first appeared in print in 1952.
I’ll refer to the point and person that brought it to mainstream attention:
The term gained a modern application after the release of Canadian author Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.The characters in the novel were born in the late 1950s and early 1960s, ironically making them younger baby boomers, or Generation Jones. In 1999, Coupland described his book as being about “the fringe of Generation Jones which became the mainstream of Generation X”.In 1987, he had written a piece in Vancouver Magazine titled “Generation X” that was “the seed of what went on to become the book”`
Although the accepted definition now seems to be that the cut-off point is 1965, I still think that’s retconning. Generation X was not coined as a demographic label, it was used as a sociological and cultural term.
Hence my comment about music.
BTW, Douglass Coupland is also a designer; of among other items this memorial to Canada’s victory in the War of 1812
That’s how all generational demographic labels are used.
Lost Generation was originally used to refer to a group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s.
I heard someone on (I’m pretty sure) the Adam Conover podcast talk about the rise of generational importance as a reaction to the lack of concise decade names post 2000. His argument:
We definitely had the idea of generations, like Baby Boomers, prior to that, but that idea didn’t have much cultural significance. Far more important was the decade, and it was unifying. We’re all living in the 70s and experiencing disco and stagflation; now we’re all in the 80s and it’s Madonna and Reagonomics, etc.
Come 2000, and there’s a bunch of attempted names for the decade, but none catch on, because they’re all stupid (aughties, naughties, oohs). What does catch on in a big way are generational names. Gen Y gets rebranded as the Millennials, and all of the sudden it’s Millennials are ruining this and that.
Using generational names create divisions by dividing people into separate groups, instead of referencing our shared experience, how the decades do. His argument was a very interesting way to look at it, even though I’m sure there are good counterarguments. And there are always problems with “kids today.”
The point remains though, that pre-Millennial, I just don’t remember generational divide as being something that people found that interesting.
ETA: the arguments used to be things like the 60s ended at Altamont or maybe the 60s ended with the 73 oil crisis. Instead of when Gen X started.
Just yesterday, thinking of this thread, I asked my kid what generation she and her husband are. (Her mill, him x.) They commented that what was most significant to them was when PCs and cellphones became ubiquitous. In that vein, they suggested there was an economic class aspect that might not be shared with all with the same birthyear.
I remember hearing about “generation gaps” growing up, even before they started naming generations.
I think generational labels started to become important as a marketing tool. Young people always tend to have their own unique culture so it makes sense that marketers would try to take advantage of that by identifying them as a distinct group with distinct interests in clothing, music, etc.
Those are both the exact same thing.
I used an overhead projector for my whole seven-year teaching career while I was in the Navy (at a military prep school) for the exact same reason. This was in the mid ‘90s through the early 2000s.
I even kept spare bulbs in my desk in case of a bulb failure.
All of my chemistry overheads were hand-written on transparencies in colored overhead markers. (The first year I did them all in water-soluble temporary markers you could wipe off in case of a mistake, but they all blurred the next summer due to high humidity and lack of A/C in my office. So the second year I redid all fifteen volumes of transparencies in permanent Sharpies after discovering you can fix mistakes with isopropyl alcohol.) After five years of teaching chemistry, I switched to physics—for these I did them in MS Word and printed them out on transparencies. (So these ones could be easily adapted to PowerPoint.)
For my last couple of years of teaching, they installed ceiling mounted projectors connected to computers with PowerPoint in each classroom. But the chances were only about 50/50 on the technology actually working on any given day, so I never used them.
I have one as well for a similar reason. A few years after I got out of the Navy, my boss was getting rid of an overhead projector that was identical to the ones I used in the Navy, so he gave it to me for free.
For a while I figured I could use it if I ever taught again. (But I now wonder if such archaic technology would be allowed in the classroom today.) I did use it about ten years ago—along with all of my transparencies—when I tutored my son and several of his classmates in AP Chemistry and AP Physics.
I’m not explaining his argument well. When the culturally relevant language emphasizes a shared experience it unifies people. It isn’t 70s kids versus 90s kids, it’s all us people here living in the 70s.
When the language used emphasizes the differences between people, such as Millennials versus Gen-Z, it acts to increase separation between people.
The observation that we used to talk about decades a lot, but now we don’t very much at all is true. Similarly that we we didn’t talk about generations too much, but now we do a lot is also true. I don’t know how much, if at all, that actually changes our cohesiveness as a society. I think any of the divisions that break down to “kids today” have always existed, and don’t have anything to do with what words we use to describe things.
What I do find very interesting is that describing things generationally is a recent phenomenon. Taylor Swift is a Millennial artist, but Madonna is from the 80s.
Looking up the original show, it appears to be one of Adam Conovers own essays. I haven’t relistened to be reminded if he got the idea from someone else or it’s his own thoughts.
But the only way to emphasize similarities is by differences with others. Nobody ever says that the shared experiences of the 70s included most people having two each of eyes, ears, arms, and legs, or that back in the 70s, everyone ate food and breathed air. The only “common experiences” people would list would be things that weren’t common to other decades.
I misread as you & your brother are aged mid70s and was confused. “How are these old Boomer dads watching Clerks back then?!”
Re: child snatching, I remember a packet for parents to fill out that included a diagram to draw scars or other distinguishing marks and a place to staple dental xrays in case our remains were found in a barn downstate like you hear about. I also remember spreading out Halloween Trick or Treat loot for mom to inspect and tossing some that weren’t individually wrapped.
This chart from Google Ngram says otherwise:
Interesting, in which case the entire premise is flawed.
Except that I think this one is more appropriate.
It is nice and messy and open to lots of interpretation. Eye ball statistics do show a difference in early reference to decades. For example 2010 is lacking before 2010, but 60s, 70s, and 80s all start ramping up halfway through the preceding decade.
I was born in 1980, and I think of myself as an old Millennial. I think this is because when I first started hearing the term “Gen X” in the 1990s it always seemed to be used to refer to people older than me, people in their 20s and 30s, and I was still a teenager. Therefore I concluded I must not be part of Gen X, but rather the generation after them.
As was riffed upon here: