The [Disco Chives] Misplaced Parrot Complaint Thread
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The US began full-scale combat operations in Vietnam in 1964, and withdrew all its forces in 1973, which is only 9 years. '64 makes sense as a starting point for Gen X, because that's when the oldest of the Boomers were of military age, but we would have to extend the end point a fair bit past the end of the war to make up a generation. I think the election of Reagan makes as much sense for the end of Gen X as anything else.
On generations... I agree that boundaries are muddled and depend on who is doing the defining. One thing that may cloud the issue a bit is that there are (at least) two different understandings of 'generation': "all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively. It can also be described as, "the average period, generally considered to be about 20–30 years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, and begin to have children." (Yes, I looked that up!)
The modern understanding of generation is usually 'all people born at about the same time' and is mostly split into roughly 15-year groups, either strictly by year, or also considering society as a whole, or defining it to suit your argument (sorry, my inner cynic got out for a bit).
So, my personal groupings would be
I'm from '68, so definitely Gen X
Okay... so in my head...
Those who born around the time of the Vietnam war are a single generation BECAUSE they didn't experience war in their childhoods. It made us a little too optimistic, maybe. We were the peace-and-love-just-say-no-to-drugs generation. Before us: aka those who remember the moon landing but were not old enough to be attending "sock hops" as teenagers are also thought of as "Gen X" But if they ARE Gen X, how can someone like you, Gordig, who was born after 1980, also be Gen X? That would make Gen X way too long. And if maxwell Frost is GenZ, then Millennials is way too short.
This break down, doesn't seem to correlate (in my mind) with events/ musically or politically. And... as already stated by a few in here, many people don't feel like they belong to the generation this system has divised and current journalists certainly are not using it consistently.
If Boomers came after the war, then they were born after 1945. Between 1945-1960(ish) presumably. Okay, I can go as far as 1965 when I "do the math".... but that would put anyone born in a 20 year period in the same "generation" and that just isn't "how it feels" to me. I feel like those born around 1960 - Maybe up to 1979 are "my generation. I don't think of those born after 1979 as "Millennials" But not quite Gen X either. They did see the birth of Dessert Storm as children and a 20 year long war in the dessert as they entered adulthood. I feel like that generation between 1979 - 1990 are the ones kinda lumped in with other generations. As well as those born between 1960 - 1969. Not based on "math" but on experience.
In my mind, Gen X (my generation) not only didn't see war as children, but also didn't have all the technology that came after 1989. We didn't have VHS as kids. We didn't even have a Disney movie. Cinderella came out when I was too little to see it, and The Little Mermaid came out the year I graduated. We had Walk-man's, not CD's. We had Atari, not NES. We DIDN'T see the moon landing. We didn't have computers in schools. We went to arcades and were "latch key" kids because our mothers were the "first" generation to enter the work force "en masse".... etc.
How does it "feel" to you guys? Does The Strauss and Howe theory that fixmypcmike shared, FEEL "right" to you?
LOL... So many comments, by the time, I got my thought out...
I can see how the definition of what a generation is could lead to all this confusion. Thanks for "looking it up" LOL
I don't blame you, Wendy!
LOL
...wouldnt 1960/1965 - 1980 be the Pepsi Generation?
I am Australian also and listened to a lot of British rock as well as Australian, likewise TV shows, fair bit of dubbed Japanese content in there too particulary cartoons
so my experieces are quite different to the American ones
my mother worked, my father being a Latvian immigrant had different views on gender related tasks and so they shared household chores
there was a lot more gender equality in 20th century Northern European countries than the British colonies
so I grew up with both parents working and doing housework together spending time with ones kids was important and was rather shocked when I got older to find a lot of other people didn't do that
Mum's family being farmers were similar in as far as work distribution
there was not this "Happy Days" Americana like culture your Boomers had, I found that show utterly fascinating BTW
after my Dad passed when I was 10 I will admit I did very much become a latchkey kid
I travelled across town to a private school by train and bus, Mum was often studying at Uni for futher degrees to increase her pay so had to cook my own meals etc
no curfews and stuff, never heard of the concept
LOL! That works for me!
In Finland, we call "Boomers" the "Large age group" and that is people born from 1945-1950. I would never consider myself to be a Boomer as I was born in 64
Admittedly, the conception of generations is pretty America-centric.
The original Strauss-Howe theory was most definitely (and admittedly) US-centric.
I find the notion of Gen X being optimistic strange -- to me, Gen X is a classic cynical generation, like the Lost Generation, seeing the idealistic Boomers as naive. The just-say-no-to-drugs is a Boomer creation, as they turned their idealism to protecting their kids (Millennial kids, not the Gen Xers who were skipped over by all the concern for protecting the kids).
An interesting tidbit: there were Presidents of the WWII civic generation through Bush Senior, then straight to a Boomer, Clinton. No Presidents from the Silent generation. And a typical Silent will be proud of that fact.
Another tidbit: I see Marc Cohn's "Silver Thunderbird" as a perfect example of a Gen X child (even though he was born in 1959) talking about a Silent generation parent.
That's the point, though: that's the type of media that Gen Xers were MAKING. That's what reflects who the Gen Xers were. Culture is primarily shaped by teenagers and young adults, as children tend not to have much in the way of disposable income or, you know, personal freedom. When you were young, Gen Xers weren't shaping culture; culture was being imposed on them by Boomers. I certainly wasn't consuming media that reflected Millennials when I was young.
Remember also that there's a gap between childhood and adulthood in each generation. TV shows like Daria (and the TV commercials of the late 90s) are classic Gen X creations.
...when it comes down to it, I simply consider myself a crusty old curmudgeon.
Here in the Netherlands this generation was called Generation Nothing or Generation French Fries before 'Gen X' was used. Possibly because we are/were seen as a bunch of lazy nihilist punks LOL (or to put it another way: "Meh, whatever..." and a shrug).
Generation French Fries is hillarious to me!
Yay :-)
Untranslated it's Patatgeneratie.
Sorry Gordig, I missed this earlier...
So, while Curt Cobain would have been born in a time when I would call him a Gen Xer. His music (grunge) became popular after what I would call 80's music. 1980's Pop (ex:Madonna) and those 80's hair bands (like Metallica) or R&B (Michael Jackson) were a different "era" in my mind, than the grunge, punk and "alternative" music that followed directly afterward. Not that Gen X didn't like it or listen to it. I just wouldn't call those who were "teens" or "young people" that were embracing it "Gen X". That's the precise generation I don't know how to catergorize. That's the generation after mine but before "Millennials", that had computers and the internet, and their video games were consoles instead of at the arcade, and their movies were on VHS from Block Buster and less so in theaters.
Glenn Eichler (creator of Daria) was born in 1956 so would probabally be considered a "Boomer" but he made Daria for a generation that would be between Gen X and Millenials, which aired in 1997. Definitely not intended for what I consider Gen X (in my opinion).
I definitely am happy to know that!
Thank you for sharing that. I do find it interesting to hear what others were experiencing around the world. Especially during times when, myself in the US, wasn't being exposed to that kind of thing. Not in our media, or classrooms. Insightful. Thank you
I had to Google Daria because I have never heard of it
Just to clarify, I think it should be something like:
1945-1960 Boomers
1960 - 1975 Gen X
1975 - 1990 SOMETHING (currently unnamed)
1990 - 2005 Millennial
2005 - 2020 Gen Z
And I am Gen Let's-avoid-political-discussions-eh?
Okay, Richard.
The "Old Folks" wisdom that I learned as a child was that a life is divided into eleven seven year periods. And a few suffered one or two more.
That feels like it makes sense to me.
I lost track... did the demented blueberry start this?... Generally blueberries don't identify as a particular generation because they either rot or get eaten within a few days...
As far as what generation I identify with, I find that whole generation thing rather pedantic, punctilious and decorous... mainly because I'm not really sure what those words mean and I'm not going to look them up... I think pedantic has something to do with pendulum ownership or swinging from them and maybe decorous mean having penchant for decorating things... possibly with little pendulums or pendulous objects... punctilious is probably something dealing with tasty punctuations like cinnamon sugar commas or fudge ellipses...
I also feel the whole generation thing is proglobulent if you are a mechtinatious individual with saletenifacliate valiconiferious memories of past lives or at least are in touch with genetically transporculated ancestral memories... Like technically if you are a baby boomer and don't go around making loud baby noises constantly (I'm assuming that's what "baby booming" is) but are instead deathly afraid of being mauled by a saber tooth weasel or stepped on by a wooly porcupine, are you still considered a baby boomer or just a person with weird, but historically justified fears?
My point was... well was going to be, something about how I just made up a bunch of words because I was too lazy to look up better words because the internet sucks at understanding what synonyms actually are beyond the most common usages and more sophisticated ones (in a satirical sense) pretty much require an actual thesaurus made out of dead trees, which unfortunately I'm too lazy to go into the other room to look for... it's huge and not hard to find, but since it's just easier to make stuff up, I chose that...
But that wasn't actually my point either because I rarely have a point... I was going to go on about how basically people keep making up words and it's not about whether it's right or wrong or intellectually nanotactutant (sorry I did it again), but how often others end up using the word, before it becomes an actual word or possibly saying... like "on accident" instead of "by accident" which probably replaced "through accident" or something equally transporculant like that...
So basically it went on like that for a while, but got boring so I deleted all that and wrote this instead which easier to read until you get to the part where I go on about if you remember that time you were in Pompeii and that guy in the tunic was saying that the mountain was fine and the extra smoke and rumbling was the because the big snake that lived in Vesuvius was gassy because he ate too many isicia omentata at Jupiter's shindig the other night and how disappointingly wrong he was, which is now why you have a fear of molten rock and trusting the advice of random tunic clad individuals that could fastulactantly interfere with what generation classification you identify with, which is now... being that that was such a long run-on sentence, what I meant was I deleted everything until this point... well that point which led to this point which actually made no point...
So in lieu of a point, please focus on my Stupid Blueberry and ponder what might have led to... A) me sticking tiny googly eyes on a blueberry... B) making teeth and a tongue for said blueberry... C) Taking a picture of it and posting it, in open admission of the fact that I do stuff like that.. D) having a source for such tiny googly eyes in the first place...
Demented blueberry? Well... I started it. It was just a musing that got lost. I will go now and join it. Bon Appetit!
Mr Spock Socks