Talkin bout Your Generation

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Hey Aspies, where do you fit in? Are you

---Baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964)

---Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980)


Millennials (born between 1980 and 1994)

Gen Z ( born between 1996 and 2015)

And how do you feel about your group?

I am Generation X. My group followed the (self) important Baby Boomers and are notorious for underachieving, even "slacking". We had pretty awesome music and pop culture, but computers were barely a thing for a long time. We can't believe how old we are getting...

Technically I'm a millennial [should a generation really span almost 20 years, though?], but I definitely see myself as more of a Generation X-er. Most of the common threads of millennials... the reality TV shows, the internet culture, the music, pokemon, not to mention other millennials, were just never a part of my life. I didn't grow up with a computer or the internet at home. I first got a computer when I graduated high school in 1999 [though to be fair, I was 15 years old at the time], and didn't get online at home until sometime in 2001 when I was in my second year of college. Most of my friends in college were Generation X-ers, and before I met them I listened to strictly pre-1980 classic rock. In college I discovered jazz, punk, and other sub-genres of rock. I was definitely a slacker, with hippie tendencies, just none of the self-import. It's always been pretty obvious to me that I could be wrong about almost anything and outside of my immediate family, I could tell that I really didn't matter to the rest of the world [the feeling remains more than mutual]. I've always been more a follower of the slang and lingo of a time before I was born, to say nothing of the TV shows and movies from back then. When FB once had a quiz which claimed to correctly guess the ages of 99.97% of users, it thought that I was 58 years old.... I was 26 at the time. I didn't get along with people my age when I was a kid, and by and large I still don't. The family called me "old man" since I was a baby, and as I get older, I tend to act younger, save for my enjoyment for manual work and self improvement [I don't see either as a very common traits in the millennials I've known]. I actually went almost five years without using the internet [until last year], still use a flip phone, and the millennials I've known just can't seem to fathom what that was like [or that flip phones still exist]. It was lonely, but peaceful. The thing I missed the most was streaming music online.

Generation X are often latch key kids left to fend for themselves by two working parents. Or divorced parents. We 'work to live' rather than 'live to work', because we saw the effects of grinding on our folks. We took school a lot more seriously as a whole, because it paid off more than it often seems to do now.

Yeah, my father wasn't around and my mother worked constantly as an RN [she's finally about to retire in the next couple months], so I've literally spent most of the minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc. of my life alone, save for work. I always loved the idea of a few different careers, but I can literally make more money bartending locally than any of those careers would offer around here. Was going to relocate to Oregon and get free college, work towards one of the careers I'd enjoy [which would've been financially worthwhile up there], but my appendix burst and I'm back in the Southeast again. Since COVID has put me out of work and my back and shoulder are really going bad, I'm planning to bite the bullet and file disability, better to do that than to struggle to pay a tax rate of 35% until I'm 66 years old like my mother had to.

I really can't keep in mind all these generations' names, who am I then

I am an ok boomer

Obviously we cant answer that unless you tell us your age, or birth year.

The "Greatest Generation" (who fought in WWII, grew up in the Great Depression, and sired the Boomers) ruled the oval office for a long time. JFK through the elder George Bush.

The Boomers took over with Clinton, and continued to rule with the younger George Bush, but were momentarily deposed by the Gen X POTUS Barack Obama, before returning to power with Trump, and will continue to rule regardless of whether Trump or Biden wins in two months.

But presidents of a generation have little obvious in common (JFK, Nixon, Johnson, Reagan)( Bill and Hillary, W., Trump, Biden). Likewise us regular folks of a given generation seldom have much in common except pop culture touchstones.

<-- Boomer.

We're reaching retirement age, and many of us are trying to hold on to some measure of relevancy, whether through entertainment, politics, or just by trying to remain "cool" and popular.  Our music seems to be in every commercial, people our age are trying to run this country, and many of us seem to enjoy pretending that we're 20 to 40 years younger.

I am loathe to admit it, but our time in the spotlight is over; socially, politically, artistically ... we're done.

X'er

Was quite the slacker in the early 90's

"Millenial" but in Eastern Europe, the shared experience of my generation is not really relatable to "Millenials" in the US.
What defines my generation is: collapse of the Eastern Block happened in my childhood. All my life, I was living in rapidly changing reality obviously not relatable to experiences of my parents' generation.
My generation is living in a time of exceptional peace and prosperity for the region. It's kinda opposite to US Millenials.

An interesting (hopefully) way of looking at the generational differences is seeing what songs and artists were popular during the epicenter of each wave.

----Baby Boomers (1970): Beatles, Jackson Five, Chicago, Stevie Wonder (whoa!)

----Generation X (1987): Madonna, Michael Jackson, George Michael, Whitney Houston (let's dance!)

----Millennials (2005): Mariah Carey, Green Day, Kelly Clarkson, Backstreet Boys (listenable)

----Generation Z (2019): Billie Eilish, Luke Bryan, Cardi B, Panic! at the Disco!

Thank you for your generation's social movements, brilliant films & music, and trying to teach the rest of us how to be more laid back and accepting of others.

--a "whatever millennial"

I'm not sure what Millennial is. I've heard it applied to people in their 20s. I've heard it applied to people in their 40s. Seems kind of broad and like a buzzword. But maybe that's how generational appellations work.

Anyway, some surveys say I'm Millennial. Some may even say I'm late Gen-X (but that's very late and very liberal a definition).

When I was younger, it was called Generation Y. The LAST generation to grow up without computers and Internet as mainstream in childhood. The FIRST generation to see that all implemented on a societal scale before reaching adulthood.

The generations before me came into adulthood in a "pre-computer" world. The generations after me had it from the cradle. Mine is an odd outlier, a foot in both worlds. Anyone around my age relate?

When I was in my 20's, I had the privilege to work with some very cool young guys from Eastern Europe as cave tour guides [not spelunking, we had paved paths electric lights, and a waterfall pump to assist the natural waterfall in the dry seasons] at the Ruby Falls cavern in Chattanooga, Tennessee. When I asked one of them about what it was like to be young during the fall of the Eastern Block, he said that their region had been [and still was] in so much poverty, there wasn't a lot of local change afterwards. Interesting to hear that there were indeed marked differences in the lives of many after the USSR fell. I wish US media would report more about the depressing, worrisome situation in Belarus, sometimes that keeps me up at night wondering what's really going on.



Pretty much, yea....



Amen, brother.... I am something of a fan of Greta Van Fleet, which is a young, modern band [zoomers] who accurately describe their music as "unapologetically classic rock". They kind of remind me of the [mostly] local New Orleans band Zebra, which had a decidedly Zeppelin feel, and indeed did a few covers of Plant and Zeppelin at most of their live shows in the 1990's.



I'm 36, but I can most definitely relate. When I was very young [pre-middle school] computers were viewed by the lower middle class and the working poor as unnecessary novelties, and when people suggested that they would soon be a major part of everyday life, some of us were pretty skeptical about it. When we had them in schools, they weren't for typing papers [I had a typewriter and a word processor before I ever thought I'd have a PC at home], they were for, well, getting used to computers: typing & grammar games with monochrome graphics, as well as text-based games like Oregon Trail and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy [which was text ONLY]. I usually use the "Oregon Trail Generation" or "Gen Y" as a label, because as a child, I didn't have a computer, much less internet, at home. My first video games were arcade [in public places], Atari, and Nintendo [original NES]. The last console game system I ever had [to this day] was a Super Nintendo. I finally got my own PC in college [a very old, even at that time, Windows 95 machine], and home internet in my sophomore year. To this day, the only video games I played after my consoles were The Sims, Rollercoaster Tycoon, & and Sims 2 [which I still do play]. When most other millennials and younger people I meet try to get to know me, video games are usually one of the first subjects which come up. I've spent more time watching other people play video games in the past 20 years than socializing with them, which is likely a big part of why I have so few friends, but "different strokes"....