Generation "X" Needs To Do Something of Note, or Keep Mouths Closed

[Odin]

The only things Generation X is famous for is slackers and hackers.

[Odin]

Originally posted by AAHZ
im curious as to the "time frame" that would qualify one to be a "Gereration X'er?

i would like to know this before i vote...
piece

It depends of the social historian or demographer one talks to, but the definition I've come to use is people born from the early 60s to early 80s

[Odin]

Originally posted by Bkeela


Generation X is the progeny of baby boomers, so I would think those born roughly between 1965 through to 1985. Talk of generation Y is far to premature. The youngest of generation Y shouldn't be in high school yet.

I would like to know what we are going to call the generation after Z.

Grrr, I hate people calling my generation "Gen Y." I prefer my generation to be called "Millennials"

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Odin
Grrr, I hate people calling my generation "Gen Y." I prefer my generation to be called "Millennials"

That sounds like the name of a suicide cult. Gen Y isn't that great, but it's better than Millennials, IMO.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Eli
What generation is 1985?

Millennial.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Bkeela
Generation X will be responsible for steering the Earth away from global disaster.

Or pick up the pieces.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Wycoff


I'd say it extends to 1983, maybe 1984. My wife was born in 1981, and I was born in 1982. There's a definite gap between the two of us and our closest siblings, who were born in 1986 (my brother) and 1987 (her brother).

I think one characteristic that could establish the boundries between Gen-X and Gen-Y would be actual memory of the Cold War. I can remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I can remember the 1992 Soviet coup. I can remember having Reagan as president. My brother can't remember any of that.

Another difference would be the spread of information technology. I was 12 or 13 the first time that I used the internet. When I was a senior in high school few people had cell phones or used instant messenger. My brother and my oldest brother-in-law had completely different experiences.

As to the topic question: I voted that we'll get around to doing something someday. The Boomers have set the bar so low that anything we do will look good in comparison.

I've read a book called Generations by a sociologist named William Strauss and Strauss puts 1982 as the boundary between Gen-Xers and Millennials based on the fact that it was in the early to mid 80s when "baby on board" stickers started showing up on cars and the amount of "think of the children" rhetoric from culture warriors increased drastically.

Strauss states that the average parenting style cycles back and forth from "over-protection" to "under-protection" and back again over a span of 4 generations and that the Xers were "under-protected" while is Millennials have been more and more protected ("zero-tolerance", etc.") and that the babies being born now are being over-protected.

[Alexander I]

I was born right on the cusp between X and Y, but I feel more affiliation with GenX because GenY's culture hadn't fully developed yet when I was little and I was raised by Baby Boomers.

And for example, my parents (1949) are thirteen years older than my wife's (1962) and she's only a year younger than me.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
1980 is too late.

1945-1960 makes sense for the boomers.

1961-1976 makes sense for generation X. That way there is 30 years between the oldest boomers and their first children.

The book I mentioned above has Boomers being born from 1943 to 1961. The author states that we generally don't rember much from the first 2 or 3 years of our lives, so that the Baby Boomers as defined sociologically, started being born a couple years before WW2 ended and the demographic baby boom began and the shift to Gen-X occured in 1961, a few years before the demographic boom ended and the 60's student movements began.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Wycoff


That sounds like the name of a suicide cult.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

we are fighting and dying in your bogus war in iraq. the baby boomers are sending theier own children to the slaughterhouse. and for what?

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
we are fighting and dying in your bogus war in iraq. the baby boomers are sending theier own children to the slaughterhouse. and for what?

You are serving in Iraq? Which unit?

[Dis]

we had better music. Our music alone is worthy of admiration and respect.

[Drake Tungsten]

I've always heard 1964 to 1980...

That's what I've always heard, as well. I was born in the last year of Gen X ('79)...

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
we are fighting and dying in your bogus war in iraq. the baby boomers are sending theier own children to the slaughterhouse. and for what?

Actually I think they are sending their grandchildren to Iraq.