I’m Gen X, too - I’ve had to take others aside (boomers and Gen X) and whisper something to them about how old Gen Y is, and that started even ten plus years ago. What they were calling a “millennial” was probably Gen Z.
For a while there “millennial” became shorthand for “someone younger than me”, kind of like “boomer” now seems to be (hilariously) aimed at “someone older than me”.
But what I’ll never forget is when some boomer called me a millennial. That was, as we used to say, radical.
I wonder how many in Gen Y have been called “boomer”.
I feel like they’ve moved the goalposts a lot on millennials. Gen X has always been ~1965-1979 or 1980. Then we had Gen Y. I can now see how Y became Y2K which became Millennial, but at some point we were calling kids born with a 20- instead of a 19- in their birth year “millennials” (as in, they were born in the new millennium). I think what ultimately happened was, Gen Y basically said “no we get that claim because Y → Y2K → Millennial”, and we all just agreed. Now 1980-1999 is millennials and 2000-2019 is Gen Z… as I understand it.
Thing is, generations are like astrology, there’s no real scientific basis behind it, especially when people display traits from multiple generations.
The boomer thing reminds me of “boomer shooter” which means like DOOM. I guess it was Boomers who made them… Not sure. But they were played by our generation. Boomers didn’t have shooters. Boomers weren’t raised on video games and most of them don’t understand video games.
Thing is, generations are like astrology, there’s no real scientific basis behind it, especially when people display traits from multiple generations.
This is the thing. The Adam Ruins Everything guy did a great takedown on the notion of “generations”. Bears (re)watching when people have internalized marketing strategies a bit too much.
I’m Gen X, too - I’ve had to take others aside (boomers and Gen X) and whisper something to them about how old Gen Y is, and that started even ten plus years ago. What they were calling a “millennial” was probably Gen Z.
For a while there “millennial” became shorthand for “someone younger than me”, kind of like “boomer” now seems to be (hilariously) aimed at “someone older than me”.
But what I’ll never forget is when some boomer called me a millennial. That was, as we used to say, radical.
I wonder how many in Gen Y have been called “boomer”.
I feel like they’ve moved the goalposts a lot on millennials. Gen X has always been ~1965-1979 or 1980. Then we had Gen Y. I can now see how Y became Y2K which became Millennial, but at some point we were calling kids born with a 20- instead of a 19- in their birth year “millennials” (as in, they were born in the new millennium). I think what ultimately happened was, Gen Y basically said “no we get that claim because Y → Y2K → Millennial”, and we all just agreed. Now 1980-1999 is millennials and 2000-2019 is Gen Z… as I understand it.
Thing is, generations are like astrology, there’s no real scientific basis behind it, especially when people display traits from multiple generations.
The boomer thing reminds me of “boomer shooter” which means like DOOM. I guess it was Boomers who made them… Not sure. But they were played by our generation. Boomers didn’t have shooters. Boomers weren’t raised on video games and most of them don’t understand video games.
This is the thing. The Adam Ruins Everything guy did a great takedown on the notion of “generations”. Bears (re)watching when people have internalized marketing strategies a bit too much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=4s
It’s interesting that the guy that ended up naming Gen X is actually from Generation Jones and the book best described people in that age range, TBH.
It never seems to come up much, but Generation Jones is a group that has even more erasure than Gen X. :) But then microgenerations don’t seem to be something most people adopt in their everyday language… https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/forget-boomers-and-millennials-we-actually-belong-to-8-micro-generations/91033196
To your point about games, it’s interesting how some tech influences this guys’ choices for microgeneration breakdowns.