I'm at the very, very beginning of Gen Y (1984). It's a bit weird - my family was always "early adopters", technology-wise, yet I CAN remember a time before we had internet access. It's weird because growing up, I always watched GenX movies and dreamed about growing up to be a GenXer... I guess I didn't really understand "generations" so well...

I have this theory that the baby boomers basically ended in around 1957/1958, myself. I was born in 63 and I've never thought of myself as a boomer - my 14 years older brother is a boomer: he got the sixties and the Doors and the Beatles and the hippy years and the protests and dodged Vietnam barely with an obscure kidney ailment. I got declining schools and cultural change and drugs in high school (thank the gods; never could have survived without it ;-) ) boarded up downtowns and the Ramones and the Talking Heads and Repo Man, which I've always thought of as sort of my generation's defining movie. My boomer brother says scornfully that I don't have a generation and my immediate peer group friends say, no, we don't because there are hardly any of us.

I wasn't born yet when Kennedy was assassinated; I barely remember the moon walk (I was in kindergarten); Vietnam was over before I was in 2nd grade; I was 16 when John Lennon died. I wore a sticker against Contra Cocaine, protested the Gulf War and was working at my college art gallery on the day the Challenger blew up.
Around then the media started calling us Gen X, slackers and it was kind of nice to have a label after sort of being the not really there baby bust. But as they had labelled, so they took it away: suddenly I was supposedly too old to be generation X. In the early 90s there was a Tom Tomorrow cartoon I've never been able to find online that I loved, it summed it up: he said, "When they first said Gen X, I was one of them. But now I've aged and the demographic hasn't."

I know, it's a false distinction: generations are stupid; people's lives are too flexible; it's all media nonsense - but for whatever reason, I've always found this stuff kind of interesting. I think it's the way, when you look at old photos, there always seems to be a defining look - not just hair and clothing, but almost bone structure, like the way everyone in 1895 has that heavy chin and the way everyone in the late 60s has that doe eyed high forehead look. I've always wondered why that is.

I think I'm solidly in the middle of GenX (1975). But I don't really identify with a generation.

Gen-ζ - it's kind of an opt-out. All the generational labels have negative connotations that I don't want to be associated with. I feel like those labels are always formed by the elder generations with a certain intent to classify & dismiss.

I'm an old GenX guy. (I've known people my age who were very, very much baby boomers though, identifying more with the culture of their older peers.) I don't identify with the irony/cynicism aspects of Gen X very much, but most of the cultural stuff, I do.

I am Gen X. I didn't really do the slacker thing myself, but that philosophy, the idea that we're not going to do as well financially as our parents and they don't seem that happy anyway so let's find something a bit more fulfilling even if it's not well paid, definitely has a strong hold. The whole reaction to the moral nastiness of the 80s.

I found it fascinating working with high school students this year, because it was the first time I'd really experienced how different social/political events could shape a whole group's worldviews. The draft kept coming up -- I think of that as a Vietnam-era issue, but these boys were (understandably, I think) pissed off at having to register, and interestingly a number of them were backlashing against feminism because of it (in that they saw it as unfair that they had to register and girls didn't, and were labeling it as an unfair perk for women).

I started to try to imagine having grown up with these wars and this economy and this total sense that our politicians are power-hungry liars who get us killed as the normal everyday reality. I'm interested to see which way the pendulum swings for this generation, based on those experiences.

I'm a year younger than gaspode. There are aspects of both Gen-X and Gen-Y that I can identify with.

and interestingly a number of them were backlashing against feminism because of it (in that they saw it as unfair that they had to register and girls didn't, and were labeling it as an unfair perk for women)

This really isn't the appropriate threat to start this discussion, but still ... **headddesk**

I missed the Boomers by a few years (born in 66) but feel a bit too old to be a Gen Xer. Obviously nothing is carved in store, but I feel that I really walk between the conventions of both generations. I have a hard time putting any faith into the generalities of catagorizing someone by a generation, but in the past when looking at traits of various generations I seemed to cherry pick from each. I'm sure I'd want to beklieve that some Gen Y traits fit me as well. It's sort of like astrology, some if it is dead on the mark and other parts seem absolutely opposite of yourself.

Am I the only boomer in here?

That's disturbing. . .

(I guess I am here because most people my age aren't any fucking fun.)

well I'm the original slacker, born in '68, broken home, crappy education, no motivation and had every mcjob known to man; you can watch Clerks I, Wayne's World and Mallrats to get a good idea what my teens and 20s looked like. Fave TV shows: Incredible Hulk, Star Trek: TNG, The X Files. sk8boarder in high school/early 20s, black clothes, big shoes, fucked up hair and a shitty attitude. I was a sophomore in HS when the Challenger blew up. never smoked weed, never did drugs of any sort ever, nor did I touch alcohol *at all* until the age of 35 (this was as a backlash to my useless hippie parents I guess) As a dumb, shallow reactionary punkass slacker in my 20s, I and all my slacker friends had nothing but scorn for the pathos of the hippies, new age freaks and "granola goodnik" types. Never got ink or multi piercings, tho all my peers had them.

I think that, more and more during the Information Age, there's been a fair bit of cultural / social overlap between generations, so finding a "hard" cutoff from about 1950 onward seems kind of nebulous. I know people ten years younger than I am who still subscribe to all those Boomeresque greed-is-good, look out for numero uno precepts of the Leave It To Beaver era.

Gen X.

Book: Generation X (Which is pretty terrible but it felt like Us at the time.)
Movie: Rivers Edge
Music: REM
TV: If you had a TV, which we mostly didn't, it was on MTV.

I think the biggest effect of my birth year for me and many of my slightly older and slighty younger peers is that we were becoming sexually active when AIDS first hit the media and wasn't understood as well as it is now. We were the condom generation, and our whole period of awakening was tinged with fear. Real fear of actual death form sex - even young, straight sex. A condom broke, and we called student health for a test. I don't think it scarred us for life or anything. Nor did it make us homophobic, even at the time. Still, that's what I'd like people to understand about what was unique about growning up X, for me.

I'm a boomer too danf (1952). High school in the late sixties, college in the early seventies. Managed to avoid Nam with a high draft lottery number, instead became an alcoholic. The thing I like least about being a boomer? It means I'm getting older than I want to be. I still like to explore and be active, but dammit, stuff hurts.

Definitely X. (When did the chronology change to include those born in the 80s, fer chrissakes?!?) I've had some interesting conversations with my brother, who's 12 years younger than me, about the differences in the worlds we grew up in. He wanted to know what it was like to grow up during the Cold War, and we talked about the fact that his peers became sexually active much later than mine did, probably due to growing up believing that sex=death. We share similar tastes in music, politics, and ink, though. (When we lived in the same city we'd go to punk shows together--I'd hold his beer and glasses and beam with pride while he waded into the mosh pit.)

In the mid-90s, a few friends of mine were interviewed by a local paper for an article on GenX, and one of them said something that I think summed it up nicely: "I really thought there'd be a nuclear war before I had to pay back my student loan."

1966 - GenX. Things that my cohort has said above (rainbaby, BoPo, occhi) resonate with me.

I guess I am here because most people my age aren't any fucking fun.

I think boomers are a lot of fun. Honestly, I think most of them are having more fun than us Gen. Xers. My opinion only, but I think they know how to let loose and not be so self-conscious. My parents are boomers (born in 1950 and 1955). They know how to whoop it up way better than me and so do all of their friends.

I was born in 1972. I can't identify with the cynicism either. I was self-centered teen and twenty-something, but is that a Gen X trait? I don't know.

I was a slacker in my own way, but didn't wear it as a badge of pride. Like most people, I don't identify with any one generation.

Gen X, pretty much all of it. I'm slowly beating back the nihilism part of that, though, through sheer will power. I always get my sheers/shears mixed up and I'm not looking it up this time.

I don't remember identifying with too many movies, though the Mosquito Coasts and Running on Empty-s held some resonance. The setting and ambiance of Ali and (oddly) Thunderheart seemed most like what my childhood felt like- a violent, political powderkeg waiting for the tiniest spark.

Everything was out of your control, so live how you want, keep your head down, your powder dry, and know that anything you create will likely go up in flames, through no fault of your own.

I was born in 1971 and I was cynical as fuck til 10 years ago or so, when I decided to quit it already- it was undermining my motivation to do anything. Still pops up out of habit, though.

mgl I really like your comment here- I feel the same way, (only not so eloquently, as usual.)

Generation X.

The deadpanning, the irony-earnestness continuum, the kidding-on-the-square that is (at least in the U.S.) so characteristic of my generation --- it started early for me. My birth was predicted for late July 1969, to coincide with the moon landing. My (square, non-hippie) parents tell me they planned to name me Luna. I still don't know if they were serious.

Nodding my head to all the associations upthread, especially REM, River's Edge, and Repo Man. If stuck for conversation in a group of Gen Xers, ask when they first saw Repo Man, and you're likely to get some lively chatter going.

I don't identify with the political apathy, though. As a teenager, I went to marches and protests, mostly gay-visibility/rights. I guess I've fallen into political apathy as an adult, though. I'm much more interested in analysing the political machine and media than I am invested in the system.

On preview: Elizard, that quote does sum up the shadow hanging over my youth! I thought there was a better than even chance of everything blowing up before I had to decide on a college. I thought sex would eventually kill me.

Yeah, I just missed the Sex = Death equation. I was in college when AIDS hit the media and at that time it had sort of a "well, yeah, but this only affects gay men and junkies" kind of vibe to it. This may have been because I was in Charleston, SC at the time and it was not exactly liberal city in those days, to put it mildly, whoooeee. We, or at least I, went on blithely having unprotected except for birth control pills sex with everyone because, hey, why not? There's going to be a nuclear war soon anyway. I remember some artist had painted the fallout lines all over Charleston's streets and, well, what with the navy base and the air force base and the Savannah River plant, it was clear that we were all gonna be dead, so, you know, party on.

Definitely X. (When did the chronology change to include those born in the 80s, fer chrissakes?!?)

Yeah, I sort of consider those born 1980-1985 to be sort of in-between generations, but that could just be the typical Gen Y desire to be special :)

>>>and interestingly a number of them were backlashing against feminism because of it (in that they saw it as unfair that they had to register and girls didn't, and were labeling it as an unfair perk for women)

This really isn't the appropriate threat to start this discussion, but still ... **headddesk**

Well, they're young, and in an all-boys school, so I think they both have not been all that exposed to the other side of things and will probably quickly grow out of it. But I think it was just, for me, an interesting retake on some 20s- and 70s-era issues. One kid said, "If women get the vote, why don't they have to register for the draft, like we do?" and, given that that was the rationale (at least as far as I know) for lowering the voting age -- you can't send us to war if we can't vote -- it was hard not to agree with him.

But, more than that, it was just depressing to me that these are the issues that are readily coming up for these kids -- worrying about being sent to war, and the twisted logic and rationales that can come from that worry. As fucked up as the world was when I was young, that was very much not a part of it, and so not a part of what shaped my worldview.

I guess that I started this conversation so you know my answer. I do consider myself a boomer but I am right on the cusp and could have picked GenX. My music and movie taste is very rooted in the '60s and '70s and I hated, hated, hated the '80s when I was living through them. MTV, Reagan, Hair Metal, Wham, Brat Pack movies, right-wing propaganda movies (Top Gun, Rambo, Red Dawn, etc) and the like all forced me to retreat in Grateful Dead Hippydom for most of the decade.

When my wife, who is only five years younger, and I moved in together, we had somewhere around 75 CDs each and exactly 1 duplicate; Skylarking by XTC. Almost all of my music was from earlier than 1982 and almost all of hers was from the eighties and nineties.

I also managed to have a kid when I was a fairly young adult, 25, so most of the people that have kids my kid's age have been much older and so I tend to hang out with boomers more. A big chunk of my friends were born in the late forties or early fifties so I probably derive a lot of my identity from them too.

Yeah, the shifting timeframes are something that I'm a little weirded-out by. I mean, I was 17 when Kurt Cobain killed himself (in April '94--I had to look it up). At the time, it seemed like I was too young to be a Gen-Xer. Now, though, I'm right next to 'pode, squarely in the middle of the cohort. And, as I've observed before, lots of people seem to use 'Generation X' colloquially to refer to, y'know, kids these days, the young folks, like that, which just complicates things worse.

rainbaby's and elizard's comments about sex, death and nuclear holocaust are so dead on accurate; it totally captures the combination of fear, apathy, cynicism and oh-who-gives-a-fuck-we're-all-doomed-anyway angst that I and all my friends had from ages 15 through about 30 or so.

oh and I just want to point out that I loathe both REM and Nirvana with a flaming fucking passion, and most of the rest of that 90's era whiny-assed complaint rock leaves me cold. I am all about Rage, NIN, New Order, Joy Division and the Cure tho. We danced in gay bars and go-go clubs with all our flamingly gothy friends, because those were the only places where the DJs were cool and played tracks that didn't suck. I remember sexuality in my late teens thru mid 20s as being a very fluid concept. It seemed everyone was coming out or bi curious in those days - maybe that's simply the case for young adults everywhere tho.

Occhi - my problem was not with the fact that they thought it was unfair that women don't have to register for the draft - I totally understand and agree with them. But the fact that they blame it on the feminists - like we fought so hard and then said, "Oh, now we're princesses, we have our cake and we ate it too" - is just sort of maddening. Feminists fight for the right to join the army in front-line combat roles. We fight for the responsibility to sign up for the selective service (well, some of us fight for the end of selective service, but that's beside the point). We fight against male gender roles that encourage them to "protect women's virtue" or whatever.

These generation labels always confuse me and really seem to anger people. But, besides that, these threads are always fascinating to me because I inevitably find out someone here is a lot younger or older than I had thought.

GenX, 13er, whatever, man.

Child of the 70's, teen of the 80's. I stopped listening to the radio sometime in the early 90's, and looking through my music, I don't have much past 1984, unless it's Weird Al.

A ton of my friends are boomer age or (nowadays) a good 10 years younger than me. Guess I can't stand my own cohort.

(I tried to register for the Selective Service, but they won't take me. I supposed I should have just hitched up)

muddgirl, ah, gotcha. And... yeah.

I'm a total GenXer, no doubt about it. Though I usually am quick to dismiss sociological BS, I think there is a very good historical argument for generational difference. Also, my career has always had me working in incredibly age-diverse environments, with co-workers between 16 and, literally, 96. The overall statements about each generation are definitely applicable in my own experience. There are always individual exceptions, but people who were brought up in the same historical time periods experienced specific conditions that didn't really recur, and it does make a difference as to how they see the world, what their expectations are, and how they act (and work).

We're the same age and very similar, octo. I had a kid very young (19) too - but somehow it just made me feel even more alienated from her peers parents. Poor kid - she went to college with me and hung out with twentysomethings who taught her how to say ANARCHY! from her stroller at age 2 when we said "What's your political statement?" Now her friends tell her she should write a book.

I was deadicated for years too and singing Neil Young covers with friends in a high school band, even though at the same time my record collection was filling up with the Police and the Clash and the Pogues and XTC (mental note - start XTC fan thread of love someday,) Dead Kennedys, X, Meat Puppets, Psychedelic Furs, REM, English Beat and so on. Ah for the days when I dyed my hair purple and wore houndstooth checked black and white sunglasses to my dead end dishwashing job. I still dye my hair purple sometimes but you never see shades like that anymore.

++++ muddgirl. Well said. When we have equality of the sexes, we'll have equality of risks, demands, and ills as well as equality of opportunity. I've never imagined it any other way.

I think I am in a very weird middle generation between X and Y. I was born in 1981 and I am part of the 2 year group that joined Friendster my last year of college. My sister (1984) is solidly gen Y because she wwas on Facebook in college. People younger than my sister join MySpace while still in middle or high school.
I guess I define the recent age groups by what social networking tool they use and when they sign up. Huh.

I graduated high school in '93. Solidly Gen-X.

I've been trying to think about why I don't really identify with the concept of generations. The labels do kind of confuse me, like mullacc said. And I loathe the whole cultural shorthand thing like, "well, I like the Grateful Dead/REM/Nirvana therefore I identify with XYZ". Or other non-music cultural markers. It's lazy. I listened to Joy Division and the Glenn Miller band equally in my twenties - which pigeonhole do I fit into?

I get the whole nuclear war and AIDS thing though. I remember turning down "going out" with a boy in middle school because I'd already foreseen the path from kissing to sex to dying of AIDS. Oy.

I'm at the very end of Gen X (1981), but since the oldest of my four older brothers was born in 1969 and my parents were both born in 1945, I identify really firmly with Gen X. I'm also pretty certain that because of our parents' and brothers' ages, my sister (1984) was also pretty solidly Gen X.

Well, true generational theory, as a sociological pursuit, really does not concern itself quite as much with specific items of pop culture. That is much too influenced by identity, affluence, demographics, etc. It's more about the historical conditions of the time period - family size, household size, powerful institutions, political climate and law, prevailing mores, events (the AIDS crisis, for instance) that profoundly changed the habits and outlook of a generation, etc. Stereotypes about what music or movies you're 'supposed to like' are bound to fail, since tastes vary. But the general mental frameworks of the generations are very pronounced.

Born in 1960, do not consider myself a member of either media construct. If you put a gun to my head and said "Choose!" (please don't), I guess I'd identify more with the Xers, although I definitely have some Boomer characteristics too.

Heh, mygothlaundry... I used to wear a pair of these when I was a pizza delivery guy in college:

≡ Click to see image ≡

1984-1985.

Here is a great page delineating American generational cyclical theory, by Straus and Howe. Though it's focused on the Silent Generation it has characteristics from each stage in the cycle. It's very itneresting to explore.

Like any sociological theory, it's not going to apply to everyone all the time, but in the aggregate is a useful construct, I think.

I'm 1979, and I don't think in terms of generations. I do think of myself as from the internets, and from the Left. The internets were more full of x-ers and the left was more full of baby boomers, so they both contributed to my outlook on life.

Wow, what a fascinating thread.

I'm still struggling to figure out which generation I fit into. I was born in 72, but I hated the reactionary 80's (even the music -- I liked Prince, a couple of Talking Heads songs, and Laurie Anderson, but little else), and thought that the previous generation had somehow lost the way, but I still believed in their ideals of peace, love, harmony, psychedelics, etc. But my parents weren't really boomers in a cultural sense -- culturally, they were throwbacks to the 50's, who felt the 60's were a weird, embarrassing mistake. I remember my dad telling me he thought Nixon was one of the greatest American presidents ever.

At the same time, I definitely shared the cynicism that characterizes Gen X, and the sex=death theme really resonates with me, as does the apocalyptic notion that we're all going to die soon in a nuclear war, so who cares about anything anyway . . . and, for me, in early adolescence, as an in-the-closet gay kid growing up in the bible belt, both of these notions dovetailed in a really nasty way with a very predatory form of christian fundamentalism.

I was pretty isolated, both socially and geographically, so I guess I kind of pieced together a sense of identity from whatever cultural fragments happened to pass my way -- bits and pieces of each generation I came in contact with . . .

for me, in early adolescence, as an in-the-closet gay kid growing up in the bible belt, both of these notions dovetailed in a really nasty way with a very predatory form of christian fundamentalism.

Word.

I always feel so much behind the curve with everything the rest of my peers (1982) are/were supposed to be doing and identifying with. I don't know the vast majority of '80s or '90s music or TV because my parents were only ever about the classical concerts on PBS - made me real popular in grade school, that did.

Gen X, all the way. I was sitting with my roommate in college doing bong hits when the Challenger exploded. I remember pissing people off in high school for wearing a button that said "THREE MORE BULLETS" after Lennon was assassinated. I have vague recollections of Watergate, including my father muttering darkly about libruls fixin' to turn us all communiss by takin' down the best damn President we ever had. I don't remember the moon landing (I was three), but I can remember singing "Yellow Submarine" with my mom while folding laundry.

I'm glad environmental apocalypse looms on the horizon in lieu of nuclear holocaust -- it's an opportunity to slip back into the smug, lazy, self-serving cynicism that's gotten me through life so far.

I always prefer to refer to it as Generation Excrement because labels are poopy.

I grew up listening to the New Wave bands, and the political punk of CRASS, Conflict, Subhumans (UK), DK's and others which really got us thinking about the balance of power both personal and political. I still think that CRASS's album "Penis Envy" is as relevant and vital today as it was when it was released in 1981. I didn't get to hear it until '83, but still... stuff like that on questioning things that you're told and not believing everything in the press, and alternate ways of living and thinking really made an impression on me.

In school there were a group of us who liked different music, so we had the New Wave (Furs, Simple Minds, Devo, etc), punk (Clash, DOA, Toy Dolls, etc), goth, ska, noise/alternative stuff all covered.
I'd write more about things, but apparently I have to answer the phone here, so maybe more later..

I was doing bong rips ('rip' is more a Gen-Y appellation than 'hit,' which is very X) with my college roommate when Tupac and Biggie died. When the Challenger exploded, though, I was watching it in my third-grade classroom.

I'm definitely an older GenX'er (1966): Cold War (get under the desk and kiss your ass goodbye), Brat Pack movies (The Breakfast Club ftw!), MTV, British music invasion/New Wave (Duran Duran, ftw!), Dungeons & Dragons, no drugs, no sex. My younger brother (1969) is of the same generation. However, there are hints of the Boomer generation in my mind because of older sibling influence.

My older brothers were born between 1957 and 1962 and are members of the younger part of the Boomer generation: Stones, Led Zepplin, The Eagles, long hair, drugs.

very clearly gen y. i was born in 1987. all of my older siblings (with the possible exception of my sister who was born in 84) are firmly in gen x, however. my oldest brother was born in 1970.

I think we first got AOL 3.0 or something when I was about ten or eleven, if that's a cultural milestone or whatever.

I remember pissing people off in high school for wearing a button that said "THREE MORE BULLETS" after Lennon was assassinated.

Yeah, one of my hs friends' favourite graffiti to write was "Reunite the Beatles. Kill the other 3." Another one was "Nuke the smurfs." I bet if you looked hard enough, you could still find it in odd places around the school.

I don't recall noticing sex=death as a constant consideration until University, and by then I didn't give a shit. I was a seriously self-destructive teen, though, so that may have been part of it, and I recall that at least until the late 80s the general perception where I was (Toronto) was still that it was mostly homosexuals and needle users that were at risk. Luckily, I came through unscathed (yes, I get tested regularly now). I was astonished that my brother's age group (born 1980 and after) generally didn't become sexually active until their late teens/early twenties, because that was all they'd ever known.

A few years ago, Rick Mercer did a beautiful rant about Baby Boomers that finished with: "At least we have one consolation: They'll have to wait 20 years for someone to flip their burgers and serve their fries in heaven." Yep, I definitely identified with that.

I was born in 1964 but never really felt I fit in any group. Although the older I get the more I feel like part of the re-generation; a kind of in-between group that is just too young to be a boomer and too old to be a gen-xer.

I've found though, that my group may be the last generation to be so badly effected by the old homophobia gaurd. These days, kids are out so early. I was deep in the closet untill well after college! Heh, when I was a kid, gay was still defined as a mental disorder. These days the young ones don't seem to remember the Stonewall revolt or even how revolutionary roeVwade was for woman.

Damn kids!

/now get off my lawn

According to wikipedia, I am at the tail end of Gen X. My younger brother is Gen Y. Will make him aware of this at our next conversation.

Gen X is also referred to as the MTV generation. Considering I grew up almost alongside MTV (I'm a year older, and spent plenty of time in front of it as an infant/toddler), that's apropos.

Me being in Gen X means a babe of your stature is still well within my means, MGL. We ain't that different after all. ;)

(Though technically, I'd argue my brother and I are MTV generation; lodged between Xers and Yers ('Wires', though we're now mostly Wireless, as a generation). I never felt we were of different generations, despite what demographers with too much free time might think. I've got characteristics of both generations. My father used to describe me as his New World Man, bridging generations between him and my younger brother. I've always been old for my age, anyway.)

The MTV generation is about as close as it gets :-/

"Gen X is also referred to as the MTV generation." ...by Wikipedia.

And what I really meant to say is, FATBS, let's make some sweet, safe love, baby. The 80s taught me to grab what I want; the 90s taught me to be sensitive. Let's make the 00s all about reconciling the two.

*recognizes some women's need to be taken/swept off their feet/manhandled, but the need to be conscienscious about it underneath the romantic drama of it all*

But really, I'm all about breaking down boundaries.

Oh, and fuck the term "millenials". Save that shit for kids born in the new millennium or something. I don't know any millennials. I also don't know anyone under the age of 8, and I intend to keep it that way.

I'm neither GenX nor baby boomer. 1965 is a forgotten year full of forgotten people. I guess I'm a "trailing edge boomer" but that's not catchy at all, now is it?

Astrologically, I'm also on the cusp, neither fully Taurus nor Gemini. I DEFY YOUR PIGEONHOLES!

Rad Vans, BP! Did you have the skater's flop to go with it?

I'm a Gen Xer, but an older one I guess. I graduated high school in 1989. I don't identify with the whole slacker/grunge thing. Everyone seemed to work so hard at proving how little ambition they had. Nirvana was a boy band (though I love you Dave Grohl!) and the whole grunge scene seemed every bit as fake as the big-haired, neon 80s. The difference being that the 80s were at least honest about their excesses and artifices.

I agree entirely about growing up with the threat of nuclear war and would add movies like The Day After, Testament and When the Wind Blows as having a big effect on me. AIDS hit my family personally pretty early on when my godfather's brother died in the late 80s--then again in the early 90s when it took my great aunt. It was very real to me and very scary.

The other event that had a HUGE effect on me was Jonestown. That parents could kill their babies in the name of god...well that put me off religion for the rest of my life. Even the nicest, gentlest congregations give me the creeps.

Depends on the source, WolfDaddy. Miko's link above says you're Gen X like me; wikipedia says we don't exist, because they say trailing edge boomer & then link to a Time Magazine site that says we're Gen X. Yeah. Overlooked as usual. The In Betweens. Fuck it: I'm still cynical, apathetic, slack and nihilistic: I call Gen X!

Gen X = drugs at high school, word.

I didn't realize until much later how special and lucky I was to have been in my HS in the special time and place (mid 80s). Talking to my teachers later on, I found out that only two years later there was almost zero marijuana smoking going on, and the cops were cracking down hard.

Rad Vans, BP! Did you have the skater's flop to go with it?

Nope. I don't even know what that means!

*watches vestigial traces of rad-ness evaporate into thin air*

The Vans were great for getting tips when I was delivering pizzas, though. Most people in my little town thought they were pretty crazy!

WolfDaddy, you and I were born in the same year?? I had you figured as being a lot younger.

mgl: I'm just cynical. Well, sometimes slack, but there's plastic surgeons for that :-)
BP: you made my day sweetie.

In the mid-90s, a few friends of mine were interviewed by a local paper for an article on GenX, and one of them said something that I think summed it up nicely: "I really thought there'd be a nuclear war before I had to pay back my student loan."

Oh my. Yes.

Whatever Gen X means-- originally, as I understand it, the term was intended to refer to the generation I come from (born in the very tail end of the 50s). My adolescence involved idolizing the hippies (my friends' older brothers and sisters) who had left the city to live in yurts on the Gulf Islands, smoking lots of pot at lunch hour, listening to prog rock (the last two items are not unconnected), marking up lots of notches on bedposts (easy access to contraception and pre-Aids!), hitchhiking to Vancouver Island, man, and watching feminism start to transform the underpinnings of our worlds, not to mention other social changes (and having our parents' marriages come apart as a consequence). It was still a man's world (and I wonder if there has been a time since where young men have held such social power), but that was starting to change: I remember continual demonstrations around things that are now commonplace, such as equality in pay and workplace protection from being fired if you got married or pregnant.

We were old enough to mourn John Lennon in a real way, but we might have been the youngest to do so, as my friend Elaine, who is five years younger than me, remembers laughing at the hippies who were all emotional about it. That was one dividing line. The other was punk. For us punk was a huge watershed that cleared away the old and reset the terms of everything; it was monumental. For those older than us, it was likely just another turn in fashion, I suppose.

And then the 80s, and various kinds of activism, and listening to Penis Envy (*waves to Zack*) and some New Wave and hardcore. I missed REM entirely because they were widely considered to be corporate sellouts. I saw Killing Joke in London and admired a young woman wearing a headdress made out of syringes. There were a lot of drugs around, but people hadn't started dying of overdoses yet. We idolized the European squatter movement and wished we had been born in Berlin. The day the Challenger blew up I was living in a house in East Vancouver with a bunch of anarcha-feminist lesbian types, where we would kvetch about waiting for the social revolution and write articles in support of the American Indian Movement. A lot of those same people are now connected on Facebook, where they are kind of immortalizing their youth and the old scene through archiving posters and photographs and digitized DOA releases.

Um, yeah. Nostalgia isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I go to the same shows that my 21 year old son does; I'm usually ahead of him when it comes to new music because he's still enamoured with the 70s canon. Life is odd.

i'm a part of the internet generation, because in between doing morally questionable things, i like to talk about cats.



Prime non media genex, which means besides living with the shadow of nuclear holocaust, we took a lot of cues from the previous generations growing up, because you had no idea what anyone was talking about without knowing a bit about what just happened before, after and amidst mitosis, cobbling together things to fill in random voids of nothingness with some hippie utopian ideals here and mistrust of the government there. It was all very Do It Yourself, and then lots of watching things that were lovingly made by dedicated little groups get eaten by the need for more consumption, until monstrosities got so big they tripped and fell and the possessing disease went on to new victims. We spent time developing skills we had no idea would become so quickly and utterly useless and watched things fall apart for reasons that had barely anything to do anything besides the rickety structures people built around them for pumping in hype and pumping out money.
We put a lot of time and energy into things that weren't time tested and safe as we got to watch those things fall apart and our own become quirky footnotes and niche nostalgic anecdotes.

We were political, we were social, we tried to beat the system, use the system, be the system, survive system failure-- we tried, we gave up, we got bitter, and not in that order but over and over again. Some people found niches, some people got washed out with the tide a lot, but some of us suffer from a painful recurrent condition called hope-- We kept aware of the new things while seeking truth with old things, finding the wisdom there and choosing to exist as if it was a choice--

Generation X sounded cool but the definitions generally sucked because they generally do, especially to a generation that was trying to escape definition.
We knew what we didn't want.
It doesn't mean we got it or get it.

What we are is the the last generation to have any shared unifying totems, items, and moments in an increasingly balkanized world of ever diversifying interests and isolating niches.

Within this one generation there are levels, with the advantage going to those barely younger than me. A lot of things changed very quickly within the span of our "generation" and just being in school a little later or any of many differences meant you got to be around a more stable technology or the new regime change. It always sucks to be at the end of something, because even though you might get the whole of the picture, it doesn't mean you'll make any money off it.

I'm Gen X, and here's why: At age 18, I was at the store buying my first snowboard when the radio announcer started talking about this hot new CD from a Seattle band called Nirvana.... Cue "Smells like Teen Spirit".

OTOH, I aways felt I was the tail end of Gen-X; IIRC there's a sentence or two in Coupland's book where he outlines the birth years of Gen-X as ending a year or two before me.

Shit. This is what I get for working all day. Interesting thread guys. From one of the mefi threads:

Dear Lord, us Gen Xers are already writing "spoiled young whippersnapper" articles?

Hah! Hah I say! As a boomer (or at least an honorary boomer), that line brings a smile to my face.

After reading mygothlaundry's post, all I can say is what a difference a year makes. She sees herself as an Xer; I was born in 1962 and have always, always, always thought of myself as a boomer. Even though we are only a year apart, her perceptions of historical events are so different from mine. I clearly remember the moon landing; I can remember exactly where I was when it happened (our whole family was at the home of some friends who had a color TV so we could watch the B&W video from the moon in living color; how odd is that?) We got our first color TV, the same model as our friends had, later that year.

I was already in the working world when the Challenger exploded, and in fact the company I was working for, Hughes Aircraft, had an employee on that mission who lost his life that day (no one remembers Hughes employee Greg Jarvis, just teacher Christa McAuliffe).

My dad was 15 when WWII ended, but he was so much a part of the generation that fought the war. Even though he was too young to fight in WWII, he did serve in the Navy shortly afterward. He was clearly part of that generation, at least in my eyes.

Nodding my head to all the associations upthread, especially REM, River's Edge, and Repo Man. If stuck for conversation in a group of Gen Xers, ask when they first saw Repo Man, and you're likely to get some lively chatter going.

Proof positive I am not an Xer; I've never seen River's Edge nor Repo Man.

I mean, I was 17 when Kurt Cobain killed himself (in April '94--I had to look it up). At the time, it seemed like I was too young to be a Gen-Xer.

Another Xer versus Boomer discriminator: I had no idea who Kurt Cobain even was until quite a while after his death, but I remember when John Lenon was killed. I was not a Beatles fan, so it didn't tear my heart out or anything, but I remember it.

It seemed everyone was coming out or bi curious in those days - maybe that's simply the case for young adults everywhere tho.

Nope. At least not when I was that age.

I'm Chilean, so gen-* doesn't really apply.
I'm a Pinochet-boy, was born 3 years before the coup and spent most of my childhod/teenage years (except for 5 years in the US) growing up in a dictatorship. That marks you, much more than MTV or the Internet.
I graduated high school and started university at the same time as Pinochet's fall, so there's a definite sense of a certain period coming to completion.
That first year of university was fairly wild, not in a drugs and sex way (architecture major, didn't have time for that kind of thing), but rather in the sense that the world was finally yours to do with as you wanted to. .

I was born in 1970. I'm a generation unto myself, it feels like sometime, mainly since everybody I run into seems either too old or too young. Where'd all the people my age go?

And, maybe it's just cause I've sort of tumbled through much of my life by the set of my pants, but aside from historical moments we all remember and all that crap, I haven't found any actual cohesiveness to my generation despite all the hype.

I was in high school for Columbine and in my first month of college on September 11th- those were my big cultural milestones. I don't at all identify with the "Generation X" label; I don't know if it's because I'm on the tail end (1983) and missed the boat, or if I personally was just out of touch because we lived overseas for awhile and lost touch with current American culture for awhile.

Where'd all the people my age go?

*waves at jonmc* We're over here, in the colony ship! What, you didn't get the memo?