It is my feeling that pretty much everybody in the world likes to talk about himself or herself.

It's what we all know the most about!

It is an amusingly peculiar aspect of that generation, though, the fascination with itself and its history. It's definitely somewhat unique in history to self-document to this degree - and it tends to flatten out the story, turning a complex set of individual experiences at a tumultuous historical time into a Narrative of a Generation.

In the long view, I suspect the Gen-Y folks will give 'em a run for their money (and the Greatest Generation already has).

Meanwhile, not too much output on the Silent Generation or Generation X. Sheer numbers have a lot to do with it.

We Gen-Xers can NOT ride off into the sunset leaving just that one crappy Winona Ryder movie to document our generation. Because that was just awful.

I'm of the Silent Generation (talking about myself here.)

That's true, BP.

BoPo, your generation will never live down St. Elmo's Fire. . .

It's simple: they hold power because of their sheer numbers, which = voting power. They voted to lower the drinking age to 18, then, when their kids were growing up, voted to raise it again to 21.

Luckily, they will push for comfy nursing homes and elder rights, so the rest of us will benefit from that.

When did the whole naming of generations thing start? Did it start with the Lost Generation? It's a weird sort of phenomenon to me.

That's an interesting question. The Civil War ran as long as did World War I. It probably had as profound an impact on its participants. But I can't recall any references to them as a "generation".

It probably only became a regular thing once it became shorthand for marketing demographics.

As a member of the last year of the Baby Boom (1964), I've always felt like that entire generation's kid brother. And yea, I'm pretty sick of them(us).

Oh here we go.

Is there a name for the trend (I can't explain this very well) whereby once something is established as a "thing" like naming generations, then all generations **have** to have a name? (e.g. see last bullet point: "It has been suggested that the next generation, born from 2010, will be called Generation Alpha.") I mean beyond something like "meme" or whatever (a word I feel has become basically meaningless these days).

I guess it's the same thing that propels people to "-gate" scandals. Drives me nuts.

This is kind of funny give the number of times your name occurs in your own posts.

What I really wonder about is how it became so easy to glide from a conception of people as a collective (e.g. generations) to people as individuals. I mean, sure, people group themselves in all sorts of ways, but it seemed like we could once talk about groups in relation to other, similar groups ("Baby Boomers" and "Generation X") without injecting the individual ("Baby Boomers" and "Lipstick Thespian"). I think it's done either for a cheap laugh, or a cheap point; either way, it's a cheap way to disagree with someone. It could always be that I'm just overanalyzing very funny jokes.

Maybe the Baby Boomers invented this kind of destructive discourse by talking about themselves all the time, all the while using broad labels for (themselves and) everybody else. Now they've taught us all to think this way, and everybody has a rock solid easy way out of any real discussion.

I readily admit I talk about myself A LOT in my posts, Wolfdog - but not on a generational level, not with multiple voices, and not with enormous media backing for years and years.

I also don't go about saying how it's only me with anything worth crowing about in history.

I'm going to go back in my thread count now and see how many LT-Specific threads I've posted in the five years I've been a part of this. Because I'm just THAT GOOD.

I readily admit I talk about myself A LOT in my posts, Wolfdog - but not on a generational level, not with multiple voices, and not with enormous media backing for years and years.

You're framing yourself as an individual and yet lumping all Baby Boomers together as a mass. My father, for instance, never speaks about himself on a generational level, or with multiple voices, and he certainly has never had enormous media backing ever, let alone for years and years.

People with money, power, and a large audience often use their money and power to address that large audience, and they tend to talk about things that are relevant or interesting to them and ignore things outside their own experience (cf., general lack of stories about women, racial minorities, GLBTs, the disabled, the poor, etc., in the mainstream media, as told from those groups' points of view). I don't think that's a generational thing, other than that people tend to gain a certain amount of money and power by a certain age, and people within the Baby Boomer generation would be at about that age; it's more of a privilege thing.

Man, I thought all of you were Baby Boomers, including LT. Probably because I started using the internet socially at a young age, and back then everyone was my parent's age.

Generational identification never made much sense to me, as someone born in those tricky years between Generation X and the Millenials (or whev). I guess that's because people born after 1980 don't have to rely on our parents to define our characteristics, like the Gen-Xers did. They paved the way for the media and pop culture to do it for us.

I guess that's because people born after 1980 don't have to rely on our parents to define our characteristics, like the Gen-Xers did. They paved the way for the media and pop culture to do it for us.

So you're saying (I think?) that Gen Y is probably the first generation that isn't really reactionary so much? Because I'd agree, (given that we are speaking in the broadest of generalities here) but I want to make sure I'm agreeing with what I think I am.

Damn, I'm confused sometimes :)

Nope, I was born in 1968 - which makes the older end of Gen X.

And yes, I talk WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much about myself on this site - I haven't even hit halfway through 2006 and there's over 100 threads I've started that either have the word "I" in the title, or are about something "I" did, either by myself or with someone else.

You guys all really should take a look at the inside of my own navel and ass - it's incredible in there. Everybody loves you!

Ooh, does anybody have an opinion about where X ends and Y begins, and whether there's anything in between?

I was born in 1976, and both me (me me) and lots of my peers/cohort/whatnot seem in some respects in between the X and Y generational archetypes.

Well, demographic categories are SO broad, box, that any one person might be a lot like the category they are technically in, or way out past the edges of it.

I have a friend my age (born 1965, the edge of Gen-X) and yet he is SOLIDLY a baby boomer in every way. I'm definitely Gen-X in just about every way I can think of. The generalizations only work when applied to large numbers of people.

Baby Boomer Bullshit Self-Aggrandizing

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Yes, it is very nice under this rock where I live.

I too have marveled at the amount of introspection that goes on here, as someone who finds it hard to share her personal life.

I got a secret valentine this year from someone who actually complimented me for the lack of talking about myself here, which I thought was hilarious.

I just started four paragraphs with I. Me me me me me me me.

I am very contradictory, am I not?

(make that 5 paragraphs)

me

Enough about you, let's talk about me!

I think that we've talked about this before but I definitely identify as Baby Boomer. I was an adult with mortgage and a kid before I ever even heard the term GenX.

As a member of the last year of the Baby Boom (1964), I've always felt like that entire generation's kid brother. And yea, I'm pretty sick of them(us).

Yea, I'm a '64 too but don't feel part of the boom or the X. Basically power has jumped over my lot and left us as invisible as we always where. Imagine how sick I am of the "generation" talk.

Also, me me me me me me.

Sorry, this thread is so totally about LTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLLTLT

STILL. EVERY GENERATION HENCEFORTH WILL BE THE LT GENERATION.

You know who really sucks? Generation Alpha. Buncha fuckin' babies!

This is dedicated to gaspode's comment.

I first heard of people thinking in terms of generations by reading the beginning of Revolt of the Masses. I can't seem to bring up the putative online version.

Oh, and my penis. This thread is totally about how amazing my penis is.

Unhooked Generation

Pepsi Generation

Spontaneous Generation

I met Carl Kurlander last week. He's a great guy so I felt bad about my deep dislike of St. Elmo's Fire.

Generation Y, hollllllllllllla!

Looking at it from a 20th-century history perspective, there are definitely some unique characteristics about the Baby Boom generation, taken as a whole, and its fascination with itself is one of them. If you think about it, there are a confluence of factors that made it an exceptional generation in historical terms. These are folks born postwar and in a period of relative middle-class prosperity. They were a news story from the moment they began to exist, because the sheer number of births per year was unprecedented and I don't think has been surpassed since. The population exploded, and with it, so did services for families and children, social services, schools, suburbs, automobiles, consumer goods, environmental impacts, the world of politics, the world of food, the world of clothing and fashion.

Twentieth century generations sometimes seem more distinct than generations past, probably because they're in recent living memory. Yet in history, it is possible to identify changing generational identities in the US (and probably elsewhere that I don't know about). Straus and Howe actually made an attempt at reconstructing what they saw as a cyclical rotation of generational characteristics. No, maybe we don't think of a "Civil War Generation," but we do think about a Transcendentalism, a time in which nature, the individual, a drive for social justice, a spiritual seeking, and abundant romantic impulses came to the fore - the 1960s of the 1800s. What was that except the young adulthood of an idealistic generation shocked and scarred by the causes and effects of the war they'd lived through?

Another reason generations past mush together for us is simply media. The speed, efficiency, broadcast width, and mirroring effect you get with 20th century media makes it much easier to create and share information about issues and activities as they happen. If the transcendentalists could have been the focus of a nascent broadcast television industry, if the "Gilded Generation" could have Twittered, it might look much more familiar to us. There are analogues in the media of the time, but of course they're fewer, because the barriers to the creation and wide dissemination of media were so much greater.

Most generational theory goes back to some work by social scientists Straus and Howe. The kinds of things they were saying are debatable in some ways, and certainly get watered down and used in a variety of ways, like demographic marketing, but their perspective does have some application in historical argument that is really pretty sound. Most people like to feel they are more unique than their broad generational characteristics make them out to be. That's because most of us feel individuated from the herd and, to some degree, we are. But all of us are products of historical conditions, as well, and in the aggregate it's sensible enough to speak about common qualities found within age-grouped bunches of people caused by the historical conditions in which they were raised.

In short, most social historians don't think generational theory is bullshit.

Look. I can see what this is about.

I, on behalf of my generation apologize, with all my heart, for the fact that the Eagles, Stones, Moody Blues, KISS, and the rest are STILL touring instead of doing anything more relevant with their lives.

Are we good now?

Hey, the Moody Blues still put on a good show. Them, I give a pass to.

(thinking more) aside from being silly, I'm sensitive to the distinction between talking about individuals and talking about large cohorts. My parents are Boomers, and I love them. They are great people. So are a lot of other people I know. There are plenty of other people, not Boomers, who are assholes. So there's really not too much specific, individual criticism built into talking about generational characteristics.

Still and all, it can be interesting to watch how the cohort takes shape and behaves. That's not the same as, but does interact with, how individuals take shape and behave. Historical conditions help define trends, choices, ideas, interests. They don't dictate, but they influence.

I still can lick any sumbitch in the house.

In short, most social historians don't think generational theory is bullshit.

As much as I hate labels, it really isn't bullshit for the most part. Each generation is influenced by the same things: our parents generation, music, tv, fashion, politics, social issues, etc. The thing is that we all react to the influences differently. There's a bunch of square pegs you're not gonna be able to shove into the round hole called a "generation" no matter what date is on the birth certificate.

Miko says it all better than I, of course.

I still can lick any sumbitch in the house.

I could spot you a clothespin for your nose and you still wouldn't have enough tongue, pal!

My tongue could turn the next generation of your family into Generation Pissmypants, Raw Hughage.

Carl Sagan liked to point out that we are all made of star stuff. I'd like to point out that the piss soaking into my pants is also made of star stuff.

Pisssoak Starstuff is my "checking into a hotel incognito" name.

I usually sign registers as F. W. Murnau, for several reasons.

I got a secret valentine this year from someone who actually complimented me for the lack of talking about myself here, which I thought was hilarious.

Which makes some people all the more intrigued. . .who IS that woman?!?

(and that v-tine was not from me. . .the one I sent resulted in that restraining order)

No offense to anyone here, but I can't wait til the Boomers die out.

Well Eidie, I'll remember not to accept a beer from you at the next meetup we're both at.

Thanks for the heads-up!

As a member of the last year of the Baby Boom (1964), I've always felt like that entire generation's kid brother. And yea, I'm pretty sick of them(us).
Yeah, 1961 here and I feel pretty much the same. I'm not a baby boomer because I just don't feel/act that way and I'm too old to be a Gen X. I'm part of the Special Snowflake generation, I guess.