comment #1

DeadPool says ...

GenX's biggest icon is Kurt Cobain. That says everything about that generation.

I've read somewhere that the early 80's kids are called the MTV Generation.

comment #2

Sabina E says ...

I was born in 1982. I always assumed that made me Gen Y and the last of Gen X was born in 1979.

But I really don't feel like I'm part of Gen Y, since many of these kids grew up with cell phones and Internet, when I didn't even start using Internet until after I graduated from high school (in 2001). I didn't have a cell phone until in 2004, either (but that's because I'm Deaf and cell phones were useless for us Deafies, until they invented something wonderful called TEXTING).

Anyway, Wells, I guess you're right. I'm a "wanderer" as you described.

comment #3

Sabina E says ...

DeadPool, MTV Generation? I've never heard that one before... I guess that does make sense, since MTV was born in 1981.

comment #4

nodirectionhome says ...

It makes sense my generation (a '79 December birth) is pissed and rightly so given that we've seen "Boomers" destroy the world in which we inhabited. Divorces, murders and other various calamities were all and still are on the rise during our childhood and adult years; what is there to look forward for when all I remember as a child and teenager is being stripped away. As a society, Gen X was the last to see America as a striving working community before we got cut off by technology and became overly protective paranoid country. At least late Y's & D's don't know or remember anything better so they can maintain a happy go lucky sense of livelihood.

comment #5

mattn says ...

No, you have it basically right. You'll notice that the article has a little hole for people born between 1959 and 1964 (me and Obama!). In articles of this type, we get moved from one category to the other depending on what is needed to make the author's point. But in reality, we're too old to be GenX but too young to really be boomers, because we have no true shared experiences with them. We're sort of the Star Wars generation, since we were teenagers when that movie came out, with all that implies.

comment #6

dinther says ...

Bad faith starts with the idea that anyone would allow themselves to be defined within these imaginary generational boundaries, or would (as self-professed baby boomers do) cling to them so as to imagine their past lives as more meaningful than they, in fact, were.

Just as "the 60s" weren't really in the 60s (as the cultural aesthetic ran from about 65 to 75) and "the 80s" weren't the 80s (actually, from about 83 to 89).

I think DTBP's got it right. Alienation is where it's at. If you feel as tho you "belong," you're not asking enough questions.

comment #7

arturobandini2 says ...

This CNN article from nearly a year ago defines the 1958-65 generation as "Cuspers."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/23/salzman.trends/index.html

We grew up in the shadow of the Boomers, can't relate to Xers, and remain undefined by the cultural touchstones of either. One minute our bosses were 10-20 years older than us, the next they were 10-20 years younger. We do the bulk of the mop-up work, receive fewer perks, are untargeted by marketing groups and generally are taken for granted. We are Jan Brady.

comment #8

Josh Massey says ...

Back in that awful, early '90s period when the term "Generation X" was seemingly embodied by Janeane Garofalo, I remember Time Magazine (or Newsweek, I forget) ending the Gen X births in 1975.

I remember this vividly because, as a member of the 1976 birthing class, I was relieved not to be included.

comment #9

C is for cookie says ...

Pissed off? You bet.

How's this for a timeline?

Late 80's, early 90's -- finish school to a job market decimated by the excesses of Reaganomics and the indulgence of the baby boom generation.

Mid 90's to late 90's -- Clinton gets in, promises a new era but gives us more of the same old shit. We get to watch as the boomers cash out and ship jobs by the truckload overseas. We get told to look to the internet for opportunities and then take it in the ass during the dot-com boom.

Early 00's -- Bush. The decline and fall of the American empire right before our eyes.

Late 00's -- Obama sells us a bill of goods about change and opportunity. We vote him in, he turns around and basically works to ensure that everything put in place during the Bush presidency becomes permanent.

Where in there do you see reason for generational joy?

comment #10

AnimalStructure says ...

No, no , no. GenX is defined by them graduating college in the early 90's when the economy was awful and there were no jobs. Someone born in the late seventies is not GenX at all, as they didn't graduate until 2000.

comment #11

reverent and free says ...

This has probably be posted here but:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLH_QyPTYM

I think anyone born around 1985 or earlier ought to understand the jokes.

comment #12

matt cousens says ...

I was born in early '83, and have always felt on the outside looking in, so to speak.

comment #13

DeeZee says ...

Deadpool: "GenX's biggest icon is Kurt Cobain. That says everything about that generation."

And it says everything about the boomers when they legitimized his widow and Dave Groll's bands as Nirvana's successors.

Deaf: They sort of had music videos before MTV, but those were more of a niche thing.

nodirect: You're 12/79, too? Nice.

"Divorces, murders and other various calamities were all and still are on the rise during our childhood and adult years;"

You forgot AIDS, the dismantling of welfare and Glass-Steagal, and a war meant to compensate for all those rocks they threw at cops and buildings they blew up during those Vietnam protests to feel good about themselves. Oh, and that neo-prohibition in the form of the Drug War, too. Um, what else? Their fucking oversized SUVs ruining our air quality and depleting our resources, too.

Josh: I'd also hate to be associated with someone whose most prominent work is Mystery Men. But at least she's still got a better career than Andy Dick.

comment #14

mutinyco says ...

Generation X bridged the transition between analog to digital. We started off in an analog world but by the time we were adults everything had gone digital.

If you were born in the '80s, you were always conscious of VCRs and CDs and home computers and video games and cable TV. If you were born before that, you'll always remember when your family first got those things.

So all of these things arrived early enough for us to easily adapt to them, but we weren't raised in a world where they were de facto. We were most likely taught in college how to make movies or do graphic design or photography or what have you in traditional analog, but the moment we entered the work force we had to relearn everything using computers.

comment #15

COCO says ...

Boomers=Fucked
Xer's=Fucked
Yer's=Fucked....Well, folks we're all in the same
leaky boat....."I was home all the time...God damn
it to hell''

comment #16

Anthony Thorne says ...

Born end of '71. The last fucking thing I'll be a fan of is Kurt Cobain, but I do feel pleased to have popped up the same month THE DEVILS, THE EXORCIST and CLOCKWORK ORANGE were in theaters.

comment #17

reverent and free says ...

If you were born in the '80s, you were always conscious of VCRs and CDs and home computers and video games and cable TV. If you were born before that, you'll always remember when your family first got those things.
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Why wouldn't someone in their mid to late 20s be able to remember the first time they got a VCR? Up until the mid '90s video stores were still renting them out with the movies.

comment #18

joncro says ...

America has been an overly protective paranoid country for centuries.

comment #19

bents75 says ...

I think you're a bit off on that time frame Reverent - they may have been renting them but that doesn't mean a shitload of people didn't already own them.

I'm 27 and I remember when I first got a VCR. I don't remember what year it was exactly but it was sometime in the mid to late 80's - first movie was either E.T. or Back to the Future. I grew up lower middle class, but I would say almost all of my friends had VCR's by 1990 as well.

comment #20

Josh Massey says ...

Most households in my neighborhood had VCRs by 1982/1983 - and I was middle class.

comment #21

reverent and free says ...

I definitely remember renting one for The Naked Gun 2. I believe I owned one by the time Jurassic Park or Forrest Gump came out.

Of course I still used a b&w set for a basement TV throughout the '80s, so I'm probably a bad example.

comment #22

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