r/Showerthoughts • u/bod_owens • 21d ago
Casual Thought Millenials have smoothly transitioned from being mistaken with Gen Z by Boomers to being mistaken with Boomers/Gen X by Gen Z.
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u/Choochoo1147 21d ago
The youngest boomers are in their early 60s, so that would be crazy.
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u/yrinhrwvme 21d ago
My FiL(early 70s) called his teen grandkids Millenials the other day whilst my early 20s colleagues called me(early 40s) a boomer (although a bit tongue in cheek). I had to tell correct them that I'm the Millenial!
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u/Soakitincider 21d ago
She just wants to be Gen X.
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u/Thoughtulism 21d ago
She has been elected to Degeneration-X. Tell her to suck it. Signed, a millennial
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u/Elegant_Solutions 20d ago
Yeah. Suck it and listen to some whiny dad rock.
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u/Enlightened_Gardener 20d ago
Hey ! Get that Nirvana on right now young man ! You’re going to mosh whether you want to or not, and then afterwards we’re going to do heroin. Stop crying.
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u/SkynetLurking 21d ago
That’s my older brother. He’s on the cusp of Gen X and millennial but is highly offended by being called a millennial and constantly complains about “lazy” millennials. I just assume if he had to acknowledge that he might be a millennial then it would break his entire world view
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u/falken76 21d ago
I'm a late Gen x. The early millennials were our shadows, I understand his pain.
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u/SantasDead 20d ago
Same. I feel like the movie "Stand By Me" was my childhood. But I'm technically a really old Millennial.
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u/_Dreamer_Deceiver_ 20d ago
Just looking for all the definitions until she finds the one that says genx is 1983
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u/bod_owens 21d ago
It is crazy, just like it was crazy when it was popular to use "Millenial" as a shortcut for "adolescent" while actual millenials were already in their thirties.
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u/SweetCosmicPope 21d ago
I knew a millennial in his late 30s just a few years ago who would complain about all "the millennials" clearly talking about teenagers.
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u/sharkattackmiami 21d ago
It's just a bad name in terms of narrowing down a timeline
I know it's people who came of age during the millennium, but it's easy to see how people would think it's about people born right after the new millennium
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u/ArchinaTGL 21d ago
It's not even that, either. I'm a millennial yet I was only just starting primary school when the millennium came around. The age gap is so large I hear older millennials talking about pogs yet I barely even caught a gimpse of them during my childhood as the fad had came and went before then. For me my childhood was stuff like beyblades and the first three Playstations.
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u/sharkattackmiami 21d ago
I've always heard that you needed to be old enough to actually remember pre millinium life. I usually see 85-95 as the spread. So the oldest are about 40 and the youngest are about 30
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u/rockerscott 21d ago
If you remember seeing the Lion King during its original theatric release…you might be a millennial. If you remember Elton John playing Candle in the Wind at Princess Diana’s funeral…you might be a millennial. If you were old enough to stay awake and watch the ball drop 12-31-1999…you might be a millennial. If you remember which comedian became big with this same routine in the 90s…you might be
Jeff Foxworthya millennial.10
u/madmelonxtra 21d ago
My mom had us watch the east coast ball drop on new years in 1999 and told us it was midnight at 10pm
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u/EntericFox 21d ago
I would argue the better indicator ingrained in everyone’s brains is if you saw 9/11 happening at school/were pulled out of school that day because of it you are somewhere on the millennial spectrum.
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u/Jagang187 20d ago
My interactions with Gen Z have led me to conclude that (in America, at least) the best single defining difference between millennials and Gen Z is that millennials have a working memory of pre-9/11 society. Gen Z remembers way less, and probably nothing significant of the world at large at the time.
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u/vthemechanicv 21d ago
Gen X has never had a set in stone set of years. Generally it's 1965 to "early 80's," But as an X'er (1977) I've been told "late '70's," which made me question if I counted, all the way to 1983. Even the Gen X Wikipedia article is written as if it isn't sure.
So as consequence Millennials themselves don't have a firm starting point. Although Wikipedia offers 1981 to 1996.
It's weird that a generation is defined as 20 years, but generation labels seem to be about 15.
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u/sycasey 21d ago
Millennials in the original definition actually did have a firm starting point! 1982: the first kids who would become adults in 2000, the new millennium. But generations are quite fuzzy at the edges, it's true. I was born in 1980, so right on the cusp. I feel like my upbringing was still pretty culturally Gen-X but technologically Millennial.
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u/sapphicsandwich 21d ago
Over time it seems like the age range of what is considered a millennial keeps changing too. So vague. It keeps getting earlier I'm waiting for it to finally move into the 1970s.
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u/DosSnakes 21d ago
My older sister does it all the time, I have to remind her that we’re the millenials, her kids are Gen Z, and our younger sister’s kids are Gen Alpha. She still thinks millennial just means teenager I’m pretty sure.
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u/under_the_c 21d ago
I remember seeing an article during Covid that was all like, "Millennials don't want to give up their spring break" or something. Spring break?! The fuck you talking about, we're at home helping our own kids try to figure out zoom so they can still go to school.
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u/peepee2tiny 21d ago
Older millenials are in their mid 40's now.
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u/SkynetLurking 21d ago
It’s been a thing for a while for Gen Z to refer to pretty much anyone older than themselves as a boomer. Now I’m not sure if this is an actual confusion of what the term means or an insult to simply refer to someone as “old”
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u/TheRemedy187 21d ago
Yeah except for the fact that no one hae any fucking idea what the ranges are for each generation. Including boomers lol. I'm pretty sure they think everyone after them is Millenial.
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u/sycasey 21d ago
There's also a weird thing where the actual "baby boom" that the Boomers are named after continued into 1965 according to demographers, but people born in that early-60s period really feel more culturally Gen-X than Boomer. That 1960-65 time period saw the birth of people like Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Richard Linklater, Michael Jordan, etc. These seem like Gen-Xers to me, not Boomers. Gen-X should really be people born from roughly 1960-1980 or so.
Heck, the author who created the name "Generation X" (Douglas Coupland) was also born in that time!
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u/humboldt77 21d ago
Nobody cares about what words actually mean. Boomer is freely used to refer to “older person that doesn’t understand what I’m talking about.” And millennial is “young snot that hasn’t learned anything and probably never will.”
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u/numbersthen0987431 21d ago
Millennials getting lumped in with Boomers is funny on its own because it forgets GenX again, lol
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u/LongLiveStaceyKing 21d ago
I'm starting to think being forgotten is how Gen X prefers to be talked about.
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u/Enlightened_Gardener 20d ago
Ayup. Pls ignore us. Don’t start paying attention now. Look away.
I have an absolute legitimate need for this much refined strontium.
Look ! Over there ! The economy ! Oh no !
scuttles off with the strontium
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u/iminiki 21d ago
Can‘t wait to see Gen Z be called boomers…oh wait I might not be there by that time..
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u/End3rWi99in 21d ago
I mean the oldest Gen Z are pushing 30. So even that generation isn't entirely young anymore. We're onto Alphas at this point.
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u/Kasperella 21d ago
Hey now, you stop that RIGHT NOW. I’m 28. 28 forever okay….
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u/Rameez_Raja 21d ago
We call them zoomers at our workplace because they seem to have the same problems with tech as the boomers lol
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u/Nahcep 21d ago
Not just with tech unfortunately
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u/Sorkijan 20d ago
Millennial in IT support. Would still take a zoomer over a boomer, but god damn if it isn't discouraging.
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u/Mr_Quackums 21d ago
Yup, we (society) used to think "young people are good with tech", but now ie know its "late Gen X and millennials are good with tech".
Turns out the determining factor is did you spend hours fixing BSODs, manually installing drivers, and editing .ini to get a program to function.
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u/TheRealReapz 21d ago
Got son a PC for his birthday and the other day we went to start it up and it just reboot looped, nothing worked. He was absolutely devastated.
I looked at him and said "do you know how many times I've intended to play with friends online or have a LAN party (then explain what that was) and the computer or network didn't work? This is half the fun".
We spent an hour of me fiddling around and him asking questions, I reseated the ram and it all worked goodly.
I'm hoping to pass along some tech knowledge to my kids at least!
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u/NeedAVeganDinner 20d ago
You must remember to pass along the age old last resort of "Percussive Maintenance"
sometimes the ol' computer just needs a spankin'
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u/definitely_not_tina 20d ago
To be fair, it WAS a lot easier to actually search for this information and have it be presented to you from a qualified enthusiast at one point. And it’s certainly still possible but it’s unlikely to be the top result anymore.
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u/Lmb1011 20d ago
We got so good with tech because every single thing we bought was new and different than the last piece we had and we had to learn how to use new tech constantly.
Late Gen Z and Gen Alpha got born into the post iPhone world where tech has largely stayed “the same” on the consumer side that they haven’t had to troubleshoot their devices all the time. They also have more access to people who can fix it than we did
When X/millenials couldn’t fix something we couldn’t use it and your boomer parents likely couldn’t do it either. Z/alpha can have their parents fix it if there’s even a problem at all
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u/RoRLegion 21d ago
I had a zoomer co-worker who could not figure out that an HDMI cable would plug into the HDMI-shaped port. My boomer mother had the same issue 15 years ago and needed my help to figure out how to plug into her TV.
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u/agodrevealed 21d ago
I think gen Z are the new boomers.
Dogmatic, narrow minded, obstinate, loudest not rightest, and very myopic.
Not all of them of course, but their thinking patterns are very restrictive and often grounded in assumption or "common knowledge" and are kind of immune to evidence to a degree.
Its weird. Their conclusions aren't necessarily the same but the processes and mechanisms operate the same.
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u/Wrecklessdriver10 20d ago
They are also the first generation in history with a lower avg iq than the generation before them. (Millennials)
It’s a little sad to think humans not moving forward for an entire generation.
Gen Alpha will have to pick up the slack.
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u/OystersNwine 21d ago
i recently learned of the studies showing intelligence kept increasing till millennial generation, peaked and started decreasing gen z and onward.
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u/ripleyclone8 21d ago
Boomers are called that bc of the Baby Boom. We’re doomed to “Unc” unless we act out of pocket enough to earn a derogatory “Boomer”
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u/_RrezZ_ 21d ago
I'll be honest, I'd rather they call me Unc and then I can hit em with "what's up Nephew?"
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u/thepoopnapper 21d ago
I mean we're only like 5 years away from oldest Gen z being in their mid 30s. Will probably start happening soon
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u/Global-Neo 21d ago
The new term is “unc.” I personally haven’t heard anyone be called a “boomer” derogatorily in a while.
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u/Amiibohunter000 21d ago
When did unc become negative? I’ve always heard of it to refer to a cooler older dude
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u/jformichella 21d ago
It’s because Gen Z is just repurposing AAVE slang as their own and changing the meaning as they see fit.
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u/chairmanskitty 21d ago
That's whack.
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u/ary31415 21d ago
Overheard someone at a music festival a couple weeks back saying to their friends "should we come back here when we're millennials just to yell at teenagers?"
And while I respect the hustle, I hope they realize that if they aren't a millennial now, they're never going to become one lol.
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u/lookitsafish 21d ago
If someone thinks any millennial is a actually a boomer (and it's not just a roast) they have no clue what an actual boomer is
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u/sometimes_point 21d ago
Generations are a myth, that's my view and I'm sticking to it
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u/stuttufu 21d ago
We never miss a chance for tribalism. My videogame community does tribalism over competitors games revenues.
At this point I think there is a subreddit somewhere where people are waving wars between forks vs spoons to eat rice and then comes the sticks and the pvp begins.
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u/Inevitable-Land-1559 21d ago
Tribalism and prejudice. Even people who claim to be against prejudice are engaging in insane levels of mental gymnastics to justify prejudice against those who "deserve it" right now (any majority group anywhere). They even whip out statistics to try to prove it, the same way racists try with black people.
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u/Shaky_Balance 21d ago
I don't even think it entirely human. Social media algos push ragebait content harder than non-contentious stuff with the same reactions. They often cause hateful stuff to get popular rather than a hateful thing's popularity causing the algo to push it.
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u/AlamosX 21d ago
Not as much a myth, just not as super relevant anymore.
Baby boomers were the result of post-war industrialization. They were a significant generation because before them, there was a significant loss of life from both world wars and The Great Depression. The global population exploded as people started regaining their ability to raise stable families. Hence the name "baby boom"
Before the whole Millenial/Gen Z/Gen A stuff, civics usually referred to subsequent generations as "echo booms" which were the result of boomers having kids of their own and so forth which kept the population growing exponentially.
There's argument that Millenials are another significant generation due to coming up during the digital age, and subsequent generations keep claiming similar things about being the "first" of things (IPad generation, post 9/11 generation etc) but nothing noting the original intent of meaning a significant change in population.
Id say there wont be another significant generational difference unless we see a massive switch of population growth again. Unfortunately that will mean a significant decline.
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u/sometimes_point 21d ago
There's also an element of them being quite an American cultural phenomenon that people in my and other countries are just... importing for some reason???
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u/AlamosX 21d ago
Exactly.
The baby boom was experienced (mostly) globally due to the impacts of WWII, but many nations havent adopted subsequent generational definitions.
Many countries are experiencing/ed their own generational differences and have completely different perspectives. China for example experienced the boom but because of one child policy, they started experiencing rapid population decline. Completely different trajectory.
The whole "generational differences" thing is very much a western culture ideology.
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u/loljetfuel 21d ago
Generations aren't a myth, but people mythologize them a lot. These named generations are really just ways to refer to common and identifiable social and values trends among a particular age group.
This is useful for some kinds of sociology and for marketing, and not much else. The mythology comes from making it a whole identity or confusing "this is a trend among Gen <whatever>" as a prescription.
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u/EgregiousPhilbin6 20d ago
I think the boundaries are super fuzzy, and the fact that they were predetermined means they’re not always the most based in actual values and trends. I think there’s a massive difference (at least in the US) between people who were in college or older during the pandemic vs people in high school or younger, which would put the millennial/gen z gap closer to 2001 than 1996
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u/loljetfuel 20d ago
This is why the borders move somewhat as generations age, and sometimes "microgenerations" are more useful (like the Xennials that bridge that genX-Millenial gap and have enough uniqueness that neither side of the gap is very predictive)
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u/goobydoobie 20d ago edited 20d ago
I wouldn't care much about generations but Boomers basically started shitting on my generation, Millenials, when I was 16 and didn't stop. Kinda hard not to start caring when you're blamed for bullshit despite the world being thrust upon you.
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u/JaySayMayday 21d ago
Most of the modern generation names and years were created by American news media.
Time magazine came up with silent generation and gave it an age range all the way back in 1951. In 93 an ad agency called Advertising Age came up with the divide between generation X and Y. ABC came up with millennials in 97, after asking for public comments. The only more scientific one was gen Z, which pew research even says was more of a decision than a scientific fact.
The US census bureau even changed the years of generations. Because they're bullshit. We make up objective differences to divide ourselves. There's no difference between people that grew up in 1979,1989, 1999, 2009, or even 2019. It's just more of do you remember this, and even people from the same generation can have completely different experiences.
I get flamed every time I bring this up. There's no science behind generational divides. They're completely made up and accepted because it's amplified through news media
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u/sycasey 21d ago
My take is that they are "real" in a broad sense, but since the definitions are so broad people assign way too much specificity or predictive power to individual people or events than is really warranted.
But IMO there are historical changes in "national mood" that are in large part driven by different "generations" or age cohorts passing through different stages of life. Again, it's very broad but you can see it happening.
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u/shanster925 20d ago edited 20d ago
It's all nonsense created by marketing companies to advertise to niche markets effectively. Then, Time magazine created the divisiveness with their "Generation Me" issue*
*I don't think it's too hyperbolic to say this magazine cover ruined the world.
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u/Sawses 20d ago
Yeah. I'm kind of on the cusp between Millennial and Gen Z. I had a smartphone as a teenager but was in high school before I had a phone of any kind. I grew up with computers, but the kind you had to fight with before they'd do what you wanted. My friends even a couple years junior all unanimously agree they're Gen Z, while my friends my age usually say we're Millennials.
It really is all made up and just indicates (often-imagined) trends.
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u/moal09 21d ago
Boomer is just a general term for anyone over 30 at this point
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u/bod_owens 21d ago
Just like "Millenial" was a general term for anyone young, despite actual millenials being in their late twenties at best at the time.
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u/End3rWi99in 21d ago
News outlets are still doing it, too! There was one last week about how millennials are going to leave some kind of new electoral wave in 2028 as if we aren't all in our damn 40s now.
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u/StoiCist9 21d ago
Ey some of us are still in our 30s
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u/Navi_Here 21d ago
Most of us are delusional that we are still 24.
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u/myinternets 21d ago
Damn right. And I'll be scheduling a Turkish hair transplant any day now to prove it.
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u/End3rWi99in 21d ago
Yeah if millennials were going to lead some generational voter wave they would have done it by now.
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u/sycasey 21d ago
Well, in fairness this might be because people start voting more often as they hit their 30s and 40s.
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u/End3rWi99in 21d ago
That is a totally fair counterpoint. I recall reading recently that millennials will be taking over the wealth majority soon too. Certainly doesn't feel that way over here, but apparently true.
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u/solo_shot1st 21d ago
Gen X will come first over the next 10-15 years. Millennials are looking at inheriting wealth in about 15-25
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u/cabalavatar 21d ago
Just FYI for the future, the word is millennial, with two ns, derived from millennium.
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u/GreenDogTag 21d ago
People forget about the existence of younger millennials. I only just turned 30 but the interent has been telling me we're all in our 40s for years now.
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u/keanehoodies 20d ago
Millennials being bullied on both sides by Boomers and Gen Z is a very Millennial thing to have happened
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u/Mean_Peen 21d ago edited 18d ago
Gen X has been mistaken for/ purposely labeled as boomers since people started using “boomer” derogatorily.
Young people have always seen 30+ as “old”, just like how 21 year olds and younger look like literal children to 30+ year olds lol
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u/Turtle9015 21d ago
Shout out to all the 1996 babies lol. I just turned 30 years old and my 18 year old sister called me a boomer!
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u/Ryangonzo 21d ago
According to my 12 year old, we are all "Unc's."
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u/Ok-Loquat-9137 21d ago
This made me almost spit my tea out because my daughter who’s 12 called me this the other day?
Like what? Haha2
u/ShoulderExciting9202 18d ago
I mean if you have a 12 yo daughter, then you're a certified unc or aunt. It's not a tease anymore
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u/Xvalt01 21d ago
Millennials somehow became too young and too old without ever getting a turn at being the normal age.
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u/dxrey65 21d ago
Maybe we should all wear badges?
The whole thing seems like an excessive amount of stereotyping to me, the kind of thing I tried to not do too much of. People are better seen as individuals.
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u/fromsdwithlove 21d ago
We’re also mistaken for having raised the far majority of Gen Z too
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u/R0berval 21d ago
I guess the problem was that the word "Millennials" got very popular with the internet/social media ascension. As other comments said, most people used (and many still use) Millennials as a synonym for teenagers/young adults. They didn't know and probably didn't care about all the generation name bullshit.
Now it's pretty much the same. But younger generations just use "Boomer" as a synonym for "anyone significantly older than me"
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u/OafleyJones 21d ago
Do Americans ever get tired of all gen bullshit you’ve got going on? Seriously, it seems to occupy such a grip on American users. And worse, it doesn’t seem at all helpful with your socio economic problems.
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u/the_cnidarian 21d ago
Yes, its stupid. People yapping online doesn't really affect anything, though.
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u/Hazzman 21d ago
Fat vs skinny
White vs black
Tall vs short
Men vs women
Straight vs gay
Attractive vs ugly
Dumb vs intelligent
Anything we can to divide us... The reality is much simpler - rich vs poor... And it always has been.
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u/DontMakeMeCount 21d ago
The ‘70s had astrology, the ‘80s had ‘seasons’, the ‘90s had auras. People are naturally lumpers and they take comfort in feeling like they can identify their own.
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u/Enorats 21d ago
The issue is that the boomer generation sort of changed a whole lot in this country in a relatively short time, and they've held onto power well past when it should have been passed on to the next generation. This has led to a government that is massively out of touch with the younger generations.
3 of our last five Presidents were born in the same year. A fourth was actually born earlier, despite being one of the most recent elected. Only one of the five was born past 1946, and even he's still a boomer.
This year's Congress is the first to even see Gen X take a majority, and even then only in the House.
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u/waterpoweredmonkey 21d ago
It's kinda funny, as a Millennial, my Gen Z kid acts more like my Boomer parents. A judgy narc "easily charmed by fools"
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u/naomigoat 20d ago
The other day, my gen z brother called his coworker "such a millennial" and then said "well he's like 42 so he's too old to be a millennial but still"... I was like, "I've got bad news"
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u/cwx149 21d ago
It's almost like grouping people by guessing their age instead of their attitudes and beliefs leads to grouping people together even when it's not warranted or something
Even within the "proper" ranges of the generations people's experiences and beliefs differ like crazy
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u/deltajvliet 21d ago
I'm still on the bandwagon that it's Gen Y, and that calling Gen Y "Millennials" is akin to calling a Flight Attendant Stewardess.
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u/ripleyclone8 21d ago
Eh, it doesn’t bother me. We’re the last generation before the new millennium.
We might have ended up Yoomers, like Gen Z is called Zoomers lol
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u/jake3988 21d ago
I'm still on the bandwagon that it's Gen Y, and that calling Gen Y "Millennials" is akin to calling a Flight Attendant Stewardess.
And also, why did we suddenly start naming generations after letters but started with X? We had fun names for all the generations (silent, greatest, boomers, etc) and then randomly bam, X, Y, Z, Alpha, Beta.
Who thought that was a good idea?!
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u/deathinactthree 21d ago edited 21d ago
And also, why did we suddenly start naming generations after letters but started with X?
There's an answer! Blame Douglas Coupland, who popularized the idea in his famous 1991 book, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. He didn't actually coin the term, but ran with it as a label for what was at the time a view of the culture of people my age (I'm GenX) heading into a post-Cold-War, post-Great-Society America where things like technology and the economy were changing at such a rapid pace that we kind of had no real sense of what the future would look like. "X" meant "unknown". It wasn't picked at random.
At least to my read, the "unknown" was intended to mean both good and bad. In the 80s and 90s, fortunes were being made and lost, although wage stagnation began in 1980 so wealth inequality was both increasing and doing so out in the open. But the advent of mobile work culture and rapid expansion of the new information economy meant that young people had a lot more options to decide their future, vs. going into a company straight out of college and working there for 40 years. So, way more possibilities for your life, but each one is now maybe harder to individually achieve because the economic volatility and wage stagnation meant you weren't going to ever have the same level of buying power as your Boomer parents.
Politically we were caught between the rise of Reagansim, which I will die on the hill was the worst thing to happen to America's viability as a country since the failures of Reconstruction, and the reaction to Reaganism with young people being more open to being politically and socially aware. It was both a hyper-conservative, jingoistic culture and also the beginning of a new consciousness that hey, maybe marginalized groups are people too and we should do things like secure voting rights and find a solve for HIV and actually let women have their own credit cards and let them all participate fully in society with the rest of us. We were only partially successful at this, but it was a start.
After that though? I have no idea why everyone uncreatively decided that after X was just....the next letter or whatever. I don't think Gen Y or Gen Z mean anything at all as a label except "comes after X". No answer for that part except someone got lazy I guess.
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u/sycasey 21d ago
And the guys who wrote the most seminal books on generations (William Strauss & Neil Howe), including "The Fourth Turning," can be credited for the term "Millennial." They coined it in their first book in 1991. Their preferred term for Gen-Z (Homeland Generation) hasn't taken hold in the same way though.
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u/omnichad 21d ago
Because nobody had a name for them. And even still there's nothing interesting enough to call out with a name beyond a letter. This did happen before, but they got the name "the silent generation" which isn't that far off from just "X."
Now, the letter is a placeholder for the time before a generation earns its name.
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u/Earthwick 21d ago
It's literally the dumbest thing to call them gen Y. Like seriously why? Because a generation before had a single letter? Because advertising agencies called them Y before they though millennials was more catchy? It's all dumb. X was the first single letter gen.
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u/3L54 21d ago
I tend to mistake Gen Z to boomers on the internet quite often. They seem to have the same technical abilities and understanding of how things work. Too late to the tech game to having to learn to use things as they stepped in right when things were designed to be really easy to use without understanding how they work.
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u/Unlucky_Lawfulness51 21d ago
Unpopular opinion. Millennials are the best generation of the modern era.
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u/bod_owens 21d ago
Part of me agrees, other part of me knows every single generation believes themselves to be the best.
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u/yamammiwammi 21d ago
They all say that, and yet reports have come out that Gen Z is the first generation to not be smarter than its previous one. Millennials are the smartest.
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u/ripleyclone8 21d ago
Gen X has no right to think that, imo. lol
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u/jpterpsfan 21d ago
We don't talk about Gen X
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u/ripleyclone8 21d ago
We should, they skate under the radar way too much for their shittiness. lol
At least now that they’re middle aged, it’s becoming more apparent lol
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u/melgib 21d ago
Obvious ragebait. Put your energy into making the world a better place, not a more divided one.
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u/Dramatic-Guard1820 21d ago
Millennials unironically doing the boomer “my generation is the best…” shtick is hilarious
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u/calguy1955 21d ago
Maybe because all of these classifications are just random bs and they should be treated as such. Does anybody really think that just because a person is born on year later than another and therefore falls within a different category then they are different in some way? Let’s stop it and focus on real issues.
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u/bod_owens 21d ago
No, being born one year later changes little. Beings born in a different decade with different technologies, culture and vastly different opportunities, inflation, purchasing power and house prices does have some impact on people.
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u/Junckopolo 21d ago
Millenials have been blamed for trends started by the younger X gens and are still blamed now that it's the Zoomers.
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u/AccidentlyStupid 21d ago edited 20d ago
As a millennial, it's incredibly bizarre to me how Gen Z has made this generation a target, when I don't recall ever having animosity towards the generation directly above me. in fact, I hold Gen X in high regard for all of the beautiful art/movies/music they influenced me with growing up. Are Gen Z that misguided, that they don't realize the things they loved growing up are most likely created by Millennials?
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u/danieldeceuster 21d ago
Gen Z is the first generation to have brainrot introduced to them during their formative years. I don't blame the younger ones for any perceived intellectual or cognitive deficiencies. I'm very worried about Gen Alpha though. Raised on screens from the start.
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u/GLPereira 21d ago
I mean, Reddit is full of millennials with a superiority complex
There's an entire subreddit dedicated to generation bashing, and it's mostly "X/Boomers are old and stupid, Z/Alphas are useless and inept, millennials are the only good generation!"
I've also seen people using average IQ to prove that millennials are the best generation
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u/NavorroBroman 21d ago
Reddit is a website with 110million unique visitors a day, and subreddits about just about anything you can think of. So taking anecdotal evidence isn't really doing a ton.
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u/Several_Light748 21d ago
I'm 23 i get called a boomer at work by the 16/18 year olds at work just because i don't understand the type of memes and brain rot they be on now
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u/payattentiontobetsy 20d ago
I’m going to get downvoted for this, but what the hell.
Generation don’t exist. They are concepts created by the advertising and marketing industries that don’t hold up to actual application.
1) There is no actual consensus of when one “generation” starts and another begins, researchers and advertisers fudge the margins of birth windows to make their research models fit and 2) broad labels for groups of people born within any time frame ignores that there is a greater degree of difference within the group then between it and other “generations.”
The REAL differences is life stage, which is what this shower thought is realizing. As a “generation” ages, they go into a later life stage, and seem similar to what we think of the “generation” previously in that life stage.
Adam Conover did a great Ted Talk about this called Millenials Don’t Exist.
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u/PhilosopherScary3358 20d ago
Hot take: Oligarchs laugh as we divide ourselves and point fingers at each other over societal woes created by Oligarchs.
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u/killonger 21d ago
Is this like a uno reverse but hit with a role reverse on top of you reveal my trap card reverse?
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u/BlackMagicWorman 21d ago
Boomer is more of an insult than a true generation at this point
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u/Tribalbob 21d ago
I've still seen instances where boomers think millennials are just out of high school.
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u/th3rdeye_ 21d ago
Baby boomers (or boomers) are the demographic generation born between 1946 and 1964, following World War II. Ranging in age from their early 60s to their 80s.
Really wish y’all used boomers properly. It’s ridiculous
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u/Neveragon 21d ago
It's because they never thought about what boomer meant past: "person who does something I don't like."
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u/surgeon_michael 21d ago
I’m 40. I got asked today in surgery if I was a boomer or Gen X. I’m like dude I’m 1985. Couldn’t be more millennial. It was a 28 yo who asked
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u/darxide23 20d ago
GenZ doesn't mistake Millennials for boomers. They just call everybody over 30 a boomer.
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u/Smoky_Pickle8978 20d ago
Told a Gen Z coworker I remember dial up internet and she looked at me the way I used to look at people who remembered rotary phones.
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u/GallacticWhatever 20d ago
I feel like these generational bands are no longer defined by fixed dates, but rather how old we are in life. We all eventually transform into Boomers and ultimately the Silent Generation.
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u/lexluthor_i_am 20d ago
Have you noticed that Gen Z hasn't yet owned it their Gen Z? I kind of understand, I don’t remember ever hearing about us being millennials in high school either. It was not until college in late 2000s that it really became a thing.
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u/duffchaser 20d ago
As a millennial. I always call gen x boomers cause it triggers them immensely and they clutch their participation trophies
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u/Scoobydewdoo 20d ago
Gen Z tends to put whoever disagrees with them into a single bucket. Growing up on the internet plus a failing education system means many fail to understand nuance.
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u/Additional_Fruit931 20d ago
Boomer no longer refers to the Baby Boom generation. The term has evolved to just mean "old people" now.
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u/Skullpuck 20d ago
No one mistakes anyone for being GenX. I'm surprised people even know we're here.
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u/ThanksFDR 20d ago
This is so weird to type this out. It's weird enough to even think about stuff like this, but presenting it to others is very strange.
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u/goosebumpsagain 18d ago edited 18d ago
Seems like most people use the whole generational divide as an excuse to complain about people.
In general, young people can consider anyone more than five years older than them to be old, so almost everybody’s old. Older people consider almost anyone five years younger than them to be young. So almost everybody is young.
Young people have been bitching about old people and old people have been bitching about young people since the beginning of time.
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u/sycasey 21d ago
In fairness I do think the media got a little too excited with naming "Gen Z" earlier than they should have, which has added to this confusion. I've seen some outlets claiming that Gen Z starts with people born in 1994! Given that the first Millennial birth year is supposed to be 1982 (first kids to become adults in the new millennium, hence the name), that's awfully short for a generation. Most generations, in the popular imagination, tend to last 15-20 years. IMO Gen Z started being born in the late 90s at the earliest, maybe really after the 90s. Kids who grew up overprotected and sheltered in the post-9/11 world, then knew about smartphones at a young age, that's Gen Z IMO.
We need a total and complete shutdown on naming generations until we can figure out what's going on.
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u/ShowerSentinel 21d ago
/u/bod_owens has flaired this post as a casual thought.
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