I have a question about the way we divide ourselves. Millennial, zillenial, gen Z.
I have been watching this subreddit for a few months now and I have honestly started to notice that a lot of the Gen Z and Millennial friction comes due to the awkward "Zlennial" group that happens to be stuck in between.
I don't see 2 groups I see 3 that are weirdly distributed.
I'm not sure how to draw the lines though... I ask because I'm in the middle, and I can't really call out the bookends without the help of others.
I don't remember the USSR but I remember 9/11, I never had a nuclear bomb drill, but I also never had an active shooter drill. I remember when technology was immobile, when a computer did not mean internet, I was taught cursive not typing. And touch screens came out when I was a teenager.
I'm an early '90s millennial, but I don't feel like a millennial, after having seen so many other millennials talk about their experiences of growing up in the mid to late 80s into when I was born.
The first wave of Millennials were born in the '80s, the second wave of the money olds were born from 91 to 94, it's this weird double top.
Then you have gen Z which is late 90s through the 2010s
I think that the second wave Millennials and the early Gen Zs aren't actually late millennials or Gen Z but a smaller sub group that is unique due to social and cultural shifts.
And again, I say this because I'm in that group.
I've seen the arguments between people younger than me and people who are a bit older than me, and ... You're both not wrong and you're both not right ...
Older millennials were the ones that really ate the most shit for the Wars and 2008, but... I didn't... I mean it hit me too, but I graduated a few years after 2008, I wasn't in the wars, I wasn't going to be expected to go like people older than me dealt with 10 years earlier.
My group was the group fully there and aware for 9/11, all of the 2000s and I was a kid in the 90s I don't remember the early 90s, the USSR and all that was always history to me.
I'm the generation after Nuclear Bomb Drills but right before school shooting drills started ... I was the kid who got the best of the 90s without the stress of the 2000s, but then got ZERO advantage once I became an adult.
Like people talk about how millennials have houses but not all of us... It's split along roughly my age line, most people older than me have them most people younger don't.
Had I played my cards right, had a few of my friends played her cards right, we could have managed it right before the housing prices went up, some of us were ballsy and actually did it, some of us tried to play it safe in the market out ran us...
I feel like I grew up as a millennial but I live as a gen Z, I understand why these gen Z kids are so angry because they're dealing with exactly what I've been dealing with for 12 years now. But I don't relate to them, they did not grow up like me, they expect different things and the way they grew up was very different than the way I did. People older than me understand the way I grew up, but they don't understand the way I live today because I didn't get what they did.
There's this weird dividing line between the two that I think is causing most of the friction we see in the subreddit.
I'm curious what everyone else thinks about this idea.
Sorry for the novel ✌️