What the Fuck happened with Gen X?
All I hear about is "boomers" this, "Millennials" that, "Gen Z" that, etc.
Why no one talk about Gen X? What happened to them? They just vanished like in Infinity War? Or are we mistaken Gen Z by Boomers?
A lot of gen x got theirs. College was paid for and was cheap, lots of opportunities while they were young, got a house, a family and are just living. They will get a fair inheritance if their parents die on time, but they are also the first to see that huge nest egg disappear to the current healthcare system.
Their vote never counted. Too many boomers.
They were the first to figure out their parents had it incredibly easy, although it took them a long time. Sometimes they didn’t see it until their own kids struggled with costs and employment.
A lot are conservative but probably because they have assets and don’t like social welfare taking from them, even though their parents set it up for them to lose.
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
I'm GenX. If you ask my group of friends "who here has built their own PC from components?" every hand is going to go up. Including the teacher, the administrator and the financier.
Ask a group of Millennials who knows what the command line is for and see what reaction you get.
GenX is the generation that does tech support for its parents and its children.
Kind of... It's really that weird bridge period between the two generations. 1980 seems to be the sweet spot. The further your birth year is from it, in either direction, the less tech savvy they seem to be.
Older millennials are firmly there with you in relation to tech.
That’s simply selection bias.
Isn't that just cos: a) you had to build your own PC back then, and b) you have way more time and resources to do so
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
We built the tech. I was there, three decades ago.
I bought a 386 motherboard that needed a patch. Not software, but by soldering a wire between two pads. You just basically figure it out and went from there with a soldering iron.
Build the computer from parts? Sure. Soldered it like it came as discrete components? Also sure.
Tech savvy is often in context of when you were learning in your teens to early twenties and then what of that skill set is still applicable today.
Some of the genx built it, but the rest of them were too old (too busy) to learn it. The kids learned it.
X86 was not built by genx if you want to get pedantic.
They aren’t as tech savvy as millennials.
Yeah, this is nonsense. Gen X were the generation that had to adapt to emerging technology in the workplace, when that technology itself wasn’t designed with user-friendliness at its core, and usually without an education that prioritised that. They worked with obscure hardware and obtuse software. They then continued to adapt as the Internet became prevalent and software within offices evolved. They saw the most change, and remain in the workforce.
As time has gone on, technology has simplified for the user. As such, Gen X are absolutely the generation that taught their parents how to solve their IT issues, and the ones that continue to teach their children, with Xennials being the peak of that curve.
Anecdotally, my teenage kids fly around an iPhone, but still think a computer is the fucking monitor.
I wonder if the context of 'tech person' vs average person is what they meant?
A genx tech person in their field is going to be on avg further along than millenial in the same field - because they've literally been doing it longer, more experience, learnt more, exposed to more fundamentals.
imo the distinction is the average (non-tech) genx probably will have less tech exposure than avg millenial, millenials were coming up during the shift of the average person thinking "computers are for geeks" to "tech is cool".
disclaimer: generation names are kind of arbitrary divide and conquer bs anyway.
Kids of today certainly lack a lot of “background” tech troubleshooting skills, but understand some of the more nuanced details of modern systems. It’s both interesting and frustrating to watch.
I disagree that they aren't as tech savvy as Millennials. I would say on average its younger GenX and older Millennials that have the highest tech skills, with GenX probably ahead. That's referring to percentage, not total numbers.
Yes, “xennials” probably have their own generation because of this, but I have met a lot more millennials that can manage UI changes over genx.
Switch a genx from windows to Mac and they are lost. Switch a millennial and they seem to be fine. I’ve seen this with phones, TVs, websites, etc.
Genx were young during “dumb” tech. VCR, digital phones, etc. millennials were learning the internet as it was moving from a hobby to its own platform, cellphones as they were first widely available then as they went “smart”, and a lot of other examples.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of knowledge was lost along the way like manual categorical systems including tabulation machines, phone books, Thomas Guides, even cabinet filing systems/card catslogs. Genx handles these things a lot better than the more recent generations.
“Xennials” probably have the most critical problem solving skills applicable to tech. But 80’s/90’s kids were dealing with really new or bad tech while 60’s/70’s kids were dealing with VCRs and ATMs.
My older Gen X Mom (late 1960s) is one of the most tech illiterate people I know….
Its pretty much Gen X who grew up programming their own games on Amigas and things like that, Milleniums grew up with iPads and game consoles.
When Gen X dies off I'd say the world's going to have a lot less being fixed all round unless AI gets a lot better.
Wow, that a very insightful and concise description, really. Now I understand more. Thank you.
Gen X here, can confirm that's a pretty accurate take
"Boomers" has been misappropriated by younger generations to mean anything from older people they disagree with, older people they feel have undue privileges they don't have, or older people who were born before the internet became widespread.
The scapegoating mostly points at gen-X'ers though, not true boomers. The boomers are hitting the retirement homes at this point.
Boomers are generally tech illiterate, gen-x grew up with consoles, the commodore 64 and then the web and the mobile era then smartphones and withspread internet and so on and on. We were there when things started.
Elon Musk & Sergei Brin are Gen X, but Bezos, Gates, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak, and most of the people who built the technology GenX grew up with are Boomers. Zuck is a Millenial, but just barely. You could make a decent start of life as GenX knowing nothing about the technology, but they were still young enough to learn new developments easily.
We took the brunt of everything the Boomers could throw at us. You're welcome. Its your turn now, we're tired.
What the hell are Boomers? Some kind of Dark souls boss? We are the Third generation they fuck up!
They got a college education for about $1000 in today money, bought property and homes for $20k today money, and are clinging to power rather than letting anyone younger have a seat at the table. They were born on third base and think they hit a triple. Every other generation is too "lazy" to do what they did, so it must be correct that they hold onto power because we'd just fuck it all up.
The world got handed to them in post-WWII USA while Europe and Asia were rebuilding and they fail to recognize that they were born into an unprecedented situation that is unlikely to repeat. That's why they're selfish assholes.
It's the working class vs the 1%, not generation vs generation
Totally agree, comrade ✊
yeah, the generation blame game is getting kinda old
We're just chilling watching the show...
I sit at the tail end of it, or as I've seen it described 'xenials', wishing things would start to make sense again one day.
1977 here, we had to be raised by the boomers alone - with no Internet, mobile phones, and left outside all summer until it was dark (which wasn't that bad mostly).
What we were sold on growing up and what actually happened when we became adults was very different.
You realize that that comic is a pretty strong indictment of gen X though, yes?
It's not noble or otherwise admirable to sit down and eat that popcorn.
Here's the funny thing with that. We watched things like Bill Nye and Captain Planet as kids. We've been aware of the evidence of science and the needs to change our society since a very young age. For many years we where told 'use plastic so they don't cut down trees' only to realize later that was wrong. All through it we where telling the parent and the grandparents that things needed to change and the future wasn't looking great.
Not one fuck was given.
So when it came time to be the parents and the mundane middle life drones many simply said hold onto what scraps you can and hope for the future, but in the meantime I just want to sit down for a bit. It's draining as hell to spend decades of your life being ignored, it's not a wonder we get called the forgotten generation.
I think genX most keeps their mouth shut about the generation wars because they were least touched by propaganga about it. Boomers were primed from the start with bullshit about the specialness of their generation. And it wasn't until genx was old enough to be over it, that the divisive cross-generation blaming got into full swing.
Ronald Reagan happened to GenX.
Worse than an H Bomb
Nah we are here, just staying out of the drama I guess. Busy working. My guess is we aren't enough of a market - not the desirable-to-marketers 18-30 age group, and not a huge group with money like the boomers. So we are not targeted as much.
That sounds very plausible
Everyone who is “old” is a boomer now.
And "millennial" just means "child." People born in 1990 have sneered the word at 12-year-olds with zero self-recognition.
We’re still being forgotten.
The boomers held on to power for such a long time that X never really got a generational chance to change things or sit in the driver’s seat. They were left waiting in the wings for their turn. The millennials were pretty pissed off for a lot of reasons and made a lot of noise, so they overshadowed X, and they’ve been maneuvering for their opportunities in the driver’s seat.
So basically X got mostly left out. Doesn’t mean we couldn’t fuck things up, though. We were the biggest trump voters by generation.
We all went for a bike-ride, and when we got home just played some Atari.
Still playing Atari...
Ngl That's kinda Badass
"The forgotten generation" strikes again!
Maybe they're just lying low so nobody will blame everything on them.
A wise move
Doesn't really matter - eventually every generation gets blamed for all the world's problems.
Generational Theory refers to them as a "Nomad" generation, analagous to the more literally named "Lost Generation" one sacculum prior.
Generational theory is not scientific, but the patterns it identifies are certainly interesting. It's held up over the last 30 years, and seems to be continuing.
At least according to Wikipedia, Generation X is the generation referred to as "the forgotten generation".
Musk is Gen X. Ron DeSantis is Gen X. Josh Hawley is Gen X. Paul Ryan, Gen X, claimed Rage Against the Machine was a favorite band despite being a fucking Republican.
Sounds to me like they're pretty loud and fucking shit up just as bad as the Boomers, no offense.
I don't have good memories of Gen X, just memories as assholes older than me who judged everyone based on what music they listened to and were absolutely assholes if your music wasn't cool enough.
Am I shocked most of them grew up to be conservative fuckholes? No, no I am not.
Anyway they mostly just get lumped in with Boomers, but Musk is Gen X and I think he's sadly pretty representative of it.
Over half of men (52%) aged 45+ voted for Trump and 44 is the youngest Gen X.
He's the one who likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along and he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means
Knows not what it means, and I say
He's the one who likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along and he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means, knows not what it means, and I say, "Yeah"
I don’t have good memories of Gen X, just memories as assholes older than me who judged everyone based on what music they listened to and were absolutely assholes if your music wasn’t cool enough.
And you base your opinion of an entire generation on that?
There are good people and bad people in all generations alike. One day you too will be older, and you'll be at the receiving end of undeserved criticism for things you've never said or done because some young dude met someone else the same age as you they didn't like.
As most things in life, a huge disappointment
I do have to say that most of the bullies and assholes I have known have been gen X.
You could call them The Silent Generation.
...
No, wait...
X as a population is a birth low like the silent generation and since both are adjacent to the baby boom, which is one of the largest generations, their relative pull during their time is muted. basically the silent generation was sorta crowded out by the large incoming one and Xers were to small to effect the new crowd size much. Then also millenials are technically a boom but really just a drop in the bucket compared to the baby boom before. They are the little peak in the early 90's in this graph where the orange is the boom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom#/media/File:US_Birth_Rates.svg . Combined with this is that X was known as the slackers and they were not big joiners. Don't get me wrong im in the gen and I know plenty of folks that do things in their lives like reduce, reuse, recycle but not many part of an org or something around it (not all good things btw of course but im giving the perspective of my crowd). It still sorta cracks me up as I live near my high school and they put all the accomplishments along the fence and it starts in like the 60's. Newer ones are in the school but as new ones come in the old ones are hung on the outside fence. Well there is this big gap in the 80's. literally stuff into the late 70's and then suddenly stuff from the early 90's. No club or sport or anything got any significant win or award or whatevr in the 80's.
Someone has to write all these shitty articles how bad the other generations are.
A couple of factors: Back in olden times, before Douglas Coupland applied the Generation X moniker in 1991, they used to talk about the Baby Bust generation. The Baby Boom was when all of the GIs got back from the war and all started getting jiggy at the same time. Then, the birth rate dropped significantly. In my elementary school, we had combined grades 2/3, and grades 4/5, because there weren't enough kids enrolled for full classrooms otherwise.
Also, the Baby Boom generation is defined as 1946 to 1964, which is 19 years, compared to the 16 years of what we call Generation X now, from 1965 to 1980.
Granted, is not a huge difference—71 million Boomers and 73 million Millennials vs. 64 million Gen X—but there's fewer of us. But also, the name and the generational categories are pretty recent developments. When Coupland's book came out, I was too young to be Gen X, the people he was writing about were adults out into world. I wasn't part of the classic Gen X disaffected-slacker culture, and its touchstones don't really resonate with me. It wasn't until years later that the definition of Generation X definitively included me. That's why you'll often see a lot of younger Gen X identify with the Xennial label, because we have a lot more in common with "elder Millennials," which makes the whole cohort less cohesive.
It's almost like the generational cutoff years are arbitrary, and that society changes continuously, and not in discrete jumps. It's almost like, too, that something unspeakably neo-liberal happened in 1980, and the real division is between the people who came of age before they pulled up the ladders to prosperity behind themselves (Boomers and older Gen X) and the people who came of age after (Xennials, Millennials, and so on). Nevermind, sorry, that's just some anti-capitalist hogwash. /s
It's almost like, too, that something unspeakably neo-liberal happened in 1980
I really hope Reagan is burning in hell 🔥🔥
Reagan is in hell waiting for heaven to trickle down.
In the UK we’re more properly known as “Thatcher’s Children”, which gives a better idea of how disenfranchised we were growing up in the 80s.
I thought millennials started at '82?
We're just waiting. See you soon.
For some reason, the internet has mistaken gen X for boomers with the "ok boomer" meme. Anyone over 40 is a boomer to the young. Completely unbeknownst to the fact that real baby boomers are literal senior home elderly people
Not really. 60 is the youngest boomer. People in their 60s are still on the workforce.
Boomer is honestly just used as a generic term for older people who are out of touch in one way or another. Millennial was a generic term for young people the speaker didn't like, but it's finally been replaced by zoomer which is more age appropriate, but it took a long time. It's not that people are ignoring Gen X, it's that most of the time when people use the term they just mean older/younger people in general.
TLDR, Gen X is probably lumped in with the term "boomer" (obviously the context matters, but this is the TLDR).
hear about
Something is only talked about if talking about it accomplishes something. Gen X doesn't raise any strong feelings with anyone, so they're not talked about. They're still there obviously.
The reason why is complex, and I'm no expert myself. However, from what I gathered about recent history, what seems most likely to me is that the time gen x'ers grew up in was very stable in the sense that economy was good, no major wars were happening, the cold war was "ending". So the only thing gen x'ers had to worry about was themselves. So they did. And you don't really need to talk about someone that just keeps to themself. They cause you no issues.
Another theory of mine is very simple: humanity changes over time. The larger the time, the larger the change. Differences between humans breeds conflict as their interests collide. Since boomers are the current oldest larger impactful generation, and gen z are the youngest, the difference between them are greatest. Thus the conflict between them is highest, thus there are a lot of people talking about those problems. I've been hearing less about millennials as well.
That is tbh a very US centric perspective. The decade Gen X grown up - youth in the 80ties and young adulthood in 90ties - is known for the break up of the Sovjetbloc. If that isn’t a big shake in life, I don’t know what else might have such an impact on lifestyle, thoughts, ownerships and behaviors.
The longtail effects had disruptions to other regions in the world with unrest and uprisings for independence.
And sure there have been conflicts as well. E.g. the North Ireland conflict with bombing in the UK. And there was the first nuclear disaster of Tschernobyl in 1986 causing angst in Europe.
But at all, I‘d say these days were characterized by a positive mood and the feeling that people can change things.
It's a western perspective. And of course it is. How many people of the sovjetbloc do you think are around here? I thought about this for a second and dismissed it because it's with a 99% chance not relevant to the one asking here.
But still, thank you for providing this perspective, it is like you say, I just didn't think it was relevant to this question in this place we're in.
Here is GenX
41% make up the US House of Representatives 28% make up the US Senate 42% of governors
Some GenXers: Elon Musk Jeff Bezos (squeaked in) Jack Dorsey (Formerly Twitter) Michael Dell (Dell CEO) Satya Nadella (MSFT CEO)
And in 2018, about 40% of F500/Inc500 CEOs were GenX.
So, not missing. We just don’t wear our generational name as a badge. What’s the point?
Probably still outside drinking water from the garden hose.
We're here, frantically paddling to keep up.
but you fuckers still got a boat though, even if it is leaking a little...
Yes we got a sinking boat and were forced to keep on rowing. We were never old enough to say that the holes should be patched. We were given the dream that our time will come. We were told that our job was to keep our head down and row, so we kept on rowing. Till the boat sank.
We are the first generation to work but have nothing to show for it, as compared to boomers.
Never upgraded; decided to stay Gen-Twitter.
These whole rather arbitrary ages used are quite silly. Do you really think someone who is, for example, 45 will have a very different outlook than a 42 year old just because of the year they were born? There are decent people and wankers in every generation.
Proper zodiac it is
Gen X said "fuck it" quickly and lived relatively comfy, selfish lives from their boomer parents funding trips to Woodstock '99 - where they feigned a rebellion, but always with a credit card they didn't pay for in their pockets and the rent paid.
They pretended to be above or "so over" politics, but in reality that was just a way to forgive themselves the burden of maintaining a decent society. So they willingly let the fire burn and grow out of control so that the millenials would have to deal with it.
After being hit with one life altering tragedy after the next during their prime earning years, many millenials realized they would need to be the sacrificial bridge generation. They resigned to delay or deny a lot of personal happiness/excitement so that they could do everything they could to oppose the second bush (who isn't actually a nice, harmless man with candy) and get Obama elected.
As the millenials can't afford homes or children of their own (part of that mentioned sacrifice), the X parents then have the kids that are gen Z later in life. Those Z kids weren't given any civic direction, personal values or responsibility to community from their perpetually checked out and selfish X parents. So without any tools to build meaningful resistance or any need to serve other humans, they then dropped the ball this election (the ball that the millenials were sacrificing their own fulfilling lives to be able to hand off to them).
Z was handed the blueprint on a silver platter, so they could literally fix shit by just showing up and acknowledging that nazis are both real and bad. There was actually a point where republicans wouldn't have won another presidency around 2009 (and they were freaking the fuck out with changing demographic trends forecasted) - never again without a "trump" chaos desperation play emerging to lower the bar, shift the Overton window and generally suck the value out of words, concepts and law.
The Republicans are ultimately ever-hungry scoundrels and religious zealots though, they want it more, but really that's because some will literally go to prison if they aren't governing. Also, a successful left will never have that same ruthless hunger, but that's really just because the definition of the left's vision of success is that you should actually be able to slow down, enjoy living and let your guard down a bit, or else what's the fucking point? The Republicans are perpetual losers, but even when they "win" they don't. They aren't happy and all that means they are never slowed by legality or morality. So they got to work in earnest starting in 2010 (go watch a film called "slaying the dragon") and here we are.
Edit: Ha! Scrolled down and saw someone posted a comic that says about exactly what I was expressing, except the Z kid would need to be falling on his face.
This is all beautifully stated.
Gen X is the end of SLC Punk. "I'm not selling out, I'm buying in."
(the ball that the millennials were sacrificing their own fulfilling lives to be able to hand off to them)
OOF. Hits hard.
I want to make abundantly that Gen Z did not fumble the election, the Democrats did. The Democratic party analyzed the situation much the same way you did, and realized that there was no way the Republicans would ever win over Gen Z, so they took that as opportunity to move further right than Reagan and expose the entire two party system as one large fascist bloc with 2 different sheep dogs.
And Gen Z correctly saw electoralism as a dead end and are actively exploring alternatives.
Nothing happened. The generational war another facet of culture war. It doesn't make sense because you have to ask what the fuck happened to Gen X? Why don't they fit into the picture? Why doesn't the data add up? That should tell you something. Your experiment is flawed. The culture war doesn't make sense.
Asshats who use the term "Boomer" don't seem to understand that it means people born about 10 years after WWII and use it for anyone older than they are, so MTV term "genX" gets swamped.
Originally calling everyone old a "Boomer" was a reaction to older people calling everyone who was young "Millennials" even when millennials were now in their late 30's
Boomer is a frame of mind and enough Gen Xers fit that frame of mind to get the label.
You wouldn't be catching strays if Musk wasn't Gen X, some of the worst people in our congress were Gen X like Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, and outside of congress idiots like Governor Ron DeSantis are Gen X. Gen X is nearly 40% of the House Representatives and a quarter of the Senate.
Some of the most fucked up assholes on the political landscape today are Gen X so they deserve the "Boomer" label.
No, they are not their parents. Asshole or not.
There is another theory I've heard that I like:
Here's the conjecture part of the theory: the Boomer lineage has been taught that what matters is what you do and if you don't achieve you have no value, whereas the Silent Generation lineage has been taught that good people are good to their family and community and being a workaholic is bad for that. The poop-throwing you're seeing online is simply an expression of a conflict between opposing values.
Both millenials and boomers get hate for being terrible parents and workaholics, and the hate gen z is currently getting for having no work ethic sounds very similar to the hate gen X got back when they were in their 20s for being supposedly lazy and stupid becuase of MTV.
Millennials were definitely called entitled and lazy.
Millenials definitely were called enitled and lazy when they were in their 20s. Theyre in their 40s now, now the supposedly lazy generation is Gen Z. Every generation has called kids in their 20s entitled and lazy. In about 15 years Gen Alpha will be the lazy and entitled generation.
That said, it is a big hole in this theory. Gen X and the Silent Generation seem to only be remembered by how they behaved in their youth, and Gen Z seems to be following that trend.
Very generous outlook on Gen X, who are mostly seen as boomer lite in my experience.
They behave about how you would expect a boomer to act. It is their turn to extract value, well at least those who are in any position to do so, which are obviously a minority but not are they working hard at it right now.
Just parasitic bahvior serving the owner class to get their mcmansions and 401ks loaded aka boomerism
The rapture came and took them away
Being a "late" Boomer, I see gen x having a lot of similarities with me. Running loose in the neighborhood, doing stupid shit that probably should have killed us, absent parents who just wanted us independent and out of their hair.
We remember old shit (music, phones, computers) transitioning into new shit. I think it's a spectrum Boomer->Gen x. A lot of similarities.
Gen X here, we're labeled the invisible generation for a reason.
That said I don't really give enough fuks to be involved, the real fight is inequality, not age.
Gen x was busy voting trump to further fuck themselves 😂
Gen X here.
LOL
Remember the Silent Generation? Me neither
We're still here.
Generation discourse honestly panders to the lowest common denominator intellect. People who constantly talk about boomers or millennials are usually pretty dumb.
The reason you don't hear much about Gen X is "we" didn't cause anything culturally significant in an enduring when "we" were in our 20s.
We're right here: https://beatleader.com/clan/GENX
They're too small a cohort to matter, and seemed to follow boomers almost exactly with their ideology
We are just living our lives. We don't care about you or your opinions so we usually dont speak to you. You want to waste your lives complaining and whining them good luck with that. No one cares.
There's no need to be rude, fella. Hope life keeps treating you well though.
I'm not trying to be rude only honest. I hope everyone the best.
Gen X is essentially just "boomer lite." So might as well lump them into boomers. That's been my experience working with many many gen x'ers over the years. They're similar in my opinion.
There is a Segway between boomer and Gen X but every generation has an overlap. I'm a Gen X. It is a small generation that lived through the creation of the internet society. We were also responsible for 90s independent music labels and the production of the greatest music since the 60s (you are welcome btw). Boomers are post war nationalists that stopped learning anything new after their 18th birthday.
segue
were the hidden generation, hiding in plain sight between 2 larger messes.
the middle child generation.
I was about to take umbrage with that on behalf of millennials, but tbh we are a mess—not entirely through our own doing, of course—but definitely a mess.
Classic Gen X: "It's not my problem."
Cool, thanks for all the help guys. No wonder you get called fucking Boomers. You could have appended "other people aren't my responsibility" and really nailed down why people stopped giving a fuck about a generation that never gave a fuck about themselves or others.
genx took learys 'turn on, tune in, drop out' as literal instruction
In other words, you coasted off of the luxuries afforded you by the previous generation and enjoyed selfish, fully funded indulgences themed as rebellion (while understanding that that wealth funding you was always ill gotten and at the expense of exploited and abused minority groups) and then, because you took a generation off, left a fully unmanaged mess festering to inevitably implode the generation after you?
And then today, even with the wisdom of time, you live with the hubris to call that generation, that you passively destroyed, "a mess". Respectfully, I'm not sure you realize it, you piece of shit, but you're actually a piece of shit.
not that you understand the the subtlety of words, the implication is that all generations are messes, genx is just, in volume, less human beings.
but go on over-reacting. it really shows what kind of person you are.