BBC have deboomerised me.

Fraid so. You still get all the vitriol.

Crikey.. I’m November 60…. Am I still a boomer… asking for a friend

That’s my understanding as well but I think people born in 1964 would have had such different experiences from people born in 1946

1946 = Maureen and Sheila
1964 = Debbie and Julie

Sorry but the BBC is wrong. It's 1946 to 1964. The term boomer comes from the "post war baby boom". 1946 men home from war starting a family to 1964 - when oral contraceptives came on to the market.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

I have read about Xennials here for the first time and my DC fit into this. I'm pleased to see it as one is GenX and one a millennial, but they grew up playing their first compputer games together and getting their first mobile phone at the same Christmas, and internet at home etc. It's hard to have a rigid cut off for specific generations.
I'm a baby boomer but when I was young those born in the 1960s were never included in that group.

Yes, it's comes from "baby boom", the immediate post war increase in birthrate.

The big difference between the baby boom generation and whatever the current generation is, is that we were optimistic about the future. We had the immediate threat of nuclear war, which was a downer, but if we escaped that, we were told, and there was no reason to disbelieve, that life would continue to get better, that retiring in your 50s would be the norm in the future. etc. So of course we made the most of what we could get, as there was every belief that it was poor fare compared to what later generations would enjoy.

On the other hand, it wasn't a wonderful time if you were a woman. Serious shortage of job options, even a shortage of education options. Sexual harassment was an accepted part of every day life, in was up to you to put a stop to it, you'd be laughed at if you complained. Equal pay was still on the horizon - growing up I remember job adverts which said salary £xxxx (men) £smaller amount (women).

Difficult also if you were gay - sexual activity between gays was still illegal.

I was less aware of racial inequalities - there were no ethnic minorities in my (quite large) town, certainly none in my school

Equality for people with disabilities was not on the agenda, no-one considered they should have the same access to life as those without disabilities.

True .. very true !

on that note - Pimms, anyone? Or is it too early ?

Too cold!

i am firmly in X category!

I know that we’re cool, but we are a bit

’i remember only 3 TV channels, street lights were our curfew, we drank out of the garden hosepipe” Facebook memes!

also our mothers smoked and drank the pub dry when they were carrying us - we had no seatbelts but hey - we all turned out alright !

obviously you are right that we’re cool as - but I feel us Xs also need to laugh at ourselves a bit !

on that note - Pimms, anyone? Or is it too early ?

Never heard that one before.

I don't need a label. Thank you anyway.

Millennials are the worse. Boomers, X, Gen Z all cool. X the coolest 🎯

I think the term “boomers” came from the fact there was a very large number of babies born and growing up in the post war years.

Nothing to do with prosperity. 🤔.

NOBODY is cooler than Gen X.

What was that about tribalism again? 😂

But Xennials are way cooler than Gen X.

They have all the good bits of Gen X minus the 70s strikes and stupidly hot summer plus some of the best bits of the late 90s and they are as earnest as millennials.

There's a few I've seen over the years. I couldn't tell you a particularly good one.

The quotes I've used are from wiki if that helps.

If you Google cusper, Xennial or Generation Jones you should come up with a few things.

The demographic groupings are incredibly useful for marketing and advertising purposes.

Yeah, of course they are useful. But people mistake what their utility and power is, and wrongly infer that they have the power to explain individuals and to tell us about phenomena at-and-around an arbitrary cut-off zone.

I've been deboomerised! Gen X now. Will tell my much younger sis that she's now a Xennial. She liked being Gen X MWAHAHAHA

@AlbertCamusflage in a time where diversity and inclusion are all important, i feel it also fosters tribalism, almost.

The demographic groupings are incredibly useful for marketing and advertising purposes.

If you’re advertising baby products, you would target millennials, so you position those advertisements around tv shows most watched by them.

If you’re marketing something that appeals to GEN Z you would put it on instagram and emphasise the sustainability aspects.

Of course all Gen X or whichever cohort aren’t all the same, but there is no doubt we are shaped by our cultural heritage and the economic, social and political factors that affect us as a specific demographic.

It is a way of making more money.

But as a Gen X, I just don’t care.

The whole concept of cuspers feels a bit odd because it seems to reinforce a misperception of generational cohorts - namely, the idea that individuals really are influenced by being born within a certain date range, just as (according to astrology) they are influenced by being born during certain planetary phases.
As if boomer-cuspers were in a particular room but because they were right near the door they got splashed with a bit of Gen X (or vice versa).

There isn't really any such thing as a 'generation'. We aren't produced in batches. "My parents' generation" picks out an incrementally different set of people depending on whether I am 6, 7, 8, ... 15, 16, 17, ... 40, 45, 50 ... 60, etc.
Generational cohorts are a research device, a rough and ready way of looking at some of the trends that allow us to make broad-brush generalisations about, say, the difference between the average 30 year old and the average 60 year old. They are never going to tell us anything at all about the differences between a 60 year old and a 59 year old who fall either side of a drawing pin plonked in a chronological map.

The reality is that the cut-off dates don't have any bearing on individuals at all. They just reflect the fact that, for operational reasons, demographic researchers have to define the population base that they are researching.

You beat me to it 😂

The BBC are talking bollocks. Gen X starts 1965. Not that we give a shiny 💩 obviously.

@RedToothBrush · There's a known thing about microgeneration at the beginning/end of generations which share traits from both the generation before and the generation after.
may I ask where this information comes from? I've not come across cuspers at all before. Is there a useful book or article please?

Absolutely agree with this.