To say shoot me now if I ever refer to myself as Gen x

[Notouchingmybhuna]

Or Z or a millenial or a boomer.

WTF is happening? I’ve just attended a professional study day where speakers introduced themselves with this bollocks as if it was relevant.

For full disclosure I have no clue which Gen I am actually supposed to be 😎

Omg. You are SO Gen X.

Me too, and it sounds cooler than the others 😄

Dorsn’t your yunno date of birth give that information? 🤓

I’m still not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. I asked for my car insurance documents by post if that helps? 😉

It's immediately understandable in the contexts it's used in though to have the named brackets. There are 125 birth years between 1900-2025, but only seven generations.

Neither a good or bad thing. Just a thing to place you in a wider cultural context.

When I first started work 27 or so years ago, there were endless newspaper articles about boomers finding millennials awful in every way possible.

Are those boomers all dead now? Or is there a premium boomer category?

😂

It seems I’m a boomer. I have no idea what years of birth qualify someone to be a millennial (or Gen Z or Gen X).

Given the youngest Boomers are in their early 60s, hopefully not.

So I'm a boomer - born 1959. My experiences growing up were very different to those of people born in 1946 like your parents.
Not the same "era" at all. To me it just feels like lazy stereotyping either no basis in any kind of logic. I think you could assume people born over say a 5 year period would share similar experiences but otherwise it doesn't work.

I have no idea. I mean, the articles might not have been written by boomers at all but by millenials themselves or gen x. Or whoever was older than boomers.

Papers have always published rubbish.

I just was observing that these terms have been around a while as I can remember all the articles pitting generations against each other.

According to search results theorists Neil Howe and William Strauss were among the first to name different generations. Douglas Coupland wrote a novel and called it Gen X for his generation. Blame them. Boomers were named for the post war baby boom. Millenials were named as we were the young ones entering a new Millenium and some turned 18 in the first few years of this century.

Make it make sense. How could somebody in their early sixties have been a boomer 27 years ago?

I’ve been using computers since they were the size of wardrobes and the internet when the main search engine was Yahoo. 😁

It’s just a framing, like jock/nerd or artistic/scientific or introvert/extrovert or left wing/right wing or northern/southern or rural/urban… useful in some ways, but it breaks if you put too much weight on it. You either find something useful in it or you don’t.

As someone else said, I find the Gen X experience of being both pre- and intra-digital very interesting, but that’s just me - I like talking about things like that. As someone else said, it can also be a nostalgia vehicle - a way of finding other people who will understand your Duran Duran references or whatever.

If nothing about it resonates with you, don’t worry about it. It’s not usually thought of as compulsory. Admittedly it’s pretty weird for anyone to ask you to include that information when introducing yourself professionally. I’ve no idea what that could achieve that a simple statement of age wouldn’t (maybe they thought it was rude to ask people to give their ages?)

Fun fact: Douglas Coupland is actually a Boomer iirc

No idea what I am, was born late 70's although I got called a boomer the other week because someone didn't agree with something I said, if you are going to insult me call me something I know 😂

I’m in my early 60s and was a boomer 27 years ago. Are people not boomers from the day they were born?

Exactly-is this a good or a bad thing 😂

It is just a media way of grouping people born roughly around the same time. I would prefer born in the 1970's/80's/90's etc as some people struggle with understanding what the terms mean and 15 years is too big a band to group everyone in. Many people think millennials are those who were born circa 2000 for example.

So you get this allocated at birth, then you carry it on for life? Who creates the names? Will there be worldwide coverage when the last boomer dies?

Can you explain the hilarity?

Genuine question-were you describing yourself as a boomer 27 years ago?