Axiem wrote: ↑21 Aug 2018 02:50
Salmoneus wrote: ↑20 Aug 2018 23:12
Personally, I think that, sociologically, it makes more sense to divide between 'Generation Y' or, say, 'X 2.0' or whatever and 'Millennials' proper.
There are some people who are calling the early wave of the Millennials the Xennials, or Oregon Trail generation. That is, the people who had an analog childhood but a digital adolescence. (The term Millennial, for what its worth, was given to those who were coming of age at the turn of the millennium, not those born in the new millennium)
Yes, but I think the general use of the term has shifted over time.
Yes, the labels are arbitrary and are broad brushes to paint entire populations...but there are definite trends I've noticed.
In particular, as an early Millennial, I find that when I talk to people even a couple years older than I am, there feels like this massive cultural gap in terms of how we view the world, technology, and so on. On the other hand, there feels like almost no cultural gap when I interact with people in their mid-20s now. We have the same sorts of complaints about our parents ("why are they calling instead of texting?"), understand the same jokes, and so on.
Whereas I've found a major gap talking to people just a couple of years younger than me. For instance, my friends and I, when arranging to meet somewhere, would use a combination of e-mails (at a distance) and then text messages (near to the place/time) (though admittedly whatsapp has been taking over both functions more recently); but one of my friends has a husband a few years younger and he and his friends would arrange everything, even down to the level of 'hi I'm here but I can't see you which table are you at?' through Facebook on their smartphones - I know it seems like a small thing, but it represents, I think, how social media shifted between the generations from "a way some of us keep up with people we don't see often" to "the central index of all parts of life". Similarly, that guy and his friends follow youtubers; whereas we just sometimes search for something on youtube and instinctively think that youtubers aren't real celebrities and should get a proper job. [That guy and his friends are also, incidentally, "politically" engaged online]
The 'same jokes' thing is a big issue for me, I think. The cultural, and particularly comedic, touchstones of my development are alien, or at least non-native, to 'true Millennials'. I mean, someone born in 1993 was 4 when classic Simpsons ended*. The comedic language I inherited from Gen-X - Blackadder, Drop the Dead Donkey, Yes Minister and Red Dwarf repeats, Deayton-era HIGNFY - is largely (except maybe blackadder, thanks to history teachers filling time on the last day of term) foreign to millennials, the language my peers were developing (which I never took to) of Shooting Stars and the Fast Show and the League of Gentlemen and so on is even more obscure, and even the American shows we started importing later - comedies like Friends and Frasier (though I never much liked Frasier) and above all the Simpsons, and comic dramas like Buffy and The West Wing - may be recognised but aren't part of their core vocabulary the way they were for us. Even the simpsons jokes they still reference, they often don't even know what they're referencing.
I mean, someone who's 21 today - they were born in 1997, so they never saw classic Simpsons live and even in the UK they probably didn't see repeats (other than by browsing through digital backwaters at 11 at night), and they were 6 when Buffy ended. The Red Dwarf revival that electrified my (admittedly geeky) peers with excitement? They were just born when VII disappointed, and were 2 for the catastrophe of VIII. But still only 15 when X began the second revival! They were just born or 1 year old at the time of Izzard's
Glorious and
Dressed to Kill. How can I hope to share a comedic language with this people? I mean gosh darnit, these people were 12 when the Wire was shown in the UK!
*in the UK, we got it later - 'real' Simpsons for me ran at 6pm daily on BBC2 from 1997 to 2006, the first 14 series, after which the show ceased to exist, other than a few repeats on C4.
It's hard for me to completely dismiss the generation idea. Though, I think it's somewhat more localized; it would quite possibly cut differently in the UK based on cultural trends there, compared to the US.
In the UK it's complicated. We did have our own eras, delayed - our 90s were basically the grimier, cooler, sleazier extension of the 80s, and the American 90s of Bill Clinton (/Tony Blair, our version) and optimism and the third way and all that only made it over here in 1997. But of course, technological changes happened here the same time as over there, and over the last couple of decades we've been synching up to US TV, from "never happen" through to "probably a five year delay for most things" right up to "airs the week after but everyone's watched online by then" and "wait, does the UK actually have its own TV anymore?".
Or, in a silly way:
- Millennials used Facebook back when it was limited to universities and high schools
Except no! MY (I think OUR?) generation used (or didn't use Facebook) back then. But from 2006, it was open to anyone 13 or over, so anyone born 1993 or later has always had Facebook-for-everyone.
I think my categorisation would be:
-pre-Boomers either haven't heard of Facebook or use it extensively
- Boomers claim not to have time to use Facebook, but when they do use Facebook, they tell people about it
- Generation X use Facebook, but only ironically
- "Xennials" mostly took enthusiastically to Facebook as a shiny new thing, but came to it during the universities-era when it was a replacement for FriendsReunited and MySpace, and still basically view it as a tool for keeping in touch and maybe a surrogate blog (Generation Y had blogs! And internet forums! And maybe even chatrooms!)
- Millennials have always had Facebook, and it's the core of their existence (though fashionable ones may be moving away from it to other social media platforms, often linked to their Facebook)
- Zs have Facebook to placate their parents, but it's not linked to their other social media accounts (which may also not be linked).