Every once in a while I look up information on the baby boomer generation, generation x, generation y, etc. And while doing so I always get pissed off. One might think it odd to get angry about something like this, but I have a good reason.
I was born in 1981, I'm sort of part of a lost generation. For the most part people define generation x as being born between 1964(some as early as 1961) and 1979 (I have seen a couple of sources that go as late as 1981.) And Generation Xers are getting old enough to be able to define themselves, and they for the most part put the cut off in the late 70s (usually around 77 as they do not believe people born later than this should be defined with themselves)
The next generation is Generation Y (I first become pissed off by the lack of creativity in this name) which is, for some reason, usually defined as mid to late 80s and the 90s.
This puts the people born in the late 70s (78 and 79) to early 80s (80-84ish) in more or less undefined space. Sociologists (the ones that actually define this stuff) either place a cut off and anyone younger is gen y, anyone older is gen x. Or what I see a lot, and is mildly disturbing, they ignore those people all together.
About the only real definition that I have seen for people born durring this little lost space in time is the Echo Boom. So named because there was a rise in the number of births durring these years (echoing the Baby Boomers.) But really, it's not a commonly used term and it kind of feels like a name placed there for the sake of giving it a name.
The only one thing that kind of pisses me off more is that there is already a name given to people born from 2002-2025, the cyber generation. Is it really fair to define people before they're even born?
One last thing that is probably unimportant. Durring the 90s there was kind of a media backlash against the generation Xers where they were basically defined as grunge wearing, cigarette smoking, slackers. In around 1998 the media basically defined anyone between the ages of 13 and 35 as generation Xers. This was mostly the Baby Boomers thinking that they had it worse off than the people that came after them.
Oh, and to help you understand why the name Generation Y pisses me off. The Baby Boomer Generation was named because there was a boom in the number of people born durring that time. Generation X was so named because they had nothing to believe in. Generation Y was so named because it came after Generation X. There have been attempts to name Generation Y something other than "Generation Y" but none have quite stuck.
A rant for no reason
Moderator: Moderators
well, it gives them something to do. While I'm sure there are a lot of sociologists that do a lot of good work doing something somewhere, there are a large number of them that are only just better than tabloid writers and feel that they need to make silly generalizations about groups of people and then make money selling books about it.
the only thing worse than stupid people writing stupid books about their stupid ideas, is of course, stupid people buying those books.
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cowsgoquack101
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