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There's also a nice list over at Wikipedia. As an 85er, blacwolve, you're just on the other side of the larger division from me. I was born in the tail end of the Conciousness Revolution. You got stuck with the Culture Wars.
Our age group can also be called the MTV Generation, the Boomerang Generation, and the Internet Generation. I hope they pick one to use consistantly soon. I hate Gen Y.
But I think the real reason we don't hear more about X, Y, and their infinite variations is that we're still hearing about the Baby Boomers. It's like in those Ameritrade commercials. They got the spotlight back in college and they won't let go of it.
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quote: I hope they pick one to use consistantly soon. I hate Gen Y.
Don't count on it. Though I'm glad my generation wasn't stuck with YIFFIES (young, independent, and few). My sister read that in a magazine back in the mid 80's. What was the one they were trying to circulate last year? Grups? Makes me feel like talking like the teacher on Charlie Brown.
Boomerang works with baby. The Baby Boomerang.
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pooka- I think we're too young for divorce to be an issue. If it began in '82, then most of us are 24 and younger, hardly old enough to be married, much less divorced.
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blacwolve - I think he's referring to the fact that a lot of the parents of the last generation are divorced.
quote:Originally posted by pooka: Hmm. No mention of divorce in the definition of that generation. Nothing makes you feel like you have to earn love like the withdrawal of it.
I didn't think about divorce, which is amusing, since my parents had one when I was six. hmmm... I imagine that it probably has an affect, but I'm not sure how, exactly. Of the Gen Yers that I have met whose parents had a divorce, I get the feeling that for many it was messy, but after the divorce the parents (particularly the mothers) threw everything into making life better for the kids (or making the kids better for life via insane scheduling of extracurriculars).
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quote:The "Greatest Generation", which is credited with winning World War II and creating the foundations on which the United States is considered the greatest country on earth, frequently states that "Gen X" couldn't possibly match it's achievements in creating foundations.
Does it? Where?
quote:The "Boomer Generation" frequently states that "Gen X" couldn't possibly match it's accomplishments in challenging those foundations.
Do they? Where? And as a side note, Gen X at least tends to get apostrophes right.
I think you are making straw men and trying to build a theory from them. Bad idea.
Ah, yes. Typing fast, I put a possessive ' in its. Thank you for the constructive and useful addition to the conversation, and the due notice of the "realize I'm painting with an extremely broad brush" sentence. [/sarcasm]
I can point to various sources for my interpretation of this outlook if you're actually interested in something more than vague criticisms. Dave Barry's "Dave Barry turns 50" has some interesting observations from the Boomer standpoint, as does some of Stephen King's work. Arguably Brokaw's "Greatest Generation", defining the term, says much of the outlook of said generation. Or some of the legislative efforts of those born in those generations that affect those of the later generations, from the various waves of attention to "explicit" music and video games to curfew laws like those that exist in Anchorage, Alaska (http://www.michaelhanscom.com/19960227/curfew.html)
If I'm making some broad points, I would note that a) broad points can be useful for the sake of discussion of broad topics, and b) I explicitly said I was speaking broadly. To be making a straw man I would have to be setting up an oversimplified point-of-view for the purpose of defeat. I'm not.
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quote:Originally posted by blacwolve: pooka- I think we're too young for divorce to be an issue. If it began in '82, then most of us are 24 and younger, hardly old enough to be married, much less divorced.
I think it's more like we're the generation who went through our parents' divorces on a massive scale. When my mother was in school in the 70s, there was only one kid in her school whose parents were divorced, and everyone knew about it because it was so unusual. By the time I was going to school, I was the unusual one because my parents weren't divorced. In that sense, divorce could very well be considered a defining characteristic of our generation, but because it's something that happened to most of us, rather than something we did.
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