Your periodic reminder that "Generation X", "Millennials", etc aren't really a thing. They are marketing archetypes made up to sell you products by an industry obsessed with segmenting up a population into discreet chunks for the purposes and monetizing perceived generational divides.
To try to use an age group as a way to somehow define your identity is, at best, pointless and at worst plays to the propaganda of an industry seeking to carve us all into digestible groups for them to consume.
From what I see, generation categories breed ageism. It creates in youth a resentfulness thinking that power doesn’t belong to them now, only to the old who keep lying to them saying their ‘time in the sun’ is later. It also causes alienation in the old: thinking that society is becoming constantly worse so there’s no reason to engage or help with the young, whether in their family or the community.
@zalasur I'm gonna need a sauce on that. Sure, could be pure marketing, or maybe having a shorthand for groups of similarly-aged people in terms of shared experiences or impacts by societal phenomena is generally a useful thing to do.
@zalasur the point is well taken as the terms can be overused and misused, but I think the concept is valid from a sociological studies perspective. I don’t think there is doubt that significant shared experiences do affect and uniquely shape a generation to some extent. ie. war, large economics changes, and social shifts. The US Dust bowl and depression greatly affected my grandparents’ generation view on life that was not shared with my parents generation.
I should have cw'd that with "my before-coffee hot take" but I was in too much a rush to get that out there. Also, I need more coffee before I can care enough to do that. 😅
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