For those who are tired of identity politics, or "us vs them" conflict, then this video is on the nose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca4xBrmWUJc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca4xBrmWUJc)
I havent seen The vid, and probably won't. But i concur with The bottom statement.
It was invented to organize marketing of stuff. How young people, to be cool, have to buy different new products than their parents. A flip phone for your daddy, but a smart phone for you. Marketing works ... calling a phone "smart" is a marketing coup over the muppet customers.
Are demographics real? In this sense, at any given point in time, people in their 20s, act a certain way (young adult) but at any given point in time, people in their 60s (seniors) act in a different way. The generations are static, people move thru them as they age. Because culture changes rapidly, today's 20-somethings are different than they were 20 years ago ... but that isn't the important thing, that is what marketing wants you to focus on.
Generational labels are useful in explaining certain differences in populations. For example, the author talks about how the invention of smart phones affected more recent generations. WWII affected older generations. Generational differences are like regional differences-- people who live in rural areas have different priorities than people in urban areas, which can be seen in voting patterns. Stereotyping, scapegoating and us-vs-them thinking are the actual problems.
Quote from: Mr.Obvious on August 16, 2018, 02:36:27 AM
I havent seen The vid, and probably won't. But i concur with The bottom statement.
I do too. I've never understood the point of stereotyping generations and then naming them as though they can be classified by some kind of field guide. I don't even know which generation I am. I've always called myself a baby boomer, but I'm not, although most of my friends were. I was born during WWII when the birth rates were one fourth the rate of the years previous and the years that followed. Maybe the fact that I don't have a real group of my own makes it seem like it doesn't matter.
But I'm putting my money on the millennial generation. They are our only hope. The rest of us had our chance and failed. Will they be up to the task? I don't know, but I wish them well.
Quote from: SGOS on August 16, 2018, 07:59:50 AM
But I'm putting my money on the millennial generation. They are our only hope. The rest of us had our chance and failed. Will they be up to the task? I don't know, but I wish them well.
As a representative of millenials (one of the older ones, literally turned 18 around the millenium change) we are definitely not up to the task. We're all doomed. Doomed, I say!
Quote from: Hydra009 on August 16, 2018, 08:47:35 AM
As a representative of millenials (one of the older ones, literally turned 18 around the millenium change) we are definitely not up to the task. We're all doomed. Doomed, I say!
You just blotted out my last ray of hope with a slap in the face meant to restore my consciousness and bring me back to reality.
But hope springs eternal, while reality offers nothing. Well, except it does offer reality. We must all choose one or the other. I don't know what to do.
I was talking to the woman yesterday. She's a 20 something with a bright outlook who wants the best world for her newborn, a world I would be happy with too. I would gladly leave the country in her hands. In a few more years it won't matter, at least for me, but you see there's this child, who hasn't even learned to talk and has done nothing bad to anyone.
Quote from: SGOS on August 16, 2018, 07:59:50 AM
I do too. I've never understood the point of stereotyping generations and then naming them as though they can be classified by some kind of field guide. I don't even know which generation I am. I've always called myself a baby boomer, but I'm not, although most of my friends were. I was born during WWII when the birth rates were one fourth the rate of the years previous and the years that followed. Maybe the fact that I don't have a real group of my own makes it seem like it doesn't matter.
But I'm putting my money on the millennial generation. They are our only hope. The rest of us had our chance and failed. Will they be up to the task? I don't know, but I wish them well.
I was born in '45 and feel as you do about generations--sort of generationless. And I've never cared. Generations make sense within families but not in societies. And I too, think the current crop of youngsters are smarter and better than they are depicted so often. I wish them well, too.
Quote from: SGOS on August 16, 2018, 09:56:26 AM
You just blotted out my last ray of hope with a slap in the face meant to restore my consciousness and bring me back to reality.
But hope springs eternal, while reality offers nothing. Well, except it does offer reality. We must all choose one or the other. I don't know what to do.
I was talking to the woman yesterday. She's a 20 something with a bright outlook who wants the best world for her newborn, a world I would be happy with too. I would gladly leave the country in her hands. In a few more years it won't matter, at least for me, but you see there's this child, who hasn't even learned to talk and has done nothing bad to anyone.
If she has no husband, marry her. If her husband isn't good to her, beat him. Do it for the children.
Quote from: SGOS on August 16, 2018, 07:59:50 AM
I do too. I've never understood the point of stereotyping generations and then naming them as though they can be classified by some kind of field guide. I don't even know which generation I am. I've always called myself a baby boomer, but I'm not, although most of my friends were. I was born during WWII when the birth rates were one fourth the rate of the years previous and the years that followed. Maybe the fact that I don't have a real group of my own makes it seem like it doesn't matter.
But I'm putting my money on the millennial generation. They are our only hope. The rest of us had our chance and failed. Will they be up to the task? I don't know, but I wish them well.
Pre-Boomer, LARPing as a Boomer ;-) The Millennials I know are doing fine. If the Boogie Man would stop scaring them from the closet, they might get a good night's sleep.
Quote from: Mike Cl on August 16, 2018, 12:23:54 PM
I was born in '45 and feel as you do about generations--sort of generationless. And I've never cared. Generations make sense within families but not in societies. And I too, think the current crop of youngsters are smarter and better than they are depicted so often. I wish them well, too.
The Baby Boomers was the first name I'd ever heard for a generation, not that other generations had been named before. I just wasn't aware. And for many years, it was Baby Boomers this and Baby Boomers that. It seemed like someone got the idea from all this that we should now have a name for each generation. And then the names started showing up, I never knew why. Time has been a continuum and I'm still not sure what determines the end of one generation and the beginning of the next. It's not like people are completely different all of a sudden. I've noticed more changes in our environment than I have in people. Times change. People not so much.
Quote from: SGOS on August 16, 2018, 02:20:27 PM
The Baby Boomers was the first name I'd ever heard for a generation, not that other generations had been named before. I just wasn't aware. And for many years, it was Baby Boomers this and Baby Boomers that. It seemed like someone got the idea from all this that we should now have a name for each generation. And then the names started showing up, I never knew why.
It was a convenient time for generational labels because there was a derth of births during the war and a surge of births after the war ended. Suddenly, there's a lot of people who are all roughly the same age as well as a desire to categorize people to more effectively sell them all the post-war commercial products.
Quote from: Hydra009 on August 16, 2018, 02:33:01 PM
It was a convenient time for generational labels because there was a derth of births during the war and a surge of births after the war ended.
OK, that brings something to mind. I did have a generational label, or at least I heard someone refer to my category as "War Babies." But there weren't that many of us so it didn't seem to stick, and it probably had no commercial value. In my mind, it refers only to time of birth, but says nothing about our personalities, as defined by horoscopes, astrological signs, and corporate America.
"Dearth of births" is surprisingly accurate from my from my limited sampling of the data available to me as an elementary school kid. My graduating class had 18 students. The one following mine had 60, and that was typical for all the classes that graduated after that.
Quote from: Hydra009 on August 16, 2018, 02:33:01 PM
Suddenly, there's a lot of people who are all roughly the same age as well as a desire to categorize people to more effectively sell them all the post-war commercial products.
It's hard to imagine, but those guys on Madison Ave do know what they are doing.
I never got the whole generational divide thing either, but then, I'm not identified as any particular one -- 1963 is, depending on who you ask, a late Boomer, Generation Jones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones), early Generation X, or a Cusper (Boomer/X) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cusper). Which mostly means that generational decision making -- political or commercial -- has almost no relevance whatsoever to me. I fall between the cracks.
I was a late Boomer, and a late bloomer.
I would imagine the real definition of "generation" is family specific. A new "generation" is born every fraction of a second to families. Humans tend to group behavior in decades as it relates to specific times in their lives that most easily relate to the pre-determined age related standard behavior patterns.
I just re-read that and have no idea what I said.....must be a generational thing.
QuoteI would imagine the real definition of "generation" is family specific.
This.
I was raised by a 1st generation German-American man born in 1922 who fought in three wars and a Scottish-American grandmother born in 1942 and sheltered from the hippy movement by her parents who had an arranged marriage set up for her that last until she was about 40. Until that time she was essentially just an isolated servant and baby producer/caregiver who, for all intents and purposes, had no life outside of her kitchen and the trailer home (while her husband was serving overseas).
I was raised in the 1990s by those two people, and we lived right along the poverty line for essentially my entire life until my dad died and we started getting checks from the military. We lived on a farm with about 40 cattle and some chickens, a rotary phone well into the late 1990's, 20 minutes from a town of less than 2000 people where I went to school and borderline fundamentalist Lutheran church. I went to a "private" school (Christian fundamentalist home school some woman ran with her bipolar abusive husband [divorced half way through my time there] and three sons) where I basically didn't have to learn anything for 4 years other than, "God is great. God created everything. Praise god!". My world, until my 20s when I moved to New Mexico and was exposed to a whole new world, was barely influenced by the media of people of my age and instead much more focused (in my free time) on old sci-fi, the "Classics" books (Shakespeare, Poe, Wordsworth, Plato) or video games. My social life was dominated by "god, god, god" or completely isolating myself from the world after my dad died, and experimenting with alcohol and weed by the time I was 11.
I could go on, but I think the point was made long ago and I just selfishly kept on writing... my childhood is not the "norm" for a millennial, and that is because there is no "norm" for a millennial. We all have had different experiences, different cultural backgrounds, different religious upbringings, different experiences with authority, different experiences with the opposite and same sex.
All it is is stupidly accusing all the people of a certain age that they must be like the rest, and that is not a good thing, because the literal only thing you know about them is their age. From that moment on every argument they put forth you have no interest in even considering, regardless of what experience or knowledge they might actually have.
Imagine if I believed that and interacted with people with the assumption that everyone here who was born between the mid forties to mid sixties is a narcissistic, spoiled brat who thinks themselves special because they were living of the economy their parents built for them after the war and really are just a bunch of bigoted, crybaby snowflakes who had no self-control and want to paint their flaws as being a thousand times brighter on everyone else who came after them.
That is literally what you are doing when I hear this "millennial this, millennial that" bullshit that pops up fairly frequently on the forum, and it's annoying af.
Quote from: Shiranu on August 16, 2018, 08:56:26 PM
This.
I was raised by a 1st generation German-American man born in 1922 who fought in three wars and a Scottish-American grandmother born in 1942 and sheltered from the hippy movement by her parents who had an arranged marriage set up for her that last until she was about 40. Until that time she was essentially just an isolated servant and baby producer/caregiver who, for all intents and purposes, had no life outside of her kitchen and the trailer home (while her husband was serving overseas).
I was raised in the 1990s by those two people, and we lived right along the poverty line for essentially my entire life until my dad died and we started getting checks from the military. We lived on a farm with about 40 cattle and some chickens, a rotary phone well into the late 1990's, 20 minutes from a town of less than 2000 people where I went to school and borderline fundamentalist Lutheran church. I went to a "private" school (Christian fundamentalist home school some woman ran with her bipolar abusive husband [divorced half way through my time there] and three sons) where I basically didn't have to learn anything for 4 years other than, "God is great. God created everything. Praise god!". My world, until my 20s when I moved to New Mexico and was exposed to a whole new world, was barely influenced by the media of people of my age and instead much more focused (in my free time) on old sci-fi, the "Classics" books (Shakespeare, Poe, Wordsworth, Plato) or video games. My social life was dominated by "god, god, god" or completely isolating myself from the world after my dad died, and experimenting with alcohol and weed by the time I was 11.
I could go on, but I think the point was made long ago and I just selfishly kept on writing... my childhood is not the "norm" for a millennial, and that is because there is no "norm" for a millennial. We all have had different experiences, different cultural backgrounds, different religious upbringings, different experiences with authority, different experiences with the opposite and same sex.
All it is is stupidly accusing all the people of a certain age that they must be like the rest, and that is not a good thing, because the literal only thing you know about them is their age. From that moment on every argument they put forth you have no interest in even considering, regardless of what experience or knowledge they might actually have.
Imagine if I believed that and interacted with people with the assumption that everyone here who was born between the mid forties to mid sixties is a narcissistic, spoiled brat who thinks themselves special because they were living of the economy their parents built for them after the war and really are just a bunch of bigoted, crybaby snowflakes who had no self-control and want to paint their flaws as being a thousand times brighter on everyone else who came after them.
That is literally what you are doing when I hear this "millennial this, millennial that" bullshit that pops up fairly frequently on the forum, and it's annoying af.
I understand your point about generations not being uniform among them. But I do think there are some basics among each generation. My parents grew up during The Great Depression and it had an effect on them As did WWII. I was born in 1950 and technically a Baby-Boomer, but my parents' experiences affected me as I was the eldest child. My younger siblings were also baby-boomers but not as affected by the parents' experience as I was. But each of us siblings shared experiences like The Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam War.
My siblings' children share a common experience of high interest rates and fuel shortages.
Their children share the shock of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. And they grew up with the internet. To me it is a slightly useful tool yo post here. To them, it is a way of life minute by minute. I can't fully understand that and I don't try. I don't engage the world the same way they do.
These things do have a shared affect. Of course people are different, but some things connect.
Generations is real thing.
especially for the last 40 year change the culture, tradition and the way people think.
I can see the difference between 40 years and now.
The changes is on political point of wiev of the masses, and about the rise of the atheism and deism, or the way we socialise.
Quote from: SoldierofFortune on August 28, 2018, 02:37:18 PM
Generations is real thing.
especially for the last 40 year change the culture, tradition and the way people think.
I can see the difference between 40 years and now.
The changes is on political point of wiev of the masses, and about the rise of the atheism and deism, or the way we socialise.
I'm pretty sure the OP's claim isn't that cultural change doesn't happen, just that categorizing people by generation and then stereotyping the crap out of them isn't necessarily very accurate and sets up an unfortunate Us VS Them dynamic.
Quote from: Hydra009 on August 28, 2018, 07:41:14 PM
I'm pretty sure the OP's claim isn't that cultural change doesn't happen, just that categorizing people by generation and then stereotyping the crap out of them isn't necessarily very accurate and sets up an unfortunate Us VS Them dynamic.
It is us vs them. Kill and eat the Millennials!
Quote from: Hydra009 on August 28, 2018, 07:41:14 PM
I'm pretty sure the OP's claim isn't that cultural change doesn't happen, just that categorizing people by generation and then stereotyping the crap out of them isn't necessarily very accurate and sets up an unfortunate Us VS Them dynamic.
Of course every generation is not uniform. That's why we fight politically and socially within our age groups.
But there are basic similarities. My parents' generation assumed that women "kept house". My generation assumed they might not. My nieces' generations go "what"? The new generation can't live without texting (or sexting) or constantly media-ing to friends they didn't know yesterday.
We change far more culturally generationally than some people realize.
And that's a brand new thing in the human experience. It used to be centuries with no cultural change at all.
Quote from: Unbeliever on September 08, 2018, 01:48:19 PM
And that's a brand new thing in the human experience. It used to be centuries with no cultural change at all.
True that! For countless generations, there was little change. You knapped a blade THIS way. Then there were generations where if your Dad was a smithy, you were too. Or a farmer. Now it is nearly random. Your Dad was a CPA and you code apps. Or your Mom was a surgeon and you bake wedding cakes for the sheer joy of the design.
Quote from: Unbeliever on September 08, 2018, 01:48:19 PM
And that's a brand new thing in the human experience. It used to be centuries with no cultural change at all.
Anyone ever read Alvin Toffler?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler
Per Club of Rome ... all this change will end, permanently, in the mid 21st century. Enjoy updating your apps faster and faster, while you can.
I just heard about another generation. An article in the Wall Street Journal (which I didn't read, but was only related to me today) named Generation Z, born in the mid 90s and characterized as serious, struggling, afraid of risk, and less likely to drink. I don't know if these are true or not, but supposedly they mirror the generation of the Great Depression.
Quote from: SGOS on September 08, 2018, 06:42:23 PM
I just heard about another generation. An article in the Wall Street Journal (which I didn't read, but was only related to me today) named Generation Z, born in the mid 90s and characterized as serious, struggling, afraid of risk, and less likely to drink. I don't know if these are true or not, but supposedly they mirror the generation of the Great Depression.
Kondratiev wave in human populations?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave
Quote from: SGOS on September 08, 2018, 06:42:23 PM
I just heard about another generation. An article in the Wall Street Journal (which I didn't read, but was only related to me today) named Generation Z, born in the mid 90s and characterized as serious, struggling, afraid of risk, and less likely to drink. I don't know if these are true or not, but supposedly they mirror the generation of the Great Depression.
I would not be the least surprised. But I think they might be also defined as an internet-dependent generation. To me, it is merely a convenience when I want to talk to all of you or blog, or look up stuff sometimes. To them, it replaces talking, working in an office, watching TV, listening to CDs, or doing something by yourself.
I wonder what it is like to have a best friend you have never actually met in person?
Quote from: Cavebear on September 12, 2018, 05:24:00 AM
I would not be the least surprised. But I think they might be also defined as an internet-dependent generation. To me, it is merely a convenience when I want to talk to all of you or blog, or look up stuff sometimes. To them, it replaces talking, working in an office, watching TV, listening to CDs, or doing something by yourself.
I wonder what it is like to have a best friend you have never actually met in person?
It's been a few days since that list of Z generation characteristics was related to me by another person, but he mentioned one of them as "Not well socialized." If it's true, it might be from iphone and computer communications. Where recognizing :-) and assorted emojis replace body language and intimacy.
Quote from: SGOS on September 12, 2018, 10:03:45 AM
It's been a few days since that list of Z generation characteristics was related to me by another person, but he mentioned one of them as "Not well socialized." If it's true, it might be from iphone and computer communications. Where recognizing :-) and assorted emojis replace body language and intimacy.
I suspect every generation considers the next "not well socialized". Even long ago, Soctates said
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.†If I was born in 1990, I would do just fine among my peers there. And I wouldn't understand my current self.