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I mostly agree with this. As someone born in 1983, I am usually grouped in with the "Millenials" (Back in my day we were "Generation Y!"). But when I see what the stereotypical characteristics of a "Millenial" are, I don't see myself. Neither do I see myself in the stereotypical characteristics of Generation X, which I only bring up because I am among the "older" of the Millenials. The comparison to horoscopes that TFA makes is apt, in my opinion.
Born in '83 as well. I consider us to be members of the Oregon Trail Generation:
http://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/04/oregon-trail-generat...
EDIT: to add some commentary, as one of the older Millennials, I've seen the media go from talking about "Millennials joining the work force" about a decade ago now, to "These wacky high school/college Millennials" now. As technology and society advance at an increasingly rate, it make less and less sense to group together such a wide age range.
A generation used to span roughly 20 years, right? These days it should probably be a decade or less. In which case, it probably shouldn't be used as a catch-all at all anymore. Maybe just stick with "People born in n decade".
It has for a long time. I'm technically part of the Baby Boom, but when people talk about "The Baby Boomers" they mean the first ten years. Its always obvious. Those of us in the second ten years are not similar. I find people group well by decade, starting in mid-decade: 1945-55, 1955-65, 1965-75, etc.
Wow, I identify with a _lot_ of that article, though as much as I love(d) The Oregon Trail, I'm not sure I could call myself a member of the "Oregon Trail Generation" while keeping a straight face :)
I was born in 1970 so I'm in the Gen X group. I remember seeing the "definitive" Gen-X movie Reality Bites and realized I hated everyone in the film except the guy they were making fun of. Also the snickers bar line still offends me.
I think background and geography are always going to trump age bracket.
That's definitely true, but it does seem like there are some broad generational commonalities. I think using a 20 year definition of generation might be too broad when rapid societal changes happen.
For instance, I think people of 1970-1990 and 1990-2010 are likely to be more similar than 1980-2000. But that's just deciding where we cut our sausage into links
Good point, but I don't think I agree. I think there is a heavy urban prejudice to the generational categories definitions and a lot of it seems to be directed at what sales categories to use.
> I think there is a heavy urban prejudice to the generational categories definitions
There's a heavy urban prejudice to the population (US population is 81% urban), too, so its not surprising that broad descriptions of population might be biased that way.
> and a lot of it seems to be directed at what sales categories to use.
Given that substantial real money is on the line in often highly competitive environments, "sales categories" most likely capture real features.
Certainly there is an urban prejudice, but that just happens automatically when you average a country's worth of people. I think there is an east coast bias and an upper income bias, as well.
I still think they are ok views of a mass of people, if you squint and keep them general enough :)
Your probably right, I just really hate talking about group beliefs in terms of anything but the group believing it. Stretching it to a general trend strikes me as wrong. Broken abstraction applied to the real world?
> I think there is a heavy urban prejudice to the generational categories definitions
There's a heavy urban prejudice to the population (US population is 81% urban), too, so its not surprising that broad descriptions of population might be biased that way.
I'm 30 and feel much the same way. I feel like the media conception of "millenial" is really "someone who is 17" mixed with "what do our NYC interns do?"
> I am usually grouped in with the "Millenials" (Back in my day we were "Generation Y!"). But when I see what the stereotypical characteristics of a "Millenial" are, I don't see myself.
That's why I claim to be Generation Y specifically, and never "Millenial". And for anyone who says otherwise, I tell them to get off my lawn!
I've seen my classification go from Gen X to Gen Y and then to millenial over the years. I guess I should be happy to be considered one of the new kids, but I wish I would have grown up to be X like I was promised.
I usually say that I grew up back when calling someone a geek or a nerd was an insult.
Born in 82 myself. If we're going to define people by generations, I wish we got broken into our own group.
I think there was a HUGE cultural shift that makes lumping us with Millenials insane. Social network usage is different, political views are different, use of language is different (e.g. YOLO).
It does seem a bit weird to lump people like me who remember the Challenger disaster and their first world map without the USSR together with people who have never experienced pre-Columbine school environments. That's not really the article's point, though.
The point is that which cultural touchstones one remembers doesn't even predict the sort of thing that's typically attributed to "generations," at least not until you control for other socioeconomic factors.
This article resonates with me -- anecdotally I think it's fairly well-understood among educated people that in modern times, variations within a population exceed variations between populations, rendering broad-scale generalizations like the ones disparaged by this article to merit all the pejoratives cited.
This article I think is part of a greater trend -- in a historical context, the very concept of identity is undergoing a shift, from the sort of old-world understanding where who you are is determined by your age, race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, class indicators, and various other easily condensible physical characteristics, to a more mature understanding of identity based on choices, desires, connections with other human beings, aptitude, and opportunities -- particularly how we spend our time and money. More and more, life is becoming about freedom of choice -- no more arranged marriages, mandatory lifelong religious indoctrination, army service, etc. with most of the remaining limitations resulting from what I see as the final hurdle -- a lack of class mobility. If anyone knows any academics who have covered this idea of the shift towards complex, multifaceted identity, I'd be grateful for a reference.
In fact I would go so far as to say that our current cultural and journalistic inclination towards these kinds of generalizations based on generational, racial, and gender-based lines, is quite toxic and serves to implicitly reinforce these tribalistic distinctions and impede social progress at scale.
In fact this unintended consequence is one of my primary complaints about the cultural adoption of logical positivism, and why I've been gravitating more and more towards a philosophical platform based on existentialism as expounded by Frankl. Watching election coverage in the US, with their constant Nielsen-style characterizations of Black voters this and Millenials that, detracts and distracts from the objective values and platforms of the candidates. I definitely agree with the article's point about confirming preconceived prejudices, and look forward to the point where we can focus as a society more on objective, aspirational values rather than subjective generalizations and the status quo. I'm reminded of David Foster Wallace's quote -- "Sometimes words that seem to express really invoke."
The generations thing is the same nonsense as "liberal/conservative". It's a lazy way of trying to understand dynamics in society.
Both refer to actual clusters in people-space. Saying someone is liberal gives you a lot of information about them. Saying they are 30 or whatever also gives you a lot of information. They are meaningful categories.
This frequent referral to this or that generation seems to be a US phenomenon as far as I've encountered it anyway.
Often it is a "diffusion of innovation" kind of thing. For instance maybe 5% of the hipsters had it, and 15% of boomers and 35% of X, and 65% of millennials.
Just for instance most of the heroes of the boomers were people like Jimi Hendrix who were just a little bit too old to be boomers.
I clicked on this because I thought it said "generators" and hoped to read some in-depth thoughts on async/await and coroutines.
You can read mainstream opinion-pieces in physical newspapers; please make HN a venue to read great technical content and not just a replacement for the workplace bulletin board. There are many of the latter and barely any of the former.
Just to give you an idea of why you might be getting downvotes, the HN guidelines say:
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence,
> the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.