What do you think of Generation Y?

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Umm. Yes it is much different, unless you're supposing that being born to a generation and a culture is a race. To conflate racism with making statements about decentralized group behavior is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

i think the appropriate made-up word would be "Generationism"? <.<

There are situations where bathwater and baby are so indistinguishable it's best to be rid of both of them.

A Gen X-er here (1968 vintage). I have a T-shirt I had made which says "Don't mind me, I'm just an amoral, sarcastic, solipsistic, self-pitying drama queen". It was a description of my generation that was in an article in Spin magazine, and I thought it was...kind of funny. (Plus, I love it when people stare at it trying to remember what 'solipsistic' means.)

I'm in an interesting situation, because my parents were not Baby Boomers but the next one back, the ones who grew up in WWII. I think that that generation went one of two ways: either deprivation in childhood made them appreciate non-material things more, or it made them eager to lap up material comforts the minute the big advertising boom of the 50s started. I've met both types, and I'm sure both types passed on their ethos to their (generally) Boomer kids. (My own parents were a weird hybrid: always poor but regarded having Stuff as being way more important than other, less tangible things. Pretty confusing. My Boomer brother is rather more cognizant that money isn't everything in life, but he does also spend it like water trying to live up to a certain image. I figured I could break myself - financially and personally - trying to conform, or screw image and live the way I wanted. Much easier.)

That said, you can't generalize beyond a very broad picture. I don't know a huge number of Y-ers, but the ones I do know seem a varied lot. They don't all come across as the spoiled brats I often see them made out to be in the media. Sure, you'll always get a few like that, but older generations always have an urge to see the young as worse than they were at that age. It's their way of excusing themselves for their own misspent youth, I think.

On the other...sometimes my own generation makes me despair. I'm amazed at the number of people I meet of my own age who are interested in amassing money in the bank, big house, flash car, designer clothes, having bushels of perfectly turned-out kids and sending them to the 'best' schools...and nothing else. Maybe that's just what 'growing up' does to you, maybe you have to take a fine-toothed comb to any group of people in their 40s to find anyone who retains a sense of the world not being OK and needing something done about it rather than buying more Stuff...but to me (and my husband) it just seems particularly marked in the people we went to school with. I don't know.

No, there is a big difference between the two. Neither the irrational emotive component of racism is necessarily present, nor are the core fallacies, due to the essentially completely different mechanisms of group identification. If the construct of generations is inexpedient, it may be demonstrated so on it's own terms.

(For the record, my original post was more a criticism of the naive individualism of Janissy ["individuals do things..."] rather than support of the notion of generations)

The use of generalities based on silly simplifications has always been one of the worst problems of human communities. Race, color, nationality, religion, generation, age, are easy ways to parse out individuals and lazy minded people frequently permit these idiotic ways to distinguish people to justify their prejudices. To accurately evaluate an individual requires a good comprehension of each one and that seems too much for people who refuse to or are incapable of thinking.

I don't think that every member of a generation will have exactly the same characteristics, but that many will be similar in viewpoint due to having a similar education or being raised in roughly the same way.
I haven't heard much about the different generations, apart from vaugely knowing of Generation X, so I have a few questions:
Why did the generations start with X? and will the next one be Generation A?
Also, I was born in February 1993, does this mean I'm the youngest of Generation Y or the oldest of Generation Z?

One of the very few benefits of being old is that I'm old enough to have lived through everything that led to that name.

Originally, Generation X was the name of a late 70's punk rock band. I was very into punk rock in the late 70's (was in highschool) and first heard of them then. They didn't have any hits but rode the wave of Sex Pistols, Clash etc. Their guitarist, Billy Idol, went on to have greater fame in his solo career.

I was in my late 20's at the same time that a young author named Douglas Copeland was in his late 20's. Although being the same age as another random person doesn't necessarily mean you have anything else in common with them, this author Copeland apparently also like the band Generation X when he was in highschool and college and he decided to name his book about life in your late 20's after the band, and identify people who were the age to like that band as also having some shared experiences. He coined the term Generation X to refer to a generation and not just a punk rock band.

His book was a hit. I bought it and loved it. So did an enormous number of other people. It got rave reviews and some of the reviewers picked up on the title Generation X and started using it to refer to anybody who was in their late 20's at the time. Many magazine articles later, somebody came up with specific age ranges that made Generation X larger than just the people who happened to be in their late 230's at the time of the book's publishing (1991).

Ironically, Billy Idol, who coined the term when he thought it up for his punk band in the 70's, would be too old to officially be in Generation X. Technically, he's a boomer. But he didn't identify with any of the things he's been told Boomers identified with. Nobody who was in a punk band in the 70's did. So he named his band Generation X. And since the early 90's, people have probably been telling him how ironic it is that he doesn't get to be in the Generation that he thought up a name for, meaning to apply it to himself and his friends.


edited to add: I just looked up the itunes biography of Generation X (the band) to find out where Billy Idol got the name. Apparently he got it from a book written about the early 60's battles of Mods versus Rockers. So there you have it: the first true Generation X were just disaffected Boomers. Ironic, really.

And you? Since you were born in 1993, that means you were 7 when the Millenium came around. That's young enough to be a Millenium Generation as far as I can tell. I don't know if any writer has set official parameters yet, but it makes sense that the Millenium Generation would be those born somewhat before and somewhat after the Millenium-2000. If it's going to be 20 years wide I guess I'll just be the one to set parameters and say it's the 20 year block of those born from 1990-2010, that's 20 years with the Millenium smack in the middle.

Do people really have stereotypes for generations now? I mean, I drew the line at decade-wise stereotypes but this is ridiculous.

I am not sure. Don't think any generation as a whole is good or bad. And possibly the fact that those in their 20s can't spell, are poorly-concentrated, etc. is a 20s thing...did all you boomers have fabulous job performance when you were in your 20s? The boomers I know didn't.

Generation X is the 10th Generation since the founding of the Nation...

I belong to the blank generation, and I can take it or leave each time...

Y and Z, I dunno..so they wouldn't have to use more than one letter?...

I feel more in tune with Gen X than Boomers; I won't by dog poop because the commercial has a Beatle's Sound track...

And I would just like to state for the record that the theme song of the Boomers is not 'My Generation' by The Who as everyone thinks it is.

It's 'Hi Ho Silver Lining' by Jeff Beck. Go to a party with any bunch of drunken Boomers present (at least, the ones I know) and this is the one that gets everyone up and singing along.

well, generalizations are useful sometimes relating to studies, statistics and the like, but there are always problems relating to it though, when getting into faulty generalizations and biased conclusions.

The concepts of Generation X or Y or whatever might be useful to explaining the socio-political aspects on different periods of time, as well as other things such as fashion, etc. but I doubt it is actually be useful to put a blame to a single generation for problems such as Vietnam War or the fall of the USSR for example, that is an issue related to governments and a group of people in position of power for the cause of such events not an entire generation.

I believe Janissy has some point about individualism, even though generalization can't be avoided, certainly if the majority share a common trait, even if a good number don't (being the minority) then such generalization still seems necessary, all IMHO.

But anyway, I did want to say that Generation Y sucks

the baby boomers are far worse and generation y will be the ones who have to shoulder their burdens.

as far as individuality: the boomers killed that off with their horrible maintenance of all mainstream media sources and those bastards are about to cut off the last bastion of free (like freedom) media by clamping down on the internet.

the boomers have made moral concession after moral concession to get here. not to mention did a horrible job raising their kids in the process.

the "greatest generation" must have been absolutely horrible parents for the boomers to come out as selfish and as greedy as they collectively have acted throughout history so far.

hatred of hippies? how about hatred of baby boomers who pissed away every freedom they took advantage of while they posed as free individuals. hippies were just posers and modern hippies are just conspiracy theorists.


You know Barry O. is a baby boomer, too.

There's a great book on the topic by William Strauss and Neil Howe called Generations (most libraries have it). Their insights on the various generation cohorts is fascinating.

Here's how they breakdown the generations of the 20th Century:

Birth Year
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1982–2000 Millennial Generation (Gen Y)
1961–1981 13th Generation (a.k.a Generation X, Baby Busters)
1943–1960 Baby Boomers
1925–1942 Silent Generation
1901–1924 G.I. Generation

Personally, I find it hard to acurately judge any generation until most of them enter their prime working years, as teenagers are by their very definition going through a period of emotional flux/ trying on new lifestyle choices while they search for their eventual place in the world.

For the record, I'm a member of Generation X whose mother was a Baby Boomer and father was a member of the G.I. Generation (big time May/December relationship!).

Here's the Wikipedia page for the book.

I despise the Y generation. How would I describe them? Lazy, dopey, mopey, entitled, selfish, perpetual 8 year olds. They think they can better their crummy lot by being tattle tales too.