When my (our) generation was dubbed Generation X, I thought “well that's some post-modern bullshit”. I'm a weird GenX myself as my parents are/were young baby boomers parents. (Most GenX have Silent Generation parents).
This idea that a letter (not a word) defines our generation … it is what our #punk rock nihilism communicated.
The idea that those behind us are defined by a bullshit letter sequence now? 🤢
IMO Gen Alpha (AA) will be our new Greatest Generation. I have faith in them.
@bkuhn I think we got the name from Douglas Coupland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X%3A_Tales_for_an_Accelerated_Culture
Counter proposal: spreadsheets should in fact go through more alphabets.
because AA is Alcoholics Anonymous and Gen Z doesn't drink alcohol (extrapolating to Gen Alpha: cigarettes aren't rebounding for example)
@Gurre @evan I never managed to learn these terms. I thought they would fade and I wouldn't have to learn them.
But reading this makes me realise they'll never die, new ones keep popping up. I need to look them up somewhere.
I think I know boomers (born right after WWII) and millennials (born around 2000). But X and Y and alpha? Are there more? Why don't they teach this in school? And when its referred its never with an explanation attached.
@Gurre @evan I think it stems from marketing, when you sell a report on consumer behaviour and preferences, its customary to set a "cool term" for the segment of the population you've analysed and you're declaring all new and special, that requires new special marketing strategies, or at least new tactics.
To me these labels are 'boomer labels', I thought they would go away... Not helpful at all if you need to look them up.
@leanderlindahl @Gurre @evan it gets worse, because the terms don't necessarily make sense and have overlaps!
X is after boomers and is largely arbitrary as a name.
Y and Millenials are the same. Y is just to follow on from X. Millenials weren't actually born around 2000, but are called that because they're the first generation to 'come of age' after 2000. They were born from roughly the mid 80s to the mid 90s.
Z is to follow X and Y, and are also called 'Zoomers' for largely arbitrary reasons.
@prokyonid @leanderlindahl @evan
wørd to all of that.
Gen AA, the Energiser generation. They just keep on going and going.
@evan Given that we started at X, we could've just called them A. None of us will be around long enough to make it BACK to X, so there's not likely to be confusion.
OTOH, are today's kids the alpha release version of our cyber-integrated species? 🤣
Great, we'll have a stable release candidate sometime after 2080.