Weekend!
“You’re a Gen Xer, right?” I was asked. “And I’m a Millennial?”
“Actually, I think you’re at the tail end of Gen Y,” I said to the kiddo born in 1988.
“So who are the Millennials?”
“Born after the 90’s started. Which was not, technically, until Smells Like Teen Spirit was released.”
“What?”
And so that’s how we began to hammer out the various decades rather than the various generations.
The 50’s started with Eisenhower’s election, for example. The 50’s didn’t end until Kennedy got shot. Then it was the 60’s until either Vietnam ended, Watergate, or Nixon resigned (opinions differ). The 70’s didn’t end until Reagan was either elected or, a few months later, took office. Some argue that the 80’s ended when the Berlin Wall fell or when Desert Storm happened but, honestly, I think it was Smells Like Teen Spirit that kicked off the 90’s. Which, of course, did not end until (let’s say it together) 9/11 (no politics).
Which brings us to the Oughts.
Some argue that the Oughts ended with Obama’s election (the 70’s were that short). I really can’t think of any other major milestone around there that might provide a decent punctuation, whether they be political (no politics), cultural, or some big event that happened that made everybody say “well, that’s over… let’s start the next one.”
That’s what is probably going to be bugging me all weekend.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Photo is “Footrace finish line, 1925” from the Seattle Municipal Archives, used under a creative commons license)
You can take this idea back in time too:
40s started with Pearl Harbor
30s started with Black Friday
20s started with the end of WWI
10s started with the sinking of the Titanic
1900s started with the election of Roosevelt
Another thing that sticks out for me is that with the exception of the double whammy of the Depression and World War II, it seems like happy decades and sad decades alternate. We’ve been pretty happy over these last six-ish years, which makes me afraid of what’s on the horizon.
I think there’s an interesting historiography there somewhere. Blame it on the collective death drive if you will.Report
1900s started with the election of Roosevelt
TR being elected (1904) or becoming president (1901)?Report
becoming President
Cheers!Report
The first third of the 1910s wasn’t that bad and many people had found memories of the 1890s to.Report
“We’ve been pretty happy”
… history won’t see it that way. Fat, peaceful, and alienated.Report
Yeah, I thought about going back further in time but… you know… the co-worker was born in 1988 and I got all depressed. (I make a Ghostbusters joke, for example, and he says something like “DO YOU MEAN THE REBOOT?” or “WAS THAT ONE OF THOSE BLACK AND WHITE MOVIES?” or the like and my blood pressure goes up.)Report
Let’s also not pretend that C&C Music Factory didn’t usher in the nineties. C’mon.Report
The decadence of the 80’s manifested in many, many ways. In Rock, it manifested itself as Yankee Rose (I’ve heard Yankee Rose described as “the 80’s dry heaving”). In Pop, there was the so-called Lip Sync Scandals involving, most famously, Milli Vanilli but it also swept up Zelma Davis pretending to be Martha Wash.
I’m sorry but C&C Music Factory is still very much the 80’s.Report
The 90s started with Nevermind, the Metallica Black Album, and Dre’s The Chronic (and specifically, the release of Nuthin’ but a G Thang.) They combined to kill hair metal, sideline boy bands for a half decade (until the Mouse brought them back), cleared the underbrush of novelty acts like Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and suppressed underwhelming R&B acts like Color Me Badd,Report
Yeah, The Chronic (and Doggystyle) felt like everything was changing in Pop Culture… the push for “authenticity” in music pressed reset again.
I mean, when Mom says “can you put that Motley Crue song on? The nice one?” and you don’t exactly know *WHICH* one she’s talking about? Your music has officially stopped being “authentic”.Report
I really want to say that Technotronic is all 80’s, but C+C Music Factory is all 90’s, and for these totally personal and not at all objective reasons: Technotronic happened before my high school graduation; C+C, after. I had Technotronic on cassette; while C+C was on CD. To me, that’s a break.Report
You really should read these Higgs books. I think you’d dig ’em.Report
I especially like the one where he runs away to sea and becomes a bosun. It has real gravity.Report
How many bosons can fit into a clown car?Report
I thought that fad hadron its course.Report
Riffing on them a little bit, it’s almost like the ’90s started with “Spirit” (and Slacker & Generation X), but they also ENDED in 1994, when Cobain did and the first popular Web browser was introduced.
From then on – we’ve just been living in the Long Now. Pop-culture-wise, anyway.Report
June 17, 2009: iPhone gets copy-paste.Report
There are actual debates among historians if historical eras should link up neatly with actual years. This is why you see books referring to thinks like the Long Eightenth Century, which starts in the 17th with Louis XIV or Charles II and ends in 1800 or insisting that the 19th century began with the French Revolution and ends with the outbreak of the First World War.Report
It seems like they shouldn’t at all. It seems, in fact, that they usually wouldn’t even have clear boundaries, they’ll just sort of blend into one another.Report
Meh. Frontiers get “discovered” in a relatively short amount of time. Trade routes reorganize, and not terribly slowly either. Japan opened itself to the world — that’s a clean break.Report
Millenials are between 1982 and 2002. They ARE GenY, just named better.
It’s a double-decade per “generation”Report
I don’t know, that doesn’t seem exactly right to me.
I know that the “Baby Boomers” had a couple of waves with the earliest ones having false memories of having gone to Woodstock (because they saw the Woodstock movie) and the last ones being around 5 years old when Woodstock happened… the distinctions between the “First Wave” and the “Second Wave” make sense when it comes to stuff like “the first wave boomers were hippies and the second wave boomers were Reagan Voters” (which is a HUGE sweeping generalization that should not be used for betting purposes but can be used as a sweeping generalization).
Gen X being between 1965 and 1981 followed by Gen Y between 1982 and 2002?
There’s too many things being smooshed together, there. First Wave Gen Y remembers 9/11 and had their 20s in a state of War. The earliest 2nd Wave Gen Y would remember 9/11 the way that kids juuuust a little bit older than me remember the Vietnam Body Counts on the nightly news (and the ones older than that wouldn’t remember it at all).
Doesn’t feel right.Report
You’re both right. Sometimes Generation Y is used interchangably with “Millennials,” and refers to those born from the early 80s (80 to 82) to the early Aughts (00 to 02). Sometimes it’s used to refer to a sort of intermediate generation from slightly earlier (’76-78) to 1990 or so, and Millennials are the folks who came after that. I think the former, Kim’s version, is more common, but I could be wrong.
What’s more, the version you’re talking about is the one that’s really scrunching things together. Usually generations last 15-20 years, but the version of Generation Y that starts in the 70s cuts off Generation X at a decade or a little more and then only lasts a decade or so itself. The Baby Boomer generation, for example, is almost always considered to be ’46 to ’64, and the two generations before it, the Silent Generation and the Greatest Generation, cover 20 years each.
I dunno when GenY started being called “Millennials,” but I distinctly remember my mother, in the mid-90s, talking about how my brother, born in ’82, was a “Millennial” because he was graduating from high school in ’01.Report
9/11 changed less than you think.
War changed far less than you think.
Computers? Computers changed a hell of a lot about HOW we think, how we interact, and, importantly, who we interact with.
There’s a real break between people like me, who didn’t get a computer until they were no longer a child (a teenager, instead), and the people who got a computer at five or under.
I’d break it at … say, 1965-1985, 1985-2005. We’ve got a new generation growing up now, but no hip name.Report
That’s a very good point. Cellular pocket computers probably are going to have a similar boundary effect.
Trying to think about putting the birth boundary at 1985, I think that’s probably a good guess.
My dad got an Apple][e when I was a kid – it didn’t have the velcro case closure, so post-1983, and it was beige not grey, so pre-1987. Calling it 1985, I would have been about 7 years old. But in 1985 having a home computer was somewhat unusual.
My mom later got a Mac Classic, so between 1990 and 1992. By this time I think a home computer was starting to get more common. I was around 13; someone born in 1985 would have been around 5.Report
If my son’s little brother (born 2008) is any indication, the new generation may be called The Melodramatic Generation.Report
Born with a USB port in the back of their heads.
Making jokes about the grownups who talk about ‘cyclopedias and TV Guide.Report
I feel the confusion your 1988 friend, as I’m technically a 1986 person, but I feel like 1982 to 2002 is stretch. I don’t feel like I fit with Gen Y or Millennials. I kind of float back and forth depending on what box they are trying to put me in.
I’m not doing anything interesting this weekend but I couldn’t think of any other place to ask, when are we doing Leaguefest 2016?! You got a leap year with 2015, but I’ll be very sad if we don’t have one this year. I have so many more of you to meet!Report
This weekend is the combined birthday party for Mr T and me. The numbers may be small, so I guess there’ll be lots of food for everyone.
That’s assuming the flu Mr T had and then the kid had doesn’t continue its path of destruction. Because then the agenda for the weekend would just be a lot of getting up to vomit, then going back to bed.Report
Success! An entirely pleasant and influenza-free birthday party!Report
As we grow older, our “successful birthday party” expectations get lower.Report
“What did you do for your birthday?”
“Qdoba. I bought some of those socks that I’ve been wanting.”
“Sweeet.”Report
As my mother (now 88) put it once: “It was a good year. Didn’t appear on the obituary page.”Report
I wore this shirt the other day.Report
Tonight I’m probably going to our local deli with a friend, tomorrow we are gaming, Sunday afternoon we have hang out / post Christmas time with our other closest circle of friends, and Sunday night I’ll be back over at our gaming friends’ house (well, the house where we game where some of those friends live) for tv night.
Also somewhere in there I really need to call my mom and my sister.Report
Tonight I am going to the WWE Live Event (Christmas present from my awesome wife), which will hopefully involve a match between Brock Lesnar and Sheamus (one of the few matches involving Sheamus that I am actually excited to see). Cena vs. del Rio was on the card, but Cena just got out of surgery, so I will not get to see him live.
Tomorrow or Sunday we finally tear down the Christmas decorations.
Things are pretty flexible beyone that.Report
Oh, that sounds awesome. Maribou and I used to go whenever they came in town (whenever Denver got Raw, Colorado Springs got Smackdown for a good long run there) and we could usually get pretty sweet tickets (front row, second tier, nowhere near a camera) for a reasonable price (that ticketmaster always turned into a “wait, it cost how much???”) and it was always a blast.
DUDE I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE ON THE INJURED LIST.
It’s reaching the point where I can kinda see why they might want Reigns in the title picture.Report