Back in January, the NYT invited readers to tell it what to call the post-millennials. (That's what I was saying, by the way, post-millennials.) The Times reported on its effort at crowd-sourcing the answer:
There was plenty of support for widely publicized names already coined for the generation born, roughly, between 1995 and 2015: Generation Z, Homeland Generation, Post-Millennials and iGeneration.And yesterday, Time had this:
A significant minority had grown comfortable with “Generation Z,” including Raquel Glassner, 22, of Olympia, Wash.
“I’ve never heard iGeneration before, but that is really horrendous,” she said. “Our whole generation shouldn’t be branded by Apple. Gen Z is the final generation of the 1900s, and a generational title using the last letter in the alphabet seems fitting.”...
The youngest respondent I tracked down was Mari Sobota, 8, a third-grader in Madison, Wis., who wrote in to say that her generation would be known for “girl power!”
Mari, 8, could identify an obvious generational difference between her and her 12-year-old sister Cassandra, and their mother, Carousel Bayrd. “We both like cotton candy, and my mom hates that,” she said.
This post-Millennial generation still has several moniker [sic], but has been most commonly called Generation Z or the iGeneration. They are widely considered to be young people born in the mid-1990s, and by 2020 they will account for one-third of the U.S. population. Gen-Z is also the most diverse in American history, and the first made up people who don’t know a world without the Internet or smartphones....Blah blah blah. How vile to be thought of as the people who always had smartphones in their hands. Will these people not rebel? Here's Time's video, which is too candy-fluff for me to listen to the whole thing, but I did learn that that pronunciation, which surprised me, because we always said "gen-X," not "GEN-x" (which sounds like the name of a new drug).
Adding tags for this post, I see I already have one for Generation Z.
ADDED, on publishing this post: I see I had one other post with this tag, going all the way back to September 2015, and it was about the NYT pushing the term...
... so the NYT got its way, even as it later made it seem like the readers sent in the idea.
How did the millennials escape the fate of getting called Generation Y? It seems unfair to Generation Z, getting stuck with being an afterthought of the famous Generation X, which was itself a quasi-rebellious retort to the truly famous Baby Boomers. And clearly the post-Gen-Z generation won't get stuck with the next letter, there being no next letter. If I were a Z, I'd be very annoyed, but I'm saying that as a Baby Boomer, and we had a rebellious spirit, borne of the seemingly complacent 1950s and the desperately discordant next phase — assassination, riots, drugs, rock and roll, and the threat of a draft into a war that made no earthly sense.
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They are all asleep at the switch.ZZZZ.
How about the MeTooGeneration? Or MTGeneration for short? Or just the MeGeneration?
Maybe the EverybodyIsAVictimGeneration?
Well, they are the generation that always has smartphones in their hands.
Have you been in a waiting room or restaurant with any of them lately?
"Mari, 8, could identify an obvious generational difference between her and her 12-year-old sister Cassandra, and their mother, Carousel Bayrd. “We both like cotton candy, and my mom hates that,"
that IS an obvious generational difference! these pre-teens like cotton candy, but their mother, AmusementParkRide Bayrd does not. The idea of young children liking candy more than their mother is all part of the genzy
</sarc
Selling to them takes this as its organizing principle (that they live their lives through their phones).
and trationalguy quickly nails it!
I don't even know what generation X is. You'd think generation XI would follow it, solving all the problems.
Generation Z would be zombies taking over.
It's so wrong for an older generation to give a negative stereotyping name to a new generation. The term shouldn't have any judgment aimed at them all.
But I've said I hope they rebel, and this will give them one more thing to rebel against.
I think the culture we're offering them right now is too bland and robotic and boring and repressive. I don't want anyone to suffer, but there's just so much superficially glitzy entertainment pouring at them and a completely uninteresting intellectual climate with so much pressure to just strive in a narrow track of getting into schools and working at jobs and nonjobs.
If I were where they are, I would survey the landscape before me and say no. It would be tune in, drop out all over again.
What's poured at the new generation is programming aimed at women.
So are we at the end now? I don't like what it signifies.
The older Bush is apparently sick.
The queen died and then the king died is history.
The queen died and then the king died of a broken heart is a story.
To regain purpose Bush should participate in comment threads.
I don't want anyone to suffer, but there's just so much superficially glitzy entertainment pouring at them and a completely uninteresting intellectual climate with so much pressure to just strive in a narrow track of getting into schools and working at jobs and nonjobs.
And conform!
The Professor is right, the GenZZZ's need to wake up.
AA said: "It's so wrong for an older generation to give a negative stereotyping name to a new generation. The term shouldn't have any judgment aimed at them all."
Normally I would agree with the sentiment, but they've earned the stereotype. And the judgmental names proffered in this post are mocking the members of the aforementioned generation getting all the ink/facetime.
There are of course silent/anonymous members of this generation who will carry the water forward. There always is.
So, what will they call the next generation? Will they rollover back to Gen A? Gen ZZ?
More proof that Althouse is a thought leader and the NYT plagerizes her work.
I'd have voted for Genny McGenface.
The "genitals" are prone to inflammation and irritation.
And Gen X meant Generation 10, didn't it?
I see where it was supposed to be Generation 13 (since the American Revolution.) So Gen X was senseless from the start.
"...desperately discordant next phase — assassination, riots, drugs, rock and roll, and the threat of a draft into a war that made no earthly sense..."
This sounds more like the empty headed rhetoric of a millennial.
I think the culture we're offering them right now is too bland and robotic and boring and repressive. I don't want anyone to suffer, but there's just so much superficially glitzy entertainment pouring at them and a completely uninteresting intellectual climate with so much pressure to just strive in a narrow track of getting into schools and working at jobs and nonjobs.
If I were where they are, I would survey the landscape before me and say no. It would be tune in, drop out all over again.
I 100% agree with this and this is precisely what I encourage my gen-Z children to do. Example is stronger than advice so in our house we consume as little as possible of the bullshit that currently comprises our culture. So far so good. My teens want nothing to do with much of it.
I appreciate that thanks to the same internet that is dumbing people down we have so much alternative material available. We can consume the arts and letters of a previous, less moronic time with ease. I do feel richly blessed in this.
The X in GenX is not a letter or roman numeral, but a variable. Therefore Y and Z make no sense.
The "X" refers to an unknown variable or to a desire not to be defined.
You'd think the NYT would know that. I guess all the writers working on the piece were millennials.
Hey we Boomers had real culture like “My Mother the Car”
( and shit like that as 4chan guy would say.)
Kids today, am I right ?
@Althouse - Yep. At least the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit could smoke cigarettes, drink martinis at lunch, and hit on his secretary.
More than 100 years ago, American sociologist Caldell Titcomb Jr. was concerned that "generation" was being used as a temporal explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. He spoke out against the idea of "generations" as discrete groups.
Now we know that there is no gene or cluster of genes common to all members of Gen-X or Gen-Z. If generations were "real" in the temporal sense, generational classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries.
These young people will grow up into adults who take stuff like American Idol seriously.
We could call them the "myopia generation" Another ten years of smart phones and myopia will be 100% unless they start going outside to play again.
Ann Althouse said...
It's so wrong for an older generation to give a negative stereotyping name to a new generation. The term shouldn't have any judgment aimed at them all. But I've said I hope they rebel, and this will give them one more thing to rebel against.
I agree. How about a name aimed back at the political class that came before them:
Generation Shit Sandwich?
Maybe they need to watch more American Idol, then they wouldn’t be so boring.
What happened to that sentence about “glitzy entertainment”? I had to chuckle about that one in light of the American Idol post.
the threat of a draft into a war that made no earthly sense.
Yeah ...who cares if a bunch of gooks get enslaved by the communists?
The next generation will be neX-Gen. They will rebel against the boring conformity caused by social media which they will say characterized iGen. They'll say iGen, not Gen Z was the real name. neX-Gen will go outside without their phones. They will turn off, tune out, drop in i.e., turn off their phones, tune out of the digital world and drop in on their physical neighbors. They will read books, write letters and ask me, (by then 100) how to use a quill pen - having seen a picture of Ben Franklin, an older American who also had white hair, using one. So I'm going to practice for that. I also know how to do white sugar on a slice of bread and butter. I predict a comeback for this delicacy.
judgment =/- acknowledgement
It is not my job to pretend the things I observe are not real.
On Gab.ai and elsewhere they're referring to themselves as Generation Zyklon.
The term "generation Y" was bandied about, but didn't gain a lot of traction. It was hard to go from "Xer" to "Yer" and millenials had a handy calendar shift.
I am preparing for the end of all things now, as we have the last generation of children. We're out of letters.
Zer doesn't sound too good either, of course, so I think there will be both another name for the youngest generation and more generations after them.
The whole letter generation trend is silly anyhow, because X was the first to use it, and X wasn't meant to be understood as a succession in a list. We don't expect to have Malcolm Y or Malcolm Z.
"They will read books, write letters and ask me, (by then 100) how to use a quill pen"
What you're talking about here, it's already happening. In Portland!
The answer to the question what we're calling the generation after the millennials has been determined.
Brainwashed, snowflake morons?
Generation Yogh should be a hoot.
Baby Boomers are those born in US from 1946-1964 and Gen X are those born from 1965-1982, and Millenials 1983-2000.
Each generation about 18-20 years. It’s a simplistic approach. As much for marketing as anything. And planing government benefits. Bi there is some cohesion in the group.
The oldest of the post millenials will be 18 next year.
I think a fair amount of generational stuff is about shared memories over both large events , like JFK assasination and 9/11, as well as just cultural stuff.
I was born in 1971. I have some memories of the 70s. I remember the bicentennial Fourth of July. And I remember when all adults smoked everywhere. And I mean everywhere, including my parents who quit smoking in 1984.
And I remember a lot of music starting around 1977 (Stevie Wonder, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John especially) that my parents listened to as well as the top 40 stuff on the radio. And I remember the Dodgers and Yankees playing in the World Series in 1977 and 1978, especially Reggie Jackson. I remember being surprised that anyone who wore glasses played pro baseball, especially such a great hitter.
The big event(s) of 1970s that sticks out in my mind was the Iran hostage. I remember my brother and me tying a yellow ribbon around the tree in our front yard and watching a bit of the news with my Dad. It was stuff like Day 100 of Hostage Crisis or something like that.
As for the big events of 1980s, Regan getting shot was big deal. They wheeled a TV into our third grade classroom and we watched some of the coverage. I remember talking to my parents about it that night and learning about the JFK stuff. I don’t think I ever heard of him before that, army least that I remember. I also remember the Space Shuttle Explosion. Again, the school wheeled the TVs in, this time to our 8th grade class.
As for cultural stuff, I’d say the VCR/movie rental stores, Atari and other video games, and the personal computer have stuck in my head.
Music wise, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna were very popular in the mid 1980s. I remember being surprised that st the 1984 Olympics Lionel Ritchie, not Michael Jackson was the big performer. As I got older and more into music, REM and U2 were pretty big for me and some of the English bands like The Cure and the Smiths (and we all started listening to a lot of Beatles/Stones and 70s rock stuff like Led Zeppelin, which was “classic rock” at the time
As for sports, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were big, then Michael Jordan started surpassing them by the late 1980s.
So “my generation” is basically people who remember this stuff well but weren’t adults the whole time.
They should be called the "bag holder generation", because that's how us boomers will leave them. They call us "boomers" because we blew everything up to unsustainable levels. They are the "selfie generation" and we are the selfish one.
Why do we need names for “generations”? I was born in 1943, and my “generation” had no name (except “before the baby boom”), yet somehow I survived and even prospered. As far as I can tell, everyone significantly younger than me is all screwed up, and giving their “generation” a name isn’t going to improve them.
And they can get off my damn’ lawn!
“”Gen-Z" (which is pronounced to rhyme with "frenzy").”
Down here in New Zealand, that would be ”Gen-Zed”.
" I was born in 1943, and my “generation” had no name (except “before the baby boom”), "
Small industries that grew rapidly during the war were often called "War Babies."
A famous yacht owned by one of those men was called "War Baby." It later became "Condor."
It was well sailed and rescued a man overboard in a race at night.
Sorry. Sailing to me is a lot more interesting that generation z.
I think there is evidence generation Z is already rebelling:
http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-gen-z-voted-relative-to-adults-in.html
Generation Zyklon because they use Pepe the frog and gas chamber memes to horrify the Boomers and their ossified idea of rebellion. They are the 4chan generation.
The generational classes for the past 30 years or so are not yet clarified, in my opinion. I think in 20 years, we will more clearly see that there is an additional generation, between the Xers and the Millenials. Gen X needs to be revised to end in 78 or so, then a new generation from 78 to 90, finally the millenials from 90 to 2000.
Yes, this is not a true "generation", time spans of decades or so, but is more reflective of shared memories, as mentioned upthread. Possibly shorter time spans in the digital age are appropriate!
Anyways, this stems from myself, born in 86, being classified as a millennial. Yet, I don't share the share perspective and memories of those born in the 90's. Why? The internet and cell phones. I remember a world without them, but the millenials do not. I remember September 11th from watching it on the news in highschool. My millennial coworkers only have vague grade school memories. Those two items (cell phones/internet and 9/11) feel so defining and it doesn't feel right to lump a generation together that has vastly different experiences related to them.
Now the gen x’ers get upstaged by the gen z’ers. Boomers feel the urge to schadenfreude, some relent knowing that this is another stage of potential wisdom for gen x’ers.
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