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by AznHisoka 3544 days ago
What's the difference between a yuppie, a hipster and a millenial? I get these buzzwords confused.
5 comments

> What's the difference between a yuppie, a hipster and a millenial?

A "yuppie" is an term of 1980s vintage for "young urban professional", formed directly from the phrase.

A "hipster" is a term of more recent invention, for basically the same thing (a young urban professional).

Both carry some implications of both in-group trendiness and conspicuous consumption though, with the changing character of the times, the "yuppie" has stronger associations with conspicuous consumption and "hipster" with trendiness with less general conspicuous consumption (and perhaps an outward, though often skin deep, rejection of consumerism.)

A millennial is a member of a particular generational cohort, basically the group now between the mid-teens and mid-30s. Modern hipsters/yuppies are probably also millenials, but plenty of millenials are neither.

a yuppie has an expensive car and house, a hipster has a bike and roommates, and a millennial borrows their parent's car and lives at home
Age too: yuppies are generally older ("yuppie" was a popular term in the 80s), hipsters are probably in their early 30s, and millennials are in their 20s-early 30s.
They are stereotypes denoting different generational cultures (wikipedia calls it "demographic cohort"). If I made your list chronologically I would put "Generation X" between yuppie and hipster.

Every generation gets a name, huge swaths of commerce depend on it.

Well "yuppie" came from Young Urban Professional.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuppie

Does anybody remember the terms DINK or BoBo? Some fun nicknames for demographics that I haven't heard in a while.
DINK as in "dual income no kids"? That one is still in common usage as far as I know, I have heard at least a couple people say it in the past month.

Never heard of BoBo as far as I can recall.

It meant "bourgeois bohemian", and referred to the sort of yuppies who shop at Whole Foods and style themselves as hippies. I knew a bunch of people who thought it applied to themselves or their friends in the early 2000s. But I haven't heard it much in five or ten years now.