[drcube]

Can somebody tell me who is considered "Gen X"? I thought I was, as a kid, but I believe I might even be too young.

Kurt Cobain was in Generation X, right? I was 11 when he died. Where does that put me? What about my 5 year old?

The whole idea of distinct "generations" seems wacky to me, but it sure does appeal to journalists.

[hkmurakami]

The whole idea of distinct "generations" seems wacky to me, but it sure does appeal to journalists.

People like to be part of a group. It's warm and comfortable. To not be part of a greater collective, part of something more powerful than their own individual beings, can be terrifying and lonely.

Journalists surely understand this; they tap into this inner fear, this inner desire of ours, when they generalize and talk in terms of distinct groups rather than in terms of individuals, even though surely none of us are so uniform that we truly belong to any such group as defined by any journalist anywhere.

[typicalrunt]

There's no exact date boundaries to generations, however if you reside around the boundaries you are generally considered to be on the cusp.

According to Wikipedia, Gen-X ended around 1981. In my lifetime (we're probably around the same age) I have seen Gen-X referred to ending anywhere between 1976-1980.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X

[rsl7]

It's the "baby bust", as mentioned in the article. I'm exactly in the middle of it - 1971. Bought my house at the high point of the internet bubble in 1999.

[ww520]

I think it's birth on anywhere from ~1962 to ~1980, around 18 years for one generation.

[gojomo]

'Generation' overgeneralizing is a cousin to decade overgeneralizing, a handy way to generate trend stories and social pseudo-science out of vague impressions. (The categories and qualities remain fluid enough that, like Astrology, anyone who wants to believe can find some support.)

I find it interesting that the 00's have been less subject to such generalization and nostalgia, and I think it's for no other reason than it's harder to say, with no one clear winning decade moniker, compared to the Nineties, Eighties, Seventies, Sixties, etc.

(The Teens may be a little easier to refer to in casual overgeneralizations, and then the Twenties will come a roarin' back with decade-o-centric thinking.)

[sliverstorm]

The whole idea of distinct "generations" seems wacky to me, but it sure does appeal to journalists.

The context of your youth tends to have a guiding hand in who you become as a person. Grouping people into distinct "generations" that span a decade or two is very imprecise, to be sure, but it does manage to roughly identify facets of the kind of environment you grew up in.