March 16, 2014

Gen X vs. Millennials compared in a single book

Greeting me as I walked through the door at Urban Outfitters today was a book on display, X vs. Y: A Culture War, A Love Story. It compares and contrasts the two generations, mostly from the vantage point of the media experiences of their formative years. (Here is the book's website, and here are some excerpts.)

That right there is overlooking some of the major differences, since Millennials prefer things and virtual reality over people and real life. Much of what makes Gen X different was their largely unmediated upbringing. And not because of technological change — they had TV, movies, novels, magazines, comic books, video games, portable music players, etc. They just didn't live their entire lives in the world of media.

Those are the most striking changes I've documented over the past three or four years, off and on. Not hanging out with friends to play a sport, not getting a driver's license, not interacting with the opposite sex, not passing along folk / oral culture (schoolyard songs, games, urban legends), not spending your childhood outside, and so on. What cartoons were like then and now — sure, that's changed too, but that's not primary.

At any rate, the book seemed like a decent read from only having flipped through and skimmed pieces. It's not meant as an academic or journalistic book that treats things at an abstract level. It's almost all nitty-gritty details about what makes the two generations (mostly) different or (sometimes) similar, across a variety of cultural domains.

The authors are half-sisters born 14 years apart, one in '71 or '72, the other in '85 or '86. The co-authorship and family relationship makes the tone more sympathetic toward the other side — whether they deserve it or not. And it's not one of those generic, lazy tones that reassure us we're all formed from the same mold, just somewhat differently. They recognize and detail how different the gens are, they are just trying to make love, not war. Given how different — how opposite — the two groups are, though, that's a bit naive.

The older sister, Eve, is at the ground zero of her generation, but her sister Leonora is one of the earliest Millennials and probably not the most representative. Seems to me you need to get to late '80s / early '90s births before they feel more palpably Millennial. This is another weakness of the sister-sister co-authorship — to get a prototypical member of each gen would have required the younger author to be born about 5 years later. On the other hand, it's worth having a younger author who is still old enough to get reflective about the course of their generation's experiences.

I was surprised to see, at the very beginning of the book where they define their terms, that they echo my take on those born between '79 and '84. Canonical Gen X ends at '78 births for me, and I used to distinguish the '79-'84 cohort as Gen Y, with Millennials coming after them. But it seemed silly to have such a small "generation," so I just lumped them in with Gen X. Nothing unusual about sub-grouping within a gen — look at the early and later Boomers, for instance.

Why not lump them in with Millennials on the other side? I dunno, they just don't fall that way when you push them. The authors make the same claim, having asked around to lots of folks in that mini-range of Gen X. So I'm not the only member of that cohort who's noticed that we are more like peripheral, Johnny-come-lately X-ers, not really our own gen, and DEFINITELY not part of the Millennials.

We feel uncomfortable with our designated membership, not because we have beef with (canonical) X-ers, but because we always thought of "Generation X" as the cool older kids when we were 13 or 14, not us. Perhaps that was the influence of Gen X as advertising brand rather than as social group.

The '79-'84 cohort is distinguished by going through puberty right at the moment when the entire social-cultural momentum was grinding to a halt, and swinging back in the opposite direction, circa 1992. These folks spent half of their formative years (childhood) in the good old days, but another half (adolescence) in the Nineties. And yet they are not evenly pulled in both directions — they are more akin to people who went through puberty in 1982 than in 2002.

Evidently, childhood exerts a stronger influence on the developing, impressionable brain. Language is an obvious example, and also fits with the theme of socialization, a child figuring out what his community's norms are and fitting in with them. Switching languages at age 13 is not impossible, but is not easy, and will leave an accent.

Actually, the language analogy understates how hard it is because it's not like your first language was somehow the opposite of the second language. Most of the norms you're internalizing fall on a continuum, and they were swinging from one extreme toward that other during the early-to-mid-'90s. We're expected to be interested in people — no, just kidding! Interested in things! We're supposed to be sincere and open — no, just kidding! Ironic and closed-off! Girls are boy-crazy — no, just kidding! They suspect you all as crypto date-rapists! And so on.

I'm at a loss to convey just how dizzying of a mind-fuck that changing-gears period was for someone undergoing the transition from childhood to adolescence. Childhood experiences are supposed to prepare you for adolescence, so you can hit the social ground running. Then right as you're about to hit the ground, down becomes up, hot becomes cold, near becomes far.

8 comments:

  1. Nice writeup. I was born in '81 and don't feel comfortable calling myself a Gen Xer or a Millennial.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I guess this is why Generation X and Y will lead the charge towards a more outgoing society, just as the tail end of the G.I. Generation was responsible for doing - they were kids during the 80s, had a normal childhood, but found the rug pulled out from under them in the 90s.

    ReplyDelete
  3. First off, thank you for all the work you do with this blog. I've been following you for a few years now, but this is my first time commenting.

    You wrote "The '79-'84 cohort is distinguished by going through puberty right at the moment when the entire social-cultural momentum was grinding to a halt, and swinging back in the opposite direction, circa 1992."

    I was born in '87, and feel the exact same way. You've mentioned earlier the mini-resurgence in outgoing behavior/desire to be a little more wild in the '01-'05/'06 time frame before. This (obviously) coincided with puberty, teenage experiences, etc for me and my peers. Random zeitgeisty fact - in that time, hookah smoking exploded in popularity in the US...probably one of the most socially conducive activities you can imagine. Hookah bars across my city were packed even on weeknights with people wanting to meet other people and (gasp!) share a mouthpiece with complete strangers.

    I can attest to feeling totally out of place in the culture beginning in '06 or so - people just started behaving very differently from the ways in which I had been led to expect. Beginning in '06 or so I began to realize how much easier it was to relate to those 10 or even 15 years older than me (Gen X)...even the '89 or '90 babies feel like aliens to me, like we speak completely different languages.

    Sorry for the rambling, this post just struck a chord. Keep up the awesome work!

    ReplyDelete
  4. There's a different kind of "whiplash" from being a 1985-1990 birth interacting with a lot of the 1979-1984 cohort. All your slightly older peers act slightly confused, frustrated and with an inconsistent split personality, which is headache when it comes from learning or dealing with them (does that slightly older girl want an excitable, flighty, unstable Gen X guy or a calm, po faced, rigid Millenial guy?).

    Whereas your younger peers have a degree of social reserve, and caution - not distrust, more like trusting people about the same amount but treating the negatives more seriously (low risk taking, not distrust). And that can seem odd and makes them harder to connect with), but they at least tend to be consistent in how they see the world and what normal socializing is to them. (Plus Gen Y about as affected by trends to mental illness and status striving, a couple of the other, separate alienating trends of our era.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. That slightly older girl never wants a younger guy. Dudes in my mini-generation figured that out in middle school, high school at the latest. It's not from knowledge either but experience -- that's what Millennials lack.

    They won't engage in trial-and-error. Hence they'll never learn first-hand that they have almost no success going after older girls (when older girls are actually worth pursuing). But they won't even learn it second-hand -- watching other guys try that strategy and always failing.

    Directly or indirectly, trial-and-error removes a lot of uncertainty about what had been an open, hypothetical matter before.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "the '01-'05/'06 time frame before. This (obviously) coincided with puberty, teenage experiences, etc for me and my peers. "

    I didn't mind the Millennials that much back in '04-'06. They didn't stand out too much as being a weird generation then. It would've been clear looking at the '90s childhoods and helicopter parenting, which I was aware of in the back of my mind, from seeing so few kids out trick-or-treating when I was in high school passing out Halloween candy. And in middle school, they're too young to make much of an impression.

    The first time they really became visible, they were enjoying the more outgoing and fun-loving time of the mid-2000s. But that turned out to be a blip, and after that they slowly regressed back to the '90s / early 2000s trend of cocooning, etc. I can interact and get along with them, but I don't enjoy it, and it wears away too much at my sanity.

    "Random zeitgeisty fact - in that time, hookah smoking exploded in popularity in the US"

    There was also a slight resurgence of Big Hair among the scene girls. It's a more inviting, lively look, compared to the trend toward straighter and flatter hair. Those girls also wore ornamental makeup and lots of jewelry. They were still on the closed-off side, though, since their hair was in that curtain-y shape that hides the face of someone who doesn't want you getting too close.

    "even the '89 or '90 babies feel like aliens to me, like we speak completely different languages."

    I notice a big jump in prototypically Millennial behavior with the '92 births, though you may be picking up on stuff that I'm not. Like guys staring at their phones as much as girls -- all Millennial girls do this, but I don't think the guys from the late '80s cohorts do. You do see that quite a bit with guys born in the early-mid '90s, though.

    ReplyDelete
  7. As a 1984 birth, I appreciate you not lumping me in with Millennials! This book could've been written by my older brother and myself, it sounds like (just judging by the age difference). You're so right when you say those born in the early-mid 80s feel so conflicted by the zeitgeist change. You're making me wonder if this huge change has more to do with my social anxiety than I initially realized. Interesting...

    Another interesting thing is that my older siblings seem to be more cocooning now than they used to be. I'm not sure if that's a function of age, the zeitgeist, or an interplay of both. They're still far more outgoing than me though, thankfully. I really want to check out this book now.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I notice a big jump in prototypically Millennial behavior with the '92 births, though you may be picking up on stuff that I'm not. Like guys staring at their phones as much as girls -- all Millennial girls do this, but I don't think the guys from the late '80s cohorts do. You do see that quite a bit with guys born in the early-mid '90s, though.

    I had to deal with a guy who looked at his phone a lot.

    In spite of the fact that he told me he was always online, he didn't respond to emails promptly. He had this rushed breathless way of speaking both in person and on the phone. He seemed to have ADD.

    ReplyDelete

You MUST enter a nickname with the "Name/URL" option if you're not signed in. We can't follow who is saying what if everyone is "Anonymous."