30-sumthins have more in common with Boomers than 20-sumthins

[Taverner]

Seriously...think about it, the humor, the music, the drugs - all of Gen X's/30 somethings world was pretty much shared with the boomers. That's why we X'ers have such a love hate relationship with the Boomers - we share a lot of the same cultural milestones, historical events etc...

We came of age during their great war (Vietnam), we were both astounded when the wall came down (I distinctly remember being in a class with a boomer teacher in college, all of the class and professor scratching our heads saying "how the fuck did THAT happen???") and even our drugs were the traditional ones (coke, pot, acid, etc..)

The Gen Y'ers, on the other hand, never knew Vietnam, were infnants when the wall came down and had all these new designer drugs (Ecstasy, Ketamine, GMB, etc...) Their music is a far cry from ours (all the electronica) and even their traditional rock bands are more like a Disneyland experience of previous styles than an actual new sound.

Anyway, just Sunday morning rambling...

[Left Is Write]

1. What about us 40-somethings?

*sigh*

I never did relate to Gen X.

[Taverner]

3. You probably relate better than you do to Gen Y

Besides, if you're early 40's, you're Gen X

[Left Is Write]

5. I know I'm *supposed* to be Gen X...

but the majority of the so-called Gen X traits never applied to me; I'm way too young to be a boomer and just a little too much on the old side to really fit in with the Xers.

[calico1]

4. How much is the "something?"

The last boomer year was 1964.

[Left Is Write]

6. I am 40.

I agree with you that the last Boomer year was 1964, but several people have disagreed with me on that. There is some murky ground between 1964 and 1970.

It used to be that a generation was classified as 20 years (thus the Boomers being born 1945-1964), but popular culture seems to have shortened that somewhat.

[calico1]

8. I think that if you are on the tail end of

one "generation" or the beginning of another then it can be confusing. I was born in 1958 so I am more toward the end of the boom. I don't remember "Howdy Doody" or some of the other stuff older boomers remember so well. And I am too young to have been drafted for Vietnam had I been male. But on the other hand I do remember very well what it was like to live without cable, microwave ovens, remote controls and other stuff we take for granted today.

[XemaSab]

27. I was born in '77

and I remmeber what it was like before push-button phones, cordless phones, portable phones, cable TV (as a common household thing), personal computers (much less the internet), VCRs, CDs, fax machines... :shrug:

[calico1]

33. Yes, but I was an adult when all these things

became common! I had to grow up with black and white TV too. Oh the horror! I don't know how I lived through it all!:silly:

[calico1]

2. I would say that is true of a lot of people in

their late thirties.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

7. I would say you just did a really crappy stereotyping of Gen Y.

And it's GHB, you old fart, not GMB.

[Taverner]

10. Well PTHTHTHTPT!

:P

When I was a kid, we didn't have no fancy-schmancy designer drugs!

We only had ditch weed!

And we had to smoke it out of rusty nails!

And it tasted like dog shit!

And that's because most of the time it was dog shit!

And we loooooooved it!

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

13. Yeah, well most of the time we're still doing coke and weed and shrooms.

Just like you old people. Sometimes E, but it's hard to find the real stuff these days. And GHB is more for date rapists to dole out, than for fun.

[Taverner]

14. And of course you youngins have Med Pot Quality 420

We had brown weed when I was in HS. Nasty stuff that would explode when the seed ignited.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

16. You should have picked the seeds out dumbass.

[Taverner]

17. Funny thing about seeds is

You think you've picked them all out...you think they're all gone, and then POP! Your joint goes kablooey.

Funny things those seeds.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

20. Yeah, I don't smoke stuff with seeds.

Just pure sticky, crystallized goodness.

[Taverner]

21. Yep that's all I smoke NOW

But in the 80's, good pot was hard to come by.

You see, our generation had the dumb idea in their heads that coke was healthier for you than pot, since you could still play sports on the stuff, and in your own mind, you thought you were a god.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

22. Yeah, so does my generation.

Coke is more popular than people realize.

[Taverner]

23. WTF is up with that shit?

I've seen coke destroy so many lives it's not even funny

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

24. Seriously. There are *nice* bars in *nice* areas around here where

I can walk in and know that there will be three hookups hanging out.

[billyskank]

9. No we don't

30-somethings will have spent their formitive years during the 80s. Only someone in their late 30s will even remember Vietnam, and they could hardly be said to have come of age during it.

The big things that I remember are: Reagan negotiating arms reductions with Gorbachev, the Challenger shuttle disaster, and the fall of the Iron Curtain.

[Taverner]

11. I'm 37 and remember Vietnam

Barely, but I remember it.

The reason it resonates with us so much is not because we witnessed Vietnam happening itself, but we saw the fallout- the Agent Orange casualties, the PTSD affecting the vets, the homeless vets, the refugees coming back from Cambodia with horror story after horror story...

[SoyCat]

31. Not yet 36 and I remember watching the news about Vietnam while

sitting on my father's lap. I remember it and a lot of other news from that time period. I have virtually nothing in common with kids in their 20s and quite a bit in common with people in their 40s, thus my being married to a 47 year old.

[Left Is Write]

12. True...

I'm 40 and certainly did not come of age during the Vietnam War. I was eight years old when Nixon resigned. I was nineteen at the time of the Challenger disaster.

[ulysses]

26. got to agree.

I don't have any real memories of the Vietnam era at 37. I have a vague memory of Nixon resigning, but not much else that early.

Carter/Ford I do remember. My best friend came from a Republican family... :)

[StellaBlue]

15. I am on a cusp

I am not really an X or a Y.

I was born in 79.

I clearly remember Ronald Reagan, the wall coming down, the first Gulf War, American Bandstand. I remember when the Jeffersons and All in the Family were on. I was in high school when Kurt Cobain died, and so that had a big impact, bigger than on these kids who are walking around with Nirvana shirts on, trying to look all moody, even though they were barely alive when it happened! ha Yeah, I was definitely a grunge kid. Pre-manufactured-pop-renaissance. I was in college when Britney Spears first appeared. I remember not wearing a seatbelt. I remember buying cigarettes for my MOM (lol). I have never done any X or prescription drugs.

But I don't remember Vietnam. I don't remember Carter, though he was in office when I was born.

:shrug:

[LaraMN]

28. I can just about "ditto" your response.

I was born in '77.
I also think that whether we relate more to Gen X or Y has not only to do with the historical/ cultural events we experienced, but the context within which we experienced them. I had a child by mid-1998, and that shifted my worldview, my perceptions, and my interests a great deal. That was the end of drugs for me, so I was only familiarized with the pot/acid genre of my teen years. My sister, who is (just about) nine years younger, subsequently grew up with very different experiences than I did.

[WhollyHeretic]

30. I was born in '77 as well and I don't feel part of either generation

My older sister is definitely gen x, we had very different experiences even though we were only 4 years apart. My son was born in '97 I agree that causes quite a shift in world view and separated me more from gen Y.

[Nikia]

32. I was born the last day of 1977

When I went to college, I felt part of the same generation as the other students there. My junior and senior year, the freshmen seemed quite different from us.

[WhollyHeretic]

18. I know, it's too bad we don't still have some of those great

disco groups or 80's hair bands around. Oh the glorious music. Olivia Newton-John we hardly knew ye... :evilgrin:

[Taverner]

19. I miss 70's era Tubes

[XemaSab]

25. I would say that there's more of a break between X and Y

than there is between X and the boomers. There's a continuum culturally between people born even from before 1948 (or whenever the boomers technically started) all the way up to 1980 or so.

I consider myself a gen x-er even though I'm *right* on the cusp between x and y. In college there was a real break between the jeans-and-a-flannel x'ers and the hip-hugging-bell-bottoms-and-a-filmy-peasant-blouse y group.

My only hatred for the boomers is that I think they give themselves WAY too much credit for a lot of things that the proto-boomers actually started (civil rights, the antiwar movement, rock music), and they're really dismissive of every other generational group for not being JUST LIKE THEM. I feel like they hate the so-called greatest generation for being squares, and they hate the x'ers for being slackers, and while there are differences in approach generationally, y'all had your thing and we have ours. :shrug:

[NewWaveChick1981]

29. Have to agree.

Gen Xer here. :hi: I am old enough to remember Vietnam---on the news, in conversations, and in everyday life. Heck, I'm old enough to remember protests and having the old fogeys call people "long-haired weirdos". :rofl: I definitely have more in common with boomers, especially since I'm on the tail end of the boom. :P

I think your observations are correct. :patriot:

[Darth_Kitten]

34. You have a point.........

early 20 somethings or teens have no idea what we went through.

they are utterly clueless.