I’m a 75er, and that Buzzfeed article was ridiculously relevant.
The only thing they could have added was “you were recommended Pump Up the Volume by your best friend’s older sister.”
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Early 1982 here. Cannot really relate with any generation type or stigmatisation. Grew up with older brother and sister and younger brother.
I believe its important to try to level up with all people idea’s and interests. Try to connect and be curious.
I was happy to make music with streamtracker, fasttracker and modtracker when i became teenager. So the blessing of electronic music making was part of me when growing up and created a life hobby. At this point I still share my enthusiasm about music making with other people and having possibilities to making new friends each year through this.
Its all about connecting with people and sharing love and music and creating and meeting friends. For me this is music, for others I can be painting, formula 1, football, any type of art or whatever…
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70 Here, still i can relate to everything written. Too Young for 68er, too old for Generation X,Y or whatever drawer is out there.
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1982 here. Definitely an 80’s kid and I think I just “qualify” as a Generation X lad. Absolutely gigantic generalisation here but a lot of the behaviours I see from Millennial’s/90’s and beyond kids make me cringe so keen to distance myself from that stereotype. The sense of entitlement is through the roof!
Anyway, my childhood was all about Transformers, He-Man and my C64. Doesn’t get much more 80’s than that.
From a technology perspective, I’m pretty thankful I grew up in a time before social media and through the birth of the Internet. On reflection, the changes in computing/gaming maps quite nicely to some big moments in my life as a kid/young adult. And I am massively grateful I didnt have to face school with Facebook et al over my head. Got everything crossed that some other “new and shiny” in the tech world gathers pace and supercedes this shit in time for my kids (9 & 7) hitting high school.
On music - I grew up with a lot of 90s bands. You tend to hit a big music interest at 15/16 don’t you? Pulp, Radiohead, Eels and Super Furry Animals being huge influences on me. I then went wild with the 00’s scene (started uni in 2000) with NME as my weekly bible (cringe!). But as I’ve grown up, I have to say the 80s is my favourite decade for music. It’s probably the last decade where people kinda just didn’t worry so much about stuff to me. Some beautiful synth laden music written during this time as well as some amazingly cheesy tunes too that I love.
I do worry about the future. Robotics (not just shiny androids…!) is going to sook up an incredible amount of available jobs over the coming 20-30+ years. This isn’t just one or two sectors being decimated (like coal in the 60s-80s). We’re talking a huge impact across a number of sectors - the service industry will be forever changed for example. How will people/society respond? I really can’t tell - and I don’t think the UK governent (for example) is forward thinking enough to deal with that sort of scale/timeline. Personally, I can’t really see anything other than the likes of the Miners Strikes in the 80s but on a massive scale. Who knows how Millennials and beyond will cope!!!
Of course, I am being guilty of donning the rose tinted specs here but being an 80s kid is almost like a curse in a way. We can remember how good it was. How exciting things were but we could well be witness to a serious crumbling. We’ll be like Mad Max in Road to Thunderdome chatting to the kids - we’ll be the ones who remember better times before the shit hit the fan! 
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77 here, so usually counted to gen x. Never felt like people could be categorized in these generations and on top, it’s only true in US influenced, I.e. Capitalistic parts of the world. I don’t think gen x in China, India, most African states, etc… do have this kind of generational approach. (at least not x, y…) as it is defined by sociologists.
Nevertheless I have been imprinted by the late 80s and mid 90s western European culture.
Not a bad thing I guess.
And still envy my friends big sister who went to the MJ Bad Tour when we were not allowed…
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70 here.
Childhood was 3 channels of TV
Games of choice
Kerplunk and Crossfire
Playing in the woods
Cub scouts
Binatone then Vic20 then BBC B
No internet till my mid twenties.
It was all about Star Wars and Six Million Dollar Man.
I feel part of the 90’s crowd more than the 70’s or 80’s I guess.
I think that is why I feel 10 years behind my peers - in terms of “progress”
Anyway - Acid House has a lot to answer for
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We talk about this a lot at work. I design training curriculum for a manager audience. It’s all about interacting with direct reports and peers.
Anyway… early 1982 here. Only child. Someone mentioned a wooden sword as the best thing they had - yes! That, a tree, and a wild imagination is all I really needed. I had a thing for legos too.
We were too poor for a computer. I was handwriting papers when my peers were typing them in high school. Finally got a word processor for my jr and sr years. Music was a sax and a guitar. Did my first record on a Studer 24tr 2in tape when I was 18. Older guys in the band flipped the bill on that.
Generationally - yeah. I’m inbetween. Total outdoor dirt and bikes childhood, digital adulthood. My friends and I just showed up at each other’s houses. No call no text. Just a knock at the door - “Thomas home?” If you wanted to flirt with a girl in class, you had to talk to her. No internet look up to see what movies she liked. You had to ask. Remember asking for a girl’s phone number in jr high or high school?! No kid today would remotely relate. Tapping “add friend” is hardly as nerve racking.
I was musically and culturally stunted for a little bit. It wasn’t until 17 or 18 that I caught wind of the “now”. Music wise, college was a time of insane exposure. Old and new music came flooding to me through the older guys in the music scene. Two guys about 5-8 years older than me both got me into things like Amon Tobin, Squarepusher, and John Zorn.
Yeah… millenials are weird, GenX doesn’t suit me.
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If Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking are warming us about robotics and AI we better listen. We can’t event control twitter or facebook from giving our data away to the highest bidder. The moment we regulate how much data these social media companies can give out they will be worth less or just worthless
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I haven’t read the thread yet, I will later…
But I live in a chill community in Northern California where the age paradigm barely means anything. When I go out to dance there’s people from their teens to their 70’s on the dance floor and everyone gets along and treats each other the same. Plenty of 20 year olds have good friends in their 50’s and 60’s and stuff. The older folks of course have more experience and wisdom so that gets acknowledged at certain times and conversations where it applies, but also the older folks learn a lot for the free spirited younger tribe…
I’ve lived in many places and did a lot of traveling and exploring before I landed here, it’s certainly not like this in many places and I had to spend years roaming to find it and join in… Its drastically different from where I grew up to the extent it feels like another county. It’s also an alternative community to begin with in a way and most of us are trying to shape a new reality and don’t pay much attention at all to any mainstream ways of living, although we all have residual leftover things in us and we are exposed to such things from the various modern stimulus sources that are here and we do have, and there’s other groups and types of people around too, but in general it’s very community-centric and we’ll all try to live in a way that’s more peaceful, helpful, and generally not defined by modern mainstream notions…
Again, took years of traveling/searching to find such a place and I’m positive there’s more places like this around the world. Didn’t take money to find it either just determination to find a more comfortable way of life… Have hitchhiked over 2000 miles before with just a backpack and $20 to my name on my journey…
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81 here
I think whatever age you grow up and experience puberty - also in which cultural context - shapes who you become! I dont like the argument, that it is just “another marketing term, to shove products down ones throat”. ( I might be wrong, but I digress)
so:
nudes. soft P* … there will be a generation of men soon, who grew up with p* . the implications, the impact that has on developing puberty young males is EPIC! …
girls: pics, selfies, validation by likes.
hey, is Tim home? … no text etc
Mom, I am going out with my bicycle, just trying to find trouble in a nearby forest. yepp I did that.
remembering 5 peoples phone numbers.
media phenomena become public culture! Syndicate, Mario, Star Wars (I dont find StarWars appealing) … the things you talk about during school break.
ozone layer. bad bad chemicals in hair spray. save the sky!
during my school time it was almost unthinkable to be not hetero.
omg, anybody seen the new 21 Jump Street? that was hilarious … this movie says it all!
so, I was reading a post on reddit, where 30+ talked about what difference it makes to go to college at a later age… all in all, you get to experience the world view from another generation! (not my words, but this was the best I could find)
looking things up in a book, dictionary, encyclopedia.
when I wanted to plan my travels, I had to take the bus from my village to the next town, go into the train station, talk to the lady who had a computer, ask for a connection to where I wanted to go with the train, write these things down, go home, think about it, and when I wanted to make a booking I had to take the bus to town and talk to the lady again!
I called people on the phone and asked if they gotten the email I sent.
make a cassette tape for a girl you thought was hot.
borrow a CD from a friend to make a copy on tape.
run out of batteries in your walkman.
experience MiniDisk.
wonder why you could pirate music from CD to tape, and CD to MD, but not to PC and then digitally to napster etc … THIS was huge in my eyes!
I took a girls Tamagocci during school break and force fed it for a few hours till it died and then gave it back to her : ) … (before I get flagged again, this was an electronic toy)
link up a GameBoy to another.
These things shape you! These experiences that you had while your brain was still getting wired i.e. puberty , that stuff made you and your (core) value system.
so lets talk about a generation that did not have the pill. romantic interactions were just not the same depending on whether it was available or not. Hence , you can label an entire generation by this invention! it shapes the entire generation at that time - who lived in the same cultural compound.
My point is: Generation X, Y, Z …etc its not just marketing terms. Our ages connect us in some way, the wordage is second, but somewhat necessary for ease of communication.
And I personally like the 81 on the Fridge typo from further up in the thread!!!
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Wow, I read that and no offense to you whatsoever your awesome, but reading that made me not want to answer any of it at all and wonder why people would want to define themselves in some sort of mass category…
I wave my freak flag high! I have no concern what the masses are doing and how or why they might categorize me. I live and do exactly what I feel and if it seems out of the norm and people question me about it I fully stand up proud for my individuality and articulate it as best as I can to them without any concern whatsoever if they think it’s not normal or weird or something… As long as I’m doing something that’s not harming anyone and is harmless which is how I behave anyway, other people’s opinions don’t weigh on me at all, they just other people’s opinions…
Most of the time people want to be free and happy anyway, and if they see me doing something fun that’s not normal at all, even though they may mock it or something deep inside they want to be free and have fun to. I’ll dance my ass off in front of a crowd of stiffs, after awhile they join me because I broke the ice…
If we believe in ourselves and what we are doing, we can be whoever we want to be as long as it’s not harming or disturbing others…
Again this is not aimed at @thelightshineth, it’s just a reaction to reading that article and probably rambles off a little more but I felt like saying it… Because I speak my truth…
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Oh shoot, if you’re talking about my comment about being an outsider, I’m sorry! I meant that purely as a joke, playing with the idea about the “Xenniels” feeling like outsiders, and now it’s like “we” found our own secret club, so it’s like, the Xenniel saying to the Gen X’ers, “who’s the outsider now!” Just a joke and I didn’t mean anything by it at all. Again, my apologies if any offense was taken.
If you’re talking about the buzzfeed article I just thought some of it was funny. 
Overall I agree with a lot of people that have posted already that labeling generations is kind of dumb, it’s such a broad scope and people are so individual, you can’t possibly lump everyone together and “define” them by their generation. Yet on the other hand I think there is also some truth to these broad generalizations of generations as a whole… not that every individual within that generation fits the description, but if you were to take a snapshot of the entire generation, then maybe it could be represented by these generational stereotypes or broad shared cultural experiences and exposure to certain things.
I do think anyone born around 1980, give or take a few years, have an interesting and fairly unique experience just from the internet/digital perspective, growing up in a non-internet world but then watching the mass explosion of computer, internet, and digital culture unfold before us, while still being at a young enough age to grow with it, I dunno, I think that’s a different experience than someone who was already 40 when this stuff started happening, or someone who grew up “in it” already.
As for me personally I never really fit in with any particular group or culture on any level due to other factors that had absolutely nothing to do with generation, so I never really thought much about not fitting into a generation or identifying with a music decade, although whenever it comes up in conversation I’m always like, gee, I dunno, 80s or 90s, it’s hard for me to pinpoint one over the other. And the stuff about the internet age has been on my mind lately as I think we all, everyone who has been alive over the past 20-30 years, have been witness to a pretty interesting world change. Then come to find out there’s this micro-group of people all born around the same time that are having these similar thoughts, and I never knew it was even a “thing”… is kind of cool I guess!
Having said all that, I will proudly call myself a Xenniel now (though completely not seriously) 
as I think in the end it has just been an interesting time to be born and alive
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I wasn’t referring to anything other than my reaction to the article, and then I rambled off as I do…
I only mentioned you because you posted it and was trying to clarify my response had nothing to do with you at all, and that I think your great!
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Aww, I think you’re great too manly hug
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1981 here and special.
Whats not to like?
We got to watch it all unfold. Things are so different now. But what a ride, late 80s > late 90s… awesome journey!
Now its about AI/big data/disruptive tech (Uber/Airbnb etc)…
The changes we witnessed were more dramatic I feel… maybe its psychological bec most of us identify with childhood/teenage years.
Cassette/MiniDisc/VHS/Beepers/Motorola Startac/Mega Drive/PC/Mobile phones/AOL/32k modems/Boom boxes/BMX/skateboard explosion…
Damn… am getting a little nostalgic…
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a too manly hug? …
great times we live in!
: )
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hey fellow 81er (on the fridge) (silly joke from me ; D )
so …
without this thread history:
how do you feel? do you think its weird to be born in 81? I personally felt, I was always in between …
you ?
Bro mega drive original with the headphone jack had that amazing soundcard. I remember playing streets of rage with that headphone jack. That might explain my 909 obsession too.
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Honestly I feel great. I dont feel stuck somehow - I havent read the buzzfeed articles so havent ever given it much thought.
I suppose the most influential years (that we can remember) are the 90s and I thought they were pretty great. I remember dancing to MJ who was my biggest influence in my early music years, then jamming to Nirvana…
Then I discovered Aphex Twin and the rest is history
I have to say I feel somewhat priviledged; unique enough to identify with the generation before and after me.
It feels like 1980-1983 is a seismic pitstop in evolution…
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Omg yes… it was sick, so was Streets of Rage!
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