Born in 1981 - On the Fringe

The Lounge General Discussion
#45

69 here. GenX grew up in the 80’s and it was great in many ways, definitely would not wish to have been born at a different time. Some things I liked:

Skateboards
BMX
ET
Electro
Casio SK1/5
Cassettes
Hip Hop
Micronauts
Video games
Boom Boxes
Walkman
Body popping
Battle of the planets
Space dust
Tandy
Home computers
John Hughes movies
Affordable synths
Synth pop
Acid House
Mix tapes
Digital watches
VHS
Teletext
Raves
Arcades
CB radio / walkie talkies
Pirate radio
12 inch single

Internet in my 20’s, and I’m glad it wasn’t available in my childhood or teenage years.

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#46

In 1981 i was a New Romantic. I crossdressed and went to clubs in Birmingham seeing groups like Duran Duran Kraftwerk Early Human League OMD. I bought an Octave Cat synth. Thomas Dolby had one too! Yes i was a 1981 kid. And it was the favourite years of my life.

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#47

I was born in September 81. Grewed up in the former GDR in Germany before it broke away in 89. In the 90s i was the Computer Nerd in our clique - not caring about Girls, just caring about bits and bytes :slight_smile: I didnt like the Rave from back then, neither did i liked Backstreet Boys or NSync and the like :smiley: But i loved the Detroid Techno that came up at that point - and which lead to Minimal Techno later on.

Made my first steps with Rebirth RB-338 on the Computer, was blown away by Reason as it later hit the market - and finally ended up in Ableton Live - after i spend lots of years fiddling around in Cubase - which is probably the most unsatisfying DAW one could have. Since everything is waaay too complicated there :wink:

I was never with the current, i was always against it. i was wearing flared pants as everybody laughed and said: he’s sooo 70s :smiley: years later as flared pants were modern again, i was wearing normal jeans :wink: I did not had a real girlfriend before i was 26. i was fascinated by girls, but not on a sexual level as it should be - it was more emotional. which is uncommon for a young men in its best age! :wink: but i was popular in our clique - i could have every girl. thats why i had none at all!

as years passed by i had to switch towns / cities where i lived, because of work and stuff. acquaintaces came and go - i never felt at home anywhere but my homeland. so i returned, found a girlfriend, settled down - but it broke away since she wanted no kids. but i slowly wanted a child! now im still at home, doing weird Youtube Videos, doing my Job - and just waiting for better days to come :wink:

I miss my past. But i know that its in my own hands how my life will continue. I was popular back then, i never thought that cliques are just a moment in life, that girls are not always with you and that you one day have to live with yourself - and still be happy! This is what i learned - this is what i now have to deal with.

Generation Y. This is how we are called. We were once told that we can be everything and reach everything - but no one told us how to do it! Now we are standing in front of our shattered lives and wonder: How the heck could that just happen?? :wink:

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#48

I have too Girls, 2006 and 2014 Born. I try to keep them away as far as possible from the Internet and facebook.
But i showed them how to use a Tablet to browse Netflix and Play Games. It ist amazing to See how fast they adopted the gestics Control.

#49

hi.

did you have a father or male role model in your life?

cheers

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#50

I know what you mean. It’s frightening how quickly things are moving - with certain games/things my kids want to do I’m swiftly becoming what I used to laugh at: a parent who is behind the curve with technology who sits squinting/staring at tech with no clue what to do :joy:

And you start to wonder if these kids will grow up and have the know how to change a car tyre or even a light bulb when they are old enough!

#51

I was 3 in 1981.

I remember the Cold War area, and how we were taught Americans were the good guys…
The fall of the Wall was something big, even here in France. Same year as the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.

No computer until 18 or so, I was playing a lot outside, with the sky as the roof.

Teenage years, I hated the sound of the eighties / Top 50. Then I found English music from the 90s, I could play the guitar for hours till I would bleed.
My fascination for English music definitely opened me doors.

I believe that having grown with the internet we are more conscious about the pros and cons, while knowing our way in this virtual world.

I don’t feel like I belong to a generation but there are interests and a common knowledge I share with people that are 10+ or 10-, and now I meet new ones because of the kids…

Lately I’ve been more and more interested in growing my own vegetables/ fruits, like all my ancestors including my own father have done.
I weigh the importance of this.
Eating health food and less meat is something I seem to share with a lot of people from my age. And overall a feeling of fear for the Nature, like it could be damaged beyond repair…

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#52

If I was a father I’d probably look for a way to remove smartphones from the family, go full Nokia. But fully empower those kids with proper laptops/computers. They can use iPads and Phones at their friends houses or at school or whatever, but not in my house. Gesture Scrolling rots the mind!

#53

Wow, this thread has covered a lot of ground.

I was born in 1975 so I am Gen X myself. I very clearly remember the 80s with the music, cold war, AV format revolution, New Coke, etc. I’m an introverted technical creative so I seldom enjoy being around most of my cohort but that has nothing to do with my birth year, and everything to do with my personality type and interests.

I mowed lawns to buy my first walkman in 1985.
I remember pricing out 1GB of RAM for a Mac in 1991 and it came in at $28,000.
I bought my first synth in 1995 when it was still commonplace to record to cassette multitrack; it would be years before DAWs were commonplace and even then most systems were limited to 8 tracks, etc.

It’s funny to watch the cycles as they play out. In the late 70s we had a pending ice age, then in the 80s we had the hole in the ozone layer (which turned out to be a scientific fraud), then in the early 00s we had global warming which we’re now calling climate change. If you pay attention to the media you’d think violent crime in the US has sky rocketed when in fact it’s at multi decade lows. Mass shootings were more common in the 1930s but most probably won’t know that. The system has our psyche under constant assault in an effort to keep us compliant and uncritical.

I did marketing in the corporate world for a few years and I am of the opinion that these attempts at defining a large group are for little more than sales and forecasting. They’re trying to figure out how to be relevant to 75% of said cohort so they can sell goods and services based on life stage, projected income, etc. I wouldn’t attach any more meaning to it than that.

You’re defined by how you live and what you achieve in life. You are not defined by what you buy. Do good and be proud of it.

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#54

While I share your feelings about mass media, I can’t let you tell ozone hole is a fraud. It’s getting better because for the first time the whole world agreed on taking measures to protect the environment (Montreal, 1987).

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#55

81er here. i think being a teenager in the 90s was a thrilling time musically. i remember hearing albums like music has the right to children, chiastic slide, richard d james album, feed me weird things (fuck 96 was the year for influential electronic music) in the year they came out. so discovering meaningful friendship, drugs and sex with this soundtrack was a treat.

yeah we are the protobatch of digital natives with a unique perspective of the pre internet existence, as a 14 year old i remember the constant stream of AOL and CompuServe CD Roms coming through my letterbox, always bugging my mum to sign up, then when she did spending all my time on the Action Games Forum sharing shittily made naive doom wads.

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#56

80 here

My parents were both manual laborers, I grew up in the mountains of Virginia. I got into computers in High School at the library, but didn’t own one until I was 19.

It was kind of a cultural wasteland, I got into electronic music through NPR and the pop industrial that became popular. I always like to joke that that area is about 10 years behind the rest of the world. I did have the fortune of having acres and acres of forest and a river to explore throughout my childhood.

So once I got out on my own (military briefly) I kind of became a digital native but I still feel disconnected from a lot of it.

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#57

I find selective omissions to be problematic. The pursuit of truth should look at all relevant data, not simply that which furthers the grant seeking process, IMHO. One should come to a conclusion based on results instead of discarding or ignoring facts that don’t serve to support a predetermined conclusion. I suppose I am old fashioned in that regard.

The NASA charts I’ve seen always show data from August-December. This obscures the decades of measurements that show seasonality that approximates a sine wave end to end. Then there is the issue with the Nobel laureate chemists that made mistakes in formulas that have resulted in atmospheric models that are off by an order of magnitude. Geomagnetic storms are known to temporarily damage the atmosphere and we’re currently heading into a Maunder Minimum, etc. This goes on and on. Read up on this if so inclined. I’ll not comment further on this since this thread is about demographics and a sense of belonging, as opposed to using compromised science to further public policy. The former makes for a far more interesting conversation.

“So Markus Rex, an atmosphere scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, did a double-take when he saw new data for the break-down rate of a crucial molecule, dichlorine peroxide (Cl2O2). The rate of photolysis (light-activated splitting) of this molecule reported by chemists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California1, was extremely low in the wavelengths available in the stratosphere — almost an order of magnitude lower than the currently accepted rate. “This must have far-reaching consequences,” Rex says. “If the measurements are correct we can basically no longer say we understand how ozone holes come into being.” What effect the results have on projections of the speed or extent of ozone depletion remains unclear.”

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#58

This.

I first came upon it when I had no idea what it was but I had good fun toying around with it.

A little later I got into techno parties and started making tracks using FruityLoops. Then all of a sudden I realised what that Rebirth thing was I had been toying around with :rofl:

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#59

Oh and I’m an 81’er as well.

#60

My mother surely played a strong Part as i grew up. I didnt had a good relationship with my Father until i left home and went into my first own apartment. My father had a rather calm childhood and i was anything but quiet and comfortable. He did not knew how to deal with me. My mother did. I had a friend back then, who was like 10 to 12 years older than i am. If anyone ever had a male role in my youth, he was that guy. But he had troubles with women himself :smiley: Sometimes he even asked me what he does wrong. Obviously, i didnt knew the answer. I was in the same dilemma :wink:

What are you getting at, mate? :slight_smile: Should i consult a psychologist? :smiley:

#61

I first thought that too, but my 11 year old had no problem to adopt mouse usage on my Mac too.

#62

82 over here, can I join a club?

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#63

Welcome to the club :smiley:

I’ve thought about all this some more since original post, and I kind of thing that the “Xenniel” timeframe of like 79-83 or whatever they’re saying, is too narrow. Whether or not it means anything to label generations, if generations are going to be split by meaningful cultural/worldview changes, then really I think the dividing point for “millennials” should be the rise of the internet & digital age, and where you fall into that spectum.

So you have basically three categories:

  1. Those who were already grown up when the internet started sprouting up, I guess this would be Gen X’ers and earlier (maybe not tail-end Gen X’ers though).
  2. Those who were born before “mainstream internet” but grew up along with the internet as it grew up as well. This would probably be anyone in late Gen X (mid 70s) to late 80s. This is essentially a roughly 15 year timespan and in my opinion worthy of being called its own generation.
  3. Those who grew up after the internet was already an established everyday reality. This in my view is where Millenials start and pretty much applies to anyone born after 1990 I think? Or roughly around there.
#64

I’m '81 and I approve this thread.

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