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[Graknorke]

How about not deleting GD, but still keeping it so that the link from the index links to that subreddit. That way we can still have our super-secret-cool-kids-club, while throwing off any filthy outsider scum.

[SalmonGod]

I'd like to join this thread, but it's too much of a hassle reading 29 pages right now.

So, I'm in generation Z, I think. Born right on the beginning of the year 2000, which is neat.

Anyways, what is the current topic of conversation?

You're probably more of a late gen Y, with 20 year generations counting from the end of WWII (1945), we have boomers -> gen x -> gen y -> gen z.

By that measure Gen Z starts 60 years after the boomers, so 2005+

I think one issue is that everyone wants their own generation to be more narrowly defined in time-range, because they can't see the connection to people who could theoretically be up to 20 years younger or older than themselves (depending on where you fall inside your "generation"). But that's the rub, if we're fitting 4 generations since WWII (and nobody seems willing to subdivide things further) then we can't all define our own generation narrowly around our own birthdate. Because if we demand our own generation be only a 10 year age-range around our own birthday, then we're really also demanding that everyone else who isn't our own age fits neatly into "generations" that are now 25 years long:

i.e for the sake of feeling more connected to "our" generation, (not talking abour Caroline, but about a tendency of gen-y'ers to say that gen y is a 10 year range spanning 5 years before or after their own birthdate) we are implicitly insisting that other people born 24 years apart must accept that they are the same generation, which is a little hypocritical.

By the 20 year rule, the leading edge of Gen Z are now turning 10. These are going to be the generation who grew up immersed in Youtube, who can't remember a time before streaming videos or facebook. I guess we just need to wait now for some Gen Z kids to grow up and start claiming Gen-Z is only kids born from 2010 - 2020, and that Gen Y spans 25 years from 1985-2010.

I think it should be defined by relation to markers of cultural significance - events and circumstances that effect how people view and interact with the world and each other.

For example, I was a daily social internet user something like 5-7 years before most people my own age (at least in Indiana), and internet use from an early age is a major cultural dividing line.  Those who got into it when they were older simply do not relate to it the same way as those who grew up with it, and this manifests in some very strong ways.  For example, most people my own age or older don't believe that you can truly know somebody or consider them a friend until you've spent time with them in-person.  This view is much less common with those younger than me.  That's just one of many ways it's a significant factor.

But this kind of thing isn't easy to define in generalities, especially when retrospect on these factors isn't yet very mature.

[SalmonGod]

Zen Riddles for Millennials

Yeah, my financial situation has technically improved dramatically very recently, so I'm realizing now that I'm vulnerable to criticism that I'm proof against my generation's complaints... but I'm also INCREDIBLY lucky. 

Not that I haven't worked hard, but hard work is not what got me where I am now.  I've been carried to this point by a series of circumstances over the years - having the right contacts at just the right times and just happening to be in the right position to take advantage of opportunities.  I've even been lucky enough to fail at attempts to improve my situation in ways that wouldn't have worked out as well as the opportunities that became available to me after those failures.

[Helgoland]

SG, usually luck comes to those who have opened the door for it. What you call 'luck' I'd call a consequence of your personal work and dedication.

[Angle]

Dude, he just explained this - it's not hard work and dedication, it's hard work, dedication, AND luck. I'm in a similar situation, except that for me, it's almost entirely the last one.

[Frumple]

... I'd think SG is a lot better at identifying which was which in 'is personal life, yeah? Work and dedication are necessary, but it's luck that's the sufficient component. All the leverage in the world can't do jack without a fulcrum. Which is what SG's noting.

There's unfortunately not actually consequences for hard work and dedication, save more of it (at best.). People just seem to like to think there were. Just world nonsense and whatnot, I guess...

Met more people than I'd like to count who have spent their entire life working their arse off for... basically nothing. Folks whose "consequence" was to die in poverty for nothing they had control over, 'cause they just never caught the proverbial break. S'always kinda' frustrating to hear people functionally say, "Well, if only you had worked harder things would have worked out." World doesn't actually work that way, unfortunately.

[Helgoland]

Well, working smart is important as well, I guess - I kinda subsumed that under 'hard'. What I'm trying to say is that opportunities don't just come out of thin air, they're (at least to a large degree) the consequence of groundwork you laid earlier. Any particular opportunity remains a coincidence, of course, but the probability of such coincidences happening is something you can increase.

Bah, words - I'm probably once again failing at communicating what I mean.

[Angle]

Sure, you can jimmy the odds - but the fact remains that success these days is more about luck than it is about what you actually do.

[i2amroy]

Sure, you can jimmy the odds - but the fact remains that success these days is more about luck than it is about what you actually do.

I'd say it's always been that way, as opposed to just "these days"; we're just much better equipped to notice it now than we were in the past due to more communication across cultural and financial barriers due to this cool thing we are talking on right now.

[Angle]

Yeah, that's actually more or less what I meant. Sorry, poor choice of phrasing.

[Truean]

The problem, we were lied to and misled by someone their fun and profit and our misery and ruin.

I'm immensely qualified and work like a dog. Corruption, criminality, etc screwed that all up (not mine).

Things used to be better, actually. People could support a spouse and 2.5 kids off ONE breadwinner. 1+1=2. If you have two wage earners in a household, then you should be twice as well off, not barely making ends meet, if that. People had full time jobs, not contract temp, on call work. We are slaves in a police state, where even and especially the police are abused by the system. Mistreated police mistreat the public they serve. Officers are neither trained, nor paid properly. Gold in; gold out. Garbage in; garbage out. I actually feel kind of bad for the police officers; we throw society's unsolvable problems at them and wonder why shit goes totally sideways.

And we throw kids into the blender, tell them to work hard and never-mind the blades in the mist of all this, as we call them entitled and spoiled for being incredibly educated and paying for it through the nose besides....

Crony connections, luck, hard work, determination, transferable skills, and more are required to MAYBE make it.

Perfection demanded but not paid for....

[Bohandas]

SG, usually luck comes to those who have opened the door for it. What you call 'luck' I'd call a consequence of your personal work and dedication.

You mean consequences for your dedication and work come to people who have luck.

[SalmonGod]

SG, usually luck comes to those who have opened the door for it. What you call 'luck' I'd call a consequence of your personal work and dedication.

You mean consequences for your dedication and work come to people who have luck.

Yeah... I started typing up a timeline of how I got where I am now, but it was basically this.  The skills that have helped me the most were the ones that I gained while slacking off.  Nothing I've worked hard at with the intention of improving my life has ever resulted in anything.  And the one thing that I worked hard at because I had to just to survive the situation (zero ambition involved) just happened, by coincidence of a long sequence of very specifically timed events, to result in me being in the perfect position to receive a promotion that I otherwise probably wouldn't have been eligible for another several years.  And had I succeeded at most of the things I've tried to do with my life, I would probably be worse off.  The reason this opportunity came to me is the office suffered a morale meltdown and everyone else managed to find other jobs before I did.  I actually got an offer, but it took just long enough that by the time that offer came, I saw this opportunity coming and had enough time to think it through and decide it was worth it.

[Truean]

Goblins never volunteer. They all just form a line and all but one takes a step back....

[Angle]

I think we have a disconnect. Helgo may be right about such things - in Germany. But here in America, things are very different.