Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[penguinofhonor]

I'm pretty sure that's definitely X. I've had X defined to me as people who were teens during the 90s. Because of this I have grown to blame them for 90s pop culture.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's ambiguous, but here's my take, by year of birth:

NO ONE CARES: 12,000 BC-1882

Lost Generation: 1883-1900

Greatest Generation: 1901-1924

Silent Generation: 1925-1945

Baby Boomers: 1945-1963

Generation X: 1964-1981

Generation Y: 1982-1999

Generation Z: 2000-2012

THIS HASN'T HAPPENED YET, FUCKWIT: 2013-999,999,999,999

[SalmonGod]

I'm pretty sure that's definitely X. I've had X defined to me as people who were teens during the 90s. Because of this I have grown to blame them for 90s pop culture.

We're responsible for it, because it's what we were fed?

[Ancre]

I was born in 1989.

Meh, it's interesting, the two things that comes to mind are 9/11 and the french riots of 2005.

[alway]

It's ambiguous, but here's my take, by year of birth:

NO ONE CARES: 12,000 BC-1882

Lost Generation: 1883-1900

Greatest Generation: 1901-1924

Silent Generation: 1925-1945

Baby Boomers: 1945-1963

Generation X: 1964-1981

Generation Y: 1982-1999

Generation Z: 2000-2012

THIS HASN'T HAPPENED YET, FUCKWIT: 2013-999,999,999,999

I certainly wouldn't put the entire 1982-1999 group together; that needs to be at least 2, if not 3 distinct groupings. The late 80s to mid 90s group grew up when the internet was just becoming big. We have vague memories of when it was an odd trinket in Netscape, and having to use DOS to play video games like SimAnt, but for us, the internet was more or less always there. It slipped into our lives at a time too early to really remember it entering, just that it was there during our childhood. We sort of grew up in tandem with the maturation of the internet itself. Beyond this group, the internet was always there, and was always in a relatively mature state as long as they can remember back. Likewise, they've pretty much always had smartphones.

[sneakey pete]

People probably need to post their country too, as that has a big bearing on things. Eg I don't have the "oh mai gawd the economy is fucked and we're all only ever going to work in crappy minimum wage jobs" vibe, however I live in Australia which has a lot to do with that.
Born 1990, just finishing tertiary education, me and my friends are seemingly able to find full time work in our fields, though it took a little bit of doing. Stuff seems optimistic really.

[SalmonGod]

The late 80s to mid 90s group grew up when the internet was just becoming big. We have vague memories of when it was an odd trinket in Netscape, and having to use DOS to play video games like SimAnt, but for us, the internet was more or less always there. It slipped into our lives at a time too early to really remember it entering, just that it was there during our childhood. We sort of grew up in tandem with the maturation of the internet itself. Beyond this group, the internet was always there, and was always in a relatively mature state as long as they can remember back. Likewise, they've pretty much always had smartphones.

I actually think this is a pretty big deal, and my big post that I'll drop later says a lot about this.  I'm just the right age to have witnessed the integration of computers into everything.  I began using the internet in 1996 when I was 13 years old.  Old enough to remember the time before, but young enough for the experience of being online to become normalized and feel completely natural as an adult.  In fact, I consider that year to be a moment of beginning and awakening for me, and it feels like the year that my conscious life really began.  At the same time, the internet was completely different in 1996.  It was something that everyone was aware of at that point and most people had brushes with, but very few had truly integrated it into their lives the way everyone has today.  Most people were deathly afraid of it.  When I told people that I hung out in online chat rooms, they seriously warned me that some internet stalker was going to find out where I lived and kill me in my sleep, and that they thought my parents were horrible people for letting me on there.  In retrospect, I refer to this phenomenon as The Great Ignorance Filter.  It slowly broke down over the next few years, but those were a glorious few years.  The internet was a wondrous community of refuge for people who didn't fit in wherever they were in meatspace.  I met the best friends of my life back then online, including my future wife.  I remember the entire internet being about as friendly and liberal as Bay12 is today.  How things have changed.

Spoiler: cant resist (click to show/hide)

[Frumple]

Man, I remember the whole stalker from the internet thing, To this day I have pretty much never used real information online. S'probably my biggest disconnect with folks younger than me, I still can't really grok using strongly personally identifiable information online. Mind you, I've been using the same alias fairly consistently for over a decade now, so there's a sense of continuous self online, but... yeah.

Anyway, I'm a few years younger than you, and remember starting to muck with the internet a bit earlier (still in the single digits); I distinctly remember playing around a little with a z-modem that mi madre got a hold of from school, and her wonder at it all... talking with engineers in India in the early 90s, stuff like that. Was and still is kinda' magical, man. Then things got fuzzy for a while (I was constantly sleep deprived for four or five years, and my recollection of those years are kinda' shot.), and I don't really remember much beyond Infantry (which taught me more about proper english than the english classes I've had, disturbing as that is) and eventually finding fanfiction (Free reading, good god!). That and like, angelfire websites, everywhere.

[SalmonGod]

Man, I remember the whole stalker from the internet thing, To this day I have pretty much never used real information online.

It's never really bothered me.  Even back then.  I'm only really cautious about posting information in places where a large volume of people I don't know will see it.  Identity theft is my main concern.  The whole internet stalker thing was completely illogical.  I knew I was far more likely to be hurt by a stranger IRL than someone hundreds of miles away, and the fact that it happened occasionally was just a matter of that tiny statistical probability applied to a very large scale.  When a classmate expressed her paranoia once to me at school, my response was "You don't really know much about me, but I sit right next to you every day with a sharp object in my hand. (*gesture with pencil*)  And you're afraid of people from the internet, who have no reason to care about you, but will put in the effort to track you down and travel?"  Ironically, I did get gouged in the arm with a pen by another classmate in that same class later on.

talking with engineers in India in the early 90s, stuff like that. Was and still is kinda' magical, man.

This was huge for me too.  I was immediately talking to people from all over the world every single day.  It really opened my eyes to a lot of the ignorance of the culture around me.  That exploded when 9/11 happened and everyone around me flew into a xenophobic frenzy that I knew was constructed from bullshit baseless reactionary assumptions.

[Frumple]

Yeah... over the years, I've largely realized it's silly, s'just become so much of a habit... yeah. That and the non-zero (vanishingly damn small, but you know what they say about one in a million chances...) chance of someone from my area actually happening upon something I've written online, which could pretty easily have negative consequences. Environment induced paranoia mixing with years old habit, heh. Don't even know if I'd loosen up about it if I were in a safer area, though. Don't really self-identify with my given name. Or this alias, really, it's just become comfortable. Titles are largely arbitrary and meaningless t'me -- I am what I say, not what I say I am

S'always been pretty damn freeing to be that, really. Fleshbag has too much baggage, ha. More are what you're called, than what you do. Stifling, some days.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, I've been using the name SalmonGod for 16 years now.  My online identity is as much a part of me as my meatspace identity, and the lines between the two are incredibly blurred.  When I go to Gencon, I write SalmonGod under my real name on my badge, on the off chance that I'll run into one of the thousands of people I've met over the years from online.  When I introduced myself in my capstone project at the end of my college career, I included "better known online as SalmonGod", knowing that the thing was going to be available online.

[dei]

Generation Y. Just you wait until we start running things.

Generation Y. I hope to be dead or off the grid by then.

[Scoops Novel]

You're right, SalmonGod. We all seem to be waiting for something, a sea change, something that will completely change our world. After all, we've grown up in a world that's been seeing vast change too fast for many to keep up, though we think we will and hope so, so why not something big? It's the reason why all of this apocalyptic stuff is so popular, particularly zombies. It's also one of it's biggest problems. I'm tired of waiting, and I'm tired of major problems being passed over in favor of immediate pleasures, despite the guilt that goes hand in hand.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I too see my username as more than an alias. I'm as much MetalSlimeHunt as I am [LEGAL NAME REDACTED]. Hence, I'm not as protective towards some of my information than most. After all, I'm already using my name.

[pisskop]

You're right, SalmonGod. We all seem to be waiting for something, a sea change, something that will completely change our world. After all, we've grown up in a world that's been seeing vast change too fast for many to keep up, though we think we will and hope so, so why not something big? It's the reason why all of this apocalyptic stuff is so popular, particularly zombies. It's also one of it's biggest problems. I'm tired of waiting, and I'm tired of major problems being passed over in favor of immediate pleasures, despite the guilt that goes hand in hand.

I agree that the newer generations are waiting.  We are so surrounded by change and evolution and technology that we've come to expect it from every facet of our lives.  Society is still as sluggsh as ever, and our lives weren't built in a day.  The rush of being an American also doesn't help this feeling. I don't know if other countries have such rush.  Competition has lead to a superficial society where the next high is the only experience that matters, and opular culture would hold that you are nobody unless you are special and unique and instantly identifiable.  TV shows depict these attractive unque characters wherein anything is acceptable.