Millennials and GenZ horribly misidentified

[AspieMillennial]

(04-28-2019, 09:59 PM)NobodyImportant Wrote: I don't know whether it's because of the authors' scarce reliance on actually good data, or because they ... quite literally are out of touch boomers, but the brackets to put these generations into are nonsense.

As Howe i think himself said these are not astronomical events you can't time them precisely.
And yet they assume generational lengths constant with about 10 years precision and cohort lengths with about 10 years precision as well, and then are remarkably steadfast about these arbitrary lines.

Well i'm here to tell whomever it may interest that at least the two three generations i have direct insight into are horribly misdefined and characterized.

-First and foremost, lumping in people born in 2005 with people born in '82 is about the least sensical and least substantiated decision possible. There is a reason people outside the US and most polling centers within the US use mid 1990's as the cutoff. (and conversely extend the starting years back a bit, so it lasts about 15 years) As a basis it needs to be established that the internet is the most defining thing of human existence nowadays. The most recent US presidential election went the way it did to a large extent because of the internet according to polling data after the fact, and that's just the most powerful country in the world. So the relation to the internet should be a defining factor in determining cohort intervals. With this in mind, millennials generally remember a time before being connected up. This is a defining trait. Millennials all at least had some form of 'being unsupervisable/unreachable', be that on the way to school at camp, etc. Psychologically this is a massively infuential, one might say defining characteristic of this cohort. They *conquered* the internet. They remember a time when the internet wasn't necessarily at home or available to them. They also do remember the actual importance and significance of 9/11.
This all stops after 1996.
People born from 1997 on can only remember the 9/11 event like a bad nightmare "with two burning towers falling down or something" to quote someone from the specified age range. They are thus too young to understand the reasoning behind the following reactionary actions. People after 1997 on average also had the internet available as a dial up as soon as they were old enough (school age/2004) to actually know what it was. There was no time that they could have actually reasonably used the internet but didn't for lack of availability. Most importantly however, cell phones were widely available and widely used by the time they were in any position to be sent alone anywhere. The options for them to be ever truly disconnected from parents are very scarce, especially with overprotective genX parents (soccer mom stereotype). How this makes for a huge impact on the psychological development of people probably doesn't need explaining.
There are also no generational differences in their experience to someone born in 2005 as far as i can tell. Both had cell-phones from the moment they could meaningfully use them - granted the later ones had smartphones.
What were major life affecting things that occurred between 2001(start of meaningful memories of 1997ers) and 2009(start of meaningful memories of 2005ers)? Wars, catastrophes, internet boom, policy changes, economic crash and historic election. All things that wouldn't influence the world of a young child much.
In other words there is nothing 2005ers experienced that 1997s didnt also experience and nothing 1997s experienced that 2005s didn't. This distinction is therefore meaningless. A distinction could possibly be 2003-4 which is the point from which people are too young to remember the crash of 2008.
What would make much more sense is a distinction around 2011 which is the point from which on a lot of people are on social media before they are born, and have access to smart toys and the internet and normal tech before they can completely deal with it, as in "completely growing up with tech." But this is still just a small distinction from 'growing up with tech from the point at which you can comprehend it" which is true from 1997 on.

-Next, identifying genZ as "Homelanders" is .... really really wrong. It's a bit presumptuous to name a generation not based on something they did (GI), or some temporal thing (millennials), but on something their parents/other people were focusing at the time of their birth years. Furthermore while GenX and Millennials were a step into a more global understanding of generations - a great step with human culture itself becoming more global - naming the one gneration whose existence has been most defined by the global village of the internet so far after a local trend is..... puzzling.
I mean it's a nice name, but it really can't be the primary name for the cohort. Millennials would self identify as millennials... i doubt homelanders would self identify as homelanders.
Futhermore GenZ has a sort of finality, a sense of "the world is circling the drain" "everything is depressing but i don't care" "lmao ? just yeet me off this planet?" about it that is incredibly common with people born in the 2000s.

-Additionally the cohort pew and some statistical people from the UK worked with (1997+) actually shows aigns of not fitting the 4 turnings model at all, indicating that the Artist generation is possibly yet to be born.
Millennials clearly fit the hero archetype the best, there can be no question to this. The best description i heard was explaining why the NPC memes affected their target so much "they grew up with everyone telling them that they could and woud be heroes and the protagonists of their stories, independently of upbringing, and this meme cuts at the heart of that, at the generational insecurity that they are allegedly just one in a mass and parroting what the establishment wants without individual agency." This individual agency and capacity being denied because of for example financial crises caused by people other than them is also what has prompted so many to be disillusioned with current society.
Compared to this however GenZ doesn't quiiiite fit the bill neither of the Hero, nor the Artist cohort.
Compared to their Millennial counterparts at the same age GenZ were found to be more fiscally conservative, more improving their behavior, more empathetic, fitting the hero generation more, but also far less politically active, and with less collective confidence, completely influenced by the circumstances of them growing up amidst economic uncertainty and turbulent political times with civil liberties curtailed.
One might argue of course that this is because that cohort is between the generations that are outlined in the 4 turnings theory, but the trend line shows that while the progress towards more and more liberalism has slowed in some aspects, in others it's not even close to peaking, so maybe we haven't even reached the true new Artist generation yet, who are supposed to grow up amidst the peak societal High. Because after all, even counting with 2005 as the starting year we're less than 4 years away from the first of this generation reaching adulthood. And i highly doubt that the conflict will be sufficiently and agreeably resolved within the next election cycle with trump being the only republican option and the democrats being in disarray.

In short: there's no indication or reason that birthyears 1997 and 2005 should be different, there is litle sign that anyone is in line to becoming conformist any time soon (at least not in a single groups and with civil engagement type of thing), not to mention that the current crisis will definitely not have ended when the designated artist generation comes of age,

I'm Millennial with Asperger's and I feel like a hyper individual. I don't relate to the opinions on the social media sites nor care if I fit in with them. I maintain control by refusing to do things I don't want and telling the world to fuck itself. How does that fit into S&H? I feel the social norms are so narrow there's no point in actually trying to meet them so I just do whatever I want and never ask permission for anything. People saying they can't do something because it's socially unacceptable is foreign to me. Everything is socially unacceptable to the peer group now so why care? The only question I have in life is if anyone can physically stop me. I'm very resentful and hostile towards a world forcing me to be the same and fight back. If the new generations will be able to do things I can't I'll be resentful and angry at them for having what I couldn't. The more life goes out of my control the more hostile I get towards the world for deciding to make me its victim and the more disobedient I get towards society. I figure if your actions don't affect your life you may as well do whatever you want and let the cards fall as they may. I learned doing the "right thing" is useless so you do whatever you want instead because nothing is promised. I find myself having a very "nothing to lose" attitude. Also social media "peers" seem distant and their mob of opinions seem too abstract for me to care for. What consequence is it if some random person gives me a thumbs down? I don't see any other than some random internet person I'll never see in the real world not liking it.