My G-g-g-g-g-generation (Doesn’t Exist)

Sometime last year there was all this talk about people born around the early '80s being called 'Xennials' or something ridiculous like that. About a year before that, I wrote this article and posted it on Medium. If I was of the next Generation up I'd have just said "First!"

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I was born in 1981 and, depending on the article you reference, the last member of Generation X was born in 1980. Millennials, sometimes referred to as Generation Y, are often thought to have started up in 1982.

Where does that leave me and my fellow grads of ’99?

Well, it leaves us in a bit of a pickle, as members of some other generation would say. Probably. How can we relate to anyone when technically there are none of us to relate to, save for, in our case, the handful of fellow ‘81ers alluded to in the first paragraph? It’s no wonder so many of us have racked up needless debt and made generally poor life choices, what with having no helpful peers to emulate.

I could sit back and cry (which I do, often, but for unrelated personal reasons, so back off!) but in this case it wouldn’t prove very productive, now, would it? So I’ll take the flip side to the argument and tell you that it leaves us — the brave men and women born in 1981, without a generation — in a pretty good position to write our own tickets. We get to cherry-pick all the best parts of each sandwiched generation and claim them as our own as it benefits us in social and professional situations. Naturally.

“Music today is horrible!”

It certainly is, friend. As a fellow member of Generation X, I too grew up on Nirvana and Beck and Pearl Jam and other music that does not suck. Those Millennials get the Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber and One Direction. They don’t know what real music is. Youths.

“Old people don’t understand social media.”

I know, right?! They’re def not good with technology. OMG, us young people — Millennials, as we’re called by derogatory article writers — really understand the social significance of Snapchat and Instagram. Seniors.

“Young people today are so entitled.”

Mhm. They don’t want to put in the hard work and earn success in the workplace the way we had to. No concept of paying their dues, unless ‘paying your dues’ is slang for something completely different to them. Everything means something else nowadays. What ever happened to words meaning what they actually mean? Urban dictionaries.

“You could buy a house because you weren’t riddled with the same kind of debt we are.”

Ugh. Literal LOL at all the parents telling us to move out and quit being so dependent. Sorry we have eighty grand in debt and can only work at Starbucks, while you sit back and collect your pensions and golden handshakes. Retirement plan?

It’s really kind of great. In job interviews we get to play up the traits that are most suitable for that particular job. In social situations we can sound young — or old — depending on the group we’re with. Know your audience. On the one hand, if we keep playing the generations against each other, we can’t lose!

On the other hand, speaking on behalf of my fellow men and women without a generation, it’s a little lonely over here.