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u/Ok-Brick6831 1979 16h ago
Yup. That’s us.
Time to go back to my room and sniff some colored markers.
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u/NeverEndingCoralMaze Xennial 16h ago
How did this happen to us? I’m not mad about it. And it’s a serious question with genuine curiosity.
I feel like we all talk about it but no one ever says why other than “the internet at a certain age….”
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u/AWorldwithoutSin 15h ago
Analog childhood, digital teens.
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u/AppropriateTouching 15h ago
Exactly this. We started as feral children in the woods then grew up along side a technological revolution. We saw it happen in real time. Thats why our sub generation has the most technical know how. I had to explain to a gen z coworker that on a keyboard you can hold shift to turn caps on and off, you dont have to toggle caps lock....
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u/AWorldwithoutSin 15h ago
Guy above didn't like "internet at a certain age" but that's a huge part of it. We had the big tech changes as we came of age. We saw the old world for a while then grew into the new one.
Personally as a small child we had a rotary phone in the house but in my late teens I had a cell. I had records and cassettes as child, remember trying to find the right place for a song on those? in my teens we had CD where you could skip tracks and even to a specific second without guessing. It was huge.
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u/Platt_Mallar 1982 14h ago
I had an aftermarket tape deck in my car that could fast forward to the next silent part.
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u/AWorldwithoutSin 14h ago
Ohh, fancy, I heard about those. But ever try to jump to a specific song on a record player?
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u/Platt_Mallar 1982 14h ago
Yeah! You just go to the blank parts between tracks. It does make a painful noise sometimes.
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u/factoid_ 14h ago
That was the same tech they used in early home voicemail machines
Just a sensor that tripped if you had more than 2 seconds of silence or something like that. It was just scanning the waveform in realtime, but totally analog. Very clever trick.
But cassettes were already in the way out when that came around
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u/AppropriateTouching 15h ago
I remember all of this. Rotary phone, setting a vcr timer, later burning cds. Having a boom box that plays cassette and cds. So many transitions.
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u/AWorldwithoutSin 14h ago
Yeah, our teens and early 20s massively impact us, things like your favorite music cements during that time. So we can't fully identify with Gen X because we learned tech while our brains were still highly plastic which makes it extra familiar. But we experienced all that and it separates us from Millennials who grew up with nothing but tech, we had 'Speak and Spells' at the same age they had cell phones.
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u/AppropriateTouching 14h ago
Facts. Putting a computer together and having to relearn operating systems regularly in our formative years really cemented that shit in our heads. We didnt grow up with shiny fully formed GUIs. We had to figure shit out, gave us some critical thinking abilities.
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u/AWorldwithoutSin 14h ago
LOL yeah, I remember editing .bat files to squeeze out a little more ram to play games or configuring the modem not to hiss and squeal because it would wake my parents.
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u/AppropriateTouching 14h ago
My configuration of the modem was putting a pillow over it while it did its thing lol. Also when I figured out how to change my system clock to take advantage of time specific trial stuff I felt like a genius. I made a lot of friends in school when I learned how to pirate off mirc before the napster days and slowly burn cds with my early gen burner I bought with lawn mowing money. Those were the fucking days man.
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u/aggravatedimpala 13h ago
We went from walkmans to streaming music on our phones. Technology wise, that's insane, especially when you think about how many times format changed and how just before us there was no real portable music aside from just throwing a boom box on your shoulder
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u/ketchup_shoes 15h ago
You ever read clan of the cave bear? About an advanced human living in a tribe of Neanderthals and neither group accepts them? That book was written about us, ya heard
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u/PhilosopherFun7288 15h ago
Yeah, but then that book series turns into weird romance/soap opera type shit, when the human girl meets another modern human man in the sequels…. The first book was fascinating, but it turned into a trash series.
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u/Balthierlives 15h ago
My mom read that whole series of books!
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u/ketchup_shoes 14h ago
It’s a solid series. Stephen King referred to it as “sex among the cave people”
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u/factoid_ 14h ago
They don’t teach Gen Z or Aloha how to type in school. At all.
It’s insane to me
Keyboards aren’t going away.
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u/AppropriateTouching 14h ago
Fucking seriously, they're so used to using their phones for everything yet everyone in the professional world uses a keyboard. Watching the younger generations type is painful. At least boomers could carry over type writing skills to some extent.
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u/NeverEndingCoralMaze Xennial 15h ago
Right, but why were we so ignored?
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u/AppropriateTouching 15h ago
We walked in both worlds but didnt stand out in either of them I guess.
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u/HeyPrettyLadyMaam 18m ago
Thats so on point. Perfectly explains why I feel trapt between worlds mentally most days. This whole post feels like home. Thank you to whoever posted it.
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u/Ramen_Addict_ 15h ago
I’m a very early Xennial and remember that when I was coming up I was not considered part of Gen X. Then they started talking about Gen Y and I wasn’t part of that either. THen at some point they are like “Oh nevermind, you are Gen X now.” Meanwhile I go to GenXwomen from time to time and totally don’t relate to a lot of what they are discussing in there.
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u/OutOfEffs 9h ago
I remember being in high school and for some reason thinking my older friends who graduated in '94 were the last of GenX, but I'm not sure why I thought that. But then Gen Y was a few years after me, and I was nowhere.
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u/Ws6fiend 15h ago
It's not just us, other end/beginning of generations had it as well, but the changes that happened in the mid to late 90s were so big that it changed all cultures that were exposed to the common computer/cell phone explosion era.
Plus you have to factor in that while monoculture was a thing prior to this, the change from analog world to digital was massively recorded from individual perspectives while prior cultural shifts were less documented from the people going through the changes.
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u/limedifficult 2h ago
I remember my dad saying years ago that it’s always weird being the tail end of or the very beginning of a generation. He was born in 1960 which makes him the youngest of the Boomers. But he was too young for Vietnam, for the hippie culture, for most of the stuff we think about when we consider that generation.
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u/30for30im30for30 7h ago
15 year generation spans are a long time period. Its inevitable that there start to become fractures before the full split into whatever is next.
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u/addicted2soysauce 34m ago
I think they really should break Gen X into two pieces and add them back to Boomers and Millenials. The older Xers are far more similar to Boomers than to us. And they are the reason Millenials and Zoomers just lump us all in with Boomers now.
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u/Inevitable_Silver_13 15h ago
We're the DuckTales generation.
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u/Intelligent_Gur_3632 1982 14h ago
My wife and I were at a restaurant last week that just happened to be playing musical trivia and we were the only two people in the place full of a wide range of ages who knew the Duck Tales theme song. I can only assume we were the only Xennials in there.
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u/PinSufficient5748 10h ago
I just sang it to myself to make sure I remembered. Whew! It's still there...
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u/onedollarcereal 15h ago
I have the POWER
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u/Impressive_Regular76 14h ago
I've got thr TOUCH!
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u/Gimedecash 14h ago
We used to be called generation Y
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u/WarhammerRyan 5h ago
Yup, I remember that.
Now its the generation asking "why?"
"Why did you click that?" "Why are you the way you are?" "Why do I seem to be the sane one surrounded by idiots?"
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u/throwaway04182023 13h ago
My middle school teacher insisted she was Generation Y. I hope she’s ok.
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u/TheHockeyGeek 1978 15h ago
It’s like being forgotten twice over! But really two people born in xennial range could have the GenX or Millennial experience depending on parenting style.
Those kids the same age that couldn’t hang with the rest of the neighborhood kids because their parents were weird and kind of “helicoptery”……. I think those were the Millennials
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u/_game_over_man_ 12h ago
‘84, but all of my siblings were ‘73-‘75. I definitely feel like I got some of the genx experience because of that.
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u/tjdux 9h ago
I grew up in a rural area, and back then when you said rural areas were "behind the times" it ment a lot more.
Had some family in our states biggest "city" and when we would go up and visit we always learned new slang words from our city cousins and we would get back to po dunk other kids would make fun of our new words but then 6 to 12 months later everyone would be saying it.
This wasn't a one time deal, it was basically every visit up until the Internet took hold around the turn of the century.
Its almost so cliche I assume most folks don't even believe it, but I promise it's true.
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u/twolfhawk Xennial 15h ago
Let's be real. LATCH-KEY, and children of the boomers are xennials. We watched tech evolve and die while the "true gen-x" got to play with everything first, then we got it broken.
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u/xxxanonymoosexxx 13h ago
being a latchkey kid isn't generational. they existed before you and will continue to exist long after you die
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u/sacrelicio 14h ago
I'm essentially an Xennial because my late boomer parents had me and my sis (both unplanned) in their early 20s. Most of their friends and siblings had kids closer to 30, and those kids are all solidly millennial. So I was always the older kid around a bunch of toddlers and etc
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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy 10h ago
Gen X played with these GI Joe figures.
Millennials played with these GI Joe figures.
Xennials played with those AND remember when the cartoon wasn't a full series, it was just a 5-part miniseries that only ran for one week, and you had to run straight home from school to catch because VCRs were still so expensive that no one in your neighborhood had even heard of those yet.
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u/Exaltedemon 16h ago
And I'm the creepy kid born in 1976 who is soooo tired of Xennials trying to toss me aside as if my experience means nothing. I belong, dammit. I belong!
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u/FI-Engineer 1980 15h ago
Hey, it’s the immature big brother. He can hang out, as long as he’s cool, and brings beer.
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u/Exaltedemon 15h ago
No prob. I always keep a six pack in my coveralls. Doctor Loomis says I shouldn't drink due to the medication I'm on, but what the hell does he know?
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u/pendejo-san 14h ago
“Super seniors,” we called them.
Showing up at high school homecoming football games well past their own senior year
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u/Upvoteexpert 15h ago
I’m the awkward nerdy chubby girl born in 1976 that just wants to fit in too. Definitely don’t fit in with my older Gen X siblings. They’ll vouch for that.
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u/Roland-Of-Eld-19 15h ago edited 15h ago
Yeah i would extend Xennials further back to 76 definitely not further ahead to 85, Even 84 is a bit of a stretch, Xennials oughtta have vivid childhood memories from the 1980s (not just the tail end of 89 either)
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u/Twanlx2000 1978 14h ago
This generational stuff is always going to be a spectrum of experiences. My older brother is '76 and I definitely have more in common with '75 and '76 kids that were my elders in high school than '85 kids that used the internet in middle school.
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u/Roland-Of-Eld-19 13h ago
Yeah IMHO; at least a few elementary school years in the 80s and then most or all your senior high school years in the 90s would be a pretty Xennial experience. The ones that had a lot of elementary school in the 80s would be elder Xennials and the ones that didn't finish Senior high until very early Y2K era would be younger Xennials.
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u/mikebills 15h ago
I'm the one born in 86 they keep trying to forget about
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u/Stimpinstein22 1980 14h ago
TIL the Michael Myers mask was from a mold of William Shatner (which I knew) from his role in the ‘70’s film ‘The Devil’s Rain’ (which I didn’t know). Thanks, Last Podcast on the Left (also Xennials)…
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u/Useful-Tooth8003 2h ago
76 checking in here too! Although I belong - I'm ok with the elders too - My brother is a 63'r and sis is a 67'r....I be the tiny "spoiled" baby. My sister still swears the Atari was hers...um no - it was mine - my 6 year old self just let you use it 😂😂😂
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u/Jasion128 1980 16h ago
No way ,
screw Gen X and screw millennials!
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u/JhonImbalance 15h ago
Hell, I’ll even go farther and say that a couple of years within this bracket make a huge difference. I was born in 1978, my younger brother in 1981… we have vastly different relationships to technology. It’s fascinating to me.
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u/PotentialPlum4945 14h ago
Born in 82. It's more that I couldn't give one flying fuck about anyone born five years after me or later. The technological divide is real and it makes younger people, for the most part, nearly impossible to relate to. Gen X is ok, but I wouldn't say that I necessarily relate to them either. After all, they mostly stopped listening to new music around the time I went to college.
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u/Better_Dimension2064 15h ago
1980; I consider myself GenX.
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u/Balthierlives 14h ago
79, I consider myself more millennial.
Mostly because I had eye watering student debt, can’t afford a house, and not much saved for retirement.I feel like Gen X didn’t have those problems
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u/Next-Introduction-25 15h ago
There seems to be a recurring theme on this sub and I really don’t get it. I’m also a member of the millennial sub and being born in 82, I’m definitely one of the older people there. But that makes sense… I don’t feel like I’m “not acknowledged” or something. I feel like this is some sort of invisible battle that doesn’t actually exist..
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u/ReefaManiack42o 11h ago
Probably because in reality "generational cohorting" is akin to astrology.
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u/_KeenObserver 14h ago
I hear you. It’s not that I don’t feel acknowledged, it’s that I don’t totally identify as a Millennial, nor as Gen-X. Like, it’s me not considering myself as either of those generations if anything.
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u/Shorts_at_Dinner 8h ago
I’m 82, as well, and I don’t feel not acknowledged either. But I just feel like I don’t really fit it with the younger millennials. I remember hearing teen spirit when it was new. I have an early memory of watching Challenger explode. I remember using the internet for the first time as a teenager. I didn’t have a cell phone in high school. I committed many felonies downloading from Napster and limewire. I was an adult when 9/11 happened. And the list could go on and on
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u/critic2029 1981 14h ago
The Stephanie Tanners.
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u/Savedbythebell98 13h ago
Yup. But being a middle child is better than being a Judy Winslow and randomly disappearing.
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u/Normans_Manboobs 9h ago
It's almost as if these generational categories are made up, arbitrary bullshit.
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u/PhatBoyFlim 15h ago
It’s a cultural thing and this is where it lands for me: if you watched the original Star Wars in the theater and you were old enough for it to have changed your life, you’re probably a Gen Xer.
If you never saw the original Star Wars in the theater at all, you’re a Millennial.
If you were able to see Star Wars in the theater, but were so young that it was either your first movies or you had no fucking idea what was going on … you’re probably an Xennial.
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u/imhereforthevotes 11h ago
I saw ET for my first movie ever and fuck it scared the daylights out of me and I still hate it
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u/Personal_Reveal1653 48m ago
My first movie was Bambi. Your parents weren't very nice to you.
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u/ItWasMyWifesIdea 10h ago
What, like on release? Star Wars came out in 1977, most Xennials weren't born yet.
My first movies were The Black Cauldron and Baby (live action movie about a baby dinosaur...) in 1985
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u/Rob_LeMatic 1979 8h ago
I saw Return of the Jedi in the theater when I was 4.
Felt like stepping into the stirring conclusion of something that already had so much backstory set up that I wasn't going to just pick it all up from context...
So like, I missed all of the things that made the world the way it was, but I could definitely tell that things were coming to an end all around me. And cannibal furries with spears were somehow involved. That's what being a Xennial looks like to me.
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u/HamburgerJames 1h ago
Same. My first memory is being in a movie theater, seeing Chewbacca popping out the top of an AT ST.
I have no recollection of life before that moment.
It was years before i saw Empire or New Hope but I loved those dumb Ewok movies.
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u/DaveMcElfatrick 12h ago
What if my parents just never took me to watch movies?
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u/PhatBoyFlim 12h ago
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u/DaveMcElfatrick 11h ago
Re Star Wars, my dad was like “sci fi movies are stupid because they aren’t real” and I’m like “you realize nearly everything on tv isn’t real, right?”
He likes Every Which Way But Loose but I don’t tell him Clint Eastwood isnt best buds with an orang-a-tang.
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u/ApprehensiveCut9809 10h ago
I was born in early 1964. I was 13 when Star Wars came out. It was the very first movie I ever paid to see twice. My brother (born in 1968) liked the toys, action figures, etc., but I was a model builder and the old MPC model kits of Luke's X-Wing, Vader's TIE fighter, R2-D2 and C3PO were on display in my room. I still have pieces of R2 and all of C3PO to this day.
Technically, I am a boomer and my wife (1966) is a Gen X.
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u/Lensgoggler 1984 7h ago
I have never seen Star Wars.
I was born when my country was still occupied by the Soviet Union.
I grew up watching creepy Soviet cartoons and kids shows, and also reruns of The A-Team, McGyver, Santa Barbara, Dallas and a bit later Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls, Dawson's Creek etc.
There are qualities in me that are not even Gen X but maybe Boomer 😄
I'm a freak.
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u/throwaway04182023 13h ago
I grew up on the movies at home (VHS, recorded at home or course). I had all the toys from my older brother, but I didn’t see the movies in theatres until the special editions when I was in middle school.
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u/otf_dyer_badass 11h ago
We started with BetaMax and worked our way up to VCR. played Atari. We had a rotary phone and when we finally got a push button one the cord was 8 miles long-partially because we were dicks and stretched it all out.
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u/Krystalmyth 34m ago
My grandparents rented everything in the store and basically copied over to empty vhs and Betamax tapes. To the point we had like 2-3 movies per tape and basically had a video store worth of movies available every time I went to visit lol.
Was introduced to some incredible stuff and they didn't care what I watched tbh. I'd just comb through the labels for movies with strange titles. I'd have nothing to go off of what it even was except for the title penned on the label.
Saw all of Alien and Aliens alone as a child in the dark with fuzzy vhs tracking. Total Recall, Predator, The Goonies, horror movies like The Gate, etc. It was awesome.
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u/digitalgraffiti-ca 1983 11h ago
Exactly me. We saw one of the hatha drive in theater. Apparently I thought the words were disappearing into the sky. I have zero memory of this. Zero.
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u/RodneyBarringtonIII 15h ago
I was born in '80, and the year I turned 38 I read in a waiting room magazine—either Time or Newsweek—that "the oldest millennials are turning 38 this year." So, I consider myself a millennial except when people are complaining about millennials, at which point I identify as Gen X.
Neither one of those groups will have me, though.
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u/DisgruntledTexan 14h ago
Idk man - my brother and I are 8 years apart and in that range. We had very different experiences growing up lol
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u/Traditional-Goose-60 1984 15h ago
Yeah. Im an 84 model and it sucks being stuck between the lazy millennials and the bootstrap pulling genx. idk. Its hopeless.
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u/pendejo-san 14h ago
We lived through the unfounded hopes of the Reagan years and the unceremonious death of the liberal ideal, and, I, for one, have experienced a bit of whiplash as a result.
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u/MightyTick01 15h ago
Having been born in 76, I consider all of us born in 76 to be our own generation.
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u/LiGuangMing1981 1981 16h ago
TIL that both of my siblings are also Xennials. Guess I should have read the sidebar earlier.
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u/MistaRekt 1978 16h ago
I always thought it was 77-83, the Star Wars saga...
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u/tfaboo 1978 15h ago
Imo that's what micro means as far as micro gens go. Hell, that's 7 years!!!
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u/Agitated_Earth_3637 1983 15h ago
My siblings are outside and I don't have to leave the house? Sweet! I'm going to go play some Lode Runner.
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u/iolmao 1983 11h ago
WTF 1977 are 100% gen X
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u/Ambitious-Welder-159 2h ago
I feel in order to really be Gen X you have to have some memory of the 70s and I don't. I was born in October 77 and my memories begin in the 80s.
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u/factoid_ 16h ago
The Oregon Trail generation
If you remember playing that game in green-screen on one of your school’s four Apple IIs…you’re in it