By the way, I want to recognize that this is a major oversimplification of the problems that Millennials face, I was just thinking about the effect of upbringing and the environments that shaped us.

I will say one thing about being Generation X. We had the best music culture ever. 🤘🏻😎

My take as a Gen-Xer is we're the cynical middle child generation, the one that got no attention and resultingly had to be self-sufficient. We automatically cringe at trends, commercialism, and any kind of general ego puffery. Cynical but easygoing.

I’m a Gen x kid .. 53 now and I remember a lot of my friends being devastated knowing their parents were divorcing. Also that we raised ourselves. No one stayed inside. You were expected to just be home for dinner and come home for the night when the porch lights were on. It was a awesome time to grow up . We all were for the most part successful in life achieving our goals. I wish the younger generation could feel what it was like to have true freedom and no cameras watching your every move. Vinyl was an experience and not just a push of the screen.

As a late Gen X’er (‘78) I like to think about it this way, I’m hopefully pessimistic. I hope things well work out, but I’m in no way surprised when they don’t, and really rather assumed they wouldn’t.

"Latch-key kid" - for those that don't know - We came home to a locked, empty house after school and had to let ourselves in with our own key, because both parents were at work, made our own lunches and took care of ourselves - unlike previous generations that came home to mom. I don't think the expression is as common now because it's just normal to be that way.

As a Gen Xer, I think the most important and persistent sentiment that was ever imposed upon us as kids was that we didn't really matter. Whatever we may have done ,or may have said, or may have thought, was unimportant at best or completely irrelevant at worst. Like you said, we grew up with the prospect of WWIII kicking off at any moment which meant that we were almost an afterthought to most discussions and talking about a 'future' was practically an act of arrogance. This is why the battle cry of Gen X was, is, and shall always be 'Whatever' because we just felt like we were the collective punchline of a bad joke.

Boomers were pretty rough on a lot of us. It definitely toughened us up. The term "child abuse" started becoming a thing during our generation. We didn't want our kids growing up like we did but therefore didn't know what was too much or to little when raising kids. We didn't whine or complain, still respected our elders, and looked forward to the day we could get out on our own

Latch/ key kids were the first generation that overwhelmingly had two working parents. We got home and no one was there. We either unlatched the gate and went in through the back door( usually a key was either under a planter or in our pockets.) We entered through the back door in an attempt to keep our business our own.

As a Gen Xer I really related to this. I had my own house key from the time I was 8. Before all the laws about not leaving kids home alone. I'd get home from school and most of the time I was alone until 7 or 8 at night. In my teens I took care of my two younger brothers. Mom was a single parent and worked 3 jobs so she was never home. Even on weekends. We learned how to be really independent. We also learned that nothing is promised to anyone. Ever. The world doesn't owe you anything. You want something? Go make it happen.

I’m a boomer and all I can say is that if 1% of the stupid stuff I did and said was recorded on the internet and available to be repeated and played for the entire planet, nobody on the face of the earth would talk or even sit near me. Younger generations have no space to grow and learn about the world in a modicum of privacy. I was learning how to “adult”. The standards for everyone is so much different now. There is no room for youthful indiscretions. It sucks. That standard is impossible to attain.

GenX circa 1968 here. When I first read "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk back in '96, then saw the movie, well damn... it screamed out GENERATION X, STAND UP! The quotes in that movie are spot on clear depictions of GenX life. _"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."_ _"On A Long Enough Timeline, The Survival Rate For Everyone Drops To Zero."_ _“It’s Only After We’ve Lost Everything That We’re Free To Do Anything.”_ I hold no hate for boomers (my parents), millennials (friend's siblings), or GenZ. I respect people who respect me. It goes both ways, and is earned. I wish that some of us could all sit in a group, sharing stories, fears, hopes, goals, and futures. We all have things to learn from each other. Wisdom and insight come with age and experience, imagination and innovation come with youth and hope. I know we can see the good in this mess of a world. Cold War (again), recession (again), disenfranchisement (again). We have much to learn from each other. The only answer I can even venture for this, and future generations? Stop allowing others to separate you, stop allowing the division between ourselves. As a whole, this generation, right here, right now, has the real opportunity to make changes that will benefit all. My closing thoughts come directly from George Carlin. One of the greatest minds that graced the Boomers and GenX... we really need to push his wisdom forward. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. _"The reason education sucks and will never, ever, ever be fixed is... because the owners of this country don't want that... I'm talking about the real owners, the big, wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you._ _They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate and Congress, the statehouse, the city halls. They have the judges in their back pockets. They own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear..._ _We know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking - well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking... That doesn't help them. That's against their interest... They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly sh*ttier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now, they're coming for your Social Security money... They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something, they'll get it... It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I ain't in the big club..._ _They don't care about you at all, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on... It's called the "American Dream," because you have to be asleep to believe it."_ -George Carlin

I was born in 1981, right on the dividing line between the two generations. My parents were boomers who had kids late, which meant a whole extra decade of dual-income-no-kids in the 60s and 70s to build up. I'm just old enough to remember duck-and-cover drills in school, but was still quite young when the Berlin wall came down. My upbringing was all about getting the best grades in school to get a college degree so I could get a job paying six-figures. Meanwhile I grew up absorbing Gen-X culture, and I saw my parents' ideas of success being conformity to a corporate consumerist culture as a shallow, empty way to live, and being funneled down that path was awfully gloomy. Then 9/11 happened. Then the financial crash of 2008 happened. And then, and then, and then.... Whether or not us Gen-X / Millenials actually wanted it, the life of the Boomers has been pushed out of our overall reach. On the rare occasion that the lucky few of us are able to get out of student debt, move beyond the gig economy, climb to the top of the bucket of crabs and begin to live the life of their parents, then congratulations, welcome to shallow, empty corporate consumerism. These are the lucky ones. I hate that I can't remember the KZfaqr who said it, but they had a great essay that summed it up really well. "Things have been terrible for so long, you miss when they were merely bad."

I am one of the earliest millennial (82) and I think it might be good to mention another formative thing that happened: I was 19 during 9/11. It was one of the first things that happened in my adult life. And we all watched it live. It's like, yes, I matured in the 90s with grunge music and stuff, but we were indeed promised stuff at that time and then it's just been tragedy after tragedy after tragedy.

In the Netherlands we actually call GenX 'The forgotten generation', specifically because everyone always glosses over them when mentioning timelines or generations.

A fellow Gen Xer here. It's funny how you said that the Gen X slogan is, "eh, whatever, never mind." Cuz that is the chorus to Smells Like Teen Spirit, a Gen X song, from the biggest album of the 1990s, Nevermind. And that album, along with many other grunge songs and artists helped shape our generation (the later Gen X group) and also reinforced how the Boomers saw us as slackers. And then pop culture kind of just embraced that and we embraced it, too. This explains the popularity of grunge fashion, of films like Clerks and Reality Bites, the Wayne's World skit on SNL, etc. And because we were so resilient and we didn't have the technology (didn't grow up having internet and smart phones), we had to go learn things for ourselves. We had to do research. To find out things about pop culture, we had to watch MTV or read it in a magazine. I remember reading Rolling Stone and Spin magazine, growing up, and listening to the alternative radio stations (sometimes college stations), just to hear what is popular. We went to the school library and used a card catalog to find the book we need. We used freaking microfiche! And read newspapers. There were no KZfaq or Spotify. We frigging requested songs from radio stations, waited for the song to come on and then we put in a cassette tape and recorded it! We frigging hooked up two VCRs together and copied movies that way. Now, you just pay a low fee per month and watch as much as you want to watch, when you want to watch it. We had to wait for our favorite show to air, every week, for every freaking damn show! And if you didn't set your vcr and you didn't make it home on time, you are screwed. And when Lost was on, I made sure I was in front of a tv when that came on! Or Seinfeld, another example. So, this made us very patient. Kids today are probably impatient when they can't have what they want, when they want it.

Things that I miss the most about growing up Gen X: --your friends weren't flakes ... if you guys made plans it was in stone --riding on my bike with 15 other friends throughout the city --smoking weed out of an apple (ifykyk) --pranks we played on each other (without a MF hashtag trending full of whiny offended ppl) --Blockbuster video --/\/ / R \/ /\ /\/ /\ --the pool hall --FRIENDS THAT WEREN'T FLAKES --internet chat rooms where we cursed each other out (no bans, no mods) --smoking out with friends and talking about conspiracy theories --fingerless gloves and denim vests --"Skinemax" on the cheater cable box --cheezy 80's movies --going out all day with $20 as a kid and coming home with change --calling 411 on the payphone and pranking the operator --riding the city bus around the whole city at 10pm at 13yo --booty / bass music (growing up in SoFlo this is mandatory) --Mustang 5.0 --the roller skating rink

As a Millennial, my expectation was to be able to work a full time job and afford a place to live to call my own. I also live in Dallas, like you joe, but even with me and my fiancé, we can barely afford rent with both of us making over double minimum wage with minimal other expenses beyond surviving and paying back loans we took to survive (like insurance, medical bills, cost of cell phone required by jobs, but not payed for by jobs, car loans to be able to travel to the jobs to afford the money, ect). This basically means no savings for getting out of this situation, and in a house where we aren't throwing our money away with no future return. And this money goes to people who are already set for life with multiple properties and want to afford that next yacht.

As a millennial, I really respect the way you handled this. You're not hating on us, you understand where we're coming from. We're all just out here trying to do our best with the tools we were given and the current state of the world.

Young Gen-X here, and it's definitely been a weird go watching the world change so drastically in our lifetime and I think this is the problem. I do feel bad for the Millennials as well. The boomers really set them up for disappointment. That was the advantage to growing up Gen-X. As you said, we had no expectations of tomorrow. The "F - it, what do you want me to do about it" attitude has served us well for the transition. The boomers set the Millennials on a path that would have been the ideal path for a boomer. So the millennials lives were on this rigid rail and they were told go to get good grades, go to college and graduate and get a good job and you will not just be successful, but you will be prosperous. BUT, at the same time they were setting them up for this pipeline, they were strip mining their futures. They shipped off all of the good manufacturing jobs overseas so we could make cheap junk to sell at WalMart. So now the good paying jobs were replaced by low paying retail jobs. Then with all of these kids in college, they guaranteed the student loans. With that college tuition ballooned, so the cost of getting that "good office job out of college" just became cost prohibitive, but they also now demand that bachelor's degree as the floor to even get your foot in the door. Now you have to get an even higher and more expensive education to get a job JUST to be middle class....but now you're also saddled with debt. So millennials were sold the promise of the boomer life track all the while the boomers were taking a wrecking ball to that reality. So basically, the millennials were unplugged from the matrix of their childhood and expected to become adults in a world they were wholly unprepared to deal with. Them now being adults, the boomers had no sympathy for them...after all, they're adults now and should just deal with it, that's life. This, again, is where the Gen-X upbringing differed so much. We were left to our own devices. We learned by trial and error. We were allowed the freedom to make mistakes where they had helicopter parents and participation trophies and soccer practice and karate lessons and they were just kept on a hamster wheel with the promises of a great future if they followed the rules. All the while the boomers, who are STILL in charge, mind you, changed the rules.

Yes. I’ve had a few conversations with Millennial friends about this. They grew up with different expectations than I did. I expected to die in fiery annihilation. When I was a kid we’d talk about Red Dawn and War Games on the elementary playground. I lived in fear all the time but it means I was pleasantly surprised when I made it to the age of 20 STILL ALIVE

Latchkey means our parents weren't home and we had our own keys to le us into the house. latch is the part o the deadbolt of doorknob that sticks out and engages with the latch plate to keep the door closed. Your house key is literally a latchkey.

Even more than the Cold War, the latchkey nature of being a Gen-Xer had a much more pronounced impact on how I see the world. Yes, there was the aspect of everyone wanting to stand out. I mean, musically you had Boy George, Iron Maiden, Whitney Houston and Twisted Sister all sharing record store shelves, and punks, headbangers, preppies and skaters all on the same sidewalk. The hair styles, the colours (remember all the shades of neon?), everyone was trying to find an identity that was unique and that made them stand out. But when the mid 80s hit, and both my folks had to leave the house and go to work, I too ended up with that key ring at the end of a cloth laniard around my neck. It was at that point that I realized that most of the kids in my elementary and junior high school had the same laniard around their necks - headbanger or new wavers, we were all going home to empty houses. Most of the time we had to figure out our own dinner. Most of the time we were figuring out friendships, school problems, adolescence, life, by ourselves and all on our own... Then, there's one aspect that Joe doesn't talk about, which is that yes, we were swimming in all the stuff that had gone wrong - the realization of what we were doing to the environment (it started with acid rain and air pollution), the constant threat of wars, how Reaganomics created a culture of excess in the 80s and budding inequality in the 90s (we're seeing the full extent of that now), and we internalized all of this all the while telling ourselves that we would do better than the boomers. That we would at least try to do at least a little bit better... But, now seeing what Millennials have inherited, I can't help but feel my heart break a little bit.

as a gen z, i see how gen x’s think and it’s really made me reflect on you guys. y’all are actually cool :)

Oh wow. The "we weren't promised a tomorrow" is EXACTLY that feeling. I was tail end (1980) but older siblings really made me identify with Gen X. People tell me I'm a millennial, I'm not.

as a pissed off elder millenial, this is a helpful mindset to keep in mind. The world is shit, full of systems that are completely rigged to fuck most involved. That being said, it's also a fascinating time to be alive, we are interconnected in a way never before possible. The flow of information is insane. The world may be terrible, but it is equally amazing. I think if I could forget the promise of opportunity promised to me by everyone guiding me, and could just take things as they are....things are not so bad. They are not great, but they are not so bad. great perspective, thanks for the video. hope we don't all die in a fireball.

As a GenX I feel that almost everything from my childhood, particularly the music, had a background flavour of 'It doesn't really matter we could all be dead in 4 minutes, and even then as least it will probably be quick'. We are the generation who accepted that our name was writ in water.

I am a tale-end boomer. The one comment (that I overheard while in a French bakery in Seattle) that really made me made enough to remember it was a prematurely gray GenX-er telling a Millennial guy, "the first thing you have to remember about Boomers is that NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENED TO THEM." That's the kind of junk that will & would make anyone who remembered watching the body bag count every day during dinner a little crazy. Each generation has its own challenges. Sometimes it pays to remember these generational tags are from the marketing industry...and should be given as much weight as the ads on during the Superbowl...

Little late to the game here, but would like to add my two cents. As a Gen-X'er, I remember fighting labels. Due to us largely raising ourselves, we had this hatred of being put in these cute little boxes, put on a shelf, and only being recognized by that box. We were not one thing, we had to be many things in order to survive and prosper. Gen-X is the flexible, laid back, easy going, self sufficient generation. We are known as latchkey kids because we were the first generation to have to raise ourselves, and HAD to be all those things I just described. We didn't need the previous generations to tell us how to live or how to do things, we learned by doing them ourselves, which is part of the reason we are also the forgotten generation. We are also the generation that discovered not all world problems needed to be met as muzzle velocity, basically for what you said in your video, cold ware ended without a shot being fired, all that angst, gone, not a shot fired. So, we tend to be more diplomatic and only use force when necessary. It's difficult to pin down exactly what a Gen-X'er is, simply because we had to be many things. Gen-X is the swiss army knife of generations, and it doesn't matter, because we don't give a fuck.

I'm a boomer, born in 1960, so I was too young to actually DO much of the hippie stuff. I certainly soaked it up into my psyche, though. When I think of how stereotypical so many of my fellow Boomers have become in their old age, it breaks my heart. It really is just the age-old (pun intended) thing of the older generation forgetting what it's like to be young. Even close friends that are my age have turned and I just don't get it. People are more alike than they're different. Love everybody as best you can, where they are, and remember you're fallible, too. That's my best take on it. I love all the generations. We all have something to offer. P.S. hope you feel better, soon.

We Gen-Xers....Had NO fear as kids.... - We stood on the roof of house to turn the antenna for clarity, even in the rain which made it slippery. - We rode at top speed on the back of pickup trucks without a seat beats. - We jumped ramps with bicycles without helmets while adults cheered us on. - We rode bikes for miles to play a video game with one or two quarters and adults could care less. - We fought with our hands, not with emojis. - Adults thought it was strange if we didn't come home dirty, bruised or both. - We had close ranged kite fights with razor blades. - AND, when we got tired from it all, we drank water from a hose which tasted strange. ...WE are still HERE... We are Tough and Unstoppable.

11:43 "Latchkey kids" is directly referring to we, who wore a key around our neck at school, because our parents were at work when we got home. We had to let ourselves into the house, make a snack, find a way to entertain ourselves and not burn down the house for the next 3-4 hours. It built character. It gave us a preview of being an adult, by taking care of ourselves, possibly of a younger sibling too. There's a certain freedom and satisfaction that comes with being put in a situation where you have to grow up a bit and figure things out for yourself, contrasted against the later generations who live with their parents well into their 30s with no job and no incentive to leave...

As a millenial born in '89, raised by two boomers (though my mom is a late boomer, she can be considered as an early gen x based on her lifestyle), I couldn't agree more. I was always taught to have longterm goals (even by teachers), and now here we are. You can't even make a 5 year plan, cause there's a nonzero chance that the world will go up in flames, global war is on the horizon, economy is struggling, a pandemic is raging, politicians are going nuts, and so on. If you wanna cope, you clearly have to be able to change your expectations, and adapt. I think we're going through now, what gen x has gone through in the '80s. We're in desperation mode, and feel like a rope is around our necks. And gen x, with its own, familiar rope around their necks is smiling like: 'first time?' (someone insert that meme here pls)

I knew what latchkey kid meant, but for those who are interested, I lifted this from Wikipedia. A latchkey kid, or latchkey child, is a child who returns to an empty home after school or a child who is often left at home with no supervision because their parents are away at work. The child can be any age, alone or with siblings. The term refers to the latchkey of a door to a house, or home. The key is often strung around the child's neck or left hidden under a mat (or some other object) at the rear door to the property. The term seems to first appear in a CBC radio program called "Discussion Club - Topic: How War Affects Canadian Children" in 1942, due to the phenomenon of children being left home alone during World War II, when the father would be enlisted into the armed forces and the mother would need to get a job. Given that the "Discussion Club" participants are all familiar with the term and allude to it being in colloquial usage, it likely predates 1942. In general, the term latchkey designates "those children between the ages of five and thirteen who care for themselves after the school day until their parents or guardians return home".

Millenials grew up with great expectations and optimism, with mom and/or dad hovering over their shoulder for a good chunk of their childhood. Then got the rug pulled out from under them as they started to hit adulthood. That kind of explains a lot of our whole deal. I myself was born in West Germany, but by the time I was 2 years old it was just Germany. I cannot remember a time when I previously worried about nuclear annihilation. The 90s were an optimistic time where we thought that we could do or be anything. Most of the 'thought-provoking' and countercultural stuff of that time were about the ennui of living in suburbia with no purpose in life. There no longer seemed to be any real enemies out there. We looked forward to the turn of the Millenium. And boy did it hit like a truck. 9/11, The Iraq War, Patriot Act, The Great Recession... It's been one thing after another and Millenials, having had less independence than their forebears from their moment of birth, were simply not given the tools to live in the world as it is now. They wanted the college degrees, the good times, the jobs, and the happy lives they were promised as children. But the more they dug into it, the more they realized they were lied to, and they got angry about it. And then their parents scoff and act like it's all their own fault for believing. Millenials had to play catch up in their early adult years to get all those adult skills that their parents never taught them because their parents never gave them space to be independent.

One interesting thing to me is growing up with the mix of both Analog and Digital. I think that adds a different perspective on the technology driven world that keeps expanding. I also think many GenXers cobbled to together stuff, sometimes using both new and old parts, and tend to be good Troubleshooters.

I think you've put a finger on this idea that I could never articulate. Thank you! My parents are Gen X also, while I'm a millennial. I've been spending you know, an inordinate amount of time worrying myself sick over the situation in Ukraine and my mom barely batted an eye. "Well, if we do die in a nuclear blast, at least it'll be quick." Pleasantly surprised pessimism and disenchanted optimism. We're a pair of generations, aren't we?

I remember my 10th grade history teacher absolutely LOSING HIS SHIT over the wall coming down. Like, he felt that he just couldn't sufficiently impart upon us just how important it was. All I remember thinking was how little I knew about the whole situation at the time, I was like 15 maybe and all I cared about was building tree forts, driving my go kart and playing nintendo. I mean, I knew it was a big deal, but the magnitude of it was just lost on me at the time. I'm also late gen-x, and I can relate to everything you said, Joe.

The term latchkey kid comes from where kids arrived at home with no parents there and they had to use their own key. You were taught to come home and lock the door, including with the latch/deadbolt and let no one in except for your parents. I specifically remember in elementary school wearing a key on a shoestring to keep up with it because there was going to be no one at home when I got there to let me in. And because they were working they weren't going to be there for a while.

Born in '68 and was the last child. Dad was a war vet and mum went through the Blitz. Grew up on a mixed farm and was either in school or working in the barns... loved it. I was my own man. That's Gen X. Have a Gen Z daughter and worry about her everyday.

Mid Gen-X here, and what I really remember most was the absolute reality that I was going to spend my entire working life paying into Social Security, but that it would be flat broke by the time I get to retirement age. I remember the reality that I would never be able to amass the same wealth and security that my parent’s generation was able to amass, and how f$&@ed I felt. I think those ideas, along with the Cold War culture were big parts of the apathy our generation is so known for.

Born in 1984 I'm old enough to know how to read a map, how to navigate and understand street signs. How to make a collect call using a prepaid phone card (not a cellphone). Having a pager where your family would page you telling you it is time to come home. The era before the modern internet and I personally do not consider dial-up a part of the modern internet, was a different kind of thing. Used to research papers for school assignments lookup world news or maybe sports scores. Now you can watch the world news and sports live. Work on and submit school assignments and communicate with people on the other side of the planet in real time. If you would have told someone in 1995 what the internet would be like in 2015... They would think you are crazy.

"Oh, well... whatever... never mind" is a good encapsulation of our (Gen X) ethos. It basically sums up the, "Screw it. I gotta do it myself" view that we have.

I figure into the Xer "Classic" born 02/70 and graduated 1988. We had a phone on the wall in the kitchen, no remote control TV. No computer in the home. My senior year we got a "computer room" in the H.S. that had 10 Apples. No cell phones utill well into our 20's. Growing up in the 70's and 80's was liberating and yet we were held to high standards of responsability. Mom worked part time 3/4 days a week, so some days the house was empty when I got home from walking from school, I was expected to mow the lawn, (Dad didn't touch the mower for 10 years) do yard work, shovel the sidewalk and driveway in the winter( and it snowed a lot more back then) wash dishes (no dishwasher) vacume, do my homework and also my other jobs I had outside the home. In Jr. high and highschool I also had sports and other extracurricular activities and part time jobs. This was just normal for kids growing up before the last 20 years. Now the helicopter parents ruined it with trying to be buddies with there kids instead of parents first. I have a daughter still in high school and she just doesn't have the drive like my gen did. It bothers me a lot.

I was 15 when the wall came down and it was so exciting. For years of watching movies with the war against the Soviet Union and seeing nuclear missile tests and worries of annihilation, it definitely felt like a breath of fresh air. Then 9/11 happened and all that changed. And when the Iraq war happened after 9/11, I felt the US went down a dark path we are still dealing with today.

Great video and insights. 2 thoughts from someone who was born in 83, and generally identifies far more with Gen X, but straddles the divide with the millennium generation: 1) I don’t have a TikTok, and have no interest in TikTok (I hate it when people send me TikTok videos and text messages lol), but I see the thing with TikTok is less people trying to copy someone else, and more so a generation of young people who have only known in the world with Internet, and this is their way to feel included, connected, part of it, and in some ways, adding their own uniqueness or contributions to it. 2) latchkey comes from the fact that a lot of kids got off the bus and had a key to get into their house, because no one was home. I actually was just talking with a friend about how a lot of kids today can barely do anything for themselves at 10 year old, meanwhile I was watching my younger brother, cooking, and doing my own laundry at that age. It’s not really a judgment on younger kids, just more of an observation about how the different things are. Think I got my first pocket knife when I was around eight, I can’t imagine giving my almost 7-year-old a knife at 8 or 9 lol.

I just found your TMI channel. I really like it! I like how you think and I like your sense of humor. Enjoyable

Im a 55 yr old Xer. All I can say is that I’m grateful. Got dealt a good hand cosmically in terms of parenting styles (hands off), music, film and American culture in general during the 1970s/80s. Being latchkey kids among other things made us resilient, less fearful and self reliant. I’m thankful my parents never hovered or fussed…let me fail, make my own mistakes, be humiliated and a little shaken up at times. I’m grateful my parents didn’t try to be friends with me! Sometime in the 80s during high school or college I first heard the term „play date“ enter the vernacular, and it felt like a bad omen. Scheduled playtime was anathema to Gen X. It creeped me out - the idea that parents were so hovering over their kids that playing with ones friends should be pre-arranged. I’m just glad I was lucky enough to be part of such a cool generation. It’s like we caught the last chopper out of Vietnam before all was lost 😂.

I was born in 1980, so I'm sort of in the middle of the two. I grew up very much as a Gen X--the lack of supervision, the single parent household, the lingering threat of existential doom, etc. However, I was also given the Millennial expectation: Go to college, work hard, job, blah blah blah. As I've gotten older and have been screwed by the system (couldn't afford to finish college, had to drop out and get a job while still having massive student debt and no piece of paper to show for it), I find myself more and more in the X mindset. "Welp, this is all going to shift, rather like we expected. Now what?" Of course, that I am very into history and seeing all the patterns repeating ad nauseam makes such a perspective easy for me, but still. I've accepted that I'll never be able to attain the great things I was promised; I'm now more focused on getting to the natural end of my existence without making things worse.

I feel like the most Gen X thing ever was classic MTV (1981-2001). Classic MTV was all about originality and a "whatever" attitude. I mean there was some seriousness and caring, like with MTV News, Live Aid, Rock the Vote, etc., but nothing was ever taken too seriously. There were no debates or intense opinions about anything.

i really love your explanation of the difference between Gen X and Millennials and why we are the way we are. Im Gen X and my son was born @ 2000 so he is on the border of Millennial and Gen Z. I always tell people who complain about them that its our fault. We made them, we raised them. We fucked up and made their life too easy. We felt like we were left to raise ourselves and our brothers and sisters. Our parents were always working. So we as Gen Xers over-corrected and now we have these brats. Lol

I won't share my life story here like every other millenial but I'll say, thank you for going over this stuff. It was cool to here you reaffirm how my 6-12 year old mind remembered my older siblings and the pop culture growing up. Also, great juxtaposition of the two gens. First time I've heard that with such clarity and I concur. Been trying to put my finger on the difference for a while. Good job!

It's nice hearing about our generation from time to time. On the Cold War, however, I'm sad to see it return. I didn't dig it when I was a kids either.

Really enjoyed this. I was born in 1966 so I'm X-Classic! My understanding of "latch-key" refers to no parent being home during the day, so we had to let ourselves in the house after school, or something like that. That was true for me, and I have no memory of my Mom being home to welcome me after school, and certainly no baked cookies or snacks, etc. But I don't miss what I never had. In fact, I watched my sister raise her Millennial kids as a helicopter parent and I am SO glad no to have experienced that. I think you're on to something, we are generally a more reslient and can take care of oursevles...maybe that's why we're left out, the other groups know we don't really need them.

Im gen X and I can remember in kindergarten we had regular drills of taking cover under your desk or moving to a hallway, to protect against a nuclear blast. This was the Ohio public school system in 1980. If it did anything positive, it was that it made a lot of other problems not seem so big.

As a Millennial, I appreciate the perspective, and never thought of things this way. I've seen people writing about how we're the last kids to grow up without the massive technology boom (for the most part), and that we a mourning the simpler life of our childhood. I really liked your take. And I totally feel you on the cold front, my toddler started really giving kisses, and wanting to share his food with me, just in time to get me sick.

A few things to add from a GenXer (born in 69) -We expected to die in WWIII, but also couldn't completely understand why. We were able to see Russians as people. - We were the first to expect that we would NOT make as much money as our parents. Job markets were getting worse; poorer pay, more education needed and no guarantee whatsoever that you would even GEY a job. - While nowhere near as bad as Millenials, we saw college go from something a summer job could pay for, to something that would give you years of debt afterwards. (it was $13 per credit when I started in '87, and $75 per credit in '92. 5 fold increase in 5 years) - We saw our parents in the grip of Reaganomics, when "greed is good", and became VERY cynical about wealth. - We cared about the environment, but had bigger things (like WWIII and rampant greed) that had us ducking and covering.

You did more to explain my anxiety than anyone I've ever met. Many millennials struggle with anxiety because these circumstances make us feel like failures. We blame ourselves for not meeting these set expectations and spiral. If more people knew that they weren't alone, there wouldn't be so much rage. Instead, we scroll on social media to compare our realities to what people post. Gen X and their whatever attitude isn't helpful, so we're stuck having to figure these things out on our own. The way you've explained things has made things more apparent, and it was everything I needed to hear.

You hit on the point that we weren't expected to do much in a lot of ways because the world might go up in flames. I feel like that may have played a subliminal part in why we were told to do or major in something you want to do rather than what you have to do. So, many of us went for our dreams. For some that did that, it worked out, not always as we pictured it, but it worked out. A lot of us also have degrees, but it's not what we're doing. Some of those hit the point of not finding a job in their field and said "so what, whatever, nevermind" and just moved to the next best option. Many Gen Xers have had adjacent jobs, sometimes shifting around to find what fits. This wasn't something that was as common for our Boomer parents. At least not for the same reasons. I know I have been an archaeologist, a museum curator, a teacher, a musician, and a historian. Now I'm looking for something new.

As an X-Gen, when you said “we’re left out”, 100%. Boomers lump us with the millennials, millennials lump us with the boomers. We’re either too young to know anything, or we’re too old to know anything.

Born in 62 and been at odds with my age group since high school. The collective shoulder shrug, can't be bothered attitude about climate change, growing wealth disparity, using up the infrastructure etc. I'm glad to have lived long enough to meet the youngest generations. I'm impressed with the way they navigate this world we've left and the way they're grappling with unprecedented times.

I've seen many of the younger generations accuse Gen Xers of being 'Boomers' henchmen' - which I take great issue with. Sure *some* Gen Xers grew up so entrenched in the Boomer worldview that they simply adopted it for themselves - but many others (myself included) spent so much time questioning and challenging those views that we got branded the Crushing Disappointments (ooh, there's the name for my next grunge band!) by our Boomer parents. So yeah, it kinda hurts when Millenials brand *us* 'part of the Boomer problem,' when we know as well as they do how it feels to be judged and berated for everything we are and stand for, by the elders who love to tell us we should be doing everything like they did it if we want to do it 'right.' Don't misunderstand me though - I do get it. Millennials have every right to feel cheated, and be thoroughly annoyed when Boomers tell them they could have everything in the world if only they "put the effort into getting it" (from their own, cosy perspective of an era of a fully-funded, brand new NHS and welfare state, wages that kept up with inflation, low house prices and a booming economy, which THEY completely took for granted and, to some extent, still do.)

At the end of the video you mention that you may think of something when you were editing the video. I was very surprised. By the fact that you edit the video. Surprised that you left in the parts where you were hacking so we could all listen to it. Thanks man.

Gen-X (72) absolutely loved my childhood, absolutely loved my teens, 20’s, 30’s etc… my brother is millennial, wouldn’t trade my upbringing for his. So glad I’m not a youth in this era

I’m a gen-x and a college teacher… I have seen the differences in the generations Year after year… millennials are now great parents. They are the ones raising kids with virtues … I’m hopeful for the future of humanity 😇

Couple of things I can say as a member of Generation X with a different perspective based on where I was born: 1. I would say that the Generation X was the first generation of divorced parents - the trend for divorces started sometime in the 70s and it hit us hard because our grandparents, the "Boomers" could not understand this type of social behaviour. 2. Ah, the 1990s - great times for someone living in the "West", but for people in my country (that desintegrated in the bloody civil war) and many other countries in the "East", were the worst times. 3. For someone who was raised in socialism, the whole system of values went to hell with the fall of the USSR and it hasn't recovered since. 4. Millenials really had some time of peace and prosperity during last 20 years or so, although in my country, you can feel that they are scarred by the events their parents went through in the 1990s.

Bmotheprince's videos about the different generations arguing with each other are hysterical

just found this from watching your most recent video on this channel. Might have been already said, but 'latch-key' refers to how our parents weren't home when we got off school, so we had to use a key to let ourselves into the house when we got home.

Gen X to me is like the “cool kid” generation. They were teenagers in the mid late 80’s and early 90’s, and knew how to have fun and do teenage things the right way, without social media and gluing their eyes to their phones. They went to the mall and hung out in arcades, they were MTV’s first audience (hence the term MTV Generation), they didn’t come home till the streetlights came on, invented a new kind of rock called grunge, and basically raised themselves.

Xennial here, born in 81, I have a younger sister and a Gen X partner. From my perspective there are three factors in play here: 1. Mass media Vs Internet/Social media. We were collectors back then, if you didn't own something like physically, that content, whether TV series, movies, records, comic books... it was out of reach for you. We were collectors and passive consumers of mass media. I could afford just so many records but somehow scarcity make things more... precious. After the internet people turned into explorers, everything was there, attention spans shortened, we saw the rise of niche content, we weren't passive anymore, we turned into consumers/creators. --> Your personality is shaped in a large way by what content you consume/enjoy. You look at what is around you. You want to scape boredom, the unsung hero of this story. But the context is completely different in the 80s (MTV) and the 00s (Napster?). 2. The historical period between the fall of the Berlin wall and the 9/11 attacks was really exceptional. A booming economy, no protracted wars, "pax americana" after the cold world, a uni polar world, shared prosperity, wild innovation... and a pretty remarkable popular culture. The expectations set in this period for milennials, as you have said, were wildly unrealistic. That was a Belle Epoque, maybe a once in a century thing. 3. As inequality grew, home prices skyrocket, real wages stagnate (btw thank you Reagan for all of that), one remarkable thing happen: the rise of the helicopter parent. Rising income inequality - and the higher stakes surrounding education - drove parents to become more involved in their children's lives. The way we were brought up changed drastically. Luckily my parents were old school in that regard and I was raised as a Gen Xer, so mostly unattended, watching Get a life by myself.

Being a young Millenial has been...interesting. Spent the first decade of my life being allowed to play outside with my sibling and the neighbor kids, with the unspoken (I think- I've pretty much blocked out most of my life, so details are hard to remember) rule of "come home when the streetlights come on". Had a computer and dial-up internet, spent tons of time on PBS Kids, Cartoon Network back when they had some sort of collectibles on their site, Disney XD (Disney's half-hearted attempt to make social media for kids- I don't know how long it lasted), virtual pet sites (rip to my abandoned Neopets and the entirety of Nutrinopets) and other forum sites (mainly Gaia Online which is somehow still hanging on), youtube in its early days (I still remember the first Simon's Cat and other classics), and got to see Cartoons that were actually good instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel. Also saw the rise of social media and the commercialization of the internet, as well as the advent of text speech, text-based emojis, and all kinds of cringey "rawr XD" 2000s internet humor. I grew up with My Little Pony before Bronies existed, and tv commercials were a special kind of strange that feel like a fever dream to look back on now. We also got bombarded with "stranger danger" and were constantly warned about pedophiles on the internet by boomers who didn't understand how the internet worked, both of which are probably what led to the current problem of helicopter parenting. But along with all that sweet technology-going from dial-up to 5G and big bulky boxes to computers that fit in your pocket-I've now lived to see several historical events unfold in real time. I never really realized that 9/11 even happened. I was almost 6 and never saw it on the news because-being a young child-I never watched the news and was happy to play with my ponies and the neighbor kids, and ignore the goings-on of the wider world. I just gradually came to understand that something had happened on a certain day involving some big buildings and a plane. In my adult life, however, I've now watched Covid, Jan. 6, and Ukraine all unfold in real time. I've seen all the promises of peace and prosperity go down the toilet, I've more-or-less accepted that I'll probably never be able to own the nice little cottage in a scenic place that I've always wanted, I'll probably never have the room for the little garden I want, my circadian rhythm is permanently fucked, and my inability to follow a fixed schedule (because of my circadian rhythm) ensures I'm always going to have to be self-employed because I'm never going to be able to have a shifting schedule under anyone else. I am probably never going to have any real sense of security and stability, and I slip further into apathy every day. I would no longer be surprised by nuclear warfare or even an asteroid impact. World-ending events feel inevitable- even on-brand for the 2020s. At this point it feels like my generation should be called Gen X 2.0. Better technology. Same old shit.

I hope you feel better Joe. Thanks you all you do, here and on Nebula!

I've heard the term Xennial before and I think those born in the late 70's early 80's like myself are really in that camp... things before internet and computers became ubiquitous... we kind of straddled analog and digital and are fairly comfortable in both camps so more flexible in mindset. Definitely seen lots of millenials who grew up with technology (Digital natives) but seem to have trouble with the actual usage of it which I find weird... I guess if it doesn't just work they get confused? Anyways not sure my point except for that the inbetweeners also grew up in a slightly different environment vs those clearly in either camp.

The trait that I remember being most important as a Gen-X kid was savviness, or street smarts you could say. Naivete or gullibility was disdained and often bullied out of people. I want to say that I highly respect Gen Z for the most part. I've watched my son and his friends grow up, and most of them are more mature, more realistic, and more practical than several generations before them. Most of them are very cautious in what they do or say publicly, because they've grown up with "internet is forever". I have high hopes for this generation. Will they make big changes? Probably not, nobody does, and they're too realistic to expect that. But I can see them methodically chipping away at future issues.

Interesting thoughts. Thank you for sharing them. As an older Millennial, I really appreciate someone from an older generation (only slightly older, in my case) being willing to address any issue concerning us with so much as a modicum of respect. Thank you! I mean that sincerely! I think you're onto something with the idea that expectations haven't matched reality and that those expectations are forged as a result of conditions during folks' formative years. I will say, however, that I'm starting to understand Boomers' perspectives a little bit more as I grow older. While I understand that my experience is not representative of many, many folks' experience of the latest barrage of world-and-economy-devastating events, it is the first time that my own personal world was only minimally affected. By this, I mean that I personally did not lose wealth, jobs, opportunities, security, etc. For the first time in my life, I actually prospered. I was lucky. The events of the pandemic, while terrifying, represented only a minor setback. I 'bounced back' in short order. This was astonishing to me. I went back to grad school. I earned top notch grades. I kept my job. Following graduation, my increased credentials actually won me a promotion. Because of the pause on student loan repayment, I was able to turn my new credentials into increased income and career advancement before repayment began. I refinanced my house. For the first time in my working life, things worked... in a manner that is somewhat akin to that expectation that was formed in those early years of childhood. I worked hard. I got... rewarded? I was flabbergasted. Now, let's not get too excited, here. Like many Millennials who have been hit by one disaster after another during the whole of their working lives, I am still very far behind the 8-ball. My graduate degree and subsequent promotion still wouldn't allow me to live alone and keep a secure roof over my head. That dream of working one job and affording all of the essentials, like room and board, is still a bridge too far for my generation, and we are still reminded - daily - of how lazy and ungrateful and, most of all, entitled, we are for expecting something as luxurious as a mortgage after spending twenty years in the workforce. I still couldn't make it on my own. I still don't ever expect silly things like retirement or to get my dental work done. I am, however, starting to be able to go to the doctor when needed and to fix the car when it breaks. Still, it was an amazing and surreal experience to go through a major disaster and NOT find myself knocked to the brink of homelessness. The catastrophe was a setback fraught with fear and anxiety and, at one point, the very real possibility of a layoff. Coworkers and aging loved ones died. It was no picnic. The difference is that, this time, it took me about a year to recover - a year, not a decade - and that I actually saw measurable forward momentum as a result of effort that I expended (and luck; let's not underestimate the luck component). If Boomers' experiences have been in any way like this one, then I can see how they developed their worldview and their subsequent disdain of my generation. I can see how, maybe, they just don't believe us. If work and sacrifice consistently translates into progress, if hard times are "setbacks" and not catastrophes, if you find yourself able to "roll with the punches" instead of getting knocked out over and over again, then I imagine that your worldview would look different. You might not even be able to see the hand of luck operating; it might look like simple cause and effect. And if it looks like cause and effect... of course the Millennials just aren't working/trying/sacrificing/doing the right things enough. I guess all of this is to say that I think that, as important as folks' formative years are, we never really stop building expectations. We're not like cookies. We're never really "done" baking. I think experiences in adult life continue to forge and change folks' worldview in ways that we often don't realize. My experiences as a teen and adult taught me what to expect much more than my 90s childhood did. And when those pessimistic expectations were only slightly alleviated, for the first time, I was astounded. It helped me to understand older folks better because, for the first time, I witnessed some of that correlation between effort and results that they're always yammering on about. I can see how seeing enough of that, over time, might shape your worldview.

How it went from kids playing with their own imagination to parents organizing the activities and play dates is truly amazing. I still don't get it.

"I'm just kinda like...I am..." is such a Gen-X stance to have. 😂 I 100% relate

I 100% agree with you. We all have had to deal with that kind of stuff. I was the same way, where its like "i dont know man, im just going to rock out and do my own thing" great video.

You just made me connect the dots so much!! Gen X was brought up to expect nothing and they got a little something, so it was a relief, Gen Y was brought up to expect nothing and they got nothing. Gen Y was always aware it was a big sham, but they were also socially pressured to play along even though they knew they were digging their own graves.

3:24 ALL HAIL ZOE!

Latch key refers to the fact that there wasn't anyone home when we got home from school. Thus, we had let ourselves in. Sometimes we had to fix our own meals.

When you talked about prosperity in the 90's I was like "huh? I remember that there was no jobs and there would be 200 applicants for a retail job" which I said to my husband. Then he reminded me that you were in Texas, while where we are, the main industry in our province shut down. There was massive out migration. What was a province of family and community was being broken apart. Everything changed. There were effects that we are still feeling today.

I believe it's latch-key because we had a key to get house and or used the latch to keep the door locked until a parent got home. When I started highschool I was told by teachers and guidance councelors that I shouldn't expect to have a 40yr career at one company with a pension. Even with college. It was just part of growing up in a steel town where a lot of people went to work in the plant or surrounding industry.

My friends and I are "geriatric" Gen X'rs. But we never identified with either the Boomers or the Gen X'rs. We consider "our" generation to be the people who were born into a world just at the beginning of the digital age, who in childhood had a non-digital existence, but by the time we were in high school computers were in the homes and we were playing video games. People who were born 5-10 years later never knew a world without computers. We also watched the internet begin. We started on local phone bulletin boards, then internet with FTP and Gopher, and then the first Web Browsers such as Mosaic. That is the generation I belong to. I saw my first Mainframe at 10, was programming on Mainframe terminals at 14, and had early home computers (Apples, Commodores, etc) and consoles (Atari, etc) in our homes by age 15. Events are a much better metric than the number of babies pushed out in a given period of time.

I was born in 1960, the very end of the baby boom. So, I grew up knowing that all of the aerospace companies near my house were atomic targets. For us, the boom in baby boom wasn't just the demographic "pig in the python", it was the prospect of the atomic explosion, wiping out everything.

In my opinion, the fact that Gen X grew up when technology changed from the analogue age to the digital age was a big factor in creating an adaptable and patient generation. Virtues that often get overlooked for more sensational ones.

Born in '71. My childhood ended when I was 8 and changed my first cloth diaper. I was too busy looking after my siblings to be out playing in the street. It also kept me out of trouble because I was too busy lookimg after them. I didn't expect much from my parents. I didn't get paid for raising my parents kids. I needed money so I got a paper route at 11 and started babysitting other kids for money at 13. I used my own money to buy our first gaming console, Atari, when I was 12. I put it on lay-a-way at Woolworth's. I started payimg for my glasses when I was 15 because the last time I needed new glasses, my father waited months to buy them and I could hardly see due to damage from gettimg the measles when I was five. When I was 6 or 7 I went to sleep-away-camp for the first time for a week and was the only one in the cabin who wasn't homesick. My parents went on a weekend vacation when I was 14 and I looked after my three siblings. The youngest was 3. It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't much different than usual except that it was more peaceful. That was life. I never wanted kids after raising my siblings for 13 years though. My parents divorced when I was 20 and it was a relief. In some ways, I was the oldest and treated that way, but at the same time, I was like a middle child that was overlooked too. My mother picked at me and I could not do much right in her eyes, but I was a good kid who didn't habe time to get into any trouble. Meanwhile, my brother next to me was in constant trouble and the youngest two where the Golden Children. They didn't even notice that I had asthma and had had asthma attacks since I was a young kid. Gen X years made me independent, but it was not a fun childhood either. My needs were not met so I tried to be what my siblings needed. It isn't the same as parental care.

Having been born right in the cusp between genx and millennial, I was a latchkey kid home alone with all my participation trophies. I both non specifically hate everything and am ready to watch the world burn AND think everything will turn out great and that if we just work hard together we can be anything… it’s annoying in my brain.

I was born in 1980, with a double helping of being raised in a poor, rural, southern (US FL, GA, AL, MS, LA) setting (which is basically set twenty years in the past no matter what year it actually is). I kind of straddle the divide between the two generations, but have a more pessimistic view of the world. I mean, I had family that didn't have inside plumbing until the mid/late 80's! I have lived as a latch-key kid and as a community kid (I had a key to the house, but if I wanted dinner I would 'shop around' to see what my friends, local family, and neighbors were having and beg to eat with them - FYI, great at emotional intelligence training and resource gathering!), with the added bonus of being the only one in my generation of cousins to be expected to go to college and get a good job because I was so smart (my one cousin was sooo pretty, and another was good with cars, but I was the smart one of that age group). But because one thing that America has that others don't is high medical bills on top of the student loans and in-affordable housing and stagnant wages, there is no getting ahead. Trying to explain that to my living ancestors is like trying to explain color to my cat. There is no budgeting out of poverty these days when wages aren't keeping up with inflation. On top of all of that, we've lived through THREE recessions and a lot of never-ending wars (desert storm, dot-com, 9/11 & the war on terror, housing bubble, and now). I'm not really sure where the idea that we were all living in an era of peace and prosperity came from, because it hasn't been like that since the early 90's, but maybe that's because of the socioeconomic class I was born into. I was born in poverty and I'll probably die in poverty because the deck has been stacked against me since before I was born. In the 80's, growing up, even with no shoes and skinned knees, we were promised the stars. The 90's hit and the hits never stopped coming. All I really got out of any of it has been depression and anxiety, honestly.

Random, thx for the brilliant articulation of the obvious and discussed before without a camera. You win for drawing lovely conclusions of negative substance,. XB❤

The graduating class of 1998 (so people born in1980 the last year of gen-x) was the first year in our school’s history that not one single senior cheerleader returned to the squad senior year. That was the most apathetic gen-x thing ever. (Also our classes were huge, there was around 400 students n that year.)

It's funny, here I am sitting as "Millennial" (being 34, born in 1987), I find myself absolutely agreeing with you about the authenticity angle. KZfaq has been awesome because of how real or genuine people a lot of folks seem to be as you learn more about them and watch their videos, or find their second channels like yours here. To me, transparency is just super important as well, and folds into that real/authentic angle of things. But I'll be damned if I don't find myself just loathing the Millennial label to the ends of the earth, and the generalities I see from people and the media. They seem to specifically love to bash that group because it sells clicks, and it's honestly disgusting. But again... it's just how it seems to work nowadays. As for bashing the younger generation, I have a 13 and a 12 year old, and I go out of my way to try my damndest to remember what it was like growing up and being their age, because it sure as hell seems like most folks have no respect for kids, or will treat them like 'kids' and not realize they are also people too. Talking down to anyone does nothing good. In all honesty, like several other comments I've read down here, I do feel like I sit on that line between Generation X and Millennial/Generation Y. I also prefer the latter term, as it actually makes sense. My parents were Gen X, I'm Gen Y, and my two kids are Gen Z. Much more sensical in my opinion. I apologize if I'm all over the place here as well, but this made me think a lot more than I realized it would. Thank you for all you do Joe, good stuff on both your channels.

I'm a late boomer (rimshot) and I've always found ways to compare the silly things kids do to the silly things I did. It makes me sad to see someone criticize youth because they forgot about all the stupid stuff they themselves did as kids. Except for me of course... I was perfect 😜

Great insights. Gen X here. Thank you for explaining the threat of Cold War over our childhood’s making us feel uncertain about our futures. I’ve actually had a hard time envisioning very far into my future and I can’t help but wonder if the cloud of the cold war is somehow to blame. Also, thank you for pointing out those Gen X who complain about participation trophies. Boomers didn’t come up with participation trophies. That is all Gen X, and then they’re complaining that the kids got them. I’ve got a heap of them in my garage. 🤣🤣 I think latchkey comes from kids having to carry keys around in order to get into their house alone after school. It’s a responsibility previous generations didn’t have

Shouting out to the late 70's and early 80's babies, aka The Star Wars Generation. We've got solid memories of the Cold War, and had our first cell phones in college. We're the inbetweeners. A complete enigma to those who classify generations.

Hi Joe, I was born in 82, grew up (the part I really remember) in the 90's, and graduated high school class of 2000. I remember getting my own house key in the 4th grade. I remember when nobody had a cell phone and pagers were only for doctors. I remember getting my own pager in high school. I remember when Kurt Cobain died (Jr high). I remember a time before the internet was available for everyone. I lived through dial up. However I don't really identify as a millennium or as genX. I do seem to fit well in the sub category "Xennial" .

I kind of liked how much independence we got growing up. I don’t think I would have liked after school care as much. I feel like it helped with that move away from institutions like the church because X’rs knew we couldn’t rely on them from the day to day. When you’re a child looking after yourself you have to be cautious and you need a little mistrust to be safe. 100% believe Millennials have valid complaints, as do we. It’s hard to be promised something and not get it, especially something as essential as a secure home and job.

This was a great compliment to Polyphonics video - an exercise of a millennial creator inspiring a millennial creator inspiring a gen x’r… which is impressive because our generation was known for being nearly impossible to inspire… which is how we got here

7:25 I actually did have to walk to school in the snow. Growing up on a farm, we had a 1/4 mile lane before we got to the gravel farm road would allow the bus to approach.

When it comes to analysis of Gen X I think something that's often left out is how much actual idealism.... or aspiring yuppiehood, if you were less idealistic, actually existed before getting kinda crushed out by some worsening circumstances, ....like if you came up after a certain cutoff point, the richer you had to be not to end up stuck between student loans, if anyone would sign for them, and a still-already full/in some areas contracting job market. Like you needed a BA or BS even to work in a mail room, but the previous generations pretty much weren't retiring or dying off, so they'd already chosen their lower ranks and that pretty much stopped there. Meanwhile, going to fall back on a factory job had a similar problem, slots all reserved pretty much, while outsourcing was getting underway. Basically a lot of the 'Millenial' problems were already hitting a lot of us in Gen X, but we were actually demographically fewer than before or after, hence getting left out/dismissed as 'slackers' when actually we gave up on a lot of things, collectively. Had to find other ways to get through, find meaning, or even get some of that social change *done* that they're trying to erase now. I often say we're the generation that never really got our turn at bat, ...as a generation that is. Often we're sandwiched between elderly parents and kids who are facing more expensive lives... Or analyzing stuff on the Net and not getting paid. ;) Definitely less spooked by certain nuclear saber-rattling, though, just one more damn thing from people trying to drag us back to the failed promises of times we only kinda got a promise of, less often the reality.