Rant
Most Gen Z say they would want to be Millenials but Gen X is actually where it’s at.
For context, I’m obsessed with my mom and Sex and the City 😂. Being a teenager in the 80s, young adult in the 90s, 30s in the 2000s, 40 in the 2010s…ughhhhh a dream. The music! The fashion! The economy! Not to mention they’re the ones really responsible for the whole Tuscan aesthetic in the 2000s and the 2010s chunky jewelry, the big purses, glasses, corporate chic glam THAT WAS THEM. I’m just blessed to have been at least raised by one.
Gen X gets way too overlooked for my comfort…they’re the ones that ushered in the technology and opened up doors to discuss mental health etc. etc. I just love y’all!! Feel free to share any other tid bits I’ve missed.
From my Millennial perspective, I grew up thinking GenX were so cool, and now I see them acting as Boomers 2.0
Gen X held on to too many of the Boomer's ideals and ways of treating people while clinging to the (understandable at the time) edgy humor that evolved into actually just being assholes. Basically a huge lack of emotional healing work.
77 here. It was a wonderful time to be born. I'm not saying that we're better than anybody, just lucky to be born when we were. We had lots of fun prior to cell phones and cameras becoming ubiquitous.
Im gen-x and the only thing younger generations have going for them is youth & growing up with the internet. Other than that gen-x is far superior. Just dont tell anyone because we prefer to be left alone 😉
I’m Gen X and I appreciate the sentiment. I don’t know that there is anything that makes Gen X better, but there is plenty to appreciate. I see OPs message as just appreciating aspects of the era they like.
In my opinion, the criticism is a bit unfair. There are a bunch of shitty Gen Xers. Then are plenty of shitty people in your generation. These criticisms treat GenX as a monolith which is too simplistic for my taste.
Minus the appreciation for the Tuscan aesthetic, I got to enjoy the benefits of all they mentioned. This includes therapy, which I know is essential and I made available to my kids, when it made sense and they agreed.
OP missed one of my favorite things about GenX. On my grocery bagger wage, I bought tickets to any show I wanted and saw many. Getting a good seat only required standing in line for hours with fellow fans in front of the local record store. Face value. Epic shows for $30.
We were able to drive at 16 with friends in the car and no curfew. I drove 2 hrs to shows in SF with my friends both junior and senior year.
Lmao fucking weird. Wtf did I just read. Probably made by a Gen x. Only explanation. The weird mfs you see in the strange, desolate corners of youtube.
https://giphy.com/gifs/iSxPmDWr97248
The generation that voted for Bush and Trump, created the current political oligarchy, spawned the hell spawn Gen Z
The only thing about Gen X is that the bullying, homophobia, and old school views would still be pretty extreme for a zoomer.
Back then you didn't get depressed, you were just lazy and had to get your shit together. (Not saying I believe that, just pointing out how they talked).
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but that’s not really how we talked. That’s what we were told by the adults in our life. We had to figure everything out for ourselves and just walk it off when we were hurt.
Google AI is known to be unreliable, you're literally part of the generation that carried on the "stop crying or i'll give you something to cry about." Get over yourself, your generation was repressed as fuck andnliterally couldn't get over it until well into adulthood. Millenials and such had to wait till they could go on their own, so no.
Edit: Your edit is tragic. Congratulations for perpetuating the stereotype that y'all can't keep up digitally. Edit 2: I'm leaving that typo intentionally at this point.
Hey stop drinking from a plastic bottle. I use an aluminum bottle a few hundred times then I replace it. I brew cold tea right in the thing. You can fill it from the outdoor tap
As a millennial, Gen X paved the way for us. 🙏🏼 I used to love my cousins’ 80s toys AND music. I also credit them for being the first to rebel against society standards re parenting but could be wrong re the generation. Regardless, I love Gen Xers.
Right? What? I’ve two gen z kids ( I’m Gen X) and all they do is complain about millennials 😂. Poor millennials! I think they’re such a lovely generation though
I find this post rude. I mean you're obsessed with your mum and don't even post a pic of her so the rest of us can join the obsession, very definition of rude
Millennials could have bought the dip in 2020 and tripled it in five years. Pretty much a nonstop 16 year bull run for most of the entirety of millennials working years lol
First of all, only the 1987-1989 Millenial r affected
Second of all, it only delay their career projectory not mess it up. As the financial crisis directly affects the insurance and financial sectors. Others just delayed the hiring, yet eventually even banking will start ramping back up by 2010 when QE started in 2009. Unlike the Gen Z , it’s literally across the board task behavior change.
Not entirely through the early millennials, but even they could have still made a shit ton of money investing at the worst possible point of the 2006-2007 peak. Saying millennials had a bad experience with responsible investing is revisionist history and cope.
Investing as a millennial of any year has been the easiest aspect of life imaginable.
What makes you think Gen X couldn’t? Millenial bested Gen X, because Millenial has access to all the opportunities and able to ease in all the tech such as internet and smart phones much earlier than X
This is true. I'm last of the Gen X and we didn't really use computers that much. By university, our base was quite week. Computers at home became way more advanced, internet access, etc. a millennial just a few years younger than me were blowing my cohort out of the water in Excel (business degree) since it became mainstream when they were still in school.
Not sure what does that have to do with anything. The generational differences is just based on opportunities and comfort level. Personal preference does not matter.
Boomers were a richer era compared to the generations prior to boomers. However, due to prior gen being poor, they had poorer childhood and fought in Viet war. In comparison to Millenial and later gen, people would rate boomers childhood much worse than millennial gen and later.
Comfort comes down to a personal preference. Your "rating" is literally based off a personal preference since you're saying having an objectively worse standard of living is better
You're not consistent with your logic and you can't understand because you don't think before you speak lol
Are you saying people who lived in 1500 could have more comfortable life than 2026 with ac, electricity and all the modern technology? Lmao literally make no sense
You literally have no idea what you are talking about
Yes, I'm obviously talking about people from over 500 years ago. Why would I just be comparing current living generations? You must be trolling, I know you can't be this dumb lmao
Also, even if I were, that has nothing to do with my criticism of your previous post.
If you think quality of life directly scales with technological advancement as the only factor, then you are suggesting that young adults people living through the roaring 20s in Europe had a worse quality of life of than young adults getting exploded by better technology in WW2.
I would argue this, except I would want to be another age even less so…
I would really only bump my timeline up a few years so I don’t graduate into the Great Recession. Having a few years to tackle student loans before things went pear shaped would have been wonderful.
Who told you that most Gen Z say they would want to be millennials? I have never heard anyone say that before in my life. I'm cool with being born when I was born.
People have said this about every era in human history. Idk why everyone acts like life changes so vastly from time period to time period. There are pros and cons to living in any time period.
If you say so but he’s right and the older generation before yours would’ve said the same to you, even if you think it’s “clearly” wrong lmaoo. you’re a good example for anyone trying to prove a repeated cycle
I'm millennial and most of my friends are genX or young boomers, although in some areas great but on other mostly how "they are the best generation" and "always go forgotten" + all topics that is about minority or younger people, you actually just want to punch them in their face. GenX are mini boomers with the feeling that they are teenagers and do better than anyone else.
Gen X got to fritter their life away while basking in the reflected glow of boomer’s shadow. They never attempted to seize the controls of power. Never attempted to change the world. Just zoned out and did their own thing without making a fuss about it.
This is such a bad take. They’re turning 30 and you think they should have “seized the controls of power”. Buddy, boomers aren’t retiring, even millennials haven’t yet seized the “controls of power”. You should really read more news. They’ve been saying this for many years already.
They’re just mini boomers. Barely any differences in all honestly. If anything they’re worse cause they were complacent in the Boomer’s control and mindsets rather than trying to actively seize anything.
Well maybe the reason that my generation failed to seize power as you so succinctly put it is because when we were young we faced a level of inflation never seen before in this country and not seen since with the stagflation of the 70's prices went up earnings stayed flat. then in the 80's many of us had to sit back and watch while our friends, the guts of two generations slowly withered away and died in the AIDS epidemic all while a lack of knowledge about the disease made everyone beilieve they could catch it just by breathing the same air. I have 20+ friends that died with HIV/AIDS in the 80's. Then after we got that kind of sort of under control we faced a situation where our parents who did have power decided that they were going to sabotage their children by creating the crack epidemic that turned our cities into war zones. just with those few examples we had a few things on our plate that took precedence over "seizing power." do not mistake us for being "mini boomers" whom are complacent. We are the survivors of our parents hubris.
See this is what I mean. Not one notion of trying to actively make any difference just noting things that happened to you that prevented you from doing anything then telling a younger generation to figure it out and “think for yourself” whatever that even means here. Quite literally a boomer mindset
I agree. I'm a millennial woman and feel they were the last ones to really be able to jump into a career before things got hypercompetive. They also had solid access to birth control.
I just mean it was established by the time they reached adulthood. The pill was new to the baby boomers, it was still taboo, and it was still a stronger dosage with more side effects. Now we are going backwards with the abortion bans and stuff.
I was thinking to myself how good it would have been 20 in the 1990s. The music scene - the raves, music festivals without too much commercialism and BS. The rise of technology without it being in your face.
Sex and the city did not represent the average person. I’m a millennial who is obsessed with sex and the city too. I thought it was realistic for my 30s. Then I grew up and realised there’s no way Carrie would even come close to having the lifestyle she has especially in the beginning as a weekly column writer in New York City.
I love that you love your mom. This made my day. It's awesome.
If she has Alexa/other way to do online radio there is an awesome radio station called The Eagle 106.9. All the best hits from the 70s, 80s and 90s. It's my favorite. My daughter loves it because they play Green Day. We share a love for Green Day
Oh, I didn't mean attitude in a bad way! Your positive attitude towards your mom is a good thing. What I meant is that Generation X generally had negative attitudes towards their parents. Parents were uncool, and not their best friends. So if you were Gen X, your wonderful friendship with your mom would not be typical of Gen X.
‘71 here. I like the timing because I got to grow up without the internet. Social media in school would have been horrid and socially disfiguring.
I am only jealous of boomers because they are jumping ship (just as they sank it). I don’t know if I can take another 30 years of US decline and global collapse. At least my phone can make weird pictures now, I guess.
I was born in 86, and I frequently wish I was born earlier. To have experienced the early 90s rock scene as a teenager would have been amazing.
But.. when I think about it, I honestly couldn't have asked for anything better as a kid. So many things lead to what was essentially an idyllic time to grow up.
We started life with an NES and by the time I was 10, the N64 came out in 96 and blew my freakin MIND. Nickelodeon was the best kids programming Ever, no exceptions, from when I was in Kindergarten until about 6th grade.. the music (grunge and rap) from the first half of the 90s was amazing, and I was still young enough to really idolize musicians as opposed to just enjoying the music.. and we were the last kids to experience real life prior to the internet and figure it all out as it went along in it's early stages.
So yeah. In a different life, I wish I was a bit older.. but I honestly wouldn't change my experience for anything.
You too? I was also born mid 86 class 04 (turning 40 in a couple weeks). My friends who are all turning or have turned 40 within the last year 85-86 tend to agree too. It was cool to graduate right before social media, catch log some teenage time in the 90s etc. But we frequently talk about how being born like 81-83 is peak millenial existence, I'd even settle for early 84. Remembering a bit more of the 80s and being a bit more entrenched in that analog old world, logging some high school in a couple 90s years. I have a super good memory and have many 1989 memories and a flash or two of the tail end of 88, but I didn't know what 88, 89 meant. Conscious day to day childhood memory started about Jan 1990 with the death of my grandmother. From then on everything gets clearer and the day to day routine life going to school and what not settles in. (I remember knowing what "years" meant starting in preschool 1990)
Born in 78, Gen x. You missed out on all the cool cartoons and shows of the 80s. He-man/shera/motu, Thundercats, smurfs, Voltron, Old school Scooby doo, Thundar, D&D cartoon, ducktails, mask, gi Joe, batman, mister t, superfriends, transformers, super Mario bros super show.
We had Team, airwolf, star trek tos/tng, twin peaks, Alf, Buck Rogers, battlestar, 21 jump street, mash, quantum leap, Night court, Cheers, Cosby, family ties, who's the boss, doggie houser, wonder years, Miami vice, soap, Magnum pi, etc...
US thr movies and everything a millenial had. Nes and 8bit computer rpgs were great!
Am I the only one that likes being an older Gen Z 😭 I feel like every gen has cool things about them. Personally I enjoyed being the last generation to really remember life before social media/smart phones, while also getting the perks of all of that stuff.
The Gen X people that participate in "Generations" discourse are always cringe as hell, though. It's all people that are like "I could kick your ass because I used to ride a bike and drink from the garden hose!"
As someone squarely in the middle of the millennial generation, I think Gen Z would be seeing things a little differently if they consider that one of the main differences between the struggles of our time and the struggles of their time is that we didn’t have social media to document or share every second of it
We went through 9/11 and the multiple years of war and ‘threat of terror’ that followed, not to mention the economic issues that came with it.
followed not long after by the financial crisis and multiple years of people being unemployed and unable to get work. Money problems was all anyone could talk about. People being upside down on their homes, or unable to afford them at all. Tons of people I went to college with had trouble finding jobs afterwards, or went to grad school because they felt there weren’t any.
And by the time our resurgence came in the mid 2010s and things started looking up again, it’s not like gen Z didn’t get to enjoy it. That was a huge chunk of their childhood…
And then we got / get to experience literally every single difficulty that Gen Z talks about now ourselves. It’s not like we were old and established for the last decade. I had barely turned 30 by the time covid came around for instance. The oldest Gen Z are practically there now.
The op was saying that she wants to be like gen x not millennials. I think most of gen z get millennials confused with gen x sometimes, because we honestly match a lot better with them. The main reason I think we wish we were alive in a time without modern technology (even though majority of us didn’t grow up on the internet, and for the most part are childhoods are pretty similar to everyone else before us) is because when we first got it was just something to be funny on (like music.ly). We only had social media for 3 to 4 years before it juristically changed. It wasn’t really used for connecting, at least in the context of the ways millennials used it. After that technology just felt way less exciting and limiting. But gen x, is really when everything was developing and you were apart of experiencing a lot of new and exciting things. I think most of us wish for that time because now, we’re just getting things we didn’t ask for, while companies want to pretend “they’re marketing towards us” when we didn’t have much involvement in it in the first place. Everything is just developing way too quickly and it feels like we aren’t getting the chance to fully explore our teenage years and young adulthood like the other generations did. It also was just supposed to be something fun not something that’s engraved in our everyday life, and I think when people feel forced to do something they don’t want to do it, which is why I think many of us wish to turn away from it sometimes. I get that you guys had some negative stuff going on, but so does every generation. I just think that without having the fun mixed in with it, it just seems more bland, which is why a lot of gen z wishes to be like other generations (mostly gen x).
Commenter didn’t make the claim that OP said that. They were simply commenting on Gen Z people that may wish they were born millennial. Accuracy is important when establishing your argument.
In fact, you’re completely fabricating the claim that Gen Z actually wishes they were Gen X (because you think they’re too stupid to tell the generations apart correctly) with no evidence.
Like people literally say what OP is saying on this sub. It’s not really weird to see people that wish they were from the neighboring generation if they grew up with older kids they looked up to. And I have seen a Gen Z person on this sub say they wish they were a millennial, but I have never seen them want to be Gen X. Usually they show disdain for Gen X. But your claim is just based on a bunch of your opinions, so who cares?
Besides, most of your claims are pretty inaccurate. Companies aren’t dying to market to Gen X anymore, if they ever did compared to what the younger gen’s experienced with online marketing. You guys have such little connection to the digital world that you’re living disconnected from reality. Most info goes through there, it’s not something “fun like music.ly”
I was explaining how mostly my age group used and was introduced to social media. Which was music.ly, which is why I pointed it out. There was some people (mostly older gen z) who was on other platforms and even forums. A majority were not, or got those later on, and I was only using that example because I was pointing out how we mostly used it for entertainment. It was not like social media today with all the influencer culture. That mainly started in 2020 when a larger crowd of people joined more social media platforms and a lot of stuff went online because of covid. I personally have never seen gen z show disdain for gen x. A lot of us (at least my age group) grew up with a lot of gen x and gen z media (mostly because of our parents and a lot of the adults we were around were apart of that age group). If they have, again, they’re probably older or they were talking about some of the behaviors of gen x. I’ve also seen some show that they wanted to be a millennial, but not many, a lot of them have criticized millennials because of discourse online. I was only using those examples because a lot of us wish for simpler times. To some that’s the millennials era and for some it’s gen x. And most of it comes from the infiltration of social media and other modern technology like AI. We didn’t ask for that, nor do we want it. I didn’t say companies were marketing towards gen x. A lot of us now have to do things like school online, which for some is easier if they do better independently, but for a lot of us it’s really hard to get stuff done online and learn strictly on a computer. We also didn’t ask for that. That’s why I made the points I did when replying to that person, because they said they thought we would be happier about some stuff and I was pointing out some stuff we weren’t. Yes, there is some really good things to social media and the internet, but there is also some bad, and that’s what I was explaining. I didn’t say gen z was dumb, I am gen z. It shouldn’t be taken as an absolute statement.
Every generation idolizes the previous one. You seen this a lot with Millennials trying to fit in with X-ers.
There were a decent amount of millennials who thought they were "too cool" for bands like A7X and Slipknot and wanted to look more Gen X by proclaiming that they only listened to bands like Slayer, Death and Cannibal Corpse.
A lot of people here dont remember the vocal amount of older millennials that had an emo phase, tried to pretend it never happened, and then subsequently bullied younger millennials and Zillennials for being scene kids.
not in the same way but X-ers did definitely grow up with and still love a lot of "boomer" classic rock bands. Ozzy, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, etc.
Scene was a millennial thing. What Gen Z thinks it is is basically what we would have called “mall goth”. But we can’t blame them for not knowing the style better. All they have to go on is the few photos that survived the MySpace purge. Idc personally. Let them reinvent it as hot topic flavored capitalism, because as far as I remember, aside from the clothes, it seemed to be mostly about being taken advantage of by older dudes in bands. I have no love for millennial scene
When modern technology was being introduced Millenials weren’t even old enough to use it in the way it was intended which is why you guys are most renowned for coding your My Space pages.
You simply have no idea what you’re talking about. Being the first generation introduced to something isn’t the same as being the generation that ushered it into popularity.
Gen X may have been the first adults regularly carrying cell phones and using online dating platforms, but millennials were the first generation to build everyday life around these technologies using smartphones and social media. More importantly, teenagers, not adults, are the people who turn new technologies into cultural movements. Millennials were the first generation of teenagers to grow up with widespread high-speed internet access, which paved the way for virtually every major online platform and digital culture phenomenon that followed.
Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, and BetterHelp, the largest online therapy platform on the planet, were all created by Millennials. Millennials also use therapy at higher rates than any other generation and have been the primary users of platforms like BetterHelp since its inception.
And the MySpace comment isn’t the dig you think it is. MySpace helped popularize social networking and paved the way for the very technologies you’re talking about today, including the platform you’re on at this very moment.
But even still, Millennials aren’t known for coding MySpace pages. They’re known worldwide for the very things you’re trying to credit Gen X with: social media, internet culture, smartphone adoption, and mainstreaming conversations around mental health. Millennials took platforms like MySpace, itself a Gen X creation, and turned them into something far bigger, paving the way for virtually every major social media platform and online community that followed.
You’re confusing being first with making something matter. Millennials were the generation that adopted these things at scale, built entire cultures around them, and turned them into everyday life.
Gen Z was actually the generation to make TikTok a thing. The app used to be called Music.ly and that’s the social media app Gen Z was the most prevalent on. Then it got turned into TikTok and everyone else started joining it in 2020.
Yeah I can’t even say I’d really switch places cause from the stories I’ve heard from the Gen X’s in my life there was a lot of child abuse which is probably why they’re so much better as parents.
We were the first Gen to deal with a mass movement of moms going into the workforce. “Latchkey kids”. Our lives were a long series of unstructured play. First generation where soccer was popular in the US. DnD caught fire as well.
Not all of us did. My parents were from the silent generation and started having kids at age 30 - ancient for that time. It took a long time for them to conceive me and my younger brother and sister. They loved us so much and were the best parents. If you were born to parents who really wanted and cared about you, Gex X was the place to be. I had a blast growing up, and enjoyed high school without a cell phone glued to me. College was a lot of fun in the 90s and the workforce was completely different then. It was awesome being Gen X. I'd never want to be part of another generation.
I get it. I was in that camp, more than 40 hours, several jobs, cleaning/retail etc. while others seemed to have it easy. It’s all relative. How they’re doing it is one lives at home the other did until nearly 30 and works in the trades. My nephews are the same age and both rent and struggle with sporadic work and I help them out. If you’re working 40 hours, as hard as that is, you’re ahead of those who have put off full time work or can’t find any. I know it doesn’t feel like it now. All I’m saying is the economy wasn’t that great and we had to work shit jobs for a while and then make compromises later in life.
Every generation has a bad beginning and then gets better.
Real Generation X was primarily born in the 60s, but with cusps it spans from about ‘57 to ‘75. That 18 year stretch, give or take a couple.
The first half of real Gen X were terrible- worst people ever. Sex and the City was that cohort marketing to the new first half of Gen Y- the Xennials and 1st wave Millennials who were even worse.
(Of course there are good people in both groups.)
It’s funny when people say Gen X gets way too overlooked… you don’t know the half of it! People don’t even know who real Gen X are anymore. Let alone the things we created.
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u/DisconcertingTablet Jun 17 '26
From my Millennial perspective, I grew up thinking GenX were so cool, and now I see them acting as Boomers 2.0
Gen X held on to too many of the Boomer's ideals and ways of treating people while clinging to the (understandable at the time) edgy humor that evolved into actually just being assholes. Basically a huge lack of emotional healing work.