Reader Rudolph Harrier and author JD Cowan unearth more evidence that Generation Y is a separate cohort from the later Millennials.
Consider some data points from a 2006 article published in the Oberlin Review:
College admissions offices, employers and marketing companies are going into a frenzy over Generation Y, a cohort of individuals characterized as Generation X on steroids. Generation Y includes those born between the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1990s, although some experts believe these dates to be debatable.
This blog defines Gen Y’s birth years as 1979-1989. But the Oberlin dating is close enough, considering that 2006 was too early to see how rapid the rate of cultural change would be, and thus the necessity of shortening generations to ten years.
Now consider what Oberlin considers defining Gen Y ephemera.
Some demographers view the 1986 Challenger explosion and the fall of the Berlin Wall as the first major events that older Generation Yers will remember, separating them from Generation X. The fall of the Soviet Union and the First Gulf War serves as the midpoint and the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the endpoint. The current Iraq War is the war this generation will likely identify with along with other recent occurrences such as Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Columbine High School shooting.
The current demographic model defines Millennials as those born between 1981 and 1996. That gives a median birth year of 1988. In relation to the milestone events above, the average Millennial according to the current wisdom wouldn’t have been born at the time of the Challenger disaster. He would have been 1 when the Berlin Wall fell and 3 at the start of the first Gulf War.
These reference points illustrate how the media and academia have moved the generational goal posts over the years. All of those events occurred too late to have a formative effect on the average Millennial by the current definition.
Other important events include the death of Princess Diana, the return of Hong Kong to China, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Y2K, anthrax scares, the SARS epidemic and the avian flu.
Again, ask a self-identified Millennial if he remembers any of these news stories, and nine times out of ten, you’ll get a blank stare.
Contra the Current Year dating, Rudolph Harrier applies my generational model to the Oberlin touchstones:
Let’s consider the defining events given in the article, using the average birth years of 1984 and 1995:
-Challenger explosion: Gen Y 2, Millennial not born
-Fall of the Soviet Union: Gen Y about 5 or 6, depending on how you count it, Millennial not born. Gulf War is about the same.
-OJ Simpson Trial: Gen Y 11, Millennial just born
-Death of Princess Diana: Gen Y 13, Millennial 2
-Bill Clinton Impeachment: Gen Y 14, Millennial 3
-Columbine: Gen Y 15, Millennial 4
-Y2K: Gen Y 16, Millennial 5With the exception of the Challenger explosion (which the article says is something that would only be remembered by older members of Generation Y) all of these are events which would have shaped the childhood of someone born in 1984. But for someone born in 1995 only Y2K and maybe Columbine would have made any impact at all.
The discussion of pop culture tells a similar tale. For example, it stresses AOL instant messenger as a major means of communication. But AIM flourished around 1997-2003. For someone born in 1984 that would mean ages 13-19 which does make sense for a time to be online. But for the person born in 1995 it would correspond to 2-8, meaning that he would have only seen the very tail end and probably would have been using Skype instead. Similarly techno(i.e. big beat and EDM) is cited as a big part of musical culture. But both of those genres went into severe decline by the early 2000’s. Likewise the last kid’s show mentioned is Pokémon, which aired in the US in 1998 (13 for Gen Y, 3 for millennial.)
It’s also said that in 2006 “the younger members of Gen Y are getting ready to ship off to college” which only makes sense if Gen Y ends at latest around 1991 or so.
Every time I stumble across an article about Gen Y from pre-2010 it always lines up with your description and not the modern one. I had similar experiences with “Gen Jones.” To be honest, at first I thought you made up the name in order to fit another “lost generation” into the scheme. That is, until I happened to find a message board thread from about 2003 where the people were eagerly talking about Gen Jones and how it is clearly different from being a Baby Boomer.
The evidence keeps stacking up. Generation Y, not the later-born Millennials, followed Generation X. All three were understood as separate cohorts until revisionist demographers and Madison Avenue hucksters found it more expedient from a marketing perspective to memory hole Gen Y.
To immerse yourself in a thrilling read informed by the cultural influences that shaped Gen Y’s youth, check out my award-winning Soul Cycle.
The ‘Little Brother’ Cultural Generations are clear if you look for them, though others will at times vehemently deny and decry them. Excellent find to keep the knowledge from being lost, Rudolph.
Strong work, Brian!
BTW, “Generation Y” is superb! You, JD, and David assembled a great bit of work! Compact and cogent!
Many thanks!
Thanks for reading!
As one born in 1988, the Oberlin observations nailed it. I vividly remember OJ Simpson and all the subsequent big event as examples from my childhood. Millennials born 1995 and after barely remember 9/11.
Discovering “Generation Jones” has been arguably even more helpful than Gen Y. My parents, born about 1960, are solidly within this generation. I’ve never thought the typical Baby Boomer characteristics fit them – they were in elementary school when all the cultural revolution stuff was going on. They benefitted from most of the same material prosperity as Boomers, at least in their youth, but don’t seem to have the same negative character attributes. The real boomers are 5-10 years older than them.
You’ve mentioned several times that the label/concept of Gen Y was memory-holed for purposes of marketing. For the social idiots like me in the audience, could you elucidate how you came to that conclusion, give examples of the marketing that deliberately targeted mixed/blurred generations, and opine on why exactly the Mammon Mob would think it a good idea to attempt to erase Yers (a cohort you’ve repeatedly characterized as the most naive and toy/nostalgia obsessed of the living age groups) in favor of Gen X and Millennials (the two most misanthropic, anti-social, predecessor-despising, and impoverished/unproductive cohorts, though for vastly different reasons and ways) as paypigs? Are Xers and Millenials just smokescreens to pretend that Yers were older then and are younger now than they actually are, so that ads aimed at them specifically can be played in age-inappropriate spaces without anyone being able to call them out on it? Only way that makes sense to me. If you already wrote out your thought processes on this subject, go ahead and just post links and tell me I need to pay better attention, I’d deserve it.
The marketers’ rationale is in an article JD found that’s cited in one of the linked posts above. Here’s the archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20190426133611/https://adage.com/article/news/generation/55731
In short, Gen Y aged out of the child/young teen demographic. And Millennials are a larger cohort with more money to spend.
They didn’t yet realize that, from Gen Y on, adolescence had solidified into the default human condition.
Would it be accurate to say that Gen Y has a naĂŻve sense that everything would be better if we could all just mind our own business and go along to get along? Even the more conservative Gen Y’ers have this, “you do you, just don’t force it on me” and “the government should stay out of it” mentality.
Millennials seem to be the ones most on board with the “tear it down” mentality and ushering in a nanny state to forcibly set things right.
The reactionary post-Trump Christian nationalism seems to have resonated amongst young Gen Z men such as Nick Fuentes, John Doyle, Wurzelroot and Kai Clips.
It’s telling to see how even conservative Gen Y’rs will wince and look over both shoulders when they hear the irreverent humor of Fuentes.
In my personal experience that is an accurate description of Gen Y politics in their formative years. The conservative side was full of “the government should be as small as possible” often going into full blown lolbertarianism, while the leftist side was based around “who is the government to tell me to not smoke pot/marry another guy/kill my baby?”
But a lot of Gen Y is not like that now. The reason for this is that the real question for a Gen Y is whether or not he managed to escape the Pop Cult. A leftist Gen Y who fell into the pop cult will be 100% on board with government interference in everything, because that’s what his entertainment tells him to do. He differs from the Millennial in that he will dress it up with appeals to pop culture, ex. encouraging COVID mandates while wearing a mask with a 90’s cartoon X-Men character on it which says “real heroes wear masks.” A millennial will just say that anyone who doesn’t wear a mask is an idiotic bigot who deserves to die without dressing it up (and if the millennial does make a pop culture reference it will almost certainly be to Harry Potter.)
On the right you also have people in Gen Y who aren’t exactly thrilled with interfering in personal lives, but who realize that it is necessary to do this because the left isn’t going to remain hands off and there isn’t an effective way to protect the idea of “leave me alone” for its own sake.
About the only people in Gen Y who still believe the “can’t we all just do our own thing” mentality are the ones who are completely engulfed in the Pop Cult but have managed to stay politically neutral. The “if they’d just get the politics out of Star Wars/Superheroes/Star Trek, etc. they’d be good again” group. But their ambitions are literally just “I wish people would leave me alone so I could watch TV, play video games and do nothing for society.”
From my experience, Ys today who are silent on the madness are willingly plugging their ears and looking away, hoping it all just vanishes and stopes. They know what is happening but they lack either the courage or capability to face it. You can pray for them, but it is their own will that prevents full acceptance of the way things are today.
The ones who accept it wholeheartedly are lost. Short of divine intervention, they are deep into the bog and willingly let themselves sink in, thinking it is raising them up.
As an example:
https://twitter.com/Pearson252/status/1502321631708037125
This is the typical response of a Gen Y pop cultist. Nonsensical, unearned arrogance due to mastery of pop cult knowledge, and mindless obedience to the cause.
You can’t do anything for these types. They just wish to consume and will support any half-baked explanation that always them to slurp up their soma in peace.
They are going to get steamrolled into whichever group wins overall, whether they complain or not about the winner doesn’t matter. Whichever group allows them to continue consuming is the one they will follow.
Fuentes was born in 1998. Though he’s enamored of the Zoomer zeitgeist, he’s a Millennial. The defining “Tear it down!” spirit comes through when you look at his actual political program. He has said multiple times that he aims to destroy the Republican party. He is captivated by post-Ground Zero entertainment and shows open disdain for fiction published before 1980.
That’s not entirely a knock against him. Remember that the Millennials were supposed to be a hero generation. Fuentes is the embodiment of Millennial tendencies dedicated to the good. I pray for a thousand more like him.
“A leftist Gen Y who fell into the pop cult will be 100% on board with government interference in everything, because that’s what his entertainment tells him to do.”
That…is depressingly accurate.
Same goes for the “STAR WARS CIVIL WAR?! Kathleen Kennedy to be fired any day now!” types.
Stop spamming, Anti-Rationalist. If people want to respond to your comments on other posts, they will.
Tangentially related, a zoomer interviews Gen Y Mister Metokur: https://cozy.tv/michaelalberto/replays/2022-03-11_2
Really emphasizes that generation gap and how much has changed since the ’00s.
Kids today don’t even know about Linkin Park Naruto AMVs *shakes head*
On a more serious note, props to Michael Alberto for digging up so much Jim lore. Even I didn’t know about him impersonating Pete Hines and making a school shooter video game.
It’s sad that Jim is retiring. Someone needs to archive all of his exploits before they’re lost forever.
This is completely off topic and I don’t think it’s significant, but it is interesting:
Fuentes means springs in Spanish. Hot spring in French is thermale. In some languages, “th” sounds like “f”, for instance Feodor Dostoevsky vs. Theodore Dostoevsky.
What does thermale sound like? Flamel
So, the name Nick Fuentes is vaguely simlar to Nicholas Flamel.
NLR
A minor correction the Greek ph= f in the Romance languages except for French. The Greek th= t again for the French but they pronounce it as /t/ like the rest of the Romance languages
xavier
Thanks for the correction. It’s more of a stretch than I had thought.
This train of thought came about because I was thinking about how to modify alchemist’s names into similar sounding modern names. In the course of that, though I couldn’t find anything about the origin of the name Flamel.
Brian, a minor housekeeping issue: the RSS feed for your blog (https://brianniemeier.com/feed/) redirects to https://follow.it/kairos-by-brian-niemeier, which only updates infrequently. It currently shows your last post as *The Sorcerer’s Harem* from a week ago. I don’t know what the problem is, but it makes it difficult to follow your posts on a regular basis this way. I thought you’d like to know. Thanks.
That’s actually an improvement. It hadn’t been updating at all. We have no idea what’s causing the problem.
This video may or may not provide some assistance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BptMggipJFI
I apologize if this is a boomer moment, because I’ve never set up an RSS feed.
Thank you. I have Boomer tech, so I will check this video out.