Four Turnings

Strauss-Howe Revisited

Owing to the sizable number of new readers who probably aren't up to speed on the updated generational theory popularized on this blog, I thought this post would make a helpful refresher. If you frequent social media and dissident blogs, it's hard to escape the phenomenon of people getting woke…
November 13, 201910 Comments
Marketing Millennials

Marketing Millennials

A comment by author JD Cowan on yesterday's viral post demonstrates the deliberate memory holing of Generation Y in this article from 2001. Here at the turn of the real millennium, trend forecasters and futurists are pondering new ways of cross-marketing to all of America's biggest consumer groups. First there was the…
October 29, 201920 Comments
MTVgeneration.jpg

Hope for Gen Y

A commenter on my recent review of definitive Gen Y high school movie Clueless writes: How tied to is gen y. I mean, I've experienced and seen a lot of failure in my life and others. Is it a trait? By what means can it be overcome if it is? I…
July 26, 201941 Comments
Clueless by Design

Clueless by Design

My dual review of Heathers and Mean Girls elicited multiple requests for me to give my take on Clueless. I'd somehow managed to avoid seeing Clueless all these years. But pleasing my readers is job one, so last night I watched the movie for the first time. Now, I pointed out before how…
July 25, 201934 Comments
Quintessential Boomerism

Quintessential Boomerism

Honestly, I didn't think people who still thought this way were real, but a recent brush with pure quill Boomerism on Twitter opened my eyes to the sobering truth that some people really are this out of touch. Here are expanded versions of both graphs: Dear Baby Boomers, Millennials may…
March 28, 201934 Comments
Generational Astrology

Generational Astrology

If you frequent social media and dissident blogs, it's hard to escape the phenomenon of people getting woke to generational differences. Much is made of Strauss-Howe generational theory. Some claim they can predict where the country's heading based on the age of the people in charge cross-referenced with the general…
July 27, 201847 Comments
Lost Generations

Lost Generations

Identity politics has increasingly become a hot-button issue. The debate typically centers around matters of ethnicity or religion, but an often overlooked yet just as important factor in setting a person's self-concept is generational identification. Inter-generational conflict has become so ingrained in contemporary culture that it's hard to imagine a…
November 17, 201728 Comments
Millennials Don’t Live in America

Millennials Don’t Live in America

We talk about generations as if they're clearly defined categories, but in reality the gaps between generational cohorts are pretty ambiguous. Because I straddle the line between Generation X and the Millennial Generation, and my parents are Baby Boomers, my perspective on current intergenerational conflicts is as close to objective…
August 11, 2015