OK, I've figured out how to settle the Gen X vs Millennial cut off:
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OK, I've figured out how to settle the Gen X vs Millennial cut off:
What was the first boy band you clearly remember while they were popular?
If it's Backstreet, NSYNC, etc, you're clearly a millennial.
If it's New Kids on the Block or earlier, you're Gen X.
Pretty sure this is as objective as it's possibly going to get and better criteria than Pew going back and forth between 80 and 84.
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@vwbusguy It pisses me off that people think Gen X is only a 15 year period, when every other generation gets 20 or more.
I was born in 1983, and I remember New Kids on the Block being chart-toppers, I remember having to push to even get access to a computer at school (Apple IIe), I remember VHF and UHF dials on the TV, still regularly seeing rotary phones, carrying quarters for the pay phone, being kicked out of the house until dark and expected to play outside unsupervised.
And remember that if you grew up rural, culturally you'd be a few years behind back then because communication was slower -- no social media homogenizing culture worldwide.
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@mos_8502 @vwbusguy yes! 1983 also. I guess the idea is that we did have Google and cell phones in high school. But I feel like my childhood was more like my parents than my sister-in-law born in 1990. Computers were in labs at school and businesses, not at home.
We also grew up with the best music.
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@laydros @mos_8502 I was lucky enough to have computers at home, but not the internet or cable/satellite TV until middle/high school and even then, internet was a very niche thing, before social media. My parents also had an early car phone.
I still have my first family computer - an Osborne One. I have papers I wrote on it for school in the 1990s that still load up from floppy in Wordstar on it, too!