Ode to Generation Jones: punks, yuppies, but never hippies

I’m a Gen Joneser and never identified with Baby Boomers.

Seconded, R1.

Are they the teens from Dazes and Confused?

Those kids were rising seniors in 1976, so they'd have been born around 1959. Peak Generation Jones.

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To me, a Boomer is someone whose dad served in World War II, then came home, got married, and had a bunch of kids - hence the “baby boom.” My dad was 9 when the war ended. I am definitely not a boomer.

I'm a peak Joneser - born in 58. I never considered myself a Boomer either.

R6 I include the Korean War. I can understand why the younger boomers(Generation Jones) do not identify with the most well known aspects of Boomers, because it doesn't really apply to them. Just as I an elder millennial I do not recognize many of the stereotypical characteristics of millennials which were based on the younger members. But, it doesn't bother me to be classified as a member of the millennial generation.

A number of the punk band members were born as early as the late 40s-early50s, Joey Ramone, Siouxsie, Debbie Harry, et al.

R8, if you were born between '78 and '82, you are an Xennial, where you have traits of both Gen X and Millennials.

R10 Even, with that I just miss it. I'm a child of '83.

You could probably still call yourself an Xennial--1982 is not a hard cut-off.

Looking closer at the Wikipedia article, Xennials have been defined as 77-83 or 85.

I was born in 59 and I always considered those older than me to be Boomers.

Gen Jones here too. Born in '59. I liked all the music from the 60's including hippy style stuff and British Invasion all through the punk era and beyond. Although I've been called Boomer a few times in joking and derogatory terms, I've never felt to be one though. And that has to do with the changing economic opportunities that was very evident after graduating high school.

[quote]Are they the teens from Dazes and Confused?

Yes. And also, "That '70s Show"

How delicious!

Born in 63. I have zero relatable with Boomers. They were adults when I was a kid. Enough said.

I was born in '58, and I've always resented being called a "Boomer." I got none of the perqs that generation got and, while I had some of the "fun," (i.e. sex, drugs, and rock and roll) as a precocious young teen, I was also a cutting edge "women's libber" and marched with my college age friends and mentors whom I'd met at NOW meetings. Plus I was out of the closet in 1972 (freshman in HS in a small town in PA) and marched in gay pride parades in major cities back in the old days (I swear, someday I'm gonna sell that one T-shirt for real $). So I did a lot of the "Boomer" work on the rights we enjoy today, but missed out on a lot of the glory.

Oh well.

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The early Boomers were of age in the late 60s...the hippies and Flower Children. They were in their late teens and upward in their 20s. Anyone born in the late 50s would have been too young for that wave....age 9/ 10 to just starting puberty. They came of age in the mid to late 70s and rode the Punk and Disco wave. I was born in 1954, so the cusp of boomer, Generation Jones. I was 12/13 when the Summer of Love in '67 began. Even I was too young, though some my age ran away to San Francisco at that time.

What gets really interesting is that growing up, in the rural South, it wasn't that uncommon to get married at 16 and to start having babies. So I can think of several groups of people where technically they and their parents are in the same named generation. It is less likely now but I do know one person where she and her eldest child are both labeled millennial, because she was born in 1981 and had her child in 1996, at age 15.

Same with Gen Y/Millennials. Some people try to lump those early years in with Gen X but that's not correct.

That's SO CRAZY!!! When does it stop???

sexy!

You people may call yourselves whatever you choose, of course, while the rest of us just refer to you as trash, as we always have.

r13 I was born in late 76 and identify as Xennial.

I always thought we were late Boomers. Our older brothers and sisters were Hippy/Viet Nam, but we took their pot and played their records

I'm kind of over these generational labels, soon every year will be a category

Generation Jones are the Xennials of their day.

I've heard Gen Jones referred to as the OG Xers.

[Quote] I always thought we were late Boomers. Our older brothers and sisters were Hippy/Viet Nam

No. You must have has a large gap between siblings.

Madonna is Generation Jones.

@r31, I wish I understood what you said

- r28

I was born at the end of 1964, technically the end of the Baby Boomer generation. But I don't consider myself a Boomer. My life experience was more early Gen X than Boomer. Both of my parents worked. I usually came home from school to an empty house. My childhood years were TV-centric, but we still spent most of our downtime outside. My teen years were disco/punk/early Reagan era and my college years were the MTV years. I started my career and my long term relationship (still together for 30 years) in the 90s.

This generational stuff makes for interesting conversation, but I have no idea what the differences are between X, Y, Z, Millennial, etc.

My parents are this generation and I have to say they are nothing like boomers.

I grew up in a post WWII suburb with hundreds of kids born from WWII vets between 1950-1965. We were all the same, some a little older, some a little younger, but there was a HUGE difference between us and our parents. The cultural shift that occurred in this country after WWII was tremendous. People born after WWII were nothing like people born before WWII

OG Gen X is 1965-1976 r30. This was the original (and correct) definition of Gen X.

These things are nearly all made up marketing demographics.

There have been rich and poor, conservative and liberal, pro-social and pro-individualist types in all of these generations.

You're an anti vax loon r38. You clearly don't know what correct means.

@r26, careful, smartass, we have all the money and with that attitude, Missy, you won't be getting any of it 😏

Over the years, the Baby Boom end year became further and further into the '60s.

When did everyone get lazy?

This is the first time I've heard of Generation Jones...to be honest.

^ Me either, I was always just a "Boomer" until this, now suddenly I'm not. I always thought my parents were part of the "Greatest Generation", now I'm hearing even that's been divided into something called the silent or quiet generation... I can't keep up

Generation Jones sounds like an adventurer always getting into tight spots... fighting off the snakes in a cave.

I think "Generation Jones " is a`way for some Boomers to distance themselves from other Boomers who everyone seems to enjoy hating

I was born in 1962 and have two older sisters who are definitely Baby Boomers. I was the big surprise baby for parents who were 35 and 40 when I was born.

Unlike my sisters, I do not know where I was when JFK was shot. I have no memory of the civil rights movement. I do not have friends who went to Vietnam or Woodstock. Never had a draft card to burn. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King are historical figures - they died when I was 7 years old. And on and on and on.

My earliest social/political memories are (in no particular order): the fall of Saigon - the Saturday night massacre during Nixon administration the Munich Olympics when Palestinians murdered Israeli athletes - hijacked planes and seeing them stranded on runways. And the FIRST oil crisis - signs at stations saying "NO GAS" and such.

Definitely no a Baby Boomer... and I'm okay with that, I think they've ruined a lot and have long been super impressed with themselves.

^ What exactly did Boomers ruin for you, besides ending Viet Nam, starting Gay and Women's rights and lowering the voting age?

You are all wrong! We are the Basketball Jones generation:

Basketball Jones I got a Basketball Jones I got a Basketball Jones, oh baby Oh, oh Hey, that's Barry White (An obsession, a burning desire) Barry, you want some chicken (The undeniable passion) Aw, you that singin' stuff (The love, of someone are some thing) You know you want some chicken (Yes, he was a victim of a Basketball Jones) In fact, I was the baddest dribbler in the whole world (Then one day, his mother bought him a basketball) And I love that basketball I took that basketball everywhere I went You know what that basketball was like a basketball to me Come on, you cheerleaders

"—Hated that song. "

We all did 😏

What’s the point of hyper-specifying generations? In the eyes of current young people, everyone born before 1990 is a Boomer.

^ That's why I said every year will become it's own generation, where those born the year before your birth caused all of your problems and those born the year after screwed up all your hard work

r53 So Millenials are Boomers lol.

r3 I always thought Dazed and Confused had very X vibes, and the age group and time period depicted was the birth of Gen X culture.

[quote]Madonna is Generation Jones.

Madonna is definitely associated with Gen X pop culture more than any other.

While it can be fun to tease apart age groups and map them to the pop culture of the time, it doesn't account for nuance. So there's no need to debate it all or be concerned if an invented categorization doesn't feel relevant to you. It's all generalization with ample room for outliers.

Strauss and Howe, who popularized the idea of classifying everyone by generation and wrote "13th Gen" have Gen X starting in 1961, the theory being that kids born after that were too young to remember the Kennedy assassination. But too easy to default to 64, the year birth rates dropped.

I have found that, whatever the generation, birth order and family dynamics play a big role.

I was born in 85 and I am the oldest out of my cousins, and my experiences map to what is traditionally attributed to Millennials.

I have friends my age or a year or two older, who are the youngest and they identify more with younger Xers because their siblings were Xers

The whole thing is sort of foolish though, because it omits social class

Blue collar Boomers were coming home from Vietnam in 1967, getting married and having kids, they were grandparents by the late 80s. Their more affluent peers didn't start having kids until the early-mid 80s, had been hippies, disco people, yuppies prior.

I can't wait until all this fascinating theory is fully incorporated into the science of astrology. We will then know SO MUCH MORE about everyone!!

"Blue collar Boomers were coming home from Vietnam in 1967"

Vietnam dragged on until 1973

A lot of the hyper-segmentation is driven by the market. Young people are relentless consumers and will even mindlessly drive themselves into debt in order to have the latest of the latest. The market thus puts the current youngest generation onto a pedestal as being the coolest, brightest generation ever. Older generations who’ve grown up believing they were the anointed ones, start feeling left out and will also start spending their money on the latest fashions and gadgets in order to keep up with the latest “coolest generation ever.”

In reality, beyond superficial fashions, generations don’t really differ much from one another, when it comes to norms and values.

LOL. Yes R61, but American soldiers didn't serve for the entire length of the war. They were drafted, or enlisted served a tour and then were sent home

1967 was the height of Vietnam, more men were going in then coming out. There was no mini-baby boom in 1967

[QUOTE] This is the first time I've heard of Generation Jones...to be honest.

Well because it's not really a thing. It never caught on with the public and never will. However a few people on this forum keep trying to make it a thing because they don't like being tagged as boomers.

We shouldn't self identify as these generations.

It's very much like claiming you are a specific model in a car factory. Another "lying by oversimplifying".

People are way too malleable and varied. Even within a family of siblings in the same generation, the types are too different for this kind of classification.

I never liked those early '80s punk people. They were the biggest bunch of followers and elitists. They looked down on other forms of music.

I just hate everyone.

[Quote] I think "Generation Jones " is a`way for some Boomers to distance themselves from other Boomers who everyone seems to enjoy hating

Makes sense but it was documented in the 1970's. Well before Boomer hate.

I'm right near the end of "Generation Jones" and I can relate to a lot of this. The whole hippy thing was history, done and dusted by the time I hit my teens, and people were becoming a lot more realistic - and cynical

So no generations should exist, r70?

I always thought of Obama as the 1st GenX president.

r70 I agree with everything you wrote 100%, but it's still fun to wax philosophical about this subject.

Excellent comment, R70.

Exactly so, but I wasn't going to waste the energy pecking my phone to explain to people who seem to desire more reasons to detest each other.

[quote]This is the first time I've heard of Generation Jones...to be honest.

I head the germ for the first time many years ago. It's not some big mainstream thing, but sociologist and demographers have been using it forever.

I forgot the most important demographic in my diatribe against age based mythology:

Level of education. 54% of American adults have a literacy below a 6th grade level. I think we’ve seen the proof of that here any number of times.

[quote]Dazed and Confused

Linklater is a Joneser.

@r69, "Makes sense but it was documented in the 1970's. Well before Boomer hate. "

I'd like to read your documents, because I never heard of it until today and I've been around since the 50s

Dazed and Confused was made for a Gen X audience, which also explains some of its viewpoint.

I was born in 62 and I don't care if I'm a baby boomer. DL cunts being ageist again, as usual...

r80 Gen Xers were peak media consumers and the 70's were the newly minted retro nostalgia. Also Linklater no doubt based it on his own youth / coming of age.

They’re just jonesing for attention.

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Douglas Coupland (a.k.a. the granddaddy of Generation X) is a Joneser.

Coupland is widely credited with coining the term 'Generation X.'

He is also one cool as fuck eldergay.

^ That's odd that in all his writings about generational identity he doesn't seem to have mentioned "Generation Jones" 🤔

"Generation X

From 1989 to 1990, Coupland lived in the Mojave Desert working on a handbook about the birth cohort that *followed the baby boom*"

He, himself, describes the generation following the "baby boom" as "Generation X".

Perhaps you should let him know he's NOT a "Boomer", but a "Joneser"😏

[quote]Perhaps you should let him know he's NOT a "Boomer", but a "Joneser"

He knows! He claims X, not Boomer.

“My book ‘Generation X’ was about the fringe of Generation Jones which became the mainstream of Generation X. There is a generation between the Boomers and Xers, and ‘Generation Jones’ – what a great name for it!” Douglas Coupland, Author, “Generation X”

^ Ok, so he decided he's not the Boomer that he is. Not everyone agrees...

What years are the generations?

Here are the birth years for each generation:

Gen Z, iGen, or Centennials: Born 1996 – 2015.

Millennials or Gen Y: Born 1977 – 1995.

Generation X: Born 1965 – 1976.

Baby Boomers: Born 1946 – 1964.

Traditionalists or Silent Generation: Born 1945 and before.

Why do I get the feeling that most DLers are "Gen Jones"? Because the only place I see people keep trying to make this meme happen is here.

Someone born in 1959 is still old enough for disco, prog rock and the horrible stuff that killed am radio. They would have listened to a lot of that stuff and probably liked it. Punk was pretty underground in the 70s and more working class. Eventually, it became art students from rich households who screamed a lot.

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I hate "generation" borders. I was born in 1980. I am not an Xer. And not a Millennial. I know we're either called Gen Y or Xennial, but that never felt correct either.

Oh well.

Boomers ruined everything anyway.

My parents fit in this group perfectly. I think they have more of a Gen X outlook than Boomer.

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^ Why do you want to keep reviving this thread? It just causes division and discord, but I guess it's the only attention you get 😏

The kids in “The Ice Storm” were Generation Jones.

I'm a 55er, same year as the greatest Chevy ever built 😀

People constantly confuse the statistical "baby boom" which ended around 1965 with cultural "Baby Boomers" who tend to be those born in the 10 - 12 years after the war; once you get to folks born from 1960 - 65 they usually had a very different cultural experience growing up than people born 1945 - 55. This is just common sense, no matter what names you give the cohorts.

^ The world according to you 🙄

“Echo Boomer” was once a thing too.

[quote]Why do I get the feeling that most DLers are "Gen Jones"? Because the only place I see people keep trying to make this meme happen is here.

DL seems to skew Younger Boomers ("Generation Jones")/older Gen Xers. The countless threads and posts about being teens in the 70s and young adults in the 80s etc.

r95, out of the 6 replies since yours 3 of them are yours. I can do as I please. No one is getting hurt. Please eat shit, cunt.

I'm definitively Generation Jones (born in March 1960), but oddly I identify with the Baby Boomers far more than with Generation X. Probably because my sisters were born in 1946 and 1956, and I grew up with their culture. The oldest sister attended the Beatles' concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1965.

@r102 is from Generation Asshole 1902-1911 Fuck off and eat shit you're already dead

I'm a later Gen Xer and everybody I've ever known who was born in the late 70s identifies as Gen X. They are offended if you think they're Millennials.

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