Are you a member of Generation Jones?

[quote] …consider this moniker to describe your age group

No. Mind your own business.

1955 -- in the cusp between the Boomers and the Jonsers

Oh, fuck this American-centric shit and get on with already. Enough categorizing. It’s so narcissistic and akin to announcing your pronouns. You’re not special, you’re not interesting. No one gives a shit about your defined generation.

r3 everyone is tribalistic.

I agree the generation categories are overblown but clearly people grow up in changing cultures and different influences and reference points that connect them. Arguing that there is no such thing as a generation and no validity to generalizations about them is going too far.

I think there is something to the late boomers growing up in a different environment. My older sister was born in 1950, my younger in 1962. They had NOTHING in common yet they are both boomers? Those born in the 60s weren't fighting/protesting the Viet Nam war, drugs weren't so new and exciting, the Brady Bunch was a lifestyle, and jobs were a good thing, foreshadowing Gen X. Also, late baby boomers grew up in greater prosperity--there is actual evidence for that. Less political turmoil, more money, I was fucking jealous of my little sister.

I'm a member of Grace Jones.

The American experience is too complex and diverse to fit into these smug generational categories.

Yes. I get categorized among the Boomers but I was in kindergarten when Woodstock happened and don't even remember it. Hippies made me roll my eyes when I was old enough to understand who they were. I could probably quote every episode of The Brady Bunch and punk/new wave was the first modern music I liked.

1. DLers are obsessed with generations in a way that I have never encountered in the real world. They act as if each generation were a nationality or ethnic group, though maybe in the gay worlds they inhabit it seems that way?

2. This Gen Jones thing crops up on DL a couple of times a year. Unsurprising given that most DLers are in that age cohort.

3. It seems likely that the definition that Strauss and Howe, who came up with the notion of Gen X are more accurate in starting Gen X in 1961--if I remember back to the sociology class I took in college, their theory was that kids born in 1961 were too young to remember the Kennedy assassination. (Same way Zoomers are said to be born in 1998 (1997?) and on, as they are too young to remember 9/11)

4. Which generation you identify with seems closely tied to your birth order in your greater family, e.g., if you were born in 1980 and you were the oldest of all your siblings and cousins, you probably identify more with Millennials. But if you were the youngest, you probably identify more with Gen X.

I missed being a Millennial but a few months. I don't like the hard cut off date. Where is my special generation? I don't feel like I belong to the Gen X, even if I technically am one!

most people generally hate labels and always claim themselves to not like the other _____

but commonalities are present among many groups...

to be against such things is to be an ":all lives matter" or "I'm part of the human race" type of person... which are generally viewed as smug, virtue signaling, pretentious assholes by everyone else.

[quote]DLers are obsessed with generations in a way that I have never encountered in the real world.

A lot of it is flat out narcissism. I’m not part of this generation because they’re old. I’m in a “Xennial”. No. Neil Howe doesn’t believe in “Gen Jones” or “Xennials”, and I trust him.

r12 narcissism doesn't hold much esteem for group identity.

next you'll be arguing both sides and that trying to say there's no difference between identifying as a republican or democrat!

r12 is projecting.

I refuse to give up 1965 as the starting point for Gen X, because that was when RDJ was born and he self-identifies as Gen X and that's good enough for me.

Eva Green,1980, also identifies as Gen X, and that is also good enough for me.

[quote]narcissism doesn't hold much esteem for group identity.

On Datalounge?

[quote]is projecting.

I’m a proud Gen X.

G-Jones are not as political. They didn't have to fight in Vietnam.

[Quote] G-Jones are not as political. They didn't have to fight in Vietnam.

Correct because they were children then. That's the difference with Boomers and G.Jones.

[quote]They didn't have to fight in Vietnam.

Those were the G.I. Jones.

I think Gen X started around 1961/1962 and ended around 1976/1977. Didn’t the guy who wrote the generations book define these as the parameters?

I would not consider, for example, Obama, Jodie Foster, Keanu Reeves or Adam Yauch/MCA to be anything besides Gen X, yet they were all born before 1965.

He did indeed R21, or rather they- as per R9, there were two authors, Strauss and Howe

The 1965 number is when the actual Baby Boom ended, but their argument was that was not an accurate generational marker.

The Baby Boom was for sure more of a cultural thing than an actual date cut-off, I'd say being old enough to vividly remember JFK being killed is a good marker. I'm a solidly a millennial (born 1987, and my parents are inarguable boomers) and it makes sense there's not a lot of people on DL my age. One example is how DL views our beloved Lens Dunham. She inspires so much hate on this board, but I love her. She nailed our generation (or a certain subgroup of it that I am well acquainted with) to a T with her work.

I've observed there are more boomers on DL than there are Gen Xers, if you remove the "Jones" semantics. Though the Facts of Life threads might argue otherwise, lol.

[Quote] I'd say being old enough to vividly remember JFK being killed is a good marker.

Then 1960 dob should be the oldest Gen X

Strauss and Howe had it at 1961 R25 - I forget the reason they thought kids born in 1960 would remember the JFK assassination...

Generation Jones = 1980s music

[quote]I'd say being old enough to vividly remember JFK being killed is a good marker.

Then being old enough to remember Judy Garland's death should be a good marker for the Gengergaytion Joneses.

[Quote] I forget the reason they thought kids born in 1960 would remember the JFK assassination...

No one remembers shit when they are 3 years old.

.........

Bump!

[quote]No one remembers shit when they are 3 years old.

I can vividly remember snatches of my pre-school days with Mrs. Simmons. Her appearance and the size and layout of our schoolroom off her carport. And my time in church nursery school with Mrs. Till. I was 3 1/2 with pre-school and 3 with nursery.

Which generation thinks naming generations is stupid? That's the generation to which I belong.

Yes - b. 1961, like Obama and Clooney. But to be honest, I probably have qualities of boomer and Gen-X. I have been very successful professionally but relationships are more difficult, due to having horrible parents.

Sexy!

I think the Watergate generations deserves its own place. We are just old enough to remember the Kennedy assassination and survived Watergate. I am not surprised that we are folded in between the Boomers and Generation X. We are the perpetual middle child.

I was born the same year as the Kennedy assassination so no I don’t remember. I’ll bet most 5 years at the time don’t remember either. Not a boomer if you have zero recollection of that time.#notaboomer

R37, I was 4 at the time, but the reason I remember is because my parents woke me up to watch it. Granted, I probably remember being woken up to watch TV (something that never happened in our house) more than anything else. I remember Oswald being shot more clearly.

Another Jones here. And there was a huge shift culturally between the kids older than I who identified with even older siblings and the ones younger than I

...........

I'm a Jones as well. I graduated in 1976. Don't remember Kennedy being shot, but I remember the moon landing. That's the thing my mother woke me up to see.

GJ bump!

Generation Jones is the same shit as posting pronouns in bio. You ain’t special. No one cares.

Everyone needs to find a clique these days. Now we’re making up fake generations within generations.

My sister was born in 1946 and I was born in 1960. Her teen years were doo wop music, she was a young mom in the late 1960s. Think American Graffiti age.

I don’t remember the Kennedy assassination, grew up with The Beatles and was too young for the hippie thing. I was a teen in the disco era. Those are some really different eras.

I’m 3 years younger than my sister but I feel like a different generation. She and her friends had no plans beyond high school except get married, have kids. She didn’t even think she’d need a job. “We’ll get married and live near each other. We’ll hang out every day and our kids will grow up together!”

Boys, boys, boys was all they cared about because their future was all wrapped up in whether or not they had a man. To not have a boyfriend was the worst thing in the world to them. A girl without a boyfriend was a wisecracking sidekick. She was the Rosie O’Donnell character in Sleepless in Seattle.

Never understood why, when, or how Gen X shifted from 1961 to 1965.

If that had not occurred, I don't think there would have been a need to invent "Generation Jones."

I also thought the title was coined by author Douglas Coupland, not Strauss-Howe.

Yes I am.

Yes, born in 1960, and very much a solid Generation Jones guy. Identify with more of the cultural interests of the Baby Boomers more than Gen Xers though.

delish!

So, the point of this thread was not so much to discuss so-called 'Generation Jones' and its characteristics, as to attempt to move the 'Generation X' cohort earlier. Hmm?

'Generation Jones' is characterized as being more likely to have been conservative (voting for Dubya and Trump, for instance). That's not me. I don't identify with the 'Jones' cohort.

[quote]R9: DLers are obsessed with generations in a way that I have never encountered in the real world. They act as if each generation were a nationality or ethnic group, though maybe in the gay worlds they inhabit it seems that way?

It sometimes seems as if someone is data mining from DL, repeatedly introducing this subject. DLers, for their part, are perfectly willing to discuss themselves every time the generations come up.

^ I thought the exact opposite. Obama is a Jones.

r47 Douglas Coupland, the daddy of Gen X, was a Joneser.

Gen Jones are the OG X'ers.

I was born in Nov., '62; boomers have always seemed damn near ancient and Gen X has always seemed a helluva lot younger.

The age range is still too wide, and it makes the baby boomer range too short.

Generations are blurry. There are no clear lines.