As an elder Millennial, I’m left wondering WTF I missed in 2006?!? All the girls in high school were wearing Doc Martins, turtle necks, and low-cut jeans while sporting streaky highlights in their hair, and all of the girls in college were wearing Uggs and puffy coats with faux-fur hoods. There was none of… Whatever this is.
This is the “scene kid” aesthetic that was popular in the mid aughts. They barely made the millennial cutoff as far as I’m concerned and they’re not very representative of our generation as a whole.
Scene kids was a period after goths and before hipsters. It peaked before Myspace was taken over by Facebook. So like 2007-2009. By the time most of them moved on to college, hipsters became a thing and a lot of them grew into that or conformed in some way.
Yeah, it’s amazing how quickly it came and went. By the time I graduated highschool in 10 it was already falling out of fashion. You could still kinda tell who was apart of it though. The clown makeup went away, but the bangs remained for a while.
Eh. Generations are defined by a lot more than what clothes someone wore or what TV shows were being broadcast. Those things move quickly. Generations are usually marked by larger cultural touchstones.
There are quite a few ways to try and slice the Millennial/Gen Z divide, for instance. An easy-on-paper ones are things like what generation your parents belonged to (Boomers/Gen X, respectively), for instance, though that just kind of pushes the issue back to a different generational divide. Or there’s the “do you remember the world before 9/11 happened?” metric. These point to differences in parenting, or differences in the larger socio-political culture within which one had their formative years, and they’re far, far wider reaching than fast fashion.
Millennials are a strange generation because I feel like elder millennials and younger millennials are kind of divided by whether they remember a time before the Internet went mainstream or not.
To your point, another dividing line for Millennials and Gen Z is that Gen Z kids’ first phone was probably a smart phone and they probably got theirs a couple years younger on average than millennials.
I agree, and I think categorizing generations is always going to be messy. But I think the Oregon Trail Generation/Xennials just seems to be more distinct than most other micro generations. I’m pretty much in the middle of the commonly accepted millennial age bracket and would still consider myself more of a Xennial based off the broad characteristics that have been described, despite falling outside that rough '86 cutoff by a couple years. I know part of it is probably due to how much Millennials get shat on, but it feels like the “Millennial Generation” is an especially weird generation where half the people that are supposedly in it don’t feel like they belong with the other half and many resent the label. To me, the Millennials born after '90 seem quite distinct from those born before '87 and I feel like I’m in the middle and identify more with the Xennials. I’m no sociologist, though, this is just my limited subjective experience.
Can’t really go off parents’ generation. Some people have kids at 16 and some at 45. I’m millennial with Gen X parents because they had me when they were young. I have a sister 15 years younger than me, who is Gen Z. We had very different experiences growing up, but share a parent.
I was one of those weird raver kids with all the neon colors and intustrial-esqe accoutrements. I remember scene kids but that set was younger than me.
As an elder Millennial, I’m left wondering WTF I missed in 2006?!? All the girls in high school were wearing Doc Martins, turtle necks, and low-cut jeans while sporting streaky highlights in their hair, and all of the girls in college were wearing Uggs and puffy coats with faux-fur hoods. There was none of… Whatever this is.
This is the “scene kid” aesthetic that was popular in the mid aughts. They barely made the millennial cutoff as far as I’m concerned and they’re not very representative of our generation as a whole.
Scene kids was a period after goths and before hipsters. It peaked before Myspace was taken over by Facebook. So like 2007-2009. By the time most of them moved on to college, hipsters became a thing and a lot of them grew into that or conformed in some way.
Aye. Peak highschool for me.
Started college in '09 and the scene kid was gone.
I was actually a little disappointed, I understood it
Yeah, it’s amazing how quickly it came and went. By the time I graduated highschool in 10 it was already falling out of fashion. You could still kinda tell who was apart of it though. The clown makeup went away, but the bangs remained for a while.
Hot topic goths evolved into emo lite
Same. Sigh.
I think the world’s evolving (or devolving) too fast for these broad generational categories to define us anymore.
Eh. Generations are defined by a lot more than what clothes someone wore or what TV shows were being broadcast. Those things move quickly. Generations are usually marked by larger cultural touchstones.
There are quite a few ways to try and slice the Millennial/Gen Z divide, for instance. An easy-on-paper ones are things like what generation your parents belonged to (Boomers/Gen X, respectively), for instance, though that just kind of pushes the issue back to a different generational divide. Or there’s the “do you remember the world before 9/11 happened?” metric. These point to differences in parenting, or differences in the larger socio-political culture within which one had their formative years, and they’re far, far wider reaching than fast fashion.
Millennials are a strange generation because I feel like elder millennials and younger millennials are kind of divided by whether they remember a time before the Internet went mainstream or not.
To your point, another dividing line for Millennials and Gen Z is that Gen Z kids’ first phone was probably a smart phone and they probably got theirs a couple years younger on average than millennials.
The Oregon Trail Generation is just its own thing.
I agree, and I think categorizing generations is always going to be messy. But I think the Oregon Trail Generation/Xennials just seems to be more distinct than most other micro generations. I’m pretty much in the middle of the commonly accepted millennial age bracket and would still consider myself more of a Xennial based off the broad characteristics that have been described, despite falling outside that rough '86 cutoff by a couple years. I know part of it is probably due to how much Millennials get shat on, but it feels like the “Millennial Generation” is an especially weird generation where half the people that are supposedly in it don’t feel like they belong with the other half and many resent the label. To me, the Millennials born after '90 seem quite distinct from those born before '87 and I feel like I’m in the middle and identify more with the Xennials. I’m no sociologist, though, this is just my limited subjective experience.
Can’t really go off parents’ generation. Some people have kids at 16 and some at 45. I’m millennial with Gen X parents because they had me when they were young. I have a sister 15 years younger than me, who is Gen Z. We had very different experiences growing up, but share a parent.
No generational rule is hard and fast. They’re all broad stroke generalities.
You can’t even go based on year, because sociologists disagree on which years to use.
Sounds like you grew up in the South
I mean, I guess I’m in the southern part of Canada.
Aren’t basically all Canadians in the southern part?
I was one of those weird raver kids with all the neon colors and intustrial-esqe accoutrements. I remember scene kids but that set was younger than me.
Yeah this wasn’t 2006 really and was more like 2009-2010 when the “scene” scene got “big”.