The whole concept of different "generations" with distinct identities is a fiction propagated primarily by millenials

Oct 13, 2026 · 8:21 AM UTC

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Replying to @John_Attridge
No, it started with Boomers, telling reverent stories about their parents, the "greatest" generation, and their parents, the "silent" generation.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
millenials not getting the joke just proves your point
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Replying to @John_Attridge
This is intentionally ironic, yes?
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Being aware of the name, and identifying with it, probably; but ask a baby boomer for relationship or career advice and report back.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
It predates millenials and reached the peak of its weaponization AGAINST them in the 2010's.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Dostoevsky often used generations to explain cultural differences between his characters. I wouldn’t call it a fiction, but rather a symptom of a rapidly changing world.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Sociologists had one generation they studied: the baby boomers. It was a cohort that stood out. Baby boomers grew up, and the journalists among them invented the notion of "Generation X" in the 90s, but struggled to define how it was much different from the boomers.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Um… did you read your own post? You suggest that propagating this fiction is an identifying feature of the millenial *generation* when everyone knows that propagating fictions = storytelling and storytelling is a characteristic of “the Greatest Generation,” not millenials. 🙄
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Replying to @John_Attridge
It is fiction. Prior to 1991, when Copeland's Gen-X and Strauss' Generations were published, the idea of "generations" was not mainstream. It was really only after the internet that generations began to have truly separate time-of-life experiences and yes, it has been propagated primarily by millennials who are the first generation to experience this.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
We didn’t know we were Gen X - until around 25 ago
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Replying to @John_Attridge
probably true. My older Gen X parents asked me what generation they were a few years ago haha. I didn't know I was a Millenial until I was an adult. It's only a helpful metric based on certain shared experiences, but we have more in common than differences.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace... JFK 1/20/1961
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Funny. Generation designations were in fact popularized by Douglas Coupland in his international bestseller "Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture." But it was Gen X. So it doesn't count. Good one.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
sure bro, crearly having completely different cultural references and lifestyles will have no impact on identity.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
What the hell hah this wasn’t us. I woke up one day in 2009 and went to my crappy restaurant job only to discover I was a lazy “Millennial.” Now the younger generation seems obsessed with these meaningless signifiers
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Replying to @John_Attridge
They were using the term 'baby boomers' and 'Gen X' before Millenials were even born. newspapers.com/article/daily…

Article clipped from Daily Press

Clipping found in Daily Press published in Newport News, Virginia on 1/28/1963.

newspapers.com
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Never heard of the generation gap, starting back in the 50s?
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Replying to @John_Attridge
@grok When did the concept of different generations with distinct identities Begin propagating? and when did it become normalized?
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Replying to @John_Attridge
It’s an artifact of two things, strict age segregation in school and the rapid advancement of technology rendering a lot of old people clueless. In a more stable time, the young would be apprentices to the old, who would be knowledgeable because the world hadn’t changed much.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Boomers but otherwise I agree
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Replying to @John_Attridge @stacycay
Sooooo… you’re a millennial?
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Replying to @John_Attridge
This has always been a thing we just name each generation now
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Replying to @John_Attridge
You mean primarily about Millennials, right? Because we were having this shit shoved down our threat about Gen Y being this unique, weird generation since I was a teenager.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Nah, just ask a Boomer to speak romantically about drinking out of a hose, you will get an earful
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Replying to @John_Attridge
You’re right. Everyone knows millennials came up with the concept of flappers
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Replying to @John_Attridge
There are some differences between the generations. I teach at a college and the millennials, quite frankly, were kind of awful. They hated criticism and wanted to tell YOU the teacher what was. Gen Z is much better. But I do agree it is mostly overblown.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Yeah different generations definitely don't have different influences in their formative years, you're right
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Coupland caused the problem.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
I'm more a Pepsi Generation Next kinda guy.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
patently false as we were called Gen Y until the boomers decided to change it to millennials mostly as a derogatory term
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Replying to @John_Attridge
What makes you think it's a fiction? Science has been able to do studies of population groups by birthdate and derive a lot of useful information from that. Wouldn't be possible if generations were a fiction.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
This book was published when the oldest millenials were 11 years of age.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
please look up "the lost generation"
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Replying to @John_Attridge
I think you meant “marketing commitees”
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Replying to @John_Attridge
Go to China and see that it is 10000% real there. Its like two people from different countries.
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Replying to @John_Attridge
This is ragebait. Millenials grew up with CONSTANT headlines saying "Millenials believe X" or "Millenials all do Y" and absolutely none of it was ever true. Millenials did not do this.
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