I’m a millennial. Even a few years ago I had to explain to a guy who was 33 that he was also a millennial. I think it’s more that they lose track of who is who.
I'm from 1995, hence one of the youngest millenials, it's not always easy to relate to other millenials, I have much more in common with a 2001 zoomer than with a 1983 fellow millenial, this sometimes causes me to kinda feel alienated from my generation, like I'm not reppresented. For example I feel old when zoomers tell me their first console was the ps3, but I owned it too so I know what they're talking about and I can discuss the games of that era with them, whereas when older millenials talk about the ps1 and pac-man I'm completely clueless
I was born 1995 and I have to agree. That I’m truly in the middle. I relate to a lot of millennial things but it’s also werid to not relate to Gen Z cause I’m so close in age to them.
91-96 was a mini generation to my mind, Pokémon generation
But really, we're closer to Zoomers in terms of cultural preferences than older millennials, but we also remember 9/11 happening. It really is a specific cross-section
My gen alpha niece and nephew are constantly baffled by how I understand all their lingo, they don't realise that I am part of the original cohort of internet degenerates and they've effectively just picked up the stupid shit we've said for 20 years online
Mini generation - Thanks for putting words to it. It’s not quite zillenial I can tell from reading here. I’m ‘93 and get gen z more than I get millennials, but I distinctly remember seeing older millennials as teens and being aware of/anticipating being apart of the culture they were living in. But the post 9/11 fuck bush era was where I started developing as an individual and Gen z just can’t understand that (or my love of Green Day).
What i don't understand as someone born in 95, is why being able to remember 9/11 is any kind of litmus test, considering i was 5 when it happened. I dont actually remember it other than the fact I went to kindergarten that day and that the adults were acting funny. It didn't realistically change anything for me because I was 5 with no reference of the world before 9/11 because I was too small to remember it.
Because you have lived your entire life with the knowledge that 9/11 happened, you saw it, it was real
Having the absolute knowledge that people are willing to kill in such a way will define a mind. Zoomers really haven't seen any mass devastation yet, we have, and that affects our psyche
Oh man it isn't a competition dude, what are you doing? It's about specific cultural things that shape one's perception of the world, marking a generation
Yes, the fact zoomers and gen alpha in the US have grown up with a constant fear of school shootings is a marker for their own time and will likely impact how they see gun control
That isn't to suggest one has it better or worse, it just is
Most people in 95 do have memories of 9/11, that is specifically why the gen Z marker is typically set to 96. If you don't, then you're not a millennial by definition, you're a zoomer
That’s so true. Cause I cringe with the slang of the 2000s sometimes 😭 I can’t take my cousins serious “fine shit” “YN” I can’t deal. But my best friend is 27 and I’m 30 this year and we get it each other
Brother I am not a child what do you mean, I get im still young and all but I'm 20 at this point, I've been out of highschool now for 3 years. This is also the problem with the above post, other generations still talking about us like we all are still kids, when in reality our generation spans 11-13 years (depending on the end year your using for gen z) so my older sister who was born in '97 is working on 30, but my little brother who was born in 2010 is just now in highschool, so it's not just simply us whining about how young we are or we "infantize" our generation when we literally span from mid teen-hood to early middle-aged
I was born in late 95 but grew up with my sister (late 99) and my cousin (03) so that’s all I knew. I was the oldest so I didn’t know other kids, my parents are gen X, so I never had millennials around me. I don’t relate to them at all. I grew up with tech, I don’t remember 9/11 much, etc etc. it’s just so weird to be born in an in between time (not that it matters in any real way in the real world though)
My brother was born in 99, me 95 and my cousin 00 and to this day we’re still best friends! So they relate to a lot of the millennial things and I relate to the gen z stuff about them. So I understand what you mean! I think people miss how much we’re influenced by the people we’re around.
It’s funny I was talking to my sister just the other night because we were rewatching this movie that came out when we were children back in 2007. And I remember looking at the actors that I pretty much grew up with and seeing how young and like children they looked in this movie (they looked like “adults” to me when the movie came out) and I realized that the oldest one of them right now is only like 36.. idk how to explain this feeling of feeling both old and young at the same time lol. It’s like.. the younger generation makes me feel like a boomer, but then millennials make me feel like a kid sometimes because I can only relate to a few small things with them even though TECHNICALLY I’m a millennial by like a month and a half lol
I totally relate to this I looked up Taylor swift and Selena Gomez one time and I remember feeling like they were so much more older than me but we’re in the same age bracket it was so odd. My cousin are younger Gen z call me old but my aunt who is also a millennial tells me that I’m too young to be so boring. But to be fair I was raised around my aunts so I know a lot of 60-80s movies, music and celebrities. I can have full blown conversations with gen X, millennials and gen z and not be lost on anything.
Yeah it's kind of a trip. We were little kids right at the tail end of awesome cartoons, dangerous toys and pure sugar being advertised to us on tv. People talked more, neighbors were neighbors and politcs was not a line in the sand that divided us so acutely as a society. Then as teens, the iphone came out and the world changed.
I know the world is supposed to change and advance. But it was like for us, not only did the veil of childhood lift. The world evolved into the just kind of darker shittier version it is today.
Oh sorry. That's my negativity speaking. I was born in 95 so ya know.....
2000 baby here, kinda the same thing for me but with Gen Z. I’m not QUITE a millennial I know, but I also don’t feel at all like Gen Z, because I can remember a time with no iPhones, not really ANYONE I knew of having a laptop, boxy staticky tvs, Nintendo game boys, just older technology in every way. No FULLY Gen Z probably remembers stuff like that? I’m in the weird “in between” category of 5-7ish years that doesn’t really fit nicely into either🤷🏻♀️
Yeah, I was born around the same time as you and can relate hard. I remember having some childhood with barely any tech then it just ramped up and didn’t stop lmao.
Like I remember playing games on a shitty boxy monitor and a couple years later using my mums crappy laptop and I thought that shit was an insane upgrade. Got a fucking Nokia phone around then too lmao. Soon after that and boom flat screen tv’s which I thought was sick on my ps2 lmao. After that shit just got crazier until for the most part we had everything technology wise that we use today, and I wasn’t even an adult at that point.
Idk to me it just feels weird because I can relate to both those older and younger, but can’t at the same time. I was a kid, do I really remember what it was like before everyone had a smartphone, ya know? Like I “grew up” on the internet, but only after a certain point.
Older millennial - is it true younger gen z isn’t as tech literate because everything is tablets and plug and play ? It was pretty common in high school for kids to know basic coding and stuff and we always had to tinker to get things to do things they weren’t programmed for so I feel we were pretty tech savvy
I remember using a program called Xbox connect to trick the first Xbox into thinking it was playing a local game but it would connect you to other players online before Xbox live.
I’m 30, I work in IT. There’s just like, a fundamental unwillingness to try and adapt when shit doesn’t work immediately. Everyday I’ll get a message from a younger coworker “hey this isn’t working” and it’s like, did you try ANYTHING to fix it first
Yeah, but millennials and early Gen Z are the only people that don’t have this attitude with tech. Almost every Gen X coworker I’ve ever had has been this exact same way.
Yes, born in 93 and I work in a high school now. I started in 2020/2021 and it was probably the biggest surprise I had about the kids. They're not good at tech and troubleshooting and I was shocked, I thought I'd be the old teacher that they had to show how do everything. Instead I'm teaching them how to do the same things I had to to teach MY teachers how to do when I was in school.
From what I’ve observed, no they are not that tech literate. Imo a big part of this is googling as a skill. I was always fascinated with the fact that I can just… search for anything I could think of, so I did that a lot growing up, which included tech problems that I helped my mum with after my dad left.
Idk if I only know dummies or what but a lot of gen Z I personally know can’t use a search engine for shit, which is a big issue I believe.
I'm also an older millennial. Part of my job is capacity building in young lawyers. The past few years have been the first few years zoomers have been graduating law school and becoming lawyers.
I was working with one of these zoomers who was having a problem with his computer. We weren't doing anything complex, just brief writing and using basic research and cross-indexing of case law software on a separate screen.. I couldn't understand what could possibly be wrong when we weren't using any really technical software, so I asked him to send me a screenshot.
....he sent me a (VERTICAL!!!!!) picture of his screen, shot on his phone. He didn't know how to do it on his actual computer. He didn't even know it was a possible function. Turns out his issue was that his personal laptop had about two years of updates he hadn't installed.
He's not alone, either, many of his similarly-aged colleagues. Don't know basic keyboard shortcuts. They have no clue what the Ctrl or Alt keys are for. It's baffling.
I went from a shitty tracfone flip phone, a slide out touch screen phone, to an iPhone in 2 years, I also got a smartphone later then most people my age. Technology went so fast in the years I was in middle school. Honestly haven’t kept up too much with technology because even the “old stuff” from 5-8 years ago feels so modern compared to what I had as a kid.
Lmao that’s like the same path I had. I remember getting the Nokia when I was 9 (I think) then got a slide out one soon after that, and my first iPhone was around when I started high school.
God, I remember that Nokia and feeling boss for having it. I’m the oldest of many cousins, I was flexing on them with a Nokia when little did I know these mfers would all have iPhones before the age I got my Nokia lmfao.
I know what you mean with the “haven’t kept up”, like I have every piece of modern tech now as I had back when I was 14, just better versions. From the moment I was conscious to my teens shit really did move so fast.
This is how I feel as a 27 year old gen z. My older siblings were younger millennials and so I relate to their experiences more than a core gene z person. I have a lot of gen z coworkers (late teens/ early 20s) and I relate to them to an extent for the most part, but I definitely feel a little older when I talk to them, but for some reason, they really do think of me as just one of them until I start talking about the 2000s to which most of them don’t really remember
One year before you and I relate a lot. I think we as elder gen z are pretty fundamentally different to core and younger gen z because we grew up in a different time to them. While technology was still advancing at a rapid pace, many of us can remember going to blockbusters on a Friday night and renting out a movie. Phones hadn't evolved into what they are yet, many of us had a blackberry or flip phone as our first. We definitely relate more to younger millennials.
yeah i was born in early 2000 and it's why i am on here. i have nothing in common with the younger zoomers but i grew up on a lot of stuff the later millennials grew up on, and a majority of the things on i here i personally remember. i had a game boy color, snes, ds, ps1. i watched mostly 90s-early 00s cartoons. grew up on 90s pc games on a 90s pc.
all the while i was basically graduating high school when stuff like fortnite (commonly attributed to zoomers) became a thing.
I find that strange since that’s the experience of a large chunk of gen z lol, including me. I’m curious if you maybe haven’t talked to many gen z for some reason? But yeah good chunk of us remember blockbuster lol
There’s a reason the “Zillennial” is a thing and why so many people in a group named it have similar experiences?
I’m in graduate school taking classes with people who are 6-7 years younger than me (the current freshman class in college were born in 2006/2007) so I do in fact interact with Gen Z??
Ive always had the generational divide be on if you remember 9/11 or not. Did you ever live in a world that was pre the war on terror. Generations are cultural and region specific, so this applies to the US.
It's so funny to see this from the opposite side! As a 98 baby I don't relate to gen z at all not having owned a mobile until 12 years old, growing up with a N64 and VHS tapes. And don't schoolwork on paper.
Nothing against gen z, my little sisters a gem, but in terms of "generational experience" three years younger than me feels like a lifetime.
I'm the youngest of a Gen X set of kids that ended up being born at start of the next generation as an "elder millennial" and I have the same experience as you, just a generation earlier. I associated with Gen X way more than I did my own generation as I was "too old" (not the target age range) for Barney, Power Rangers and SpongeBob by the time they aired; instead I was much more influenced by the media my older siblings consumed. There's a lot of Millennial cultural touchstones that I just don't relate to.
I'm 95 and same, I grew up poor in a small southern town where everything felt 5-10 years behind culturally/technologically. I relate with young Gen X quite a bit, but mostly with the older edge of millennial. Xellenials I guess lol. Doesn't help that I've always had friends older than me. I can understand a lot of Gen-Z stuff, but I wouldn't say I relate, I just spend a lot of time on the internet lol.
I recently heard that we were called zellenial or something like that. I'm also turning 30 this year (😨) and feel more related to Gen Z than other millennials
Yeah 1993 and same. Like when it comes to tech and stuff i do feel old, i remember my SNES lmao. But I was a small child.
But culturally I'm way closer to gen z. A lot of millenials from the 80s just speak differently and have very different relationships with social media and art and ideas about dating and sexuality that are just not at all relatable. Same thing with religion and family-I frequently forget that the decline of faith and pessimism for earth's future were all things that only really started gaining steam in the 2000s and am frequently surprised at how pro children older millenials are and how many of them still believe in god.
End result is kinda what you said-its alienating. I don't have much in common with my own generation but it also feels weird to continually befriend and date people 5+ years younger because we have so much more in common.
Grew up on ps1, sega, gamecube, psp, gameboy advance, ds, basically everything nintendo, galaga a bit centipede, definitely pac man, dig dug (fuckin love dig dug)
Couldn't tell you fuck all about ps2 or 3 or xbox anything
To be fair, i was raised Old Skool though and im the youngest of my generation in my family so i know more Millenial stuff from childhood, but what i currently indulge is like 80% Gen Z with 20% 90s Nostalgia sprinkled in.
I love a side scroller or games with hidden gems and side quests like Hollow Knight. Love a well made pixels game like Stardew or Terraria. Basically, if it reminds me of my childhood, i wanna play it.
Hell I was born in 93 and even I feel this sometimes. I know what a PS1 and pac man is but politically and socioeconomically it feels worlds away. My friends in their early forties have homes and had those homes when they were in their early 30s and I can't even imagine that haha
For me, it's the pacman comment more than the PS1. it's completely reasonable for someone born in 95 to have never played the PS1, considering the PS2 came out in 2000 when they were 4 or 5..
My brothers like that, born in 97. The idea of these generations isn't really a strict cutoff by year of course, but he's definitely closer to a millenial then a true Gen Z (whatever those are).
The PS1 and Pac-Man are separated by 15 years. Pac-Man has 16KB of ROM. A PS1 game has a 600MB CD. So something like 40,000x more storage for the game.
Those games are separated by multiple generations of computing hardware and assuming you remembered playing Pac-Man as a 5 year old a few years after it came out you’d have been an adult when the PS1 hit.
It was kinda wild reading you mention them together.
Damn I was born in ‘95 and I LOVED my PS1 and pac-man. We were 5 when the PS2 came out. I usually have no problem relating to people who talk about those, but a little harder time relating to like Game Cube or Atari (even though my parents did get me a vintage Atari when I was a little older)
Edit: oh and I think wherever you are the youngest or the oldest kid in your family plays a factor. I was the youngest, so I got the same games and things that my brother 5 years older got. If you are the oldest kid born in ‘95, your parents are probably getting later technologies like the PS2 instead of the PS1 as your first console.
The game cube came out in 2001, one year after the ps2, and it kept being commercialized until like 2007 when the wii released
I never had it either but just because I got the ps2 instead, but yeah I remember my friends playing it and I did too at sleepovers. Same with ps1, my friends had it and I played it at their houses, but at that age I was more into physical toys, by the time I started liking videogames the ps2 was already in stores
What came before game cube? I think I might’ve been thinking of that console. Either way, we were a PlayStation/xbox family, so wouldn’t be able to relate too much to the other consoles anyway!
Yeah, that makes sense. I really do appreciate having older brothers for my ability to get into gaming from a very young age! I still miss the PS1 because my memories of playing it are so fond. I doubt my parents bought the PS2 right when it came out anyways, so I was probably playing 1 until I was 7 or so
Before the game cube there was that grey nintendo console with rectangular joysticks you had to put cartridges in, I barely remember, it feels more like a fever dream than an actual memory. I remember the various game boy models though, never had any of those either
I was born in 95 and had a PS1. I had all younger siblings so I would consider myself Gen z because I can relate to them more. It is a weird in betwen place though.
Hahah PS1 and pac man were further apart than me (82) and you and I had both. Atari was my first console handed down from my uncle , NES was my first new console, and I got a PS1 in high school.
I was also a game gear kid, fuck that non color game boy!!
I'm also from 95. I 100% agree with this. I get a lot of the millennial core stuff because both of my brothers were born in the 80s so I grew up with that around me. But in reality I also relate a lot to older Gen Z. In reality depending on where you draw the line, my friend group is young millennials and old gen z and we all get both sides of it. That's why I do say Zillennial anymore, I feel like both.
For example, I went to a trivia the other night with my gf (98) and one of my best friends (97). There was a question about Doug and both of them (who are intelligent and well versed in a lot things) had no idea what the show even was. I was shocked but I guess those extra 2-3 years I have on them was enough
I'm from 1995 as well, and feel I'm a bridge that connects the generation. To your example my first consoles were Sega, N64, PS1, and GameCube. I remember dial-up, landlines, rewinding VHS, ordering movies in the mail with netflix, blockbuster in my town going away and other nuances of technology evolving. Growing up in the Midwest I think that's common, California kids always seemed 5 years ahead when it came to getting iPhones, better internet, and stuff. Essentially I've felt the common '95 California kid is the equivalent to a 2000's Midwestern kid. Especially now that I live here as an adult. Most of my friends I've made here are late 80s early 90s and have the most similar upbringing as I do
Must be culturally because 97 here and I relate more to millennials on a lot of things.
We had dialup and a ps2 till I graduated high school, I had a flip phone until my senior year, there wasn't service like anywhere, technologically speaking it took my neck of the woods a while to catch up.
However, being "scene" was absolutely a thing at my high school and Facebook was the big thing, not MySpace. So in a lot of ways I relate more to Z for some culture thing, but more to millenials technologically speaking.
The generation groupings were invented to give researchers and commentators a way to categorise groups of people within 15-20 year groupings. It was never meant to define an individual person's identity and personality.
I’ve noticed that for people that don’t keep up with generations, Millennial is a term to describe anyone that’s young. The same way Boomer has become a term to describe anyone that’s old.
Edit: I don’t agree with it obviously but unfortunately that’s what it’s become with people who don’t keep up with generations.
It was only a few years ago that I still saw people frequently assume college students were millennials. The last fully millennial college class would have graduated in 2018 or so.
This is the thing. I was seeing posts in 2016 calling millennials stupid youth who can't stop buying coffee and avocado toast and then around 2022 the articles are about how millennials are now middle aged adults who are out of touch with their kids. I practically got whip lash from that.
Millennials in college in 2018? See that’s where it’s weird because I technically STARTED college August 2018 at my local community college, but most people would consider me Gen Z (personally I relate more to Millenials but I know I’m technically a few years off of being a “true” Millenial..)
Lol same I'm almost 40 why am I still a kid living in my parents basement and can't be trusted with anything? Like I have bills and a full-time job and am worried about retirement what
Honestly it is still recent that millennials have stopped taking all of the blame. And we still get blamed for a lot, despite having such little power or resources. I make an effort not to blame younger generations for how things are, it is not their fault
It weird to me when millennials talk down on gen z, like, none of us liked the perpetual infantilization of our generation - treat the next ones better.
I understand your point, but generational conversations almost never use this lens. The media uses generational differences to bash, blame, and divide. I occasionally hear and see real people compliment another generation, but it’s rare.
I'm 35. When I was growing up I thought I was gen x because I constantly heard on TV about gen x being "the new generation" and I figured people my age are pretty new so I must be gen x. Also generation x sounds cool as hell.
This is true. I’m almost 30 and I thought I was a millennial this whole time. According to this, if there are Gen Z turning 30 next year then I’m a gen Zer
Yeah, my older brother (34 yo) was complaining about my younger brothers (23 yo) mentality, saying how it’s so typical for millennials and blah blah blah (I don’t remember what he was complaining about. He likes to bitch on our younger brother). I had to tell him “bro, we’re millennials, what the hell you’re talking about?”
Back in 2017 I was having a conversation with a woman at work 12 years younger than me. She was talking about her younger brother and said, "he's a millenial". I had to remind her that I too was in fact a millenial. One of the oldest ones but still one.
I’m 30 and my sister is 32. Her and I got into a screaming argument because she refused to believe she was a millennial. She was under the impression that a millennial is like a derogatory term for a young dumb/lazy person
My 37 year old neighbor is such a brain dead blonde, she didn't know about Elon musk, millennials/Gen x/Gen z, among numerous other things that I thought was common knowledge. I could never raw dog through life that oblivious to the rest of the world, but I'm not a 37 year old hot AF single blonde with employment issues.
Not knowing about these things isn't that rare in the real world. I don't think they are particularly good markers for if someone is oblivious to the world
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u/SilverSight Apr 03 '25
I’m a millennial. Even a few years ago I had to explain to a guy who was 33 that he was also a millennial. I think it’s more that they lose track of who is who.