Why “Xennial” Isn’t Enough
Mirriam-Webster.com’s “Words We’re Watching” section on xennials opens with the following consideration:
In the next paragraph, as in innumerable articles and arguments, the Xennial is defined as being “born on the cusp between Generation X and the millennials” and by the seemingly arbitrary birth years between 1977 and 1983 (though Business Insider, who presents the disturbing moniker of “The Oregon Trail Generation,” thankfully extends the most recent year of inclusion to 1985).
There is a problem, however, with this description and its historical location. Xennial, being a merger of Generation X and millennial, suggests that this “micro-generation” is characterized uniquely by the trends of its adjacent groups.
The baby boomers are not explicitly defined by those born the years before and after them. And, though a feature of Generation X is its rebellion against its timeline neighbors in the ‘Boomers, it is ultimately a singular and self-defined group.
Also, as descriptions of what constitutes a xennial commonly include exposure to and memories of technology such as dial-up modems, floppy discs, mixtapes, and Walkmen, its implied timeline then includes birth years up at least 1986.
I propose a title change of the currently-designated xennial and a refitting of its conclusive range of birth dates to the era between 1977 and 1991.
This would effectively represent the generation as much distinct from millennials as Xers, wipe out the broadly confusing Generation Y subsegment of the former, and hopefully substantiate the subject enough so as to be rid of this ‘micro-generation’ nonsense.
The currently-labeled xennial generation is a profoundly significant one.
We are the last generation to remember life without the internet, yet we were young enough at its emergence to adapt with ease and contribute meaningfully to the process.
We delineate the onset of nothing less than a social and economic revolution as evident in the age of data and the disruption of industrial capitalism.
From an entirely subjective perspective, I, having been born in the mid-’80s, consider Generation X the older kids I admired across the street, who had The Goonies in theaters and pre-Home Alone John Hughes, first-form Nintendos, and who rested steadily in the bullseye of emergent MTV’s target demographics. And I barely know enough about the favored cultural implements of younger millennials to trust presenting them here.
Still, I have never identified with millennial tropes, and though I may be somewhat anachronistic, an informal poll of my comrades in age suggests that none of them have either.
The millennial is specifically a digital native, and its characteristics, shaped for disparaging or praising effect, are based exclusively on this fact. As a millennial friend of mine says it, theirs is a generation “raised by the internet.”
It is the millennial’s birthright of high internet speeds and smart phones by middle school that are said to contribute to its ‘oversensitivity,’ its ‘misguided’ expectations for meaning in the workplace, and its ability to get an immense amount of high-value work done while appearing to be doing nothing at all.
Having lacked these resources in development, such characteristics are misapplied to my particular age group.
In fact, there is a distinct pattern of behavior and socialization in both Gen Xers and millennials which does not apply to the years specified and to which I was born.
The xennial generation was socialized to have a somewhat thicker shell than ones following (to the extent that computerization’s relationship to social sensitivity is a valid one). We were raised at the tail-end of that 20th-century tendency which allowed kids to explore their world with relative lack of escort. And we were unlikely to encounter popularized diet concerns for children, knowing as a majority, next to nothing of gluten, veganism, or GMOs. We saw firsthand the adoption of the recycling bin and the wildfire spread of the organic movement.
We had “an analog childhood and a digital adulthood.”
We were old enough to encounter the “hanging chads” of the Bush, Jr. election as well as the attacks on the World Trade Center, to engage with some lucidity in collective attempts to understand these subjects, and yet to have them internalized as primers, being our earliest, most impactful exposure to politics and international relations.
The internet as we first found it was generally regarded as slow, unreliable, and unsafe for children. And if we had a computer, it was likely shared and kept in a home office or family room.
We remember the landline would ring and someone in the house would invariably just call out to no one or everyone, “Phone!” because it could be for anyone — or no one — , and we were probably too busy playing Donkey Kong.
Call waiting was a revelation. Answering machines were fancy. ‘Mobile’ phones were for limos.
Whereas Gen X had The Breakfast Club, Say Anything, Blade Runner, and Star Wars, we had American Pie, You’ve Got Mail, Pulp Fiction, and Titanic.
To the millennials’ (I fully expect this to be inaccurate) Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Drake, Imagine Dragons, and One Direction, our artists were Britney Spears, Ice Cube, Blink 182, Neutral Milk Hotel, and The Backstreet Boys.
Gen X had Sesame Street, we had The Magic School Bus, and millennials had Blue’s Clues.
We watched the format shift from tapes to CDs to recordable(!) CDs and were the first peers rabid to download a song an hour on Napster — and then burn it.
We broke the music industry.
We bought the iPod.
Conspiracy was high on our radar but as a source of humor and entertainment — a la Roswell, Conspiracy Theory, Enemy of the State, The X-Files.
To Generation X’s iterations of televised fashion (before MTV stopped playing music videos) and the millennials’ infinite access to internet trend, our clothing fads were pointedly misguided.
We had an obnoxious affinity for slogan t-shirts. We treated dye jobs as signs of complexity.
We had MySpace pages and flip phones. We owned phonebooks and Tony Hawk posters.
We had mail.
Again, I write in proposition of a new moniker for this generation, one which identifies it as self-contained, self-defined, and a vital witness to the most recent sea change of world events and institutional forms. And the designator I present for consideration: the dial-up generation.
Hear me out.
This name presents an immediate, visceral reference to a dominant indicator of our group (as many have suggested, if you can still hear the sound of dial-up internet as an artifact of youth, you’re probably a member) and suggests more poetically an emergent ‘linking up’, an establishment of connection, a building of a structural interface.
Peering out over generations in terms of their contribution or relationship to the advancement of technologies, we were exactly the dial-up, the on-boarders and alpha testers, the ones reaching tentatively for the then-humble field of dreams (another one of ours) of global assembly upon which the millennium now plays out its contests.
We are unique, and we worthy of meaningful designation.
Why “Xennial” Isn’t Enough
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