The date you are born barely matters. A broke mfer born in 1998 is watching reruns from the 80s and 90s. They are more millennial than a rich kid born in 1996 who has access to the latest media. "You can't really do that" is the the single dumbest take. It's a guideline, not a hard and fast rule. There isn't even a consensus on these dates by the way.
You’re confusing individual experiences with generational identity. Nobody is arguing that your birth year determines every aspect of your personality, taste, or upbringing. The point is that generations are demographic cohorts, not personality types.
A person born in 1998 can absolutely grow up watching reruns from the ’80s and ’90s, and a rich kid born in 1996 can have access to the latest technology and media. But neither example disproves the significance of birth year. They’re exceptions in terms of individual experience, not evidence that the broader generational distinction is meaningless.
Generational labels are based on the historical, technological, and cultural environment people tend to experience at formative ages. Someone born in 1996 was generally at a different developmental stage during the rise of smartphones, social media, and streaming than someone born in 2006. Access to the same media doesn’t mean experiencing it at the same age, in the same cultural context, or alongside the same peers.
And wealth doesn’t automatically make someone more culturally current, just as poverty doesn’t automatically make someone culturally older. A rich kid can be nostalgic for older media, and a broke kid can be deeply immersed in contemporary culture.
Also, saying “it’s a guideline, not a hard-and-fast rule” doesn’t actually contradict anything. A guideline can have exceptions without becoming meaningless. Generational boundaries are approximate precisely because culture doesn’t change overnight on January 1 of some arbitrary year.
The real point is that birth year isn’t the only factor in someone's cultural identity, but that doesn’t mean it barely matters. You’re taking the fact that individual experiences vary and using it to dismiss a broader statistical and historical pattern. Those are two completely different arguments.
You can't even define a generation without excluding a quarter of the people that are supposed to be in it and including a quarter of people not supposed to be in it according to the arbitrary dates chosen. It's nonsense. It's made up for the convenience of generalizing. It is lazy and intellectually void to divide people into neat little groups so you can pretend to understand the world outside of your basement. It's horoscopes for pseudo intellectuals.
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u/kpyle 17h ago edited 15h ago
The date you are born barely matters. A broke mfer born in 1998 is watching reruns from the 80s and 90s. They are more millennial than a rich kid born in 1996 who has access to the latest media. "You can't really do that" is the the single dumbest take. It's a guideline, not a hard and fast rule. There isn't even a consensus on these dates by the way.