r/Xennials • u/Rotterdam5082 • 7h ago
Nostalgia Anyone else here who related better to the culture of the slightly older or younger cohorts than your own?
Im an elder millennial (82 born) who graduated from high school in 2001 and I remember preferring The Smiths and Bowie along with old school Prince to crap like Creed and Limp Bizkit. I also considered teen pop to be too corny and overproduced for my tastes.
Anyone else who felt the same way themselves?
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u/fattycatty6 1982 6h ago
82 myself, married to a 75 and yes. We like all the things that would be more of the X than the "millenials". At one point weren't we Gen Y?
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u/Drslappybags 6h ago
We are Gen Y. Don't worry, I'm taking it back.
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u/Murderhornet212 1977 6h ago
1977 and I feel like I relate better to elder millennials than elder Gen X
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u/Sofagirrl79 1979 5h ago
Yeah some the oldest Gen X can seem boomerish,my boyfriend though was born in 1965 and he seems more core Gen X than boomer like,we didn't meet though till I was 37 so no weird age gap or him taking advantage of me type of thing
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u/Skew_Whiff_9041 1976 4h ago edited 4h ago
Same. I was watching Captain Planet and Pee-Wee's Playhouse like elder Millennials, even though I was starting high school. And our experiences are much closer in terms of the whole pre-internet childhood that quickly morphed into AOL Messenger and MySpace when we were still pretty young.
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u/PurplePenguinCat 4h ago
'77 also, and I feel the same. My husband is also '77, but he has a brother who was '67 and a sister who was '69. So my husband was exposed to music and media that his siblings liked when he was very young.
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u/BrokenMicroscope 6h ago
I feel this way all the time. I’m from 83 and graduated in 2001 also, but I am the youngest of my family so was influenced more by young Gen X. Even though I was a kid, I was in on all the things that were cool to teens in the early 90s. I was heavily into the Gen X grunge and alt rock era on MTV and my parents never regulated the tv or movies I watched as a child so I was exposed to In Living Color, Twin Peaks, and the like as a young kid. I never saw Pokémon, Sponge Bob, or Harry Potter as I was already too old to have interest in these millennial-associated media. I got my first mobile phone when I was in my mid 20s so it’s hard for me to relate to the millennial label in many ways. I’ve often wondered if anyone else my age feels like this.
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u/SevereDeparture739 1985 2h ago
🙋♀️ And I'm even younger than you. Same thing. Loved In Living Color. Started heavily getting into music/listening the radio and Casey's Top 40 around '92. Was ordering BMG/Columbia House by ~93. Watched the Nirvana unplugged show when it aired. Big time MTV junkie. I watched all the shows. Lip Service... you name it. But also kid stuff on Nickelodeon, especially Ren & Stimpy. Parents were born '50/'51 if that matters.
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u/CEEngineerThrowAway 6h ago
Personally I often relate to my younger coworkers since we have the same aged kids (I’m 45, my youngest is 2), and still do a lot of snow boarding and mountain biking, but feel my personality identities more with Gen X than those younger.
But back in the 90’s I was a pretty typical 90’s kid. I hated Limp Bizcuit and Creed then too, lots of us did. We had a lot of terrible popular music just like every generation.
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u/TaffyPool 6h ago
Yes, and ‘84 born. But I attribute that entirely to being the youngest in my family (i.e. having no control over what was watched or listened to). Add in that I shared a room with my older sibling, five years my senior, and there was no way I wasn’t getting exclusively exposed to Gen X culture when at home.
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u/cyt0kinetic 1982 6h ago
Yes, I'm 1982 as well and definitely X adjacent. By the time Britney and Bizkit were on the radio they were cringe to me.
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u/Morvenn-Vahl 6h ago
I just related to older people in general. Had a hard time connecting with my peers, but I could talk to old people until the cows came home. To be fair my parents were really old when they had me(born 1940-1943) so that might have affected me a lot.
Also preferred(and still do) a lot of 70s and 80s music.
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u/9fingerjeff 1977 6h ago
When I was younger most of my friends were older than me but as I’ve aged I feel closer in my world outlook to a slightly younger demographic. I went from firmly Gen X to nowadays relating much more with millennials.
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u/Sofagirrl79 1979 6h ago
I liked 80s and 70s music as a teen but also liked the popular songs from the 90s too, didn't really identify as Gen X or millennial but as per this subs name I always felt in between which is why I like this sub
My boyfriend though was born in '65 but he seems more core Gen X than late boomerish
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u/conscientiousrejectr 6h ago
Born in 80. I was in to them all but always loathed teen pop.
Creed and Limp Bizkit was just youth.
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u/Easy_Independent_313 1978 6h ago
Yes. I grew up in a college town and as a result, listened to college radio. I resonate with the older crowd.
I look significantly younger and pretty regularly have people in the upper 30s be surprised I'm not exactly in their cohort.
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u/GrapeImpossible589 6h ago
Born in 82 and graduated in 2000. I was too young for the wave of Grunge in the early to mid 90s. I really enjoyed the early gangster rap movement lol. My best friend's older brother exposed me to Snoop's 1st album, Doggy style and I was hooked. My parents absolutely hated it, which made it soo much better hahaha.
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u/CaptainAmerica_2026 6h ago
I was born in 76 and identity with younger more. Wife is 81, old roommate also 81. Older GenX didn't really align with my interests.
Favorite movies: Can't Hardly Wait, Scream, Scary Movie, Final Destination, American Pie, Superbad. The list goes on.
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u/More-read-than-eddit 1979 6h ago
Yeah, I relate a lot to people from like 85 because I changed careers at around 27 and we all started off together. Also I lived in nyc, where density and youth culture kept everyone in touch with younger stuff (even people older than me). All ages diy shows are always gonna feature bands made up of college kids.
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u/bigfancydelta 1981 6h ago
'81 here. Married a '78, best friend is a '73. Have always related to those a tad older than me.
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u/JstVisitingThsPlanet 6h ago
I’ve always gravitated towards people older than myself. My siblings are 7 and 9 years older than me and once they were out of the house it was me and the parents so I’ve always been with older generations for the most part.
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u/Sumeriandawn 3h ago
I am younger GenX and I relate more to elder Millenials than older GenX. Older GenX didn't love 2000s pop culture, but I do.
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u/sinisterfaceofwoke 6h ago
1980 but I identify solidly with millennials as I went to university at age 25 and many of my friends are around seven years younger than me.
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u/PatchworkGirl82 6h ago
82 as well! I had a ton of older cousins, so I got a lot of hand me downs, from clothes to records to toys.
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u/BillyDMountain 4h ago
I always have liked older music, TV and movies, mostly 60's and after but also some stuff from further back too but up to about 1997 I could find current stuff I could get into as well. I found it not really impossible but harder to find new stuff I liked in the late 90's. Most of the teen pop TRL stuff wasn't for me and I also didn't like the Rap Rock and Nu-Metal stuff. It wasn't much fun. In the early 00's I found it easier again to balance liking new and old stuff again but yeah, I didn't find '98 - '99 very fun.
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u/CalmBeneathCastles 1979 4h ago
I consume it all. Less new pop culture it is relatable year after year, but I was both archaic and current up until about 2022.
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u/Izzy-of-Albion 1h ago
Yes, that's why we adopt the Xennial identity afterall. I'm a young Gen X ('79), and I'm a little strange in that feel like my influences growing up were millennial ones, but my musical taste is now much more that of a much older gen X.
For example emo, screamo, pop punk etc (i.e late 90s, early 00s) feels more nostalgic and formative for me than anything from the 80s.
I have a greater attachment to the N64, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, GameCube era of gaming than the days of 8-bit.
I have no little to no memory of things like the space shuttle missions, the cold war, or the AIDS crisis. Late 90s culture and events feel more influential to me. So I feel like a millennial.
But, my favourite music now, and for a long time actually, is from the 70s; Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Led Zeppelin etc. In that way I'm like an old gen X or even a boomer.
I have a friend who is even more extreme; born in '87, very much a millennial, but he a lifelong fan of musicians like Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, and movies like Connery or Moore era Bonds, and the Carry Ons (smutty british comedies of the 50s-70s). So he's very much like a boomer, despite being 8 years younger than me. He had a very old dad, maybe that's why. 😅
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u/instant_ramen_chef 6h ago
You, like me, are a Xennial. We are the bridge generation between millennial and gen x. Thisbis why you feel the way you do. We had older siblings or people bin our lives that were gen x, and friends who were millennials. We are the ones who were adolescents during the end of the Clinton era and just becoming adults when 9/11 happened. We still remember what the pre digital age was like. We are the ones who showed our parents how to install the internet onto their pcs, while still making mixtapes from recording the radio onto cassettes.we straddle that line.
Join r/xennials and you'll understand yourself better. One of us... one of us... one of us..
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u/SeaSkimmer2 6h ago
I couldn’t relate to the losers I was forced to dorm with during my first year of university in 2000. I already had a part-time job which transferred from another location back home, a car I was paying for, and beginning to incur student-loan debt, while they still acted like high school and had everything paid by parents. They just didn’t understand being responsible on their own.
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u/uglahsD 6h ago
Born in 81. The first time I heard the Backstreet Boys I thought it was like, joke music, somehow? Like tongue-in-cheek. I thought no way would anyone actually like-like that kind of music. Little did I know the dawn of bubblegum 90s boy/girl-band era pop was upon us, lol. I was big into the Beatles and Brit-pop (minus the Spice girls).