On being born in the early 80s, aka “elder millenial”, aka “xenial”
- You grew up experiencing the analog world, then were an earlier adopter of the digital world.
- Therefore you are forever pining for what was lost of the analog lifestyle, and the lost free Internet. You miss hanging out with your friends on the streets downtown when there was nothing else to do; you also miss when everyone was the webmaster of their own homepage. You’re in a transition generation, the lifestyle equivalent of being an immigrant; you feel like you've been in different lands for so long that you can't fit into any of them anymore.
- You started working right before 2008. This permanently shaped how you feel about work. The system is rigged and any impression of stability is a lie. You don't trust anything. Prepper generation.
- You grew up in the end of history, then saw history resurrect the fuck back. This had the same effect.
- You were taught that work shouldn't be just about money and status but like, personal fulfilment?? You grew up with movies about plucky heroes who defy their parent's pressure that they should become doctors and, through dedication and believing in themselves, became artists, musicians, rainforest defenders, aid workers in Africa. You grew up with “accountant” being a synonymous for “boring person”. Professional failure for your parents meant ending up a poorly-paid street cleaner; for you it meant becoming an office drone. You're the last generation that still caught enough motivational posters that demotivational posters still made sense as comedy; despair.com was fresh and funny. You aren't old enough to have learned to think of work as this purely impersonal game, play the cards you were handed for as much money as you can and disengage emotionally from it, like your parents did. You aren't young enough to grow up thinking of work as exploitative bullshit from the get-go, like your children did. No, you wanted to follow your dreams, do what you love, be a manic pixie dream girl who fills the world with colour and imagination. Through your job.
- This didn't end well.