generation identity might be the next gender identity -- you might identify with a different generation in the strauss-howe cycle besides your own, I think I'm a pretty typical X and happy being one, but I do know X's who act like boomers, millennials, or Z's
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The top-end marketers know that the concept of generations is nearly obsolete, but keep marketing the idea to lower-end marketers. Interests & networks over chronology when the internet makes culture asynchronous.
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still has a lot of momentum and legs though, and may get coherent again in the future
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I think we could construct less general, less ridiculous generational profiles this way - ones that may retain some explanatory power.
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I think the failure of Strauss & Howe's method, besides underestimating the impact of technology, is generalizing from a narrow view of generational experience (or, a broad view applied to a narrow population). If you overlay more specific sets of experiences on each cohort 1/
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you'll get something a little more descriptive, without having to dispense completely with the powerful, predictive parts of the theory 2/
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Because historical experience and our reaction to it really does have a formative effect on our behavior, I don't think generational identity can ever be completely self-created. YMMV.
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