Here we are now, Gen (blank)

As is one of my amateur hobbies with socio-economic proselytizing, I love the correlation (or not) of cultural generation definitions. Simply put, I love lumping people into fairly clear cut characterizations based simply on the year they were born. You have the Baby Boomers, the Gen Xers, the Millennials, and now the post-Millenials for all of us with kids now. Knowing how to relate to each group is essential for career advancement, in my opinion. There has been some writings about "cusp generations", those born near the end or beginning of a generation who can relate to two generations in a row. Essentially, the bridge between the generations that can get the 25 year old to work with the 40 year old effectively.

I fall into this category. Born in 1978, I am "officially" at the end of Gen X, but I don't subscribe to all their angst and pessimism, yet I'm also certainly not a Gen Y/Millennial since I came of age pre-wide-spread internet usage and cell phones. Over at Slate, they have an article up that attempts to define us born during the Carter administration and first year under Reagan, Generation Catalano. As K said, who also falls into this group, it isn't the most profound tryst on people our age, but it does raise a few questions. Namely, what makes this group (including most of all of you that read this!) different enough to not feel a shared conscience with Gen X or Y.

To me, I think the main thing that separates us is the fact that we were the last set of people to go through high school before mass and instant communication became a part of our lives. When we were in high school, NO one had a cell phone and about the closest thing you could do to communicate with a large group of people at once, besides sending an email to your two or three friends with one, was post a message on your local BBS. Yeah, remember those? If you wanted to flirt with someone or ask them out, you physically had to be in their presence and use actual words. In other words, we are like the last cavemen before fire was discovered or the people that turned 20 in 1492 and had to realize that the earth was officially round.

Also, look at the shared pop culture references we shared. For the most part, we all watched the same cartoons on Saturday morning (ie when they still had cartoons on Saturday morning), the same music videos on MTV, the same handful of teenage marketed tv shows on the THREE basic channels and the new one, Fox. Fox WAS to us what CW is to kids today. Remember how cutting edge it was?!? The thing is, we all do share these memories, thus we can quickly bound over these shared experiences. But Gen Y had about 100 channels to watch, the internet to play on, text messaging, and other economic benefits bestowed upon them by a booming late 90's economy that many of their parents benefited from. Case in point, how many of our younger siblings got more stuff or "entitlements" than we did?

So, here we are now. But what do we call ourselves? If not Gen X or Y and I hate "cuspers", sounds like a STD, what do you think should be our name? Does the fact we don't have one unite us more, essentially giving us the shared angst of Gen X and shared entitled unity of Gen Y? What do you think defines us?