#21st century

Illustrations: anneidesign.com

It was during the 90s that for the first time I heard the term Generation X a class of people made of rumbling young-adults who listened to Nirvana, made California Rolls popular, made TV-show Friends a hit, first to use internet as a daily thing of their life, but most importantly they were the last generation to land stable and secure jobs in the West. 

Generation XYZ because after the X which stood for incognito, the rest of the letters would follow anyhow but with less of a certainty onto what would define them. Television with its pay-per-view and the radical skater scene the West cost provided became a huge social influence worldwide. After the hefty 80s experience of Reaganomics with all its perks and consequence, the 90s would upset everything that came before it because that’s what they wanted to do in the first place. From the get-go, Generation X meant to be the rebellious slice of a transitioning era which wanted to forget the post- Vietnam period and the fear of the Cold War.

After the X comes the Y and this is not a set of chromosomes defining a future newborn, but rather the inevitable outcome of a generation which had to fill even bigger shoes. The Y generation is a 80s-born niche of those who are in their thirties that have been awfully identified as Millennials for practical journalistic reasons. Here we have that discrepancy which comes to separate two generational ridges: the X managed to capitalized on the Baby Boomer Legacy, while the Y couldn’t because by the time they graduated the world already changed drastically.

That Generation Y is today squeezed by the success of its previous batch and the Millennials wondering into the unknown. The remarkable event that separates the Y from the rest it the technological transformation that happened when communication went from hand-written letters to fax machines to emails. In between you can throw telex and experimental video call attempts.

Wikipedia won’t display Generation Y as an official page yet; its alphabet skips to the Z identifying the post- Millennial crowd of those born in the 21 century as the current poster child of the lettering sequence. They will be those who had already a Facebook page before they came to light, those who will have a 50/50 chance of taking their driving license because by the time they reach their late teen years cars will be fully autonomous.

My remark in this post is about the experience my own Y generation came to witness and exists in a world that changed fast and without the opportunities of the past. If the Baby Boomers became wealthy in a post World War 2 reality, surely their Gen X kids managed to grasp that last breath of chances the late 20th century had to offer.

Those born in the 80s have grown educationally and professionally across the September 11 2001 momentum, trying to overcome that depression until the 2008 financial crisis gave them the ultimate kick in the teeth. They are the ones who were told that a degree was necessary while in school, but got told they where overqualified during their job interviews. They where the ones who had to reinvent their professional status with new solutions because the economy had no clue how to deliver the many promises the markets made them.

“The age of the Iron Bowl has long gone…”- this is the new philosophy for the 21st century. The Iron Bowl is the analogy for the safe bowl of rice Chinese people know to receive for their meal time each day, meaning that nothing is certain anymore today and nothing is safe: from your work place to our salary there are no solid pillars, and everything changed to the point ‘where piece of mind’ has become a bargaining chip into your stability and future.