Why do some 80s babies see themselves as one generation(1980-1989)? After reading comments on YouTube about Generations some 80s babies say they have more in common with people born the same decade then any other decade aka 70s & 90s.
It is a different world now. But I have hope for the younger generation. Some of them are the sweetest, kindest human beings I ever met. And I certainly do miss days where people actually would vacation on Black Fridays to sky resorts or actually take nature trips outside of malls to enjoy the day after Thanksgiving. I remember playing all the time outside in nature with friends all the time, to catch butterflies, ride down hillsides in the dirt, blow wishes upon dandelions. The air we breathed was so different back then. And the blue skies were truly blue. Now we see haze.People born in the 80s have some weird acid-trip experience that apparently no one else in the world can relate to!
While there is actually some truth to that, I do think 90s babies have a similar prejudice. What connects 80s to 90s babies in our awful prejudice is our hellish allegiance to the pop culture and sitcoms of our respective early childhoods. Ask ANY Millennial who isn't a very special case about their childhoods, and they'll share very specific things. Like literally this political or social event happened, or this band existed, or this show makes me feel happy to be three years old again. There's nothing in the world that makes me feel like Facts of Life or One Day at a Time (it's not always good, honestly it's sometimes creepy, like there's dead people or a propaganda field around me) and a lot of 90s babies will say that about iCarly or some shit. We experienced nostalgia and commercialism in a similar happy and disturbing way. No one said it was superior - that crap is reserved for Baby Boomers, 80s babies often like to brood upon how they were raped by capitalism (like 70s babies, but their experience of digital and Internet was not sufficient to join us).
There's even an ENTIRE SUB-GEN called "X-innails" to basically accommodate 80s babies who remember the world without as much technology and with more white trashy haunted creepy goodness like the 70s kids, but also identify with corporate capitalist entities in a completely sad and involuntary way like 90s babies. I think that's what connects the 80s and 90s though, the utterly involuntary allegiance to popular culture that makes us bitter. People in the 60s and 70s were subjected to it. But they still had more of a choice, or were more likely to have a parent who turned off the four channels on a television.
What I've noticed is smart 80s people are utterly aware of what happened and not-so-smart 80s people are very like Baby Boomers in how awesome and ideal it was. In example, Donald Trump voters.
I'll tell you what biases me more than anything I can't deny, even now as an adult, is the country music of the early 90s. Randy Travis singing "Deeper than the Holler" strikes something so spiritual and innocent in me that I can only share it with my niece who is almost a decade younger than me. Too Close For Comfort isn't like that. That's why I use it in my bio. I feel like whatever happened in the late 70s and early 80s made me who I am and I cherish it, but it also disturbs me in a way that only reminds me of things like drug addiction, suicide, war, and murder.
If you don't "get" that ,you don't "get" the 80s. My ex did and we were together for six years, and I had another relationship for 18 months with someone who "got it." Lana Del Rey "gets it." I feel like who I am is a very hard person to be. I feel like it's easier to be a stupid Trump voter. They idealize the whole thing, but who the hell does that? Who idealizes LA from tip to toe, or idealizes a murder scene even if its in a beautiful happening scene?
Vegans were also bigger in the 80s than the 90s or 70s, and that's reflected in the 2010s with my age group.
I don't know, we are who we are. I guess we are the narcissistic millennials. I'll admit that. The Boomers who were in their 20s and 30s in the 60s are much more narcissistic than people who were young adults in the in the 70s, to the point that younger Boomers like my mom are called "generation Jones" like they're more ordinary. The people who were children in the 80s rather than the 70s or 90s apparently share this conceit.
My grandparents totally reinforced it too. Especially since my parents were such assholes, they were like "yes we're going to buy you every robot and doll and educational toy in existence because your mom and dad were dirty, disgusting hippies." That doesn't leave you.
But neither does growing up in a smaller world with more nature. One of the BIGGEST differences that actually connects 80s Millennials to Gen X is our remembrance of nature, of playing outside, and a much, much smaller world (literally). I guess 90s is included in that somewhat but 90s babies are born at the cusp of a population explosion with children being locked indoors in a paranoid ADHD world.