Generation None: The awkward gap between Millennial and Gen Z
Boomers, zoomers, millennials, Gen X, you know the drill. Words ascribed to generations of people to define their experiences, upbringing, attitudes, and whatever the fuck society was up to when any given person was growing up. Headlines like “Millennials are ruining this expensive and unnecessary industry” and “Baby boomers are totally justified in calling young people lazy” are pretty commonplace these days. Even Gen Z is making a name for themselves, usually in unsavoury ways. But what about the middle children? With the last year of millennial babies debated as anywhere between 1996 and 2001, what the fuck do we call this halfway generation?
Growing up as a pre-9/11 baby means early 20-year-olds just don’t quite fit into the expectations of any generation. They’re children of the Internet, but like, dial-up internet where you had to hang up the home phone to make a Google search. Severely lacking serotonin but no money for the avo toast to get it. Cell phones at age 11, but Doodle Jump was the height of the phone-gaming experience. There are people you went to high school with that own their own homes, some that haven’t left home, and most of them barely surviving in shitty run-down flats. With such a range of experience, how do we define this generation?
Massive spoke to three students all in this Generation None about where they feel like they sit. Grace, a ‘99 baby and a fourth year at Massey, said they felt like they leaned “more towards millennial”. They were raised as a millennial with their older brother with a “very ‘90s influenced childhood”. Grace says their feeling of connection with the millennial generation came from activities and games. “We had a PS1, Nintendo Game Boys, Tamagotchis and a cheeky cursed Furby or two.”
On the other end of the spectrum is Janet, a 2000 baby who feels closer to Gen Z. Apparently, Janet feels “embarrassed of the zoomers sometimes when they eat laundry detergent or some shit”. However, most of the time, they’re “pretty impressed with how community-focused they are”. Janet believes Gen Z kids are all in the same boat: “We don’t expect to ever own a home or have a secure liveable income.”
Rangimarie, however, doesn’t feel like she fits in anywhere. She debuted life in ‘98 and feels “older than Gen Z but also like a baby compared to the RAWR :3 folk”. She feels like kids in this middle generation have an era of their own and a unique experience that can’t be quantified as one or the other. She says that some of the things that make this generation its own are “Doodle Jump, Ripsticks, Jenna Marbles, Vine, iPod Nanos, the live-action Scooby-Doo flicks (hello Velma), eating Raro out of the packets, and other kids snorting it”. Classic.
When asked about how they felt about the generation they don’t align with, there were some mixed responses, but no one seemed to be a big fan of millennials. Janet thinks, “Millennials are shitcunts. They think they’ve got it tough, but most have houses and full-time jobs. They’re so individualistic. It’s a sad life when you focus only on yourself.” Rangimarie was concerned about both of the options. She thinks that “millennials appear more fully-fledged in life because a lot of them have kids or houses of their own... Gen Z humour is so chaotic it makes me miss the security of YouTube back in its glory days. I think, in general, all of us are just tired.” On a slightly more reflective note, Grace seemed tired of the hate for ‘young people’ handed down from one generation to the next. They put it down to “older generations blaming us or telling us we’re overreacting to problems that they created. Gen Z is pretty courageous and well informed when it comes to speaking out on social and political matters. You can definitely see a positive shift.”
While there are many shared experiences of 96-01 babies, there is just too much variation for one unifying definition. The only thing you can do is find similarities to nearby generations and pretend to belong there. So which generation are you? Do you want to be lumped in with people already turning 30, or are you happy standing by the kids who spend a year eating dishwash liquid? Massive took the guesswork out of it.
