I was 1-11 in the 80s. Was super aware of nuclear fallout and the Cold War. But my dad had also been gassed in protests against the Vietnam War and used to joke about running toward the blast of the nuclear war ever happened.
I’m technically the last year of Gen X, but definitely fit more with millennials, and couldn’t drink until the year 2000.
Op also forgot the dot com bubble which burst when I graduated high school.
I'm 1 year older than you and feel the same about fitting with millennials.
The most non millennial thing about me is really important though. I was already in my career when 9/11 happened. Having my foot in that door was huge.
I was still in college. I also went part time for 2 years so I was in school with all millennials when I graduated college. I got a good job after, but just as I qualified for 401k contributions 2007 happened and I got canned when the whole company went under.
The cutoff is currently 1980, but generations are just weird retrospective categories anyway. They sorta shift a bit as new divisions become noticeable.
I can be Gen x if you want, it’s just financially and experientially I’ve lived much more of a millennial’s life.
Generations are about your social cohort and shared experiences, not a calendar.
I think late X folks who got the internet in their teen years mostly fit in better with millennials than X. Being able to anonymously talk about anything with people from all over the world while still in your adolescence is something that most Gen X didn't get, and I think that particular experience is critical for understanding the differences between X and millenial.
I was born in 78, and I definitely have a lot of X characteristics, but when I talk to other people my own age about things like the futility of working hard for recognition from society/employers it becomes really clear that I understand millenials a hell of a lot better than most gen X do...
Whenever I meet a fellow Gen X in the wild, they seem to fall into one of two categories. If they were born before the end of the Vietnam War, they are upper middle-class douchebags who film anti-woke TokTok videos in their Dodge Rams. If they were born after the end of the Vietnam War, they are solidly working-class and just quietly depressed about everything.
I'm obviously generalizing here, but older Gen X does seem to be far more Boomerish, and younger Gen X is just... Lost.
Yeah I was going to say, I'm 41 and while I seem more like gen X since I mainly hang around with them and basically grew up around them, I am sadly gen Y.
On a side note, millennial has such a bad connotation around it I prefer to say gen Y. Most people don't associate their negative feelings about millennials with the term gen Y and it just makes life easier during the rare occasions that it comes up.
I think a lot of it is bullshit. I am 45, early 1980. My mom was 17 when she had me. Her parents were Silent Generation, early 1936 and late 1939. Mom and Dad were cusp boomers born in late 1961. Her parents raised me with my cousins who were all 1970-1975 kids. I have two brothers who are cusp gen Y&Z, born in early 1995 and late 1996.
I am firmly Gen X in my upbringing and socialization but when my cousins went off to College I got a bunch of Gen Y friends and my experiences changed. I introduced them to The Meat Puppets and Husker Du and they introduced me to Blink 182 and Green Day.
My little brothers are Gen Z stereotypes raised by a couple of Gen X stereotypes but technically they are Gen Y and Boomers
My point is the dates don't mean shit, it's the environment and the influence. When I talk Generations with people I just tell them I am a Xeinal 1977-1983. It saves me from having to listen to someone tell me I am Gen Y when I have almost nothing in common with Gen Y.
Looking at the pixels and layers upon layers of compression artifacts in this photo, it wouldn't surprise me if the original was created at least 5 - 10 years ago, meaning it would have accurately included all millennials at the time it was made.
Fox News legally can't call themselves a news station anymore because of how little of their programming is actually news. It's always been an opinion broadcast, at best.
Haha nobody directly although my parent has alluded to me being lazy at points but moreso I meant like all those "opinion" pieces and articles talking about these new generations blah blah etcetc
In hindsight. There was some degree of hysteria at the time, which prompted ended at the turn of the millenia when planes did not fall out of the sky and computer systems did not all fail in unison.
Nothing personal, I try to correct this view everywhere I see it.
Y2K didn't happen because a lot of talented engineers worked their asses off to prevent it from happening. It is the bane of IT people everywhere that the working state of the systems they create and maintain is being taken for granted by the public, with barely a thought givem to those who fight bugs, spam, cyber attacks and pure entropy every day. It is in fact a minor miracle of engineering that we're even having this conversation.
That's true, but it is also true that there was a lot of hysteria... A lot of well designed systems were built without the y2k flaw in the first place...
The public should take it for granted, it's corpo culture that shouldn't. If IT people had the freedom and option to do the right things early there's so many situations that would never happen, but oh no profits must increase by 10% yoy or else CEO is replaced.
Y2k was a non event because a lot of time, effort, and money was spent fixing it before the deadline.
The estimated cost of fixing the bug was between 300-850 billion dollars in 2000 - adjusted for inflation that's about 0.5-1.5 trillion dollars
The estimated worldwide cost of fixing the Y2K bug, according to analysts: Cap Gemini America Inc. — $858 billion; Gartner Group Inc. — $600 billion; International Data Corp. — $300 billion.
Y2K wasn't that bad because a billion engineers saw it coming and prepared accordingly. If everyone hadn't been freaking out about it for years beforehand things could have gone very differently.
I am not religious, but I like the substance of this quote by C.S. Lewis: "If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things —praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."
There are always wars, rumours of wars, plagues, natural disasters, but the work remains the same as it has been for much of human history.
Add a housing crisis, the construction of a corporate surveillance state, a fascist takeover and the impending employment apocalypse of AI implementation.
Gen X checking in. Here's a list of world crises just in my lifetime. This is by no means a comprehensive list:
1975 - 1990: Lebanese Civil War
1976: Tangshan earthquake (China) - 242,000+ deaths
1979 - 1989: Soviet-Afghan War
1979: Three Mile Island nuclear accident
1980 - 1988: Iran-Iraq War
1981 - Present: HIV/AIDS pandemic
1983 - 1985: Ethiopian famine - 1 million+ deaths
1984: Bhopal gas disaster (India) - 15,000+ deaths
1986: Chernobyl nuclear disaster (USSR)
1987: Black Monday stock market crash
1989: Exxon Valdez oil spill
Late 80s - early 90s: Recession
1990 - 1991: Desert Storm
1991 - 2002: Somali Civil War & famine
1992 - 1995: Bosnian War & Srebrenica massacre
1994: Rwandan genocide - 800,000+ deaths
1999: Columbine High School massacre (the beginning of a trend)
2000: Y2K
2000: Recession (Dot Com Bubble, etc)
2001: 9/11
Early 2000s: Recession (Fallout from 9/11)
2001 - 2021: Afghanistan War
2003 - 2011: Iraq War
2004: Indian Ocean Tsunami - 230,000+ deaths
2005: Hurricane Katrina - 1,800+ deaths
2007 - 2008: Global Financial Crisis
2008 - 2009: Great Recession
2009: H1N1 swine flu pandemic
2010: Deepwater Horizon oil spill
2010: Haiti earthquake - 160,000+ deaths
2011: Tōhoku Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster
2011: Arab Spring uprisings & Syrian Civil War begins
2014: Ebola outbreak (West Africa) - 11,000+ deaths
2014: Russian annexation of Crimea
2015: European migrant crisis
2017: Hurricane Maria (Puerto Rico) - 3,000+ deaths
2019 - Present: Covid19
2020: Australian bushfires - 3 billion animals affected
2020: George Floyd protests & global BLM movement
2021: January 6th US Capitol riot
2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine
2022: Pakistan floods - 1,700+ deaths, 33 million displaced
2023: Turkey-Syria earthquakes - 50,000+ deaths
2023 - Present: Hamas-Israel war and open genocide
2025: Global Trade War
The first third of this list took place during the Cold War, when WWIII and nuclear attacks were a real fear. Add in climate change, the discovery of microplastics in everything, the world seemingly embracing Fascism again, and a whole slew of other shit, and it's no surprise that suicide rates have increased almost 40% over the past 25 years.
Another one for the list in early 1980 when US tried to start a nuclear war with Russia and that's when the doomsday clock was born. They told kids ‘just roll under a desk if a bomb drops’
Yes, a nuclear bomb. The same as the one in Hiroshima.
Do people not remember that they didn't have cars until like 1920? Do people not understand that most roads weren't paved until like the 50s? It's foolish to think we're the only generation living through lifetime events. Motherfuckers they were people that went through World War I and World War II. They were veterans of World War 1 that enlisted in World War II. There are people born in the fifties that lived through the computer Revolution. Do people not understand that the internet is only 30 years old?
Yeah, but I think we're going to get a participation trophy. I've been raised to believe this is the case, but that we should not be proud of it, because we're actually garbage.
Computers were not designed to roll over the year. This would have caused the dates to roll back to 1900 or some day in the past, breaking any logic doing math on dates.
The programming community made huge efforts to fix this problem, and they did across many sectors.
The fact that people don't understand how big of a deal this was is due to the efforts of those that did and were able to correct it.
The media talking about power outages and nukes launching due to Y2K was standard news hype/fear mongering during a crisis with rather boring (to the layman) causes and fixes.
If you did nothing, and it becomes a big problem, everyone riots over why you did nothing about it.
If you raised awareness, busted ass, and prevented the issue from happening.. then everyone riots over how much of a "waste" it all was since nothing happened.
Computers were not designed to roll over the year.
I get that, but I would assume that this only applied to a few old systems? Didn't programmers in the 80s want to make sure that their code would last for more than 20 years? And people knew Y2K would be a problem so they had plenty of time to fix the issues right?
but I would assume that this only applied to a few old systems?
You might be shocked at how much of our infrastructure ran on those old systems. But thankfully, yes, the rest of your comment is exactly what happened. Programmers knew what was up, and jumped on the problem early enough to avoid any major issues. However, this didn't stop the media from selling panic for ratings, which became the worst part of the entire Y2K experience. If you've ever seen the 1995 movie 'Strange Days' with Ralph Fiennes (and a great cast overall), it's only a slight exaggeration of what the media was hyping for Y2K.
It had to do with memory and storage limitations on computers back then. It didn't make sense to store two extra digits for the date when that space could be used for other data. It affected pretty much every system made before a certain date.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem
It was actually a bit of a big deal. Luckily it got figured out with enough time to fix it before it really effected anything. They were pulling cobalt programmers out of retirement to fix old systems and auditing anything important for years before 2000.
I was 18 in 1999, there wasn't that much actual panic. At the time people already generally knew the media was overreacting.
There was a pretty awesome shoe commercial a few minutes after midnight. It had a guy jogging down the street, presumably on Jan 1st, while in the background ATMs are spewing cash, planes are falling out of the sky, traffic lights are flashing randomly, and other chaos. Then it had a tag about new years resolutions. That commercial made it all worth it
It turned out to be a huge nothingburger with no riots, no looting, no violence... But there was definitely panic, at least in the sense that a lot of people were prepping for some kind of apocalyptic outcome "just in case". Once the clocks rolled over and people saw that planes weren't falling out of the sky and nukes weren't auto-launching, they realized it was a bunch of over-hyped media nonsense.
Because all software at that point was unable to handle the new date format. Imagine if today, all computer systems had widespread issues at the same time, on the same day. The only reason nothing happened is because people did their jobs.
Not even close to all software. There was a broad mix of stuff that used 2-digit years that would have had problems with it, stuff that used 2-digit years where it wouldn't really impact anything, and stuff that used 4-digit years and so wasn't a problem.
However, if it drove any sort of critical infrastructure, it had to be audited just in case it fit in the first category.
Fair enough. I was exaggerating a bit. Just trying to emphasize the point of how big of a deal it could have been. Especially since we see issues like crowd strike, y2k38, etc.
It’s less about the y2k bug itself and more about the cultural phenomenon. It was everywhere, and it was huge, and then absolutely nothing happened. It was the best possible outcome AND the funniest possible outcome.
With stuff like that, it hits different when you live through it and it’s part of popular culture for years. It leaves grooves in the ole neurons.
In contrast I could think about how terrifying the Cuban missile crisis must have been. The fiery end of the world could happen at any moment and everybody knows it. And we even find out afterward that the world was basically saved by one Soviet service member. I can empathize with living through that, but since it happened long before I was born, I don’t have the vivid memories of the actual emotions invading my normal day to day.
What year comes after "99"? People would way "00" meaning 2000 but a computer might say "00" meaning 1900 potentially breaking a lot of data systems/bases
It honestly wasn't. Like yes, it was a real problem, there was a lot of bad, often legacy, code that had to be reviewed and maybe patched. Industrial control code tends to be notoriously bad, and so you never know if this traffic light or that power station is going to glitch out until you dive in
But even as a kid who just knew how to take things apart, I knew it was a nothing burger. Real work went into it, but the fact people in the industry were taking it seriously means there was little actual danger
There was A LOT of doom predictions.. from airplanes dropping out of the sky to power being shut off, to possible missile launches.. it was a good time to be a shit talker in those days. Businesses made a butt ton of money selling snake oil "Y2K" checkers for your computer.. crazy time
As a Gen Xer who lived through the fall of the Berlin Wall and then all of the rest of this shit, I'm so tired. Y'all millennials even got to miss there Reagan years. Nixon may have started the car, but Reagan is the asshole that shifted it into drive, tossed a brick on the pedal, and let it go off down the mountain.
They also missed the stranger danger years. (Which is a huge reason why we got all the helicopter parents now)
One of the biggest reasons Genx are the invisible generation. So many went missing
I think that is one tragedy that was exclusively genx. Things like colds and flus killed the generations before but the Genx were just basically getting wiped out as children by adults. It was also the surge of mass murderers on the heels of the vietnam war in which they had used experimental drugs which I’m sure there is a connection
I still remember watching the news as a child right after the tsunami of 2004 and seeing the death toll rising day by day.
It is only going to get worse with climate catastrophy barely being addresed. Hunger and water shortage is only going to increasr the frequencies of wars and pandemics. Which will result in more and more extremism.
The hole in the ozone layer is recovering due to the bans on CFCs in the 90s. Climate change deniers deny this and insist that it is something that would have happened anyway...
It is not unfair to clock the first bit. But you can't count hypothetical WW3s. That's like Boomers saying they lived through Hypothetical Nuclear Winter.
Also, if we're counting recessions as millennials, you can't neglect the '87 crash and the '01 dot-com bubble. If we're counting plagues, you can't leave out AIDS.
“Billy has aids. You cannot get AIDS from being in the room with Billy. The only way to get AIDS from Billy is to come into contact with his blood or other bodily fluids. If you see someone bleeding on the playground, don’t approach them. Get a teacher as quickly as possible. Safety equipment like gloves will prevent an HIV infection.”
I was in university at the time. My economics prof had a habit of writing the Dow Jones on the white board every class. The day the crash happened I said 'wow that's a massive drop' to which she replied 'this is on par with the crash of 1929...'
But that was so early in our lives that they where just how the world was. I do not remember the AIDs crisis when it started my school just kind of taught it as just another thing that will kill you.
I've become convinced after the recent India/Pakistan conflict that WW3 is near impossible under current conditions just due to the fact that you start losing your very expensive airforce really really quickly.
I remember reading somewhere that one of the reasons the War in Ukraine has gone on as long as it has is because of how much of the conflict has been taken up by the use of militarized drones, cutting down on (but not eliminating by any means) the amount of people getting killed.
Which is good in that it means fewer people dying in a pointless war for Putin's ego, but bad in that in that it dulls the human cost that has been known to really kill war efforts, even in dictatorships.
Before Ukraine, I’d read that idea quite a few times.
Previous wars were run on logistics and manufacturing - can you keep your guys supplied longer than the other side? But now you goto war with what you have, you lose ridiculously expensive and very lethal equipment very quickly. Modern equipment is so complex and expensive that you can never sufficiently speed up manufacturing, so once you’re out, you’re out. Your equipment may not last long enough to institute a draft and call up more people, so once you’re out, you’re out. War over. Very quickly.
That was the expectation. Then there’s Ukraine, which defied all expectations. Somehow it kept going, it turned into a logistics battle again. The modern lethality didn’t happen as expected
The losses for the Russian airforce has been huge, i feel like the war would be over now if not for the massive minefields they laid down sort of freezing the conflict
A theory of mine is that one of the reasons people don't take the various crises threatening to destroy civilization seriously is that we've lived through so many crises that were solved without the average person suffering that much.
Y2K, overpopulation, the decay of the ozone, acid rain, all major problems, which received major attention from government, media and the scientific community....and were solved, by the scientific community through incredible efforts that were unthinkable a generation before thanks to advances in science. But things didn't really change that much for your average schlub on the street. The change in fluorocarbons in bug spray or air conditioning units may have changed the price a bit, but not enough to really hurt the ordinary person's wallet.
In World War II, everyone participated, everyone did something, be it as big as risking their life on the battlefield, or as small as collecting old newspaper to recycle. Nothing in the past eighty years has demanded that kind of investment or sacrifice or commitment. A great swathe of our population simply cannot believe there is or can be an existential threat to life as we know it.
I have a similar theory about politics, that most Americans thinks of the modern American democracy as inevitable and irrevocable, thus don't take it seriously when the President's platform seems built around totally destroying democratic norms.
Oh I know. My uncle was a big part of all of the work to make it a non-issue.
I'm just saying it was hardly scarring, unlike the other things listed. Most people didn't really think it would be a big thing and it turned out, because of other people's hard work, not to be a big thing.
Mostly it was just a giant waste of NASA's time trying to explain to people why it wouldn't result in toasters exploding no matter what anyone did or did not do, because toasters don't care about the date.
I don't deny there was some hysteria around the subject.
but given how stupid the average human is.. its probably better to err on hysteria, than to err on common sense, when you need to build public awareness and support for something critical.
It's the same problem, though. "Oh no, we need to store 4 digits instead of 2" vs "Oh no, we need to store int64 instead of int32". Or y'know, just use RFC3999 if you can't do 64-bit. It's a tedious lift, but it's not a crisis. People that need to change will do.
You might read up on the everlasting prevalence of ancient COBOL still running too much of our banking and government. the same software that caused y2k is still there
The problem is all the existing IoT devices etc that haven’t pre-planned for this. It’s a safe bet a lot of consumer devices with embedded systems haven’t planned for this and likely don’t have user friendly upgrade paths.
I used to work at a major iot company. While, yeah, some devices will probably be left behind, most would've had this covered from the outset. The ones left behind were never intended to make it that long anyhow.
Just like y2k, the irony is the problem is already solved but that won’t help us.
Datetime types have long since converted to longer data types that will not have such a problem for thousands of years. APIs have long since converted to return those longer data types. The problem is solved.
But the backward compatible 32bit datetime types are still there. Too many programs still use them. Too many embedded devices don’t include “extra features that waste space “, industrial devices are far more widespread but don’t get updates for many years. Worst of all, we have no idea what works and what doesn’t. We’re doomed to repeat the same crisis as y2k, where we’ll need to evaluate all our software, roll out patches, worry about everything falling down.
Modern software development has made it easier than ever to keep everything up to date, to prevent so many issues from ever happening. Year 2038 is an unnecessary problem. But human nature is to let it fester until the problem erupts. We’re doomed
Oh we're absolutely all going to die because there's literally no way to move some businesses off software developed in the 1980s they're addicted to it.
It was considered pretty serious at the time. I remember being at a new year's party and everyone went outside at the ball drop to see if the world turned off.
I don't know how old you were during 9/11 but it was an awful time to grow up. Out of nowhere you were being bombarded with messages of hate towards of nebulous group of "others". The country overnight decided that unabashed Islamophobia was in vogue (previously there was still hate but not as outright). Think the Asian hate during covid but ramped up to 11. Your country was changing (at least from a young persons perspective) and all the sudden our allies were not to be trusted (remember freedom fries?). The US became embroiled in what was ostensibly a forever war for no reason.
It wasn't the worst thing, but people were going to war again and that was very clear and very scary. The financial crashes probably take the spotlight since they affected a lot more Americans directly and it's possible that everyone knew someone who lost or had to leave their home, but 9/11 changed the country in unmistakable ways and it was scary to watch and then have to witness the fallout without really having much understanding and certainty no agency. I don't think the meme is saying all of these things are equally bad. Just pointing out that these were major events and possible inflection points in history that didn't break in favor of justice.
I was in prime conscription age. My father was called up for Vietnam but refused conscription and only the end of the conflict kept him out of jail. I had already applied with selective service as required when I turned 18 and when I saw the second tower get hit, followed by the pentagon, I was certain we were going to be in another conscripted war. Anyone who blows off the impact of 9/11 wasn't there for it. Anyone who thinks it is history doesn't realize how many rights we lost on that day that we will never get back doesn't understand.
I couldn't agree more. Things might have turned out similarly regardless, but there's a non-zero chance that without it the patriot act, the second bush term, and the following collapse of civil liberties would not have occurred, or at least would have taken more time or a different path. Sometimes you see people say al-Qaeda won that day and though I don't think anyone really won, sine it and the aftermath were devastating worldwide, they certainly had some of their aims accomplished.
The world is bigger than the states. My country didn’t give a damn about a couple of towers. My comment mentions Ukraine as an exaggerated example to show people how unimportant 9/11 was for everyone in literally any other country in the world.
In any case, point taken, I hope you got my point as well
you do realise you're on the World Wide Web, right?
Please stop acting like there's only one country in the world, and that's the omnipotent, wonderful USA. That's what the message you're replying to refers to: 9/11 was important for the USA, but the world is much bigger.
You ever been through an airport before and after? That shit alone was so different between, say, 1999 and 2003. The othering certainly took place across a fairly broad swathe of the Western world, and the post-millennium paranoia never let up. 1999 was an amazing year to be alive. There really did seem to be a boundless optimism that, God, if you could've bottle it it'd sell like hotcakes
I'm not acting like there's only one country in the world and nothing in my comment would suggest I think the US was omnipotent and wonderful, unless you think racism and Islamophobia and turning against other countries is somehow wonderful.
If I see a post that talks about how too many parents are giving their kids tablets, my first thought is not "there are so many places where no one even owns a tablet, stop generalizing". This is a random meme, not a manifesto on global issues. The term millennial isn't even used globally and often different countries will have different ideas of what a generation is and what to call it. In South Africa some "millennials" would be part of the "born-free generation", in Northern Ireland you might call them "Peace Babies", in china "Post 90s". Terms from the US might make their way abroad, but "baby boomers" certainly was not a phenomenon in every country. Getting upset that someone is using a US made term in a meme in English on a site where the plurality of the traffic is from the US is a weird choice. I don't know if Ukrainians consider themselves millennials but it seems like people who did at least some sociology have made the following divisions:
the Soviet generation (age 60 years and older), who were 30 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed; second, the transition generation (45–59 years old), who were educated and launched in the Soviet Union; third, the post-Soviet generation (30–44 years old), who were educated in independent Ukraine and have little memory of the USSR; and fourth, the young generation (18–29 years old), who have no memory or experience of the USSR.
Again, I don't know what is the most popular term in Ukraine, but it's clear that generations mean different things to different people and using millennials in a US centric way is pretty standard. It's not our place to act like we can use our sociology names for social cohorts globally and have that be reasonable. So if anything the use of the term to describe US sentiments (or other countries that feel like their experience aligns closely enough) is a good way to honor other countries and cultures agency and autonomy.
All the adults told us it would be better for us than for them.
All the adults told us that it was our responsibility to do better than they'd done things. Some of the adults tried to help out along the way, while other adults knee-capped us and robbed us and threw us in jail for the crime of becoming poor.
And there's a real selection bias along the way. A friend of mine was six years old when her dad shoved her out of the way of a speeding car. He died. She and the driver lived. She got to grow up in a world without a father willing to give everything to protect her. But the guy who killed her dad kept on ticking.
As we carve out more and more space for reckless, heartless people, we lose the honest and selfless ones along the way. In the end, a generation that selects for selfish people is going to be dominated by the most ruthless.
Most of the adults did tell me to do better, but they also kept repeating that I had it better than they did. Which was partially true at the time depending on who said it, but they still messed things up and blame me for not fixing their mistakes.
And what does that story have to do with generational pressure?
I mean, you take your pick-which generation would you actually want to switch with? Baby boomers had it better economically (if you were a white man) but a lot less tolerance for everything from being a single woman to interracial marriage (much less gay marriage or transgender recognition)
My guy, my life isn't even halfway over yet. It's been incredibly rough so far, certain things which my life never truly recovered from... And much worse can possibly still happen in the decades to come.
Gen X went through a wall street crash and recession. We went through a recession when reagan screwed up the economy in the early 80's the frequency is just increasing.
Whenever millenials post stuff like this I’m like ‘huh, welcome to the human race I guess? You’re slowly catching up to all the generations even the new generation after you has seen some shit ‘ I mean I’m not sure where you’re intending to take this complaint about being human. If you find the manager or a help desk let the rest of us know. Some of us been looking for it since the 70s.
See, I turn 39 this year so if Trump's attempt to further shit all over what my grandfather fought for could just wait till the actual end of his term I'll have made it to 40 before the world turns to complete shit.
WWIII has been looming on generations before millennials. Millennials weren’t alive during the 1980 cold sweat of Russia and the doomsday clock. Everyone had nukes. Lots and lots of nukes. We’re not talking small nukes. We’re talking like what happened in Hiroshima. Only everywhere.
Also recession isn’t new, its been happening at least once every 10 years if not more. Although usually they are only when something happens that isn’t preventable. This recession is entirely preventable.
It’s when it’s a depression that it gets real bad. Like your bank closed and your money is gone and it won’t matter what kind of insurance you had, you’re eating leather boots.
Additionally there’s been bird h1n1, sars, various flus prior to Covid.
Just be grateful none of us have to necessarily live through polio and a plethora of other diseases because we have vaccinations now….
Oh wait..
Ok so just be grateful there’s A CHOICE to not live with it.
A lot of us are 40+ but I appreciate your meaning.
We need to include the Cold War and the nuclear crisis to the list.
Does it really count if they were babies?
Gen X has entered the chat
Inappropriately as always ;)
Indeed, it’s never about you.
I was 1-11 in the 80s. Was super aware of nuclear fallout and the Cold War. But my dad had also been gassed in protests against the Vietnam War and used to joke about running toward the blast of the nuclear war ever happened.
I’m technically the last year of Gen X, but definitely fit more with millennials, and couldn’t drink until the year 2000.
Op also forgot the dot com bubble which burst when I graduated high school.
I'm 1 year older than you and feel the same about fitting with millennials.
The most non millennial thing about me is really important though. I was already in my career when 9/11 happened. Having my foot in that door was huge.
I was still in college. I also went part time for 2 years so I was in school with all millennials when I graduated college. I got a good job after, but just as I qualified for 401k contributions 2007 happened and I got canned when the whole company went under.
And you aren't a millennial.
Eh, 3 months before the cutoff doesn’t really count.
Then what's the point of a cutoff?
Honestly, anything before 1985 doesn't feel millennialish.
The cutoff is currently 1980, but generations are just weird retrospective categories anyway. They sorta shift a bit as new divisions become noticeable.
I can be Gen x if you want, it’s just financially and experientially I’ve lived much more of a millennial’s life.
This is a pretty gatekeepy take.
Generations are about your social cohort and shared experiences, not a calendar.
I think late X folks who got the internet in their teen years mostly fit in better with millennials than X. Being able to anonymously talk about anything with people from all over the world while still in your adolescence is something that most Gen X didn't get, and I think that particular experience is critical for understanding the differences between X and millenial.
The boundary is nebulous enough that social scientists even came up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials
I was born in 78, and I definitely have a lot of X characteristics, but when I talk to other people my own age about things like the futility of working hard for recognition from society/employers it becomes really clear that I understand millenials a hell of a lot better than most gen X do...
And gen-x has lived through everything listed and more. Boomers even more. Think gen-x gets to retire? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA good one!
Whenever I meet a fellow Gen X in the wild, they seem to fall into one of two categories. If they were born before the end of the Vietnam War, they are upper middle-class douchebags who film anti-woke TokTok videos in their Dodge Rams. If they were born after the end of the Vietnam War, they are solidly working-class and just quietly depressed about everything.
I'm obviously generalizing here, but older Gen X does seem to be far more Boomerish, and younger Gen X is just... Lost.
You should talk to those Catholic dudes who have been around since 1840. They have seen some things.
Yeah I was going to say, I'm 41 and while I seem more like gen X since I mainly hang around with them and basically grew up around them, I am sadly gen Y.
On a side note, millennial has such a bad connotation around it I prefer to say gen Y. Most people don't associate their negative feelings about millennials with the term gen Y and it just makes life easier during the rare occasions that it comes up.
I think a lot of it is bullshit. I am 45, early 1980. My mom was 17 when she had me. Her parents were Silent Generation, early 1936 and late 1939. Mom and Dad were cusp boomers born in late 1961. Her parents raised me with my cousins who were all 1970-1975 kids. I have two brothers who are cusp gen Y&Z, born in early 1995 and late 1996.
I am firmly Gen X in my upbringing and socialization but when my cousins went off to College I got a bunch of Gen Y friends and my experiences changed. I introduced them to The Meat Puppets and Husker Du and they introduced me to Blink 182 and Green Day.
My little brothers are Gen Z stereotypes raised by a couple of Gen X stereotypes but technically they are Gen Y and Boomers
My point is the dates don't mean shit, it's the environment and the influence. When I talk Generations with people I just tell them I am a Xeinal 1977-1983. It saves me from having to listen to someone tell me I am Gen Y when I have almost nothing in common with Gen Y.
This long unsolicited rant is over lol
Looking at the pixels and layers upon layers of compression artifacts in this photo, it wouldn't surprise me if the original was created at least 5 - 10 years ago, meaning it would have accurately included all millennials at the time it was made.
It's missing working 3 jobs to survive and still being called entitled and lazy
What idiot was calling you entitled and lazy?
Pre-MAGAts
All of Fox News
"Maybe Millenials should save money instead of spending it on avocado toast" was a very common sentiment at the time.
Fox News was attacking avocado toast? Why don’t they just report the news??
Fox News legally can't call themselves a news station anymore because of how little of their programming is actually news. It's always been an opinion broadcast, at best.
Haha nobody directly although my parent has alluded to me being lazy at points but moreso I meant like all those "opinion" pieces and articles talking about these new generations blah blah etcetc
Y2K wasn't that bad compared to the rest
In hindsight. There was some degree of hysteria at the time, which prompted ended at the turn of the millenia when planes did not fall out of the sky and computer systems did not all fail in unison.
Nothing personal, I try to correct this view everywhere I see it.
Y2K didn't happen because a lot of talented engineers worked their asses off to prevent it from happening. It is the bane of IT people everywhere that the working state of the systems they create and maintain is being taken for granted by the public, with barely a thought givem to those who fight bugs, spam, cyber attacks and pure entropy every day. It is in fact a minor miracle of engineering that we're even having this conversation.
Thank you. I was on the Y2K team.
Thank you for your service. I mean it.
And thank you! I merely followed directions, my first real IT job. But I'm proud to say I was there! As a private if not a general.
God(or whatever metaphysical force you subscribe to) guard the engineers. Of all types.
Couldn't agree more and do not in any way intend to diminish the hard work of those that prevented a widespread systems failure.
That's true, but it is also true that there was a lot of hysteria... A lot of well designed systems were built without the y2k flaw in the first place...
Reminds me of this funny bit from Louis C.K. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBdwNP7xk_6/ (profanity)
The public should take it for granted, it's corpo culture that shouldn't. If IT people had the freedom and option to do the right things early there's so many situations that would never happen, but oh no profits must increase by 10% yoy or else CEO is replaced.
A-men
And A-women too 😁
the Dot Com bubble burst + World Trade Center in 2001 was another animal
Y2k was a non event because a lot of time, effort, and money was spent fixing it before the deadline.
The estimated cost of fixing the bug was between 300-850 billion dollars in 2000 - adjusted for inflation that's about 0.5-1.5 trillion dollars
https://www.computerworld.com/article/1372100/some-key-facts-and-events-in-y2k-history.html
There was that one guy who got charged $60k in late fees at blockbuster though.
Y2K wasn't that bad because a billion engineers saw it coming and prepared accordingly. If everyone hadn't been freaking out about it for years beforehand things could have gone very differently.
Not really as it would just be another Crowd Strike
Comparatively, sure it's small potatoes.
If anything it was a misdirect.
When the world/news goes crazy, it's probably not actually that bad. Surprise mothetfucker!
Whenever I hear a new term I have to figure out if it's really that bad, or just made up nonsense.
Pretty sure we are in a "unofficial world war 3" considering how there's like 6 countries at war
Russia vs Ukraine
Israel vs Palestine
India vs Pakistan
Americans vs America.
Does US vs the world in economic war count?
That too economic warfare.
Didn't you hear? God emperor Trump made that whole silly India/Pakistan thing go away /s
An Indian Pakistan conflict would kill lots of people and create millions of refugees. (And that's ignoring the nuclear risk)
If the US can stabilize the situation let them
US can't stabilize itself. And we all know how "good" US is at resolving conflicts.
You are probably right. However, it is always to good to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Trump is more like to stir up trouble on the thought he could come in and annex the land after everyones dead/weakened.
Nah let them pop off. Push the red button.
The dot-com burst was a recession too.
Oh, and you are ignoring the entire thing where every currency except the dollar was destroyed in the 90s.
Also, history ended in 1986. It seems you didn't get the memo. It would have been typed and nailed into your local clipboard.
Imagine thinking neoliberal Western Democracy was the final and ultimate expression of ideology.
They did though! These idiots thought exactly that.
Downvote away, I've been having these conversations for 20+ years. I remember what yall said.
To be fair, it were the Marxists that started with the entire "end of history" bullshit.
I am not religious, but I like the substance of this quote by C.S. Lewis: "If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things —praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."
There are always wars, rumours of wars, plagues, natural disasters, but the work remains the same as it has been for much of human history.
well said, thank you for this
Bird flu is scheduled before WW3 so plural plagues
We already had bird flu check your records
We've had one bird flu, yes, but what about second bird flu?
I don't have that in my calendar for some reason. Fucking Google.
Add a housing crisis, the construction of a corporate surveillance state, a fascist takeover and the impending employment apocalypse of AI implementation.
Aint it great!
Don't forget the return of measles, as well as even more e-coli and salmonella outbreaks as food safety is curtailed.
"Anthrax - snort! - alright!"
To a nearby cockroach: "I smoked your uncle, you know that?"
"Fuckin' crazy!"
Gen X checking in. Here's a list of world crises just in my lifetime. This is by no means a comprehensive list:
1975 - 1990: Lebanese Civil War
1976: Tangshan earthquake (China) - 242,000+ deaths
1979 - 1989: Soviet-Afghan War
1979: Three Mile Island nuclear accident
1980 - 1988: Iran-Iraq War
1981 - Present: HIV/AIDS pandemic
1983 - 1985: Ethiopian famine - 1 million+ deaths
1984: Bhopal gas disaster (India) - 15,000+ deaths
1986: Chernobyl nuclear disaster (USSR)
1987: Black Monday stock market crash
1989: Exxon Valdez oil spill
Late 80s - early 90s: Recession 1990 - 1991: Desert Storm
1991 - 2002: Somali Civil War & famine
1992 - 1995: Bosnian War & Srebrenica massacre
1994: Rwandan genocide - 800,000+ deaths
1999: Columbine High School massacre (the beginning of a trend)
2000: Y2K
2000: Recession (Dot Com Bubble, etc)
2001: 9/11
Early 2000s: Recession (Fallout from 9/11) 2001 - 2021: Afghanistan War
2003 - 2011: Iraq War
2004: Indian Ocean Tsunami - 230,000+ deaths
2005: Hurricane Katrina - 1,800+ deaths
2007 - 2008: Global Financial Crisis
2008 - 2009: Great Recession
2009: H1N1 swine flu pandemic
2010: Deepwater Horizon oil spill
2010: Haiti earthquake - 160,000+ deaths
2011: Tōhoku Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster
2011: Arab Spring uprisings & Syrian Civil War begins
2014: Ebola outbreak (West Africa) - 11,000+ deaths
2014: Russian annexation of Crimea
2015: European migrant crisis
2017: Hurricane Maria (Puerto Rico) - 3,000+ deaths
2019 - Present: Covid19
2020: Australian bushfires - 3 billion animals affected
2020: George Floyd protests & global BLM movement
2021: January 6th US Capitol riot
2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine
2022: Pakistan floods - 1,700+ deaths, 33 million displaced
2023: Turkey-Syria earthquakes - 50,000+ deaths
2023 - Present: Hamas-Israel war and open genocide
2025: Global Trade War
The first third of this list took place during the Cold War, when WWIII and nuclear attacks were a real fear. Add in climate change, the discovery of microplastics in everything, the world seemingly embracing Fascism again, and a whole slew of other shit, and it's no surprise that suicide rates have increased almost 40% over the past 25 years.
We didn't start the fire.
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
No we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it...
Did we fuck
Another one for the list in early 1980 when US tried to start a nuclear war with Russia and that's when the doomsday clock was born. They told kids ‘just roll under a desk if a bomb drops’
Yes, a nuclear bomb. The same as the one in Hiroshima.
My high school had a fallout shelter. I had English classes down there.
lol hot damn. Gen X started off with some bangers. They just on going for millennials.
Guess what? I was born 1995. So my life as a newborn was spent in a shelter. Same again as a 4 year old toddler. Now that's fate.
Do people not remember that they didn't have cars until like 1920? Do people not understand that most roads weren't paved until like the 50s? It's foolish to think we're the only generation living through lifetime events. Motherfuckers they were people that went through World War I and World War II. They were veterans of World War 1 that enlisted in World War II. There are people born in the fifties that lived through the computer Revolution. Do people not understand that the internet is only 30 years old?
I know he is a fictional character but Colonel Potter in Mash served in ww1, ww2 and Korea... There are real people that had that experience.
Yeah, but I think we're going to get a participation trophy. I've been raised to believe this is the case, but that we should not be proud of it, because we're actually garbage.
And climate change
as a gen Z I still don't get why Y2K was such a big deal
Computers were not designed to roll over the year. This would have caused the dates to roll back to 1900 or some day in the past, breaking any logic doing math on dates.
The programming community made huge efforts to fix this problem, and they did across many sectors.
The fact that people don't understand how big of a deal this was is due to the efforts of those that did and were able to correct it.
The media talking about power outages and nukes launching due to Y2K was standard news hype/fear mongering during a crisis with rather boring (to the layman) causes and fixes.
the people problem of any crisis.
If you did nothing, and it becomes a big problem, everyone riots over why you did nothing about it.
If you raised awareness, busted ass, and prevented the issue from happening.. then everyone riots over how much of a "waste" it all was since nothing happened.
I get that, but I would assume that this only applied to a few old systems? Didn't programmers in the 80s want to make sure that their code would last for more than 20 years? And people knew Y2K would be a problem so they had plenty of time to fix the issues right?
You might be shocked at how much of our infrastructure ran on those old systems. But thankfully, yes, the rest of your comment is exactly what happened. Programmers knew what was up, and jumped on the problem early enough to avoid any major issues. However, this didn't stop the media from selling panic for ratings, which became the worst part of the entire Y2K experience. If you've ever seen the 1995 movie 'Strange Days' with Ralph Fiennes (and a great cast overall), it's only a slight exaggeration of what the media was hyping for Y2K.
It had to do with memory and storage limitations on computers back then. It didn't make sense to store two extra digits for the date when that space could be used for other data. It affected pretty much every system made before a certain date. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem
It was actually a bit of a big deal. Luckily it got figured out with enough time to fix it before it really effected anything. They were pulling cobalt programmers out of retirement to fix old systems and auditing anything important for years before 2000.
The panic it caused was the worst part of it, which was largely overblown by the media who kept predicting major crashes that would cause riots.
I was 18 in 1999, there wasn't that much actual panic. At the time people already generally knew the media was overreacting.
There was a pretty awesome shoe commercial a few minutes after midnight. It had a guy jogging down the street, presumably on Jan 1st, while in the background ATMs are spewing cash, planes are falling out of the sky, traffic lights are flashing randomly, and other chaos. Then it had a tag about new years resolutions. That commercial made it all worth it
I was 24. People started panic-purchasing guns and ammunition the minute the whole Y2K story broke. Here's a CBS News segment from 1999 about it. Here's a DOJ paper about it. Background checks shot up 15% from the previous year, with over a million background checks in December 1999 alone.
It turned out to be a huge nothingburger with no riots, no looting, no violence... But there was definitely panic, at least in the sense that a lot of people were prepping for some kind of apocalyptic outcome "just in case". Once the clocks rolled over and people saw that planes weren't falling out of the sky and nukes weren't auto-launching, they realized it was a bunch of over-hyped media nonsense.
I now classify anyone who knows how to program cobol as a cobalt programmer. XD.
Autocorrect "helping out"
Because all software at that point was unable to handle the new date format. Imagine if today, all computer systems had widespread issues at the same time, on the same day. The only reason nothing happened is because people did their jobs.
Hope this helps.
Not even close to all software. There was a broad mix of stuff that used 2-digit years that would have had problems with it, stuff that used 2-digit years where it wouldn't really impact anything, and stuff that used 4-digit years and so wasn't a problem.
However, if it drove any sort of critical infrastructure, it had to be audited just in case it fit in the first category.
Fair enough. I was exaggerating a bit. Just trying to emphasize the point of how big of a deal it could have been. Especially since we see issues like crowd strike, y2k38, etc.
Don't worry. The one happening in 2038 should be worse.
It’s less about the y2k bug itself and more about the cultural phenomenon. It was everywhere, and it was huge, and then absolutely nothing happened. It was the best possible outcome AND the funniest possible outcome.
With stuff like that, it hits different when you live through it and it’s part of popular culture for years. It leaves grooves in the ole neurons.
In contrast I could think about how terrifying the Cuban missile crisis must have been. The fiery end of the world could happen at any moment and everybody knows it. And we even find out afterward that the world was basically saved by one Soviet service member. I can empathize with living through that, but since it happened long before I was born, I don’t have the vivid memories of the actual emotions invading my normal day to day.
What year comes after "99"? People would way "00" meaning 2000 but a computer might say "00" meaning 1900 potentially breaking a lot of data systems/bases
It honestly wasn't. Like yes, it was a real problem, there was a lot of bad, often legacy, code that had to be reviewed and maybe patched. Industrial control code tends to be notoriously bad, and so you never know if this traffic light or that power station is going to glitch out until you dive in
But even as a kid who just knew how to take things apart, I knew it was a nothing burger. Real work went into it, but the fact people in the industry were taking it seriously means there was little actual danger
There was A LOT of doom predictions.. from airplanes dropping out of the sky to power being shut off, to possible missile launches.. it was a good time to be a shit talker in those days. Businesses made a butt ton of money selling snake oil "Y2K" checkers for your computer.. crazy time
As a Gen Xer who lived through the fall of the Berlin Wall and then all of the rest of this shit, I'm so tired. Y'all millennials even got to miss there Reagan years. Nixon may have started the car, but Reagan is the asshole that shifted it into drive, tossed a brick on the pedal, and let it go off down the mountain.
They also missed the stranger danger years. (Which is a huge reason why we got all the helicopter parents now)
One of the biggest reasons Genx are the invisible generation. So many went missing
I think that is one tragedy that was exclusively genx. Things like colds and flus killed the generations before but the Genx were just basically getting wiped out as children by adults. It was also the surge of mass murderers on the heels of the vietnam war in which they had used experimental drugs which I’m sure there is a connection
I still remember watching the news as a child right after the tsunami of 2004 and seeing the death toll rising day by day.
It is only going to get worse with climate catastrophy barely being addresed. Hunger and water shortage is only going to increasr the frequencies of wars and pandemics. Which will result in more and more extremism.
You're forgetting hole in the ozone
The hole in the ozone layer is recovering due to the bans on CFCs in the 90s. Climate change deniers deny this and insist that it is something that would have happened anyway...
See, ever now a than, thangs is cold. And thangs is hot.
It’s in yer bi-buhl buddy. Reed it.
:p
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Ya gawt ta reed yer bi-bull!
It tha werd uh tha lorduh!
It is almost completely gone
3 or more possible WW3's
It is not unfair to clock the first bit. But you can't count hypothetical WW3s. That's like Boomers saying they lived through Hypothetical Nuclear Winter.
Also, if we're counting recessions as millennials, you can't neglect the '87 crash and the '01 dot-com bubble. If we're counting plagues, you can't leave out AIDS.
Not hypothetical as much as possible, near misses
Up to end of Soviet Union '91
US-North Korea-China
NATO-Ukraine-Russia
US-China-Taiwan (upcoming)
US-Israel-Iran (upcoming)
Not hypothetical as much as very real possibilities
Definitely can't leave out AIDS or drug epidemics, mass shootings, living under threat of terrorism
Remember the AIDS PSAs we watched as kids?
“Billy has aids. You cannot get AIDS from being in the room with Billy. The only way to get AIDS from Billy is to come into contact with his blood or other bodily fluids. If you see someone bleeding on the playground, don’t approach them. Get a teacher as quickly as possible. Safety equipment like gloves will prevent an HIV infection.”
I'm GenX and I still remember when they called it GRID and the American Government was like "Shrug. It's just killing the gays. No worries."
Reagan thought it was a blessing from his god.
I’m behind you there. I’ve never even heard the term “GRID”. I was born in 1985 though.
What a bummer that people can be so ugly. :(
Edit:
Just looked it up. Man. What a way to put stigma on everything all around. Jesus.
Or a platypus.
?
Don't forget the savings and loans crisis in the early 90s.
2008 housing crash...
I was in university at the time. My economics prof had a habit of writing the Dow Jones on the white board every class. The day the crash happened I said 'wow that's a massive drop' to which she replied 'this is on par with the crash of 1929...'
But that was so early in our lives that they where just how the world was. I do not remember the AIDs crisis when it started my school just kind of taught it as just another thing that will kill you.
I've become convinced after the recent India/Pakistan conflict that WW3 is near impossible under current conditions just due to the fact that you start losing your very expensive airforce really really quickly.
It seems the Ukraine conflict and the U.S's plans to counter China's push on Taiwan indicate that the future of warfare is:
....Just...a gazillion, never-ending swarms of coordinated, "cheap", militarized drones....
I remember reading somewhere that one of the reasons the War in Ukraine has gone on as long as it has is because of how much of the conflict has been taken up by the use of militarized drones, cutting down on (but not eliminating by any means) the amount of people getting killed.
Which is good in that it means fewer people dying in a pointless war for Putin's ego, but bad in that in that it dulls the human cost that has been known to really kill war efforts, even in dictatorships.
Before Ukraine, I’d read that idea quite a few times.
Previous wars were run on logistics and manufacturing - can you keep your guys supplied longer than the other side? But now you goto war with what you have, you lose ridiculously expensive and very lethal equipment very quickly. Modern equipment is so complex and expensive that you can never sufficiently speed up manufacturing, so once you’re out, you’re out. Your equipment may not last long enough to institute a draft and call up more people, so once you’re out, you’re out. War over. Very quickly.
That was the expectation. Then there’s Ukraine, which defied all expectations. Somehow it kept going, it turned into a logistics battle again. The modern lethality didn’t happen as expected
The losses for the Russian airforce has been huge, i feel like the war would be over now if not for the massive minefields they laid down sort of freezing the conflict
Real I'm not quite sure Y2K should be in there since it didn't really result in anything happening.
Y2K was like the ozone.
It became a big nothing issue because of the spreading awareness, hard work, and other activities that went into preventing it.
So like I said in another post.
The problem with crisis is always the people.
If nothing happens, cause of the hard work to prevent it, people riot over it being a big waste of time cause nothing happened
if something happens, then people riot because no one worked hard to prevent it.
A theory of mine is that one of the reasons people don't take the various crises threatening to destroy civilization seriously is that we've lived through so many crises that were solved without the average person suffering that much.
Y2K, overpopulation, the decay of the ozone, acid rain, all major problems, which received major attention from government, media and the scientific community....and were solved, by the scientific community through incredible efforts that were unthinkable a generation before thanks to advances in science. But things didn't really change that much for your average schlub on the street. The change in fluorocarbons in bug spray or air conditioning units may have changed the price a bit, but not enough to really hurt the ordinary person's wallet.
In World War II, everyone participated, everyone did something, be it as big as risking their life on the battlefield, or as small as collecting old newspaper to recycle. Nothing in the past eighty years has demanded that kind of investment or sacrifice or commitment. A great swathe of our population simply cannot believe there is or can be an existential threat to life as we know it.
I have a similar theory about politics, that most Americans thinks of the modern American democracy as inevitable and irrevocable, thus don't take it seriously when the President's platform seems built around totally destroying democratic norms.
Oh I know. My uncle was a big part of all of the work to make it a non-issue.
I'm just saying it was hardly scarring, unlike the other things listed. Most people didn't really think it would be a big thing and it turned out, because of other people's hard work, not to be a big thing.
Mostly it was just a giant waste of NASA's time trying to explain to people why it wouldn't result in toasters exploding no matter what anyone did or did not do, because toasters don't care about the date.
I don't deny there was some hysteria around the subject.
but given how stupid the average human is.. its probably better to err on hysteria, than to err on common sense, when you need to build public awareness and support for something critical.
Thank software engineers for that.
The real concern for computers is the Year 2038 problem.
It's the same problem, though. "Oh no, we need to store 4 digits instead of 2" vs "Oh no, we need to store int64 instead of int32". Or y'know, just use RFC3999 if you can't do 64-bit. It's a tedious lift, but it's not a crisis. People that need to change will do.
You might read up on the everlasting prevalence of ancient COBOL still running too much of our banking and government. the same software that caused y2k is still there
The problem is all the existing IoT devices etc that haven’t pre-planned for this. It’s a safe bet a lot of consumer devices with embedded systems haven’t planned for this and likely don’t have user friendly upgrade paths.
lots of cars too, probably. Its totally not unreasonable for a car to be on the road for 10/15/20 years.
I used to work at a major iot company. While, yeah, some devices will probably be left behind, most would've had this covered from the outset. The ones left behind were never intended to make it that long anyhow.
Just like y2k, the irony is the problem is already solved but that won’t help us.
Datetime types have long since converted to longer data types that will not have such a problem for thousands of years. APIs have long since converted to return those longer data types. The problem is solved.
But the backward compatible 32bit datetime types are still there. Too many programs still use them. Too many embedded devices don’t include “extra features that waste space “, industrial devices are far more widespread but don’t get updates for many years. Worst of all, we have no idea what works and what doesn’t. We’re doomed to repeat the same crisis as y2k, where we’ll need to evaluate all our software, roll out patches, worry about everything falling down.
Modern software development has made it easier than ever to keep everything up to date, to prevent so many issues from ever happening. Year 2038 is an unnecessary problem. But human nature is to let it fester until the problem erupts. We’re doomed
Oh we're absolutely all going to die because there's literally no way to move some businesses off software developed in the 1980s they're addicted to it.
It was considered pretty serious at the time. I remember being at a new year's party and everyone went outside at the ball drop to see if the world turned off.
Apparently IT people at the time had to deal with bunch of stuff and come to work at christmas just in case.
Hopefully "possible WW3" will turn out the same way.
Did y'all forget about the Zika, Ebola, Bird flu and Swine flus?
Thanks, but I'm totally wasted on typhoid over here, i couldn't possibly do any more!
It iiis what it iiis
Thanks dad.
Oh yeah, 9/11. The biggest issue of this generation. I imagine millennials in Ukraine be like “war is tough, but thank God 9/11 is over”
I don't know how old you were during 9/11 but it was an awful time to grow up. Out of nowhere you were being bombarded with messages of hate towards of nebulous group of "others". The country overnight decided that unabashed Islamophobia was in vogue (previously there was still hate but not as outright). Think the Asian hate during covid but ramped up to 11. Your country was changing (at least from a young persons perspective) and all the sudden our allies were not to be trusted (remember freedom fries?). The US became embroiled in what was ostensibly a forever war for no reason.
It wasn't the worst thing, but people were going to war again and that was very clear and very scary. The financial crashes probably take the spotlight since they affected a lot more Americans directly and it's possible that everyone knew someone who lost or had to leave their home, but 9/11 changed the country in unmistakable ways and it was scary to watch and then have to witness the fallout without really having much understanding and certainty no agency. I don't think the meme is saying all of these things are equally bad. Just pointing out that these were major events and possible inflection points in history that didn't break in favor of justice.
I was in prime conscription age. My father was called up for Vietnam but refused conscription and only the end of the conflict kept him out of jail. I had already applied with selective service as required when I turned 18 and when I saw the second tower get hit, followed by the pentagon, I was certain we were going to be in another conscripted war. Anyone who blows off the impact of 9/11 wasn't there for it. Anyone who thinks it is history doesn't realize how many rights we lost on that day that we will never get back doesn't understand.
I couldn't agree more. Things might have turned out similarly regardless, but there's a non-zero chance that without it the patriot act, the second bush term, and the following collapse of civil liberties would not have occurred, or at least would have taken more time or a different path. Sometimes you see people say al-Qaeda won that day and though I don't think anyone really won, sine it and the aftermath were devastating worldwide, they certainly had some of their aims accomplished.
The world is bigger than the states. My country didn’t give a damn about a couple of towers. My comment mentions Ukraine as an exaggerated example to show people how unimportant 9/11 was for everyone in literally any other country in the world.
In any case, point taken, I hope you got my point as well
you do realise you're on the World Wide Web, right? Please stop acting like there's only one country in the world, and that's the omnipotent, wonderful USA. That's what the message you're replying to refers to: 9/11 was important for the USA, but the world is much bigger.
You ever been through an airport before and after? That shit alone was so different between, say, 1999 and 2003. The othering certainly took place across a fairly broad swathe of the Western world, and the post-millennium paranoia never let up. 1999 was an amazing year to be alive. There really did seem to be a boundless optimism that, God, if you could've bottle it it'd sell like hotcakes
I'm not acting like there's only one country in the world and nothing in my comment would suggest I think the US was omnipotent and wonderful, unless you think racism and Islamophobia and turning against other countries is somehow wonderful.
If I see a post that talks about how too many parents are giving their kids tablets, my first thought is not "there are so many places where no one even owns a tablet, stop generalizing". This is a random meme, not a manifesto on global issues. The term millennial isn't even used globally and often different countries will have different ideas of what a generation is and what to call it. In South Africa some "millennials" would be part of the "born-free generation", in Northern Ireland you might call them "Peace Babies", in china "Post 90s". Terms from the US might make their way abroad, but "baby boomers" certainly was not a phenomenon in every country. Getting upset that someone is using a US made term in a meme in English on a site where the plurality of the traffic is from the US is a weird choice. I don't know if Ukrainians consider themselves millennials but it seems like people who did at least some sociology have made the following divisions: the Soviet generation (age 60 years and older), who were 30 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed; second, the transition generation (45–59 years old), who were educated and launched in the Soviet Union; third, the post-Soviet generation (30–44 years old), who were educated in independent Ukraine and have little memory of the USSR; and fourth, the young generation (18–29 years old), who have no memory or experience of the USSR.
Again, I don't know what is the most popular term in Ukraine, but it's clear that generations mean different things to different people and using millennials in a US centric way is pretty standard. It's not our place to act like we can use our sociology names for social cohorts globally and have that be reasonable. So if anything the use of the term to describe US sentiments (or other countries that feel like their experience aligns closely enough) is a good way to honor other countries and cultures agency and autonomy.
This is very obviously a US-centric meme, as evidenced by the first word in the header, "milennials."
‘Thank goodness we don’t have to wear masks anymore’ meanwhile a bomb drops somewhere in the backdrop..
I turned 40 in February and I only forsee things getting worse. 😩
Well, summer is within spitting distance, so prepare for a new record. :)
I’m pretty sure there a lot of worse stuff that’s happened in the past 100 years, you just know how that ended.
We know, we learned the details about WW2. Our grandparents and great grandparents actually lived through that, and told us the stories.
All the adults told us it would be better for us than for them. While they fucked everything up and then blame us.
All the adults told us that it was our responsibility to do better than they'd done things. Some of the adults tried to help out along the way, while other adults knee-capped us and robbed us and threw us in jail for the crime of becoming poor.
And there's a real selection bias along the way. A friend of mine was six years old when her dad shoved her out of the way of a speeding car. He died. She and the driver lived. She got to grow up in a world without a father willing to give everything to protect her. But the guy who killed her dad kept on ticking.
As we carve out more and more space for reckless, heartless people, we lose the honest and selfless ones along the way. In the end, a generation that selects for selfish people is going to be dominated by the most ruthless.
Most of the adults did tell me to do better, but they also kept repeating that I had it better than they did. Which was partially true at the time depending on who said it, but they still messed things up and blame me for not fixing their mistakes.
And what does that story have to do with generational pressure?
The dead family aren't around to give better advise
I mean, you take your pick-which generation would you actually want to switch with? Baby boomers had it better economically (if you were a white man) but a lot less tolerance for everything from being a single woman to interracial marriage (much less gay marriage or transgender recognition)
My guy, my life isn't even halfway over yet. It's been incredibly rough so far, certain things which my life never truly recovered from... And much worse can possibly still happen in the decades to come.
Not to mention the last 10,000 years
Hey, at least you didn't get drafted for Vietnam
Give it time, I'm sure we'll have Vietnam 2 before long.
I'll volunteer, on the Vietnamese side
I doubt they'd take the average American. Wont fit in the tunnels.
gets drafted for the resource wars one year away from being too old to draft
What's the maximum age for the draft? There may well be a war against China very soon.
I don't see that happening as that would be bad for everyone involved
In general war is devastating for all involved.
And yet, we keep having them.
Funny how that works
Don't forget the 2012, possibly the biggest threat to humanity in our lifet .... I can't finish this with a straight face :D
After Covid-19 I am convinced that they mixed up the number of 2021
I mean, people who were born in early 1900's would have spanish flu + 2 WW's just in one life time(if they reach the second one)
/+ in Germany there was the biggest hyper Inflation imagenable.
Older Gen Z have lived through all of those as well, but before the age of 30 😭
Gen X went through a wall street crash and recession. We went through a recession when reagan screwed up the economy in the early 80's the frequency is just increasing.
Horrific.
And a turd king
Gen X here - we had Mutually Assured Destruction as well.
I for one would really like to get off this ride.
no way out, once you’re in the ring, ya gotta dance baby!
https://youtu.be/SJUhlRoBL8M
Please don't, you're making it better for everyone else.
Yes I'm just feeling peachy. Just perfectly peachy.
Whenever millenials post stuff like this I’m like ‘huh, welcome to the human race I guess? You’re slowly catching up to all the generations even the new generation after you has seen some shit ‘ I mean I’m not sure where you’re intending to take this complaint about being human. If you find the manager or a help desk let the rest of us know. Some of us been looking for it since the 70s.
Hey! Hey now! I might hit 40 before world war 3. Let's stay optimistic about this.
See, I turn 39 this year so if Trump's attempt to further shit all over what my grandfather fought for could just wait till the actual end of his term I'll have made it to 40 before the world turns to complete shit.
Yeah, the end is going to be when it gets ugly.
Gen Z here. Bitch, this shit just getting warmed up, hahaha
Just wait, it gets worse. Global fresh water demand will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030 and 90% of global top soil and arable land is at risk of depletion by 2050.
Milkdrinkers
Disaster speedrun.
Interesting times
WWIII has been looming on generations before millennials. Millennials weren’t alive during the 1980 cold sweat of Russia and the doomsday clock. Everyone had nukes. Lots and lots of nukes. We’re not talking small nukes. We’re talking like what happened in Hiroshima. Only everywhere.
Also recession isn’t new, its been happening at least once every 10 years if not more. Although usually they are only when something happens that isn’t preventable. This recession is entirely preventable.
It’s when it’s a depression that it gets real bad. Like your bank closed and your money is gone and it won’t matter what kind of insurance you had, you’re eating leather boots.
Additionally there’s been bird h1n1, sars, various flus prior to Covid.
Just be grateful none of us have to necessarily live through polio and a plethora of other diseases because we have vaccinations now….
Oh wait..
Ok so just be grateful there’s A CHOICE to not live with it.
Gen Y had all that plus 6 wars (gross estimate) and an explosion of a nuclear power plant.
laughs in genx. Let's go get you some fruit.
And we saw both Hulk Hogan's and John Cena's heel turns.
So dramatic
Then how about get the fuck out in the streets and join us so we put a stop to this shit.
No? You'd rather doomscroll and meme? Ok you're part of the problem
But I am le tired
fascism has arrived in the most powerful government in the world and you are sitting here meming.
Well then take a nap...