Earlier today I posted an article "Why I am a Boomer." I expected to get a negative or agreeing comment or 2 but I didn't expect anything like this:
Comments
Wow, I guess Sarah told me. Don't I feel the fool? "With all respect?" You think Sarah may have an agenda here? I was cool with this until she said "It is filled with rather shocking innacuracies,(I find it hilarious she spelled inaccuracies incorrectly) particularly given the name of this blog." Now that's an unwarranted flame. She's saying I'm not savvy? Well maybe I'm not savvy about generational labeling but I am savvy about the internet and technology.
But it's easy to say things like that when you don't leave your email address and state why you are saying something like this, so because I am unable to reply personally to her, I will reply here in a post just for her. Sarah you might want to read this post to get an idea of how pissed off I get when people flame me and leave me no email address like you are supposed to. At least you didn't swear at me like the other person did so now I am able to post your response. Maybe I had some facts wrong and maybe you were right but if you have a vested interest in refuting me, and insulting me, at least state what that interest is. And then we can debate from there. By the way, I asked my mother-the term was used in the late 40's or do you want to call her a liar as well? Skulking around the internet flaming people who disagree with your company's point of view is bad behavior that I expect from immature individuals, not someone who is supposedly a professional.
Stay tuned folks, we have a bit of a surprise in store for "Sarah G." Unless of course "Sarah" you want to say here what your real agenda and interest is with the term "Generation Jones" and who you work for. Because if you don't, I will post it on Monday Sept. 17.





With all respect, this post doesn't reflect much savvy about generations. It is filled with rather shocking innacuracies, particularly given the name of this blog. For example: the Baby Boom Generation was certainly not called that back in the 1940's, th e '46-'64 definition had nothing to do with "time it takes to move from 1 generation to the next"; instead it had to do purely with birth rates, the boomers were certainly not the first generation to be labeled, and of course the pre-boom generations have labels (eg. GI Generation, Lost Generation, Beat Generation, Silent Generation, etc.).
But the biggest mistake on this blog entry is about Generation Jones. The GenJones label has nothing to do with "getting older", it has to do with the fact that a fundamental mistake was made when all the people born during the boom in births between '46-'64 were lumped together as if they were one generation. No generation in US history has ever been defined by birth rates before or since that boom. That's because generations stem from shared formative experiences, not head counts. The fertility rates of the parents of these people doesn't define them as a generation! The dramatically different formative experiences of those born between the early/mid-1940's-mid-1950's and those born between the mid-1950's and mid-1960's created two very different generations. This is why the Generation Jones label has become so quickly popular and used by so many experts because now that these experts are crosstabulating their data to look at the differences between the 40s/50s cohort vs the 50s/60s cohort, they are discovering just how major the differences are between these two groups. In fact, the data is clearly showing that Jonesers are much closer to Xers than to Boomers in most attitudinal categories. So we are seeing a concensus emerging among the leading experts in this field that there was a boom in births between '46 and '64, but two, not one, generations were born during this time period: the Baby Boom Generation was born from 1942 to 1953 and Generation Jones was born from 1954 to 1965.
Posted by: Sarah G. | September 12, 2007 at 07:51 AM