The Savvy Boomer

Sarah G and Generation Jones-you're busted

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

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

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.

The Savvy Boomer nails a profanity spewing ageist troll

I got some incredibly profane and ageist  comment spam on the Savvy Boomer yesterday morning that I was able to delete almost as soon as it arrived.  I sometimes post about ageism and I routinely leave comments on other blogs that either post ageist remarks or blogs written by other boomers and seniors that post about ageism.  I always use my blog name when posting.  I've  left about 5 comments about ageist posts on other blogs in the last week so I guess I shouldn't be surprised I got this.

This low-life left comments on 3 of my older posts probably not realizing they would show up in my email immediately along with the IP address it was sent from.  This spammer wasn't too smart.  That particular IP  is hooked up to a dedicated line so the company name showed up when I traced it.   I had never heard of the company and after I googled it, I went to the company web site.  I sent the spam comments to the webmaster with the IP information from Typepad and said I was going to post all the information I had collected on the spam source on this blog if I didn't hear from them in 24 hours.  18 minutes later, I received a very sincere apology from the VP of IT of the company with the comment "appropriate action is being taken," asking me not to post about it on my blog. 

Actually, I would never post the company name because I don't know how accurate the tracer is but based on that response, it got it right this time.  This isn't the first time I have received ageist or profane (well, these were way beyond profane) remarks in both the comments and my email but if the commenter is willing to identify him/her self, as long as it isn't too profane, I'll leave comments there no matter how much I may disagree with them.  If they don't mind showing their ageist bigotry for everyone to see, that's fine with me.

Speaking of ageist remarks, look at this post on Time Goes By.  Shame on CNN.

Win a new BMW from the Savvy Boomer

This is the 111 th post on the Savvy Boomer and today is April 1 so with all those 1s in abundance I felt I should celebrate by giving away a new BMW just like this beauty above to the 1 millionth person to hit on the site today.  So good luck.  The rules are posted here and winner will be solely determined by me.

WHY DO YOU GET SPAM MAIL?

I get asked this question a lot.  Simply put, it's unavoidable but there are many ways you can minimize it.  I won't go into all the ways spammers get your address.  The obvious ones are registering for something (often free) on a website you don't know anything about.  A good example of this is a birthday card site.  Unless it is a well known firm like Hallmark or Carleton, most email birthday card sites only want to get addresses they can sell to spammers.  So when you send a birthday card, they get 2 more addresses-yours and the birthday recipient's.  Never ever click on a pop up that says something like "YOU HAVE WON A FREE IPOD".  They too just want your email address so they can sell it.  Another is if you register on a  discussion board.  Chances are they'll sell your address.  So in general, NEVER EVER give your email address to anyone or any site you don't know or trust. 

If you just have to get some information but are wary of giving out your address just use this service from Mailinator . It lets you use a fake address that will satisfy the requirements of getting information or something you want from a website without getting spammed because any spam will go to Mailinator, not you.  Another service I use but is a little more complicated but well worth the effort is Spamgourmet.  This is my personal favorite as it allows you to use a fake address that will allow you to see a specified number of emails to that address and then after it reaches a number you specify, all future mail goes to their website, never to be seen again.

Remember when you first got on email and tried to get your name as an address but were disappointed that Carol@hotmail.com was already gone?  Well,now with the sophisticated random email generators that spammers have, I'll bet that address gets thousands of spams every day.  The lesson?  Make your email address complicated eg  Carolfsgg4883ert@hotmail,com.  Yes, you won't remember it nor will your friends but that's what email contact lists are for -you just have to enter it once and then forget it-the PC will remember it for you AND your likelihood of getting random spam to a complicated address is virtually nil.
Finally, make sure that you use 1 address for close friends and family only and NEVER EVER type it anywhere on the Internet.  Oh yeah, and tell those people if they send you a birthday card to use a big well-known card company.  I have about 10 email accounts, 1 of which I never get spam on because I have followed these rules.

Now you may say, "I don't care because my email service has great spam protection."  Yes that may well be but it might just be too great as emails you want end up in your spam folder and if you don't check it from time to time, it will automatically be deleted after a few days without you ever knowing about it.  I recently got an email back after sending a casual acquaintance about 3 mails, none of which were answered,  Finally I got back a very apologetic email from him saying that he was looking through his spam box and saw my email.

SPAM will probably never go away because if even 1/10 of 1% of spam mail is opened, the sheer number of spams sent every day means that spam is profitable.  So take a few precautions and your problems should decrease.

Comments

[Sarah G.]

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.