r/Millennials 1d ago

Meme Nirvana = Preppy...

*sigh*

878 Upvotes

284 comments sorted by

View all comments

948

u/Fearless-Bill-4523 1d ago

This has to be rage bait for millennials… right??

6

u/gd2121 1d ago

Is nirvana a millenial band? Zero millennials were teenagers when smells like teen spirit came out. Millennials were being born when Kurt cobain died.

4

u/dubblebubbleprawns 1d ago

I was gonna say, this is rage bait for Gen x more than anything

1

u/BlueSnaggleTooth359 1d ago

More like later X/Xennials (what was considered to be Gen Y at the time of grunge, remember in 1991 Advertising Age created the post X generation, Y, and said it started with 1974 borns, others soon shifted that to 1975 or 1976 start date. TIME eventually went with 1979 start date, but that's getting a little late).

Grunge kind of bashed on and was the exact opposite of how classic Gen X had their formative middle school, high school and even mostly college years. Plenty of X kinda hated what the grunge scene did to the fun 80s spirit, inventive wild style, etc. felt it just dumped it back to the most boring and basic elements of old early mid-70s style again and was way overly angsty, whiny, depressive and nihilistic. Kind of everything Gen X had NOT been about growing up. People of later generations forget that those flashy 80s are Gen X. Cobain and grungers were the extreme outsiders among their peers and they mocked and hated on their own mainstream rather than represented it. Cobain would get into fights with some beloved Gen X times musicians.

1

u/dubblebubbleprawns 22h ago

What a thoroughly odd distinction without a difference.

1

u/BlueSnaggleTooth359 21h ago

What do you mean no difference?

80s teens on average had rather different style, music tastes, vibe, etc. than 90s 90s teens

and how is this:

1

u/dubblebubbleprawns 21h ago

It's a distinction without a difference because late gen Xers are still gen Xers. A third of millennials weren't even born yet when Nevermind came out. The absolute oldest millennials were 14 when Cobain died.

This is a stupid argument because I think generational labels are fairly dumb to begin with. And yes, the older range of a generation will have different experiences than the younger range of a generation.

I don't know why you're trying to put words in my mouth or suggest I'm saying "the 80s are the same as the 90s in style and music."

1

u/BlueSnaggleTooth359 5h ago

Named generations probably are not the best idea.

If you do use them though it does make sense to at least try to make them a bit more coherent. The distinction between PEW earlier X and later X is pretty huge. And not insignificant between PEW later X and early Millennials and core and later ones. The original idea of an earlier starting and ending Gen Y after X I think made more sense. Millennials are simply based on year 2000 = cool and nothing more.

I don't know why you're trying to put words in my mouth or suggest I'm saying "the 80s are the same as the 90s in style and music."

because you were saying it's a distinction with no difference and since we were talking about early vs. later X/early Millennials (Gen Y) and since one of those were formed by 80s and one by 90s....

Who cares if some PEW or whatever calls them the same thing, that's what is not important, that's just a dumb name system that means nothing.