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Saturday, 11 May 2024

Millennial exceptionalism: how to rewrite history

Screengrab from Threads. It says: "Thanks for your question! The year was 1998: while our parents & grandparents were still busy pounding away on their typewriters, the first ISBN was issued to an ebook, and Google was born! For us as children in our preteens/teens that era was very exciting. At the same we had no idea how these innovations would in a few yrs revolutionise the publishing industry. So while we were thrilled to be the first Google users, it marked the end of typewriters (which to this day are a symbol for authors)."

One of the things I don’t understand about the modern world is the tendency for young(er) people to adopt labels. To me, that’s like letting other people describe you, and limiting aspects of your individuality.

And when people use a label that’s based only on the year they were born, that’s just weird. Generation theory is pretty rubbish when it’s used by marketing types; when it’s embraced by the people it describes that’s pointless.