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…

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.

Not entirely unreasonable except for the whole thing where it’s clearly a bronze age myth that has somehow survived into modernity

I think the reddit user base is shifting too. It’s less “just the nerds” than it used to be. The same thing happened to Facebook. It fundamentally changed when everyone’s mom joined…

I worked in the analysis tool division of a company that built civilian and military jets when I was fresh out of engineering school.

I didn’t feel too bad about it because I was making commercial aircraft quieter and more efficient with my work. Then, the Iraq war started up and they told me I had to work on the engine for the F22. I started looking for a new job that day.

Now I work in planetary defense and don’t feel guilty about it…

Nothing in the built environment is, city or country… That’s the nature is being an outlier