Alpha to Zoomer — Every Generation Explained

And where we go after Gen Alpha…

Gif my NotPotSer on Giphy

Humans like to categorize things. We start in babyhood, putting the star-shaped toy into the star-shaped hole. Categorizations help our brainsicles understand the world around us. We’ve done this to the recent sociological evolution of humans by dividing us into different chronological generations.

Things like the clusterfuckery of the world at the time, and pop culture, help shape that generation’s mojo and mystique.

Then, like the overgrown primates we are, we fight about it and sling poop at each other.

The generational wars are, of course, stupid. They rely on generalizations, but then again, so does a lot of life, because we need it to break things into concepts our monkey brains can understand. We chose generations, even though there are better ways to group people, like putting all the douchecanoe arseholes together in one assholian group that we can all vent our generational angst at.

But stupid never stopped us from doing something before. So here we are.

If you’re wondering what the generational pecking order is, you might think it all slopes downhill with one generation disliking the next. You’d be somewhat correct. But for a cheatsheet: the boomers are the ones we poke fun at, Gen X hates everybody, Alpha has no idea what’s going on yet, and everyone hates Millennials.

Don’t look at me for saying everyone hates millennials. I am one; I didn’t get a vote.

Anyhoozy, let’s take a chronological looky-loo at the defining characteristics of each generation:

The Greatest Generation (born between 1901 and 1927)

Tom Brokaw somehow decided this was the ‘greatest generation of all time, I’m assuming in the same fashion that a random restaurant in Bummsville, Idaho, will label its food ‘the best Chinese food in the world’. Perhaps they were named for their steadfastness in times of hardship, as they are as resilient as a tardigrade.

They grew up in the Great Depression and fought/lived through WWII. So they were raised on sacrifice and half-rotten potatoes. Their work ethic was unwavering, I’m assuming because it’s hard to complain about going to work when you’re starving, your buddy Dave is fighting on the front lines, and your buddy Bill has consumption (that’s the old-timey name for tuberculosis).

In between suffragette struggling and swing dancing, the Greatest Generation helped shape the world we live in, using their post-war prosperity to build the infrastructure and institutions we depend on today. Like NATO, a cooperative organization designed to keep us from blowing up the planet.

It was this generation where the middle class became a thing, something our current tyrannical oligarchs are trying to do away with, and have us back peeling potatoes.

The Silent Generation (1928 to 1945 — ages 80 to 97)

This generation is what happens when you’re raised by potato-hoarding war gremlins. They were too young to fight in the war, but their upbringing was marred by it, the aftershocks of the Great Depression and the Cold War.

They’re silent because they’re the ‘seen and not heard’ generation.

Although these days, those who are left can be frequently heard saying the phrase ‘back in my day’, followed by something mindblowing. Such as how they had to walk uphill, both ways, to milk their goat, which they then had to sell at the market in order to eat. This generation still cooks with lard, and the only milk they know of came from a teat.

They were raised with conformity and traditional values instilled in them, making them disciplined and cautious, despite experiencing post-war prosperity.

There were two medicinal ways to solve health problems: rub some dirt on it or drink a vial that contained the color purple, codeine, and cocaine.

Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964 — ages 61 to 79)

The baby boomer label is the funniest of all generations because it’s the only one defined by the fact that their post-war parents humped like horny feral rabbits.

They grew up in one of the most prosperous times in history (although some people were still broke as a tooth fairy in a house full of meth heads), so they weren’t as frugal as their pinch-a-penny parents. Also, they bought their now-million-dollar homes for twelve dollars.

Boomers’ prosperity made them optimistic and ambitious. They had time to be pensive, something that gave birth to things like the civil rights movement and the counterculture of the Vietnam War (unless they were fighting in it). Things their ‘greatest generation’ parents called them ‘god-damned hippies’ for.

The world had morphed from collective struggling to individualistic prosperity. Oh, and there was TV now, so they didn’t procreate as bunny-like as their parents.

Their food pyramid was 97% bread.

Gen X (1965 to 1980 — ages 45 to 60)

Gen X are also called the ‘the forgotten generation’, because they didn’t have the humping pedigree of the boomers, or the hate-inciting fuckery of the millennials. This generation was the first to be raised with skyrocketing divorce rates because women were allowed to do things like speak and vote now.

This generation was raised with ‘latchkey’ childhoods, which turned them feral because they were raised like barn cats and weren’t allowed inside the house.

The nascent individualism of the boomers really spread its wings in Gen X, who are a tell-it-like-it-is generation focused on being pragmatic and skeptical of institutions. They say they ‘don’t give a fuck’, but their new-agey counterculture ideals really mean they gave selective fucks.

Gen X lucked out in that while their brains were still forming, or at least the brain cells not lying dormant due to the weed they bought in a standalone trailer in a field somewhere, they experienced computers. This made them adaptable. Career-wise, many went into the burgeoning tech fields to become the nerds that were bullied in their youth (bullying wasn’t a no-no back then).

Millennials (1981–1996 — ages 29 to 44)

I was born in 1983, which makes me a millennial elder. The millennials are the generation that stole the thunder from the Gen Xers, although it’s because we’re the most hated generation. Seriously, it’s a thing. There’s a phrase that trended a little while ago about ‘millennials ruined everything’ (and I have an upcoming post about all the things we killed).

We’re also known as Gen Y, which is because we’re in between Gen X and Gen Z. But it also spawned the joke ‘generation Y bother’.

We got computers and the internet younger than any generation so far, which made us adaptable and tech-savvy. It also cursed us with being tech support for our boomer parents. We saw the technological revolution happen in real time, going from landlines to pagers to dumb phones to smart phones.

Our landmark events were 9/11, the 2008 recession, and the end of the world with Y2K. Oh, and the end of the world again in 2012 with the end of the 5,000-year-old Mayan calendar.

But we survived it all (something easy to do when all the end of the world’s were fake) so that we could eat the avocado toast that kept us from buying houses. Instead, our housing acquisition strategy is waiting for our boomer parents to do their final boomerang.

Our work ethic is where it really started to wane generationally. We were aware of our feelings, but poured booze on them. So we’d party, hard — but — we’d still go to work. Hungover as fuck, but we were there.

When I was in my early 20s, I worked in tech. We’d be high on ecstasy, partying at an underground rave, but our bosses couldn’t complain about us coming in drained after a weekend bender because they were all of three years older than me — and we were partying with us.

Overall, we’re a tolerant generation that values diversity, but also appreciated a good ‘yo mama is so fat’ joke. We bring that chaotic balance of acceptance into the workplace, trying to find a better work-life balance than our parents did. Well, we tried, but instead we got seven simultaneous side hustles and still no house.

Gen Z (1997–2012 — ages 13 to 28)

I assume Gen Z was named with a Z because we assumed they would be the last generation to live. Perhaps we thought we’d have blown ourselves up before we had to figure out where to go after Z.

They’re the first generation raised entirely online, making Gen Z digital natives. They’ve had smartphones and social media since they were old enough to swipe, which explains why their phones are permanently grafted to their hands.

Not that I can blame them for that; previous generations left them with a bit of a clusterfuck. The environment is on the brink of calamity, politics is…well…you know, and they can’t even afford avocado toast.

It’s made them incredibly socially conscious, but Gen Z takes a lot of shit for being ‘the worst generation to work with’ because they balk at our work-to-the-bone-and-beyond work ethic. They’re checking out (on time) of hustle culture, and people talk shit about them for it. I’m pretty sure we’re all just mad that we didn’t think of that.

This is the first generation to have defined mental health issues en masse. Not because they’re kookier, but because before this point, you were basically sorted into either gifted, normal, or a stamp-licking paste-eater. The other generations just shoved their feels down into their stomachs, then poured booze on it to make the ouchy go away.

Gen Zers aren’t booze hounds like the rest of us, but psychedelics are really making the rounds.

Gen Alpha (2013–2024 — ages 1 to 12)

We don’t know a ton about this group yet since the ‘elders’ of this group are 12 years old. So far, they’re obsessed with yelling ‘six seven’, a nonsense phrase with no real meaning (that’s the point, it annoys people who don’t know what it means). Not that I can judge them on that, my generation went around yelling “Cornholio”.

They also appear to be a group of feral honey badgers who are hellbent on fact-checked honesty and social justice. But if we ever need to fight this group of youthful hooligans, it won’t be hard. We can use carrier pigeons with a message written in cursive, and use the secret code we developed to send people messages on pagers.

Gen Alpha is still young, but we’re already learning that being born into an era of smart devices, powered by AI, creates attention spans shorter than Dory’s.

Parenting them is difficult because they can fact-check you instantly and know that the sky isn’t blue because ‘It’s Jesus’ favorite color’.

The Generational Future

So, where do we go from here? Generation Alpha only took us up to last year, 2024. Well, the generation born after 2025 already has a label. It’s by far the worst one — Generation Beta. Apparently, we’ve already decided as a society that these babies are simps, which I think means that they will be the most feral batch of hooligans to ever exist.

Seeing as we’re starting over alphabetically after Gen Z with Gen Alpha, then Gen Beta. For the babies born after, my guess is that the label will be Gen Cucks.

And by that, I’m simply hoping that they’ll put the passive-aggressive and aggressive-aggressive shit behind them. And exist in the Xanax-coated harmony that most of us have been wishing for all along.

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