Films that didn't really cross the Atlantic

[Sporting]

You are anything but dull.

[Hot Pepsi]

All of that is that is true. It seems that people born on five years of either side of me share most of the same pop culture memories, but that’s about it.

And I’m not sure that will be true in the future. We all watched the same shows and saw the same movies because there were only three networks, etc.

Adults don’t seem to share many references at all any more. Maybe they never did. I was talking to a friend of mine about Stranger Things and the other friends in the group said they’d never heard of it.

[Sam]

Happy to agree with whoever it was who said on the previous page that my definition of 'millennial' was a narrow one. I've always understood it to mean 'coming of age' around the turn of the millennium, so to me people born in the mid to late 1990s are clearly too young. 'Coming of age' has a multitude of interpretations, but I think everyone would agree it doesn't mean turning four or five years old. But YMMV, obviously. I have my impression reinforced by the fact that almost every time I read something about millennials online, it's clearly talking (to me) about people around my age or a bit younger. So yes, I probably am towards the older end of it. My own, inevitably self-centred, definition of it would have some room for people who don't remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and/or Nelson Mandela's release from prison, but no room for people who weren't yet born when those things happened. Some of the definitions on the previous page would include people who can't remember 9/11 or a non-European nation winning the men's FIFA World Cup, and those people clearly can't be said to be of the same generation as me in any meaningful sense. Not in my opinion, that is. But when history books in a couple of centuries' time are looking back on the events between the end of the Cold War and ... I dunno, some major event that's still in the future today, they won't agree with me, obviously.

And of course it's all arbitrary. It's no surprise that it's marketing people who come up with this guff (er, no offence, WOM). It can still be enjoyable to consider, though (it's always the most meaningless stuff that's most fun to argue about, for me, as long as everyone's in agreement that it's meaningless).

SB, 'Generation Y', sometimes spelt 'Generation Why', is a name I remember reading for my age group as well, long before I remember the word 'millennial' entering the lexicon. The second spelling, I remember reading, was because we questioned everything. Which is sort of a pattern, isn't it? That's always one of the things the new generation are said to do, by the people who come up with these labels, which sets them aside from their peers. Almost as if someone were trying to flatter them ...

[Felicity, I guess so]

All of that is that is true. It seems that people born on five years of either side of me share most of the same pop culture memories, but that's about it.

And I'm not sure that will be true in the future. We all watched the same shows and saw the same movies because there were only three networks, etc.

Adults don't seem to share many references at all any more. Maybe they never did. I was talking to a friend of mine about Stranger Things and the other friends in the group said they'd never heard of it.

This, definitely.

I help run a weekly staff-student Cineclub which goes to the pub after and obviously talks about what else we’re all watching.

There is literally one student who does what I do and watches almost every film at the Tyneside (art house).

There are subgroups of horror nerds, Sci-fi buffs, people who watch each and every DC film etc and repeated comments like “what are they/you talking about now? Oh...never seen it”

And while most will have seen “Stranger Things” also common is “I got around to watching that foreign series you were going on about last year” so not exactly water cooler discussions.