A Lost Generation

My generation doesn't have a name so you might not have heard of us.

Generation X ended in the late 70's, Millinials started in the early 80's, and we were born somewhere in between.

A gap generation.

No one talks about my generation.

My generation has always been on the edge of something.

We were born with the death of disco and graduated high school when ska got popular.

We were too young to relate to Reality Bites and too old to relate to Superbad.

We inherited our older siblings' sense of apathy and borrowed a sense of entitlement from our younger siblings.

I guess we got the worst of both worlds.

We were the last generation to watch Saturday morning cartoons and the first generation to watch Nickelodeon.

Now we are Cartoon Networks' target audience.

We were the last generation to experience analog technology and the first generation to experience digital technology.
We are the only generation to be raised on both.

We were guinea pigs.

The test subjects.

Our education was an experiment with mixed results.

We learned from both Mr. Rogers and Super Mario.

We watched the rise and fall of AOL.

We were in school before and after Google.

We perfected social media and made it unbearable.

We were weened on vinyl records, spent our childhoods with cassette tapes, took our CD collections to high school, and binged on MP3s in our college years.

We know we should feel nostalgic for one of those mediums but we're not sure which.
We were the last generation to buy VHS, the first to stream movies, and we still lovingly hold on to our DVD collections.

We turned Blockbuster into a ghost town and we were the first residents of Netflix.

We can't live without the internet but still remember when we lived without the internet.

My generation is both listless and motivated.

We are filled with both hope and despair.

The odds are stacked against my generation.

We can't get low tech jobs because they're filled by an older and more experienced generation.

We can't get high tech jobs because they're filled by an younger and more experienced generation.

Our parents' generation didn't need a college degree to get a career.

Our kids' generation won't have a career without a college degree.

We split the difference.

We are everything and we are nothing.

We are sandwiched between a generation that's broken and the generation that broke them.

We are permanently stuck in the middle.