Ultimately,the cultural and technological advances have been so significant that even a few years of difference can create profoundly different life experiences. The advances include:

• Rise of Social Media (2004-2012)
• Smartphone Revolution (2007-2012)
• Shift from “Appointment” (Weekly) TV to On-Demand Streaming (2005-2015)
• Shift from Physical (VHS, DVD, CD) to Streaming Media (2005-2015)
• COVID-19 Pandemic (2020-)

Thus, the rise of the micro generation and cuspers identifying strongly with two different, major cohorts.

Portmanteaus

One of the things that makes talking about micro generations so much fun is their names are portmanteaus, blended words formed by combining parts of two separate terms. I have some affection for some old portmanteaus like smoke + fog = smog (I spent my first seven years breathing it in Southern California), and motor + hotel = motel. Growing up, I thought rich people stayed in hotels and everyone else stayed at Motel 6. Ahhh, the pool was so cold.

The viral spread of portmanteaus began around 2005 with Brangelina, a celebrity portmanteau referring to the high-profile relationship between actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. After that, people were inspired to come up with catchy and compact ways to describe things that intersect or converge. One year, Old Navy decided to use a portmanteau in their holiday campaign. It’s the worst one I’ve ever heard: cheermageddon. What on earth. Sick.

One thing the rise of social media has taught me is that people are more clever and funnier than I realized. This has been humbling because I am not a funny person and rarely think of anything clever to say. Even after all these years writing about Generation X, my husband, an accountant, is much quicker with the Gen X comebacks.

Recently, Robert and I were out for a walk in the neighborhood when we spotted a young father jogging alongside his son. The dad’s running style was unintentionally theatrical, like a fancy little pony trotting along. Robert glanced at me and began giggling, “I’m a cowboy… I’m a lady at a party.” Nothing like a perfectly timed Gen X reference to brighten your day. In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s a deep cut from Gallagher’s 1983 stand-up routine.

Xennials

I’m not sick but I’m not well. (Flagpole Sitta, Harvey Danger, 1997)

Moving along. The portmanteaus coined for the current micro generations reflect the hybrid nature of the in-betweeners. Xennial, for example, fuses the X from Generation X and the word Millennial to describe people who embody traits of both groups. It’s actually so genius and I wish I’d thought of it. The Xennial birth years are 1977-1983.

Writer Sarah Stankorb is credited with popularizing (not coining) the term in a viral article she co-authored titled “The Oregon Trail Generation: Life Before and After Mainstream Tech.” I briefly mentioned it in a post I published more than 10 years ago. I can’t find a link to that article, which is a shame because it was a total sensation that was discussed for months.

About 18 months later, in 2016, I published a post titled Who Are The Xennials. It features an infographic I designed from a template, which at the time I thought was stunning, but now find hideous. I love to design and spend much of my day designing graphics for my nonprofit work. Hopefully, I’ve gotten better. lol. Anyway, my point in mentioning these old posts is to confirm just how long we have actually been talking about Xennials. It’s been more than 10 years.

Zillennials and Zalphas

And I’m not proud of my address / In a torn up town, no post code envy (Royals, Lorde, 2012)

Following the Xennial formula, the word Zillennial blends the Z from Generation Z and the word Millennial, capturing a cohort that grew up in the overlap of those two cultural identities. No one person is owed credit for coming up with the term but a few people who were among the first to use it were the authors of Millennials for Dummies, Hannah Ubl, Lisa Walden, and Debra Arbit. The Zillennial birth years are 1993-1998.

Finally, the lesser known Zalpha merges the Z from Gen Z with the word Alpha from Gen Alpha. Zalpha, which hasn’t really caught on yet, marks children who carry some influence from Gen Z and who experienced the pandemic in early childhood. The Zalpha birth years are 2012-2023.

The one micro generation without a portmanteau is Generation Jones, which I wrote about in 2016. Read: Who Is Generation Jones? A Micro-Generation Between Boomers, Xers. The Generation Jones birth years are 1954-1964. 

Come As You Are

Come as you are, as you were / As I want you to be. (Nirvana, 1991)

Finally, each micro generation has its own brief, but collective memory. They offer a more nuanced way to understand ourselves and each other. I think they’re fun to talk about, and they also give people on the fuzzy cusps a sense of belonging, which is nice. Nobody likes to be left out. Speaking of being left out, here’s one of my favorite posts about Generation X, which I wrote in 2015: A Nameless, Unlucky Generation. 

I’ve been trying to nurture a sense of belonging among the disaffected, snarks of Generation X for the last 17 years. Talk about tough birds. It’s easier now than it was in 2010, but it’s still hard. I’ve learned I’m really only going to have an impact in private emails and messages or in an occasional comment on Reddit.