A SLICE OF LIFE
Does this finally explain why I hate posting on Instagram? asks Devinder Bains
Our columnist Devinder Bains explains why she hates posting on Instagram.
This week, I found myself reading an article about ‘intelligent consumers and intelligent business trends’ – yeah, it surprised me too. I’d accidentally clicked on the wrong link while googling eighties and nineties fashion trends. As I glossed over the paragraphs about blockchain technology and AI-driven brand experiences, wondering where the bit about LA Gear trainers, acid wash jeans and G-Shock watches was finally going to pop up, something caught my eye: a section about Xennials.
The term Xennial was coined to describe the micro-generation of people who were born, depending on what you read, between 1977 and 1983. The group of people who don’t quite belong in the self-confident, digital-wizard world of the millennials (also known as Generation Y) but are tech-savvy enough to not be labelled as part of the MTV, grunge-loving demographic cohort of Generation X.
So, in a weird way, the article I’d stumbled across did actually have a link back to the eighties and nineties trends that had been the cornerstone of the lives of Xennials like myself. Which made me wonder, should I put looking for shoulder pads to one side for a minute and have a think about what being a Xennial actually means?
Before the word Xennial was dreamt up, being born in 1979 meant I either came under the very end of Generation X (born around 1964 to 1981) or I was teetering into the world of the millennials (1982 to around 2000). Although, I identify with the mix-tape making, Pacman playing, Doc Marten-wearing antics of Generation X, I have no idea what Square Pegs is and I’ve never watched The Breakfast Club…really, I haven’t. But when it comes to millennials: yes, I can work my way around Instagram and Snapchat (I’ve even downloaded VERO) but no part of me feels like I really belong on those social platforms; I’m not okay with divulging everything
– from what I’ve had for breakfast, to what I’m wearing on a daily basis. I don’t feel like I fully belong to either of these demographics, but that I’m more like the central overlap of a generational venn diagram. And actually, it’s exactly where I want to be…
I’m happy that we live in a digital world where I can stalk the Kardashians, know exactly where in the world Liam Gallagher is on any given day, and have the answer to any question by just tapping a few buttons. But I’m overjoyed that I got to grow up in a place where every teenage spot and bad hairstyle I endured didn’t make its way onto Instagram, although I’d really love to revisit some of the shell suits I was sporting as a kid. I’ve grown up in a world that saw the birth of social media and embraced it but was lucky enough to live in a time where reading a whole newspaper article was how you learnt what was happening in the world not through limited characters in an algorithm-biased Twitter feed.
I’m so grateful to be knee-deep in two generations – one where I waited for a magazine to tell me what had happened on the catwalks of New York and Milan, and one where I can watch a live stream as it happens, and in some cases, even order and buy the clothes there and then.
I lived in a time when our only choices were tapes, CDs or vinyl, when you still had to go to a video store if you wanted to watch a film at home, or a library to read a book, I still love all those things and the memories they have for me, but would I choose them over the access we have now to new artists, films and authors? Probably not. I’m the lucky overlap kid who has had the best bits of two great generations, watched this amazing new digital era evolve but will always know a world when it didn’t exist, a world where encyclopaedias were still sold door-to door. A world where people were still wearing eighties and nineties trends and not just googling them.