who names the generations? Why did we start using the phonetic alphabet? Why is it gonna be gen beta and not bravo?
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People have explained where these names come from, but I think it’s important to say that the concept of separating and naming these generational groups is pretty new.
The post-WWII “baby boom” created a whole lot of new people, kind of all at once. So Baby Boomers actually are a group with some real-world meaning. All the other generations are essentially arbitrary divisions that people can’t even really agree on. I mean, people have complained about “kids these days” and cultural age gaps forever, but I think the Baby Boom is what got us talking in terms of named generations like this.
Edit: also, maybe, the rise of the internet separated old from young pretty severely. Old folks famously have a harder time figuring out emerging tech, so the 90s might have created a pretty sharp cultural divide between people young enough to run with it (dubbed Generation X because it sounded futuristic) and the people too old for it. I definitely think everything after that is just putting names to arbitrary age ranges
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