i think [@Verdaux] is coming in as a representative of the heretofore uninvolved Generation Z, as in those people just coming into young adulthood who were either infants at the time of the September 11th attacks, or who had not even been born yet. Since they are new they haven't really had their formative events yet, and so their relationship with the world is still sorta forming.

Speaking as somebody born right smack dab in the middle of the Millennial generational timeline, I have to say that the focus on generation is being overdone by our own right now. Really, I think all the generations since WW2, Baby Boomer on down to ours, have thusfar been part of a single monolithic super-generation, who's values are uniquely consumerist, and who's lives have been ridiculously comfortable. Especially our childhoods. So, for instance, if you took millennials and put them in the place of the baby boomers, we'd act the same despite (or really because) of our similar upbringing. And naturally if you did the opposite and put the baby boomers in our place, they'd do the same we are doing now. So the generational bitching at this point is sorta like a young rich man and an old rich man on the Titanic running into each other after the lifeboats have all gone and getting in a pissing contest about which one of them deserved to have been let on a boat. They were the same people before, and they are both going to drown, but they have to cause shit for each other anyway due to the desperation of the thing.