I was doom scrolling through YouTube just now and came across a short that the final members of Gen Y (the original designation of Millennials) are either 30 or turning 30 by the end of the year. I’m on the other end of the generation (mid 40s) and find it both interesting and humbling that there’s people whom would’ve had their 10 year high school reunion at the same time as others having their 25 year reunion and still be in the same generation.

Additionally, Microsoft plans to offer buyouts to about 60,000 workers as part of the company's efforts to trim costs and retool its workforce as it invests heavily in AI. that amounts to just over a quarter of its total staff.

I see the AI writing on the wall for my job sooner or later.

Back during the Y2K era I spent a small fortune on makeup. It was insane how I was exclusively purchasing MAC and it was so expensive!! Who else did this???

Anyway, there was a lipstick I absolutely loved. It was like a peachy pinky colored lipstick. It was the perfect shade. I was trying to find it online, but I can’t. I can’t remember the name. I posted a photo of a reference the color family it’s in. If anybody can remember some discontinued, Mac lipsticks from the Y2K era that looked kind of like the one I posted in the photo. Can you post that name in the comments? Thank you in advance. I need to revive that color into my make up kit.

But I am le tired.

I feel like everyone was in a garage band at this time lol.

All my friends were in a band or at least knew someone in a band..it was a wild time to be alive.

Disclaimer since people can't read: This is NOT a "omg we look like teenagers post"

I'm still convinced that people age a lot more slowly than they used to (again for the 100th time, NOT saying we look like teenagers but people don't seem to age as harshly as they used to). Drinking water, using sunscreen, not having 7 kids by the time you're 25, and not having a diet of Marlboro Reds and Jack Daniels will certainly do wonders for your skin and your overall vitality.

However, I also noticed something very interesting about how adults my age behaved in the 90s vs today. I will say this probably depends on where you live, but I remember adults being a lot more formal. They tucked their shirts in, they addressed each other as Mr. or Mrs. if they weren't close, shook hands even outside work, dressed conservatively, and didn't use slang or colloquialisms. A 35 year old guy going "sup bro" and giving you a fist bump wouldn't be too weird now, but that would be extremely unusual back then.

Now, I feel like we express ourselves a lot more casually. You'd be hard pressed to find a group of 30-somethings who address each other using formal titles or dressing business casual outside work. There's no longer an age limit for having a sense if style (sometimes I still buy from the junior section because the whole timeless look just doesn't speak to me), and there's less pressure to abandon all the hobbies you enjoyed when you were younger.

Anyway, these are just personal observations so they may not resonate for everyone. I'd like to hear your thoughts!

I’m almost 21, but sometimes I feel like a Millennial at heart. My parents are 65 and 60, and my mom had me when she was 44. They raised me with a more old school perspective, so I sometimes feel like I have more in common with older people than people my age.
A lot of my peers have parents in their 30s or 40s, while mine are in their 60s. When I was growing up, people sometimes mistook my parents for my grandparents. That could be embarrassing, and it made me feel different from other kids. I’m grateful for my parents and the wisdom they’ve shared with me, but I had a different experience growing up.
I’m autistic, and I can find it hard to connect with some people my age. I have friends around my age and friends in their 30s, but I often feel like we grew up with different experiences.
Does anyone else feel this way? Do you think having older parents or being autistic affects which generations you relate to?

My votes, spoilered to avoid influencing the discussion:

Best: Lion King 2 is surprisingly watchable and the music is remarkably good.

Worst: Mulan 2. Every single thing about this movie was an insulting downgrade from the original

I encourage you to list your own first before reading mine.

Summer 2016 i was just 19 playing Pokemon Go.

How did time pass so fast

Do you remember it? A 2-minute ad, aired simultaneously in 190 countries on November 1st 1999, to celebrate the automotive company that at the time was the 2nd largest in the world.

Huge production, huge budget, etc etc, but that’s only a small part of it. If you watch it, I think you can experience that feeling of confidence in the future we used to have, at least in the western world.

Then the new millennium actually arrived and ... well we all know how it went down. Anyway, this is one of my favorite time capsules ever.

Just experienced my first bout with sciatica. I’m in my mid-thirties and feel decrepit. Can hardly function. Anyone else dealing with this?

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I grew up with a dog and we always loved and treated her extremely well (especially at the time) but I think times have changed a lot and even my parents comment on how differently they treat and much more they spend on their current dog compared to our childhood one (and feel bad about it). I view my own dog like a child and there is nothing and no amount i wouldn’t spend on him.

I feel like our generation really changed the norm and I love that for us.

Have we gotten any better?

Not every career or job is going to be a fulfilling one, and that’s perfectly fine. Some jobs are just jobs, places to exchange your labor for money. You don’t need to be fulfilled at every single workplace, and not everyone is seeking fulfillment from a job. Some of us just want do to the 9-to-5, get a paycheck, and call it a day.

But for those of us who do find a degree of fulfillment in your career, what do you do and what’s it worth to you? How important is being “fulfilled” or “having purpose” in your career, and how does that balance with your material needs?

I’m over a decade into my career in environmental consulting, and have finally hit that level where I feel like my work matters and gives me a sense of purpose. Not to the degree where I’d substitute a healthy paycheck for it, but I wouldn’t consider doing something else for a marginal raise elsewhere.

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We are old enough to remember how the world was prior to the recent technological milestones (internet, powerful computing, social media, smart phones), and--maybe more critically--we are young enough to understand the current tech and its implications and risks.

I'm generalizing here, but consider this: the younger gens simply don't know what that old world was like, and the older gens have issues understanding and adapting to new world: scams, (especially AI-driven scams), higher gullibility towards AI-generated content, etc.

From a social perspective, allowing AI to generate images of physical matter existing in our universe was a mistake. This gave us the ability to produce alternate reality: people, animals, scenes, backgrounds, landscapes and other things that do not exist in this world. Then we give this ability to virtually everyone in the world, and to no one's surprise, it's going to get used for all sorts of nefarious reasons.

We (society) are at a point where we have to question whether an image or a video we see is real and we have to do that multiple times every day. It's exhausting.

A basic foundation of human societal (social?) trust has been eroded as a result of all this, and no one knows how this impacts all of us, but we are seeing now that it does.

Two years ago I quit wearing a smartwatch and went back to my mechanical watches. Since then I've been watching the wrists of people my age and have seen a reduction in watches with screens to more traditional watches.

Have you noticed this or have you made the switch yourself?

I think I'm late to the party, but did a double take when I saw these.

Though the inner corners are a still a little sparse lol

My actor headshot back in the day when I first started to make a serious attempt to get into voice acting.

(Yes, I know- why the hell would one need a headshot for voice acting)

Anyway, anyone else have pictures from Y2K that they look at and laugh?