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john_strinlai 3 hours ago

indeed, i always understood a "fad" to mean some short-lived trend. meanwhile, pokemon is probably around the same age as the average HN user.

alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> probably around the same age as the average HN user.

Based on the references and speech patterns I've seen on HN, I think the average HNers is at least a decade older than Pokemon. The first Pokemon videogame only came out in 1996.

Y'all are boomers - nothing wrong with that, but HN has become an older monoculture.

buildbot 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t think this is true. HN was well known to CS people in my undergrad and I’m barely a millennial.

alephnerd an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm roughly the same age (maybe a bit older) as you and frankly, we are middle age. Yet by HN standards we skew young.

Karrot_Kream 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agree with this FWIW. The music and movie references here are largely from the 80s. Nostalgia here tends to be rooted in the 80s to the early 90s. This place feels solidly GenX to me which makes sense as the first web-forward generation.

john_strinlai 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Y'all are boomers.

i am! but i see a fair amount of people just starting their careers, students, etc. as well. and, based on some of the comments ive seen, i think there is a lot of young folk. most of my students are active, or at least browse, HN. they are mostly 18-20.

i took a wild guess that ~30 would be the average. maybe 35-40 is closer. either way, i think my point stands: 30 years seems too long to be classified as a fad.

alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> i think my point stands: 30 years seems too long to be classified as a fad.

Yep! Completely agree! I'm not that much older than Pokemon, and most of my peers have been influenced by it heavily and their kids will be influenced by it as well. If Pokemon is a fad, so are smartphones.

In classic HN fashion, I decided to kvetch about something completely irrelevant to the larger convo ;)

pretzellogician 2 hours ago | parent [-]

:-)

In that case, I'll kvetch about the "boomer" term (Baby Boomers are ~61+ years old), as I think you're conflating it with Generation X (45 - 61 years old)

Nursie 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

10 years older than pokemon isn’t even Gen X, it’s millennial…

RedNifre an hour ago | parent [-]

They probably meant "Boomer" in the colloquial sense of "somewhat old person" like how "Boomer Shooters" are for GenX and older Millenials.

pretzellogician 11 minutes ago | parent [-]

Thanks! I didn't know that. That's... really unfortunate that the slang has gone that direction.