Posts Tagged ‘times’

Baby boomers and Generation X, Y, Z – Generational Marketing and 4 Common personality stereotype traits of people born over the last 60 years

Saturday, August 18th, 2018


Those who are employed in the realm of Social or Internet Marketing definitely have to know the existence of at least 4 different conditional stereotypes, these are Baby Boomers and Generation X, Generation Y and Generation Z (Millenials).

According to Socielogist Karl Mannheim (who is among the founding fathers of classical socielogy) – "All members of a generation share a similar collective experience" or in other words people are categorized in generations depending on when they were born.

As stereotypes they're generalization of people born in different periods of time and sharing same or similar traits.
Because of the age and the conditions they grew up and as they share those general spirit of time and age, they tend to be more or less behaving in a similar ways in how they think save / spend money or share some common approach to life choices and attitude towards life and worldview.

But before proceeding to the 4 main cohert provisional stereotypes, its worthy to mention how these four common trait generations came to existence with a little bit of pre-history.

The pre WW I and WW II world situation and the First and Second World War played a pivotal role in forming the social conditions necessery for the development of the baby boomers.

* The depression Era people

Born in period: 1912 – 1921 who came at full maturity around 1930-1939 right in the beginning of WW I (all of whom are already deceased) as of 2018 as a cause of the war uncertainty and the havoc and the war conditions were very conservative, compulsive savers, tried their best to maintain a low debt. They had the mindset (responsibility) to leave some kind of legacy to their children. They were very patriotic, oriented towards work before pleasure, had a great respect for authority and had a strong sense of moral obligation. For all this character traits of this people undoubtfully a key role played the strong belief in God mostly all people had at the time.

The next in line conditional stereotype of people that came to earth are the:

* The World War II Generation

Born in year period: 1922 to 1927 who came to a mature age exactly at the terrible years of Second World War.

People of that time were either fighters for or against the Axis Powers or the Central Powers with the common shared goal to fight against the enemy (of course there are multiple of people who were just trying to survive and not taking a side in this meaningless war).

The current amount of people living are estimated to few million of deathbed elders  worldwide.

As above conditional generations types mentioned are of importance for historical reasons and most of the people belonging to those depression pre WWI and WW II era are dead or just a few millions an overall in un less-consuming age (excluding the medicine consumption which is higher compared to youngsters).

I'll further proceed further with the Baby Boomers, GEN X, Y, Zs who are de-facto the still active members participating to society and economy more or less.


So what are these 4 Stereotypes of Generations that and why are so important for the modern marketers or business manager?


1. BABY BOOMERS also called for a short (Boomers)


These are people who have been defined by a birth year range (period) from early to mid 1940s  until 1960 and 1964.

 In Europe and North America, boomers are widely identified with privilege, as many grew up in a time of widespread government subsidies in post-war housing and education, and increasing affluence.

As a group, baby boomers were considered the wealthiest, most active, and most physically fit generation up to the era in which they arrived, and were amongst the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time. They were also the generation that received peak levels of income; they could therefore reap the benefits of abundant levels of food, apparel, retirement programs, and sometimes even "midlife crisis" products. The increased consumerism for this generation has been regularly criticized as excessive (and that's for a good reason).

One feature of the boomers was that they have tended to think of themselves as a special generation, very different from those that had come before or that has come afterward. In the 1960s, as the relatively large numbers of young people became teenagers and young adults, they, and those around them, created a very specific rhetoric around their cohort, and the changes they were bringing about. This rhetoric had an important impact in the self perceptions of the boomers, as well as their tendency to define the world in terms of generations, which was a relatively new phenomenon. The baby boom has been described variously as a "shockwave" and with a methapors such as as "the pig in the python".


2. Generation X / GEN X


Generation X is considered the people born in the following birth year period 1960 forward in time until 1980s. A specific feature in the 60s-80s period was the shifting societal values, perhaps the spring of this generation was also connected to the increasing role and spread of communism in the world.
Sometimes this generation was referred as the "latchkey generation".
The term generation X itself was popularized largely by Douglas Coupland in his novel 1991 novel Generation X Tales for an Accelerated Culture

A very common trait for Generation X was the reduced adult supervision over kids when compared to previous generations a result of increasing divorce rates and the increased role of one parent children upbringing (in most cases that was the mother) which had to be actively involved as a workforce and lacked physically the time to spend enough time with its children and the increased use of childcare options in one parent families.

They were dubbed the "MTV" (Music Television) generation – that was a hit and most popular music TV in the early 1990s.
The kids representing generation X were described as slackers, cynical and disaffected.

The cultural influences dominating the tastes and feelings of the teen masses of that generation was musical genres such as punk music, heavy metal music, grunge and hip-hop and indie films (independent films)  produced outside of the major film studio system.

According to many researches in midtime those generation are described as active, happy and achieving a work-life balance kind of lifestyle.

People belonging to Generation X are described as people with Enterpreneural tendencies.

Just to name a few of the celebrities and successful people who belong to this generation, that's Google's founder Sergey Brinn & Larry Page (born in 1973), Richard Stallman (founder of Free Software movement) as well movie and film producer celebrities such as Georgi Clooney, Lenny Kravitz, Quantin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, David Fincher etc.

According to United Kingdom survey study of 2500+ workers conducted by Workfront, GEN X are found to be among the hardest working employees in today's workforce. They are also ranked high by fellow workers for having a strong work ethics (about 59.5%), being helpful (55.4%) and very skilled (54.5%) of respondents as well marked as the best troubleshooters / problem solvers (41.6%) claimed so.
According to research conducted by Viacom, gen x they have a high desire for flexibility and fulfillment at work.

3. Generation Y (Millenials) – GEN Y


Following Generation X came on earth Genreation Y the birth period dated for this kids were years are stretchy year period that this generation is described are years 1980s – 1990s to yearly 2000s where birth period range of those ppl ends.
This kids are descendants of the GEN X and second wave Baby Boomers.
In the public this generation is referred as "echo boomers".

The Millenials characteristics are different based on the region of birth, they're famous for the increased familiarity with communication, media and digital technologies.


There upbringing was marked by increase in liberal approach to politics.
The Great recession crisis of the 2000s played a major impact on this generation because it has caused historical high levels of un-employment among youngsters and led to a possible long term economic and social damage to this generation.

Gen Y according are less brand loyal and the speed of the Internet has led the cohort to be similarly flexible and changing in its fashion, style consciousness and where
and how it is communicated with.

As I am born in 1983 me and my generation belongs to Generation Y and even though Bulgaria before 1991 was a Communist regime country, I should agree that I and many of my friends share a very similar behavior and way of thinking to the GEN Y stereotype described, but as I was born in a times of transition and Bulgaria as a Soviet Union Satellite at the time has been lacking behind in fashion and international culture due to the communist regime, me and my generation seem to be sharing a lot of common stereotype characteristics with Generation X such as the punk-rock, metal, hip-hop culture MTV culture and partly because of the GEN X like overall view on life.

Among most famous representative successful people of the Millenials generation are Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder), Prince William (the second in line to the British throne), Kim Jong Un (the leader dictator of North Korea) etc.


4. Generation Z ( GEN Z) / iGeneration / Generation Sensible (Post Millenials)


Following Millenials generation is GEN Z, demographers and researchers typically set as a starting birth date period of those generation 1990s and mid 2000s. As of time of writting there is still no clear consensus regarding ending birth years.

This is the so called Internet Generation because this generation used the internet and Smart Mobile Phone technology since a very young age, they are very confortable with technology (kinda of wired) and addicted to social media such as Facebook / Twitter / Instagram etc. Because of the level of digital communication, many people of this generation are more introvert oriented and often have problems expressing themselves freely in groups. Also they tend to lack the physical communication and more digitally community oriented, even though this depends much also on the specific personality and in some cases it is exactly the opposite.


 * Summary

As a Marketer, Human Resources hiring personal specialist, a CEO or some kind of project / business manager it is a good idea to be aware of these 4 common stereotypes. However as this are stereotypes (and a theory) as everything theoritized the data is slighly biased and untrue. The marketer practice shows that whoever conducts a marketing and bases his sales on this theoritizing should consider this to be just one aspect of the marketing campaign those who are trying to sell, stuff ideas or ideology to any of those generation should be careful not to count 100% on the common traits found among the above 4 major groups and consider the individuality of person everyone has and just experiment a little bit to see what works and what doesn't.

Also it should be mentioned these diversification of stereotypes are mostly valid for the US citizens and Westerners but doesn't fully fit to ex-communist countries or countries of the Soviet union, those countries have a slightly different personality traits of person born in any of the year periods defined, same is more or less true for the poor parts of Africa and India, Vietnam, China and mostly all of the coomunist countries ex and current. It should be said that countries who belonged to the Soviet Union many of which are current Russian Federation Republics have a personality traits that are often mixture of the 4 stereotypes and even have a lot of the traits that were typical for the WW I and WW II generations, which makes dealing with this people a very weird experience.

Nomatter the standard error that should always considered when basing a marketing research hypothesis on Generational Marketing (using generational segmentation in marketing best potential customer targets), having a general insight and taking in consideration those stereotypes could seriously help in both marketing as well as HR specific fields like Change Management.


If you're a marketer, I recommend you take a quick look also on following very educative article Generational Makarketing and how to target each of the GEN X, Y, Z and Baby Boomers and what works best for each of them.

Nomatter what just like all Theories, the theory of Boomers and the Generation segmantation is not completely true, but it gives a good soil for reasoning as well definitely helps for people involved in sociology and business.

Comments and feedback on the article are mostly welcome as the topic is very broad and there is much more to be said …

Hope the article was interesting to you ….

What was your Generation like?

What Every Body is Saying – one of Best books on Body Language ever written

Tuesday, August 14th, 2018


Those interested in People Reading or holding a Management position position job inside some Small or Mid sized corporation could benefit greatly of a Book called
What Every Body is Saying

What Every Body is Saing is written by an ex-FBI Agent (JOE NAVANNO), probablythere are no actually ex-FBI agents, but that's a topic for another post.

The book is quick to read, especially if you follow the pictures of Body postures shown with their little description below.
Many of the Body Languages so commonly adopted by multitudes of people, thanks to the American of the Culture world-wide are being practiced
in some degree in mostly all people you might know (mostly unconsciously) …

What Every Body is Saying could be of a great help to people who want to make through in life and for Start-up company CEOs, Human Resource Managers, or anyone who want to better learn to communicate and Influence People.

Even in a normal family relations, being able to properly identify the Body Language of your Wife or kids would seriously benefit you and if you keep attention (focus) would reveal there short term-plans.


Adopting some of the suggested body languages in the book would definitely help you improve how people perceive you and practising some so called "Confident postures" could even boost your Confidence levels dramatically both when you're alone or when you are in a group of people or A Company Team Meeting.

Reading the Person Body language is of a great help also to understand the approximate Emotional / Spiritual state the person in front of you is and even if applied proparly could help you make the person or group of people be positively influenced to change from a negative to positive mindset
or when working on a project, could help you dramatically to make the people work more efficiently and boost their motivation / mood about the things, they have to someday do anyways.

The reader has to know of course that most of the mentioned body language cues are generalizations and in order to find out the exact messages being sent on non-verbal communication level depends on a multiple factors and many of the Body languages talked might be in a modified form and even some could be totally different from any of the described of the book.

However the observation practice (at least mine) shows that at least 60-70% of the described Body Language postures are adopted and used by mostly anyone out there.
To check the validity of the things described in the books just sit somewhere in a park or in a bar / caffeteria and watch carefully how people interact, you will be surprised how many things are being communicated non-verbally and how often the lack of one of the two, or two have severe communication issues, just because they couldn't synchronize their body language or lack the ability to read the other interlocutor's processed and communicated intentions.

The book when red at least for me was a wide eyes opener and even though as a Christian, I've always been doubting that any-generalization model trying to frame up people is very untrue and trying to influence people with your Body Language is bad sinful (kinda of satanic) practice, realizing that even Christians does communicate and do use body language (because they're conditioned by the society they lived in), that means that improving your Body Language to be more convincing in mostly anti-christian society we live can do you good favour to be adequate in society, or at least you can be aware of the existence of the Body Language and its meaning.

By the way, many of the models and gestures as translated described as a behaviour body interpretations are perhaps highly used nowadays by Agents across all the major Secret Services agencies such as CIA, MI6, KGB, Mussad etc.


This kind of things are learned in most business universities nowadays, but the way the Body Reading / Influencing knowledge is communicated in Business universities is a disaster, because it is usually compiled by Professors who alone are not expert or haven't been advanced enough in body language.
Thus even like that if you read the book, I'm sure you will benefit and perhaps reread it at least a couple of times in the coming years …

A summary of the book goes like this:

1. It starts with a short story on how the author get acquainted to the knowledge of body language and his personal life events

The author Joe Navarro was an emigrant from Cuba to US as the age of 8, because the author inability to speak English at all, his best way to understand what the other was saying or communicating in the first few years in US was to observe closely what the person in front was communicating non-verbally and makes guesses, what that could be.
His family and grandmother also played a key role to help him learn the craft of Body Language reaading.

Growing up and graduating college in the age of Baby Boomers, Joe Navarro was hired in FBI where he spend the following years as an agent specializing in Counter Intelligence
and behavior assessment.

2. It continues as the knowledge on Body interprations is being served in a very stuffed manner



The 3 key things to remember out of the book goes like that:

    A. At least 60% of what you say is not coming out of your mouth.
    B. There’s one more option next to fight or flight responce our brain does automatically
    C. To become a master at reading body language, you have to develop situational awareness.

The book claims that people tend to be stuck into 3 main states (as a result of the evolutionary development of species (Creationists and Christian fundamentalists could argue seriously here 🙂 ) , whenever facing a difficult situation these are:

  • Freeze
  • Fight
  • Flight

To sum up if you're looking for new ways to improve your current relationships with people and build a new ones, the book would definitely help you tremendously.
I've found the book in a PDF format with few simple searches online so those who can't afford it could also download it from the internet (at least as of time of writting this article).
A lot of the exampled Body confidence / influence postures described in the book you will find on mostly any Kids Cartoon and Internet top shows and in mostly everybody from TED Talks show and mostly all Youtube educational videos and podcasterers.

That's all Folks, Enjoy reading!



Father Daniil Sysoev – New times Orthodox Christian Martyr of the 21-st century

Thursday, August 9th, 2012

Christianity is well known to have almost “countless” number of known and unknown Christian martyrs. Martyrdom has been considered of a high esteem especially in the dawn of Christianity. Short after the martyrdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, many faithful to his teaching (including many of the holy apostles) endured martyrdom similar to the Lord’s crucifix on Golgotha.

We’re almost living in a peaceful age with no official persecution of Church the if compared to many of the previous centuries. Nomatter faithful Christian still shed their blood for Christ. Probably in Christian missions, all around the world even in the moment of writting this article some faithful Christ servent is suffering martyrdom. In this post I will devote to one modern day Russian martyr saints of our Orthodox Christian faith – Father Danail Sysoev. He is most recent martyr saint I know of. Fr. Sysoev is still not officially canonized in the Russian Orthodox Chuch because according to Church canons, to proclaim someone officially a saint – 50 years or so has to pass since the saints earthly death.
Fr Danail Sysoev was a faithful God servent who has who lead a lot of people to the Lord Jesus Christ, by writting books, radio and TV talks, preaches and spiritual governing. I heard of him by Vsevolod a Russian brother in Christ from Moscow, I met just few days ago. Vsevolod shared with me that he is a spiritual child of father Danail Sysoev, because it was through him he was lead to Christ ….

Father Danail Sysoev was a fervent missionary for Christ and turned probably tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of people to faith in Christ in the only fully thruthful Orthodox Christian faith.

The Father was threaten numerous times over phone to stop preaching Christ or else he would be killed. But the continuing threats did not frightened him at all but on the contrary he even more fervently continued preaching the Gospel following the instructions of the Lord himself who said himself:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spiritteaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Mathew 28:19-29

The father has done a great work for the heavenly kingdom, writting in his short 35 years of eartly living – 28 books ! ! !, besides that he was leading holy liturgies, doing missionary work, was a confessor of many and was taking care for his family ! ! !

The new-martyr saint works are explaining in good detail the Orthodox Christian faith and how by following and understanding correctly our faith we can reach paradise (The Heavenly Jerusalem) our Lord Jesus Christ promised us.
The Hierarch inspired hundred of thousands Christians all around the world to do a missionary work and live a life for Christ and is a well known and probaly the most bright nowadays primer of a person who worked hard for bring Christ kingdom on earth – just like our Church holy fathers.
Danail Sysoev was “dreaming” (desiring) for martyrdom. He even explained in his works that Martyrdom is one of the best glorious ending a Christian can have for his faith (this is also in concurrence with holy fathers writtings and our Church 2011 years tradition.

The Father was famous among Muslims in Russia for leading open debates with Muslims, questioning validity of Islam? Showing with multiple sources that Christ is the only “door” and God through which one can enter heaven.
Because of that and because of his truthful life like Christ said he was persecuted, blasphemed and killed for Christ’s name.
The missionary work Fr. Sysoev is one of the biggest missionary present works done within the Russian Orthodox Church.

Whole Russian nation was in shock in 20th of November 2009, when an unknown masked man entered the Church where the father was serving, the killed called out Father Sysoev’s name and shot him twice – once in forehead and once in chest …

The whole brutal scene occured in Moscow Church building which the father built himself collecting money in his lifetime….

Below is a short TV report of the brutal murder of the new-martyr, as well as the last preach of the father translated to English:

By the fr. last preach it is easy to determine the great spiritual experience and spiritual heights the martyr reached prior to his martyrdom.
There is also a full length documentary in Russian about Father Daniil Sysoev life but unfortunately I couldn’t find it with english subtitles, however it will be worthy for Christians speaking any Slavic language. You can check – (Ð¯ Ð¸Ð´Ñƒ Ð´Ð¾Ð¼Ð¾Ð¹ (ÐŸÐ°Ð¼ÑÑ‚Ð¸ Ð¾Ñ‚Ñ†Ð° Ð”Ð°Ð½Ð¸Ð¸Ð»Ð° Ð¡Ñ‹ÑÐ¾ÐµÐ²Ð°) on url –

A terrible times

Monday, May 11th, 2009

The SHR project is going nowhere, the teachers are playing with the group.Right now I’m drinking Amstel, yesterday I tried The Dutch beer Grolsh it wasn’t bad by the way.I’m completely convinced that my family has no love for me.I’ve recently suffered with a constipation again (a bit more than 3 days without a completepoop). I’m trying to eat as much food I red is good to be ate in cases of constipation,howver I still have difficulties when pooping. Happily with God’s help I was able to pooptoday twice even thought I felt like I couldn’t poop completely again. I’m starting to thinkthat this problem’s source are more deep. I experienced the same a couple of times previous year.The food here is also a reason. The food is simply terrible. I have absolutely no idea whatto do next in my life. I don’t know what will happen with this university it will be reallyridiculous if I didn’t succeed this semester I’ve prayed so much to God with a requeststo grant me graduate this times. Two days ago I woke up eary in 6:00 o’clock in the morningbecause my room was filled with a weed odour probably some mate was smoking weed, it is soterrible in this country. I have absolutely no idea what to do with myself next even if I graduate.Today I went to the bathroom at least 30 times (or more) attempting to bring some poo, my stomachwas swollen and I couldn’t bring the poop out … I’m constantly thinking about becoming a priestor a monk right after I graduate. There is no much that really hold me to this world. My health problems causing frequent urination are calling up again … it’s really hard to live in thiscondition I don’t understand why God doesn’t heal me from that but anyways I cannot do much about.I couldn’t pray much anymore, I also feel so weak and tired this days. It’s getting darker anddarker in this world. The weather is getting more and more insane, probably the day of the lordis coming near. Apart from that today I went to Ina’s home cause we had to work on the IBP plan.I’ve asked a friend of mine to design a logo for our company and he did a great job.Tomorrow we have to meet the teacher and ask him about what we have as a plan so far.Later on I went to Sali and helped to Mimi (his wife) to peel some potatoes, afterwards Sali borrowedme one of his bikes as he usually does and we went for a drive around in the city. We went throughtthe city center the Sonsbeek park and another park near Sonsbeek after which we came back to his place.His wife Mimi treated me with some fried potatoes which was pretty nice I haven’t eaten fried potatoesfor maybe 5 months. That’s mostly what is happening, anyways I should thank God for his abundant merciesto me the sinner. Glory be to The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit now and forever and ever! Amen!END—–

Hermits of our times

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

Two days ago I strucked on an interesting video. It shows us a few contemporary persons who are hermits in Romania.What they teached and said is quite interesting to see since it’s truth. One of the hermits said how many hours perday do you pray? Do yo u pray for 6 hours ? w0w, 6 hours that’s a lot. We are so astray from God ..Just check the video out here We are lucky still to have people like this ..END—–