> In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery Have people always thought this (e.g. "the youth of today are lazy") or is it measurably true? I feel like it's obviously true.
Yes; moaning about both the youth of today and old people goes back, at least, millennia (though there are sometimes cultural taboos against moaning about old people which dampens that down). My pet half-serious theory is that we currently talk a lot about the dastardly millennials and boomers because senior media staff are largely genX; note that we don't hear much about genX these days. This will start to change in…
the whole generation-labelling thing is fabricated, likely because it gives the media something else to divide us with. the only officially labelled generation was the baby boomers.