I feel like COVID has sort of messed with people's perception of time because I still see a lot of people saying "4th gen just started" when 4th gen started like 5 years ago now, which was like same length as 3rd gen, just about, depending on your cut offs.
Idk. This is an old thread so when it was made 5th gen 100% hadn't begun. But I think generations are going to start moving faster than they used to because of societal changes. The reason why 1st and 2nd gen was so long is... I think quite simply due to the absence of social media like we have today. 3rd gen saw the globalisation of Kpop and 4th gen saw the movement of Kpop onto social media. And now we have a lovely app some may have heard of idk called TikTok. Tiktok has made it that trends move SO FAST. And it has put a massive emphasis on staying on trend while being unique. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see massive shifts in the industry more often because of TikTok. But then which trends are the ones that change the generation??? I still can't tell if 5th gen has begun coz a lot of the groups people are currently naming as the beginning of 5th gen are groups I don't care about like xikers (not to be harsh, I'm a girl group stan so). I feel like year cut offs are also complicated because some groups who debut in the same year don't feel like the same generation. This may be controversial coz groups can be so defensive about this, but like to me (G)I-DLE, fromis_9 and LOONA don't feel that different to 3rd gen groups. I would consider them more gen 3.5 than 4th. But IZ*ONE just feels like 4th gen. Same year. But then SKZ debuted right at the beginning of 2018, before Idle, Loona and f9, and SKZ to me feels very 4th gen. It's too complicated. Some people are saying NewJeans are the beginning of a new generation, but I think they might just be the beginning of a current trend. But I think it's hard to know when a generation is changing. It's easier to me looking back afterwards. But honestly to me 4th gen feels completely incohesive because of the effect TikTok has had. There aren't those set groups everyone agrees are on top of the generation, everyone is arguing about "who are the 4th gen leaders" and even though I have my own viewpoints about what makes a leadercough didn't debut years after the generation started, 4th gen groups are constantly breaking each other's records.
So what have we concluded from this? Literally nothing!
Idk. This is an old thread so when it was made 5th gen 100% hadn't begun. But I think generations are going to start moving faster than they used to because of societal changes. The reason why 1st and 2nd gen was so long is... I think quite simply due to the absence of social media like we have today. 3rd gen saw the globalisation of Kpop and 4th gen saw the movement of Kpop onto social media. And now we have a lovely app some may have heard of idk called TikTok. Tiktok has made it that trends move SO FAST. And it has put a massive emphasis on staying on trend while being unique. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see massive shifts in the industry more often because of TikTok. But then which trends are the ones that change the generation??? I still can't tell if 5th gen has begun coz a lot of the groups people are currently naming as the beginning of 5th gen are groups I don't care about like xikers (not to be harsh, I'm a girl group stan so). I feel like year cut offs are also complicated because some groups who debut in the same year don't feel like the same generation. This may be controversial coz groups can be so defensive about this, but like to me (G)I-DLE, fromis_9 and LOONA don't feel that different to 3rd gen groups. I would consider them more gen 3.5 than 4th. But IZ*ONE just feels like 4th gen. Same year. But then SKZ debuted right at the beginning of 2018, before Idle, Loona and f9, and SKZ to me feels very 4th gen. It's too complicated. Some people are saying NewJeans are the beginning of a new generation, but I think they might just be the beginning of a current trend. But I think it's hard to know when a generation is changing. It's easier to me looking back afterwards. But honestly to me 4th gen feels completely incohesive because of the effect TikTok has had. There aren't those set groups everyone agrees are on top of the generation, everyone is arguing about "who are the 4th gen leaders" and even though I have my own viewpoints about what makes a leader
So what have we concluded from this? Literally nothing!