We were born in the twilight of one era and the dawn of another. My wife and I carry the unique experience of analog beginnings and digital awakenings. We are Xennials - that rare microgeneration born on the cusp of Gen X and Millennials, roughly between 1977 and 1983. Coined by Sarah Stankorb in GOOD Magazine (2014) and now recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary, the term captures people who grew up analog but came of age just as the world turned digital.

Childhood on Analog Mode

Growing up in the Philippines, our earliest memories aren’t of broadband and Wi-Fi - those came much later. Instead, we had:

• Betamax rentals from the corner shop, rewinding tapes before returning them.

• Afternoon cartoons and anime (Voltes V, Daimos, Ghost Fighter, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z) blasting on local TV.

• Slumbooks instead of Facebook — swapping heartfelt “Favorite Color / Motto in Life” entries with classmates.

• Outdoor games (piko, tumbang preso, teks) before anyone said the word “screen time.”

We lived in an analog childhood that was colorful, noisy, and gloriously low-tech.

Upgrading to Digital Adulthood

By our teens and early adulthood, the “system patch” of technology hit. Suddenly:

• Dial-up internet cafés meant waiting for pages to load like downloading patience itself.

• Pagers and Nokia phones buzzed in pockets while the Philippines became the texting capital of the world.

• Friendster, Multiply, and MySpace were our first social networks - early sandboxes before Facebook and Instagram.

• Broadband only started becoming mainstream in the mid-2000s, meaning many of us finished college still on dial-up.

We were beta testers of the modern internet, bridging two versions of the human experience.

Culture, Music, and Tambay Scenes

And of course, we can’t forget the Greenhills tambay culture - hanging out by decked-out cars with boom-boom speakers thumping, swapping cassette tapes or VCDs, and soaking in the weekend freedom. If you weren’t at a mall arcade, you were probably singing along to Eraserheads, Rivermaya, or Parokya ni Edgar, or flipping between MTV Asia and Channel V, dreaming of a future soundtracked by CDs and mp3s.

That mix of analog grit and digital sparkle defined us.

Living Between Generations

As Xennials, we balance the practical skepticism of Gen X with the tech optimism of Millennials. We grew up debugging cassette players and now we debug apps. We upgraded from landlines to smartphones, from Friendster to Facebook, from dial-up to fiber.

And today, with our son born in 2023, we’re raising Generation Alpha - the true digital natives. If our lives were the beta test of a new operating system, then our child is the official release, born into AI, super apps, and smart everything.

In other words:
Exit-Xennial | Start-Process GenAlpha
- because living between generations is our legacy, and launching the next major version is our joy.