What’s the point of these labels? I know 16 year olds that talk like the stereotype of “boomers”, and 70 year olds that talk like “generation z”.
Imagine we were making the same kind of generalisations about your gender, skin colour, choice of programming language - what would it add to the conversation? We may as well say “Scorpios like partying where sagitarians prefer reading books”
While there may not be much value in stereotypes like that, with generations at least we are all somewhat interconnected by historical events. WWII defined one generation, and their kids. 911 defined another. Those things that change us as a society do have some impact.
We all lived through it. Though we had different experiences of those events, and processed them all in our own way, they still shaped us as a society.
We do make generalizations about all the categories you mentioned. Some are harmless some are hurtful. This doesn't mean that demographics are irrelevant or that characteristics are randomly distributed. We are influenced dramatically by the environment we grow up in and nothing is quite so stable as the past. So, your exceptions do not discount the rule.
I'll take my generation vs gen Z as an example. I clearly remember 9/11, blowing NES cartridges to get my games to work, rewinding video tapes, making phone calls to friends on a shared line using a corded phone, having to listen to a radio station for 3 hours to hear the one song I liked and then rush to hit record so I could save it for replay, and on and on. I cannot share these experiences with gen Z. They won't ever have that. I can talk about it but it's just like a Boomer telling me about going to Woodstock or making 10 cents an hour bagging groceries, or dodging minefields in Vietnam, or using punch cards to program. Sure I can hear those stories and be amused, shocked or whatever by them...but I'll never know precisely what it was like to go through all that, with the mood of the time.
