Gen Xists

Gen Xists

Generation X is the generation that never really knew it was one.

Now, it appears no one else knew Generation X was a thing either, especially not the reporters at CBS News. By now, many Gen X pop culture critics are familiar with the CBS story featuring a graphic which basically eliminated Generation X from existence, while asking the ridiculous question, “Are Millennials the Burnout Generation?” Whatever. The original burnout generation, which had been anointed “The Slacker Generation” by Time Magazine in 1991, just shrugged it off as they’ve been doing most of their lives. Then, in classic disaffected style, many of them took to Twitter with the most Gen X of responses, dissing the dis with a bemused sardonic sneer.

Of course, it’s not surprising that the news corporations could forget about their media darling from twenty-five years ago, for it was just last November that Forbes thought to refocus the spotlight on Gen X in “The Forgotten Generation: Let’s Talk about Generation X.” The demographic of 66 million people born from the early 1960s to roughly 1981 has simply been busy doing the work of raising its kids, taking care of its parents, and holding the economy together while the Boomers make an ungracious exit as the Millennials lament the awful state of the world they’ve been left. Ever since the year 2000, when sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe published the book Millennials Rising, Generation X has been the “middle child” between the Boomers and the Millennials — the Jan & Peter Bradys of generational study. As Generation X has subtly lived its life off the media radar for the past decade or so, it could easily be missed, though it’s tough to ignore its impact or relevance. I mean, it’s only the generation that basically invented the internet, saved marriage, and redefined traditional institutions in pursuit of lifestyle over career, all the while remaining focused on their lives as a quest for authenticity.

The tech world seems to be the toughest place to ignore the Xers. While the Millennials are believed to be the most tech-savvy “digital natives,” and Generation Z (are we really being so derivative?) came out of the womb with a digital umbilical cord hooked to an iPad, it was actually Generation X who came of age with personal computers and the dawning of the Internet. Adolescents today may very well be called iGen for their online existence, but that’s only because Gen X basically “invented the internet,” even though that Boomer Al Gore claimed credit. The very idea of surfing the net — not to mention the entire internet economy where early Xer Jeff Bezos made his fortune — is only possible because of the technology created by another Xer, Marc Andreesen, whose Netscape Navigator became the first web browser. That revolutionary innovation opened the door for Gen Xers Sergy Brin and Larry Page to take their college project Google and turn it into the greatest marketing and ad-revenue-producing tool of all time. The next step was the original social media producers Steven Chen and Chad Hurley whose invention of YouTube made anyone and everyone a media star, long before Facebook and Instagram became the Millennial contribution of living our lives online. Add to that the egalitarian work of Jimmy Wales who revolutionized information and open source access to knowledge with the creation of Wikipedia, and you begin to appreciate just how fully the digital world in which we live was envisioned, crafted, and cultivated by Generation X. Clearly, with tech gurus like Elon Musk who have been changing the rules with idea-based companies like PayPal and Tesla, the heart of Gen X is innovation.

And, in world defined and often ruled by Hollywood, it would be wrong to gloss over the impact Generation X has had on the movie industry. Gen X basically changed movie-making as we know it through the rise of independent film and film festivals. In fact, the Sundance festival of Boomer Robert Redford is actually a thing because a bunch of Xers made, submitted, and watched films like Clerks from Kevin Smith, Sex, Lies, & Videotape from Steven Soderbergh, and Reservoir Dogs from Quentin Tarantino. Add to that string, the rise of independent film masters like Richard Linklater, Christopher Nolan, Guy Ritchie, John Singleton, Robert Rodriguez, and Ed Burns, and you have a grasp of the most revolutionary time in film since color was added. In fact, the very nature of independent film is quite Gen X, as it preferred to operate outside the traditional channels and established institutions for which it had little respect and even a bit of mistrust. In that way, Generation X is postmodern without even knowing what that means — which makes it all the more poetic. Filmmaking changed as Gen Xers came of age, and they were truly impacted and influenced by films like Fight Club, The Matrix, Memento and Usual Suspects which exposed the possibility that “things may not be what they seem.” That’s always been the way it is for X.

Ironically, many of those institutions and traditions have been redefined, recycled, and recharged through the very people who looked askew at them early on. Generation X, those kids of divorce, actually saved marriage and opened the door to expansion of marriage rights. Xers actually became the first practitioners of a postmodern adulthood — later called emerging adulthood — by saying, “Wait, I’m not ready for marriage and kids at 18 — gonna take some gap years (before they were ever called that) and backpack across Europe and Southeast Asia.” Certainly, the expat life wasn’t something new, but the circuitous route to adulthood was. Rich Cohen, a Gen X writer, notes them as “the last old school generation who knew how to fold a newspaper and take a joke …” Ultimately, they are realists who seek, expect, and subtly demand authenticity above all else. That’s why the craft market exists — from beer to soap, Xers want something authentic, and when they couldn’t find it in the stores, they just did it themselves. The organics market that Millennials have embraced was created by Generation X. Sure it was a Boomer named John Mackey who founded Whole Foods, but it was Generation X that made his stores and philosophy a success — and they were the people working there, too.

It’s that wry self awareness and desire for authenticity that has always defined Generation X, and there’s no shortage of writers and critics who have been attuned to X’s survival power and historical significance along the way. One of the earliest to chronicle that ethos was Jeff Gordinier, whose book X Saves the World praised the group’s detached independent spirit as its strength. Rather than being slackers, the twenty-somethings went about the business of adapting to a world that disappointed them by entertaining and supporting themselves. While X didn’t always make the films they watched, they definitely produced and defined their genres of music. Rap/Hip Hop, Grunge, Alternative — these musical movements arose and thrived with the kids of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. In fact, the very idea of Alternative music, being independent and something else other than the norm, was a classic Gen X conceit in a world that was constantly commodified and pre-packaged. From the time they were kids, before their generation was even named, they were changing industries and institutions simply by their tastes and preferences. For, it was Gen X who turned Young Adult literature into an actual genre, not initially by writing it but by reading it voraciously and turning standards into classics. From S.E. Hinton and Judy Bloom to J.K. Rowling and John Green, stories about adolescence became literature that mattered, giving voice and awareness to the honesty of their feelings. From movies to music to books, Generation X produced and consumed culture in a slightly different way than generations before. And that uniqueness even transferred to the restaurants they created and patronized. The concept of “fast casual” is a classically Gen X term — an elevated fast food with a more relaxed form of finer dining. And it was culinary visionaries like Steve Ells who turned the idea of fast casual food into a national phenomenon at Chipotle. With fast casual, we have fast food that is simply better.

Of course, while the media spends time focusing on those other generations who are known more for taking than for giving, Generation X is quietly going about the business of holding it all together. Long on the outside looking in, and rather content to do that, some sociologists and business writers are noting it’s actually Gen X that rules the roost. I mean, seriously. This is a group of people for whom the song “Don’t You Forget About Me” became an anthem back in 1984. And then the world forgot about them. But for Gen X, it’s all a matter of, well … meh. These are the original latch-key kids — of course they’d be forgotten. Heck, I was left behind at the mall multiple times as a child — enough to make me wonder looking back if that might not have been intentional, at least subconsciously. Of course, there also may be a legitimate reason for CBS leaving Generation X off its graphic. Maybe Generation X is not really a group of people born at roughly the same time at all. People of a certain age will recall how, in his eulogy for Generation X, Douglas Coupland argued that marketers never really understood his point in the novel that started it all — Generation X was never about chronological age but about a way of looking at the world.