Gen X Feels Unloved
By Dan Brown Our mothers smoked when they were pregnant with us. We were born before the first moon landing. As kids growing up, we had joysticks, not gaming controllers. We started our careers in the 1990s. We may be the last generation for whom home ownership was not a pipe dream. And we were horrified to learn Shoppers Drug Mart now considers us senior citizens. Who are we? We’re Generation X. And we’re pissed. With today’s twentysomethings in the headlines constantly, we can’t help feeling a bit unloved. All we read and hear about is Generation Z, Zoomers, the Net Gen, whatever you want to call them. Apparently they are the coddled generation that can’t live without their cellphones. You may have complained about them yourself. So if we could have the spotlight back, that would be great. Because here’s the thing: Long before old people hated on them, we Gen Xers were the object of your scorn. No one remembers now, but older generations scoffed at us just as vehemently. They said we were aimless. We were derided for being cynical. They called us slackers. Baby Busters. The 13th generation. We suffered by comparison, of course, to the Baby Boomers. While they had careers, we had McJobs. If Baby Boomers had been raised by the television set, we were raised by cable. While Boomers had the coolness of Woodstock, we had the commercialism of MTV. Even their movies were infinitely cooler. The Boomers had the Big Chill. We had to settle for trash like the Breakfast Club. St. Elmo’s Fire was written off as “the Little Chill.” Us Gen Xers, we never got the heed and media scrutiny the Baby Boomers got, and Gen Z seems to have all the time now. Why, I could swear no one wants to hear our boring Generation X stories anymore. Like how in our day, we didn’t have free love, we faced the deadly threat of AIDS. How we grew up in the closing days of the Cold War, convinced civilization would end in a mushroom cloud. That’s why we watched eagerly as the Berlin Wall came down. We’re the last generation with memories of what life was like before the internet and Google. Strange as it may sound to young folks, we use our cellphones to actually make phone calls. And speaking of phones, we can tell you about a time when the phone rang – and you had to pick it up to find out who was calling. We were free-range children, latchkey kids who came home from grade school to a house empty of Dad and Mom. Unlike Generation Z, we aren’t digital natives (but luckily for us, our youthful mistakes weren’t livestreamed to a global audience). And yes, I’m exaggerating. A bit. The unsaid truth is, today’s twentysomethings are actually – surprise! – amazing. I work with university students and I’m convinced they are going to save the world. They have no choice except to rescue it, because we screwed the place up for them. Nor is any of this unique to any particular generation. The truth is, every older generation hates on the younger ones that come after it. The older demographic hated the Boomers who became Yuppies in the 1980s. Back in his day, in the 1930s, Ernest Hemingway was considered a member of the Lost Generation. Talk about a derisive nickname. The truth is, as they come of age, no generation’s members have it easy. We’re all doomed to make the same mistakes and learn the same lessons since human nature never changes. And yes, I grant you it is absolutely true that making generalizations about an entire generation is a foolish project. It’s self-defeating, of that I am aware. We’re all individuals, regardless of the decade in which we were born. So hey, spare some empathy for us Gen Xers as we retire and fade away. When the history books are written, please don’t write us out of the story altogether. We’re not dead yet. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
