The Outsiders, A GenX Follow-up
We shall not be defined! (by anything other than our films & music)
Over a month ago I wrote a little open call to the employers of the world to hire a GenXer with an art degree. I like the piece and I stand by it, but I like the comments even more. If you have a chance, check them out.
I’m so interested in where our generation is at nowadays. We’re all middle age but probably don’t act like the middle agers of our youth. Of course back then a thirty year old seemed middle aged.
Being middle aged means a lot of us have gone through or are going through menopause at the same time our nation is going through a metamorphosis. Am I the only one that finds it all so very discombobulating? We are all, regardless of gender, in the middle of a Genxopause1.
It feels intense because the technology we embraced has led us to a place that we couldn’t imagine - even if we read Philip K. Dick. It’s a little unbelievable because we were raised under a vague but prevalent notion that each generation is supposed to do better than the previous generation. Where did that come from anyway? And did we forget to agree on the definition of “better”?
Well, it just so happens that few people agree on the definitions of a lot of kind of essential words. It’s proof that we’re living through the breakdown of shared reality. Of course we called it way back when with Reality Bites, but who would have thought it’d go this far?
Reality anxiety could explain why generation talk is so popular. It’s based on the concept of shared experience and shared reality. GenXers have a leg up though. Thanks to being the first generation that was marketed to/at with reckless abandon, our memories, at least, are anchored by consumer choices and cultural preferences. This is what we can hold on to while reality morphs and the other generations pick on each other.
Yeah. GenX is the generation that gets flat out ignored in generation battles. Plain ol’ skipped over in news stories about generations. The treatment is so similar to how we were parented, I don’t think anyone is raising too much of a stink about it.
Of course part of that could be because there seems to be at least two different kinds of GenXers. That’s why I made the art degree distinguishment. There are the slackers/musician/activist/f-the-man/creatives and then there is Ted Cruz. It can all easily be explained by watching The Breakfast Club and The Outsiders.
I can see it on social media. Some GenXers claim they were raised to get and stay in a job until retirement and some say they saw their boomer parents do just that and that’s what made them rebel.
The media called Beto O’Rourke the GenX presidential candidate and then later wrote about how T***p won over GenX2. Maybe they don’t get us because they ignore us until election time? Or maybe we’re a shifty generation. Maybe the T***p manosphere pipeline won the male GenX vote because some were the first batch of men to proudly own action figures as adults. Or maybe shady campaign financing, media bias, and foreign influence won the election, but I digress.
We might be hard to pin down because we are defined by our lack of supervision. So we were left alone to shape our identities through our own unique thoughts and experiences. Ok, that’s probably too romantic. Maybe it’s more like, we were left alone to define ourselves by our choice in music and films. Speaking of - please see High Fidelity for more information.
We’ve never lived in times where we’ve been able to witness the lives, thoughts, habits, fashions, and preferences of all the generations simultaneously and intimately. It’s crazy to think that when we were in our teens, the lives of adults were a dusty mystery. I doubt the youngs find elders any more interesting now, but they sure can see them living all over social media as evidenced by the occasional generation beef.
I’m not in that beef scene. Because I’m GenX. I speak to our people. We should keep in touch so we can get through Genxopause together.
Hire A GenXer Updates
And now for addendums to my hire a GenXer piece, thanks to the inspiration y’all left in the comments.
The art degree doesn’t really have to be a degree, pretty much any GenXer with a creative background or any GenXer that saw more than one “show” a week at a certain point in their lives counts. And if you know what a show is then you know.
On that note, we are all in culture shock nowadays because shows used to be cheap and plentiful. Ticket cost to income ratio seems to correlate to CEO to worker salary ratio. If we didn’t have other pressing things to study, I’d say we have to get somebody on this.
Elder millennials and younger boomers feel a kinship with us, we’re chill so y’all are in.
Counting change is a very specific skill we possess. I almost forgot about it until someone mentioned it in the comments. Don’t freak out, but did y’all see how DJT wants to get rid of the penny? I bet the rest of the coins are next! And it’s probably only to take away the enormous powers of GenX. Just a theory.
We lived through a time when you could jump in a car, drive around the country, and count on being able to grab a cheap campsite anywhere. I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I didn’t see it as a rarity until the first time I rolled up to a park and they told me reservations usually booked up eight months in advance. Now that’s the norm and glamping has raised campsite prices higher than a night at your average Motel 6.
We know and love and made a movie about the Dewey Decimal system. But - I did find an article that talks about the bias in the DD system, so some things can use an update. That doesn’t mean I’m having an easy time adjusting to the new system at my public library.
Did I miss anything? I can’t thank you all enough for commenting. You’ve reminded me of so much good stuff and made us all feel like waitaminute, maybe we are a band of outsiders that will be the custodians of a cooler, kinder, more creative world.
Thank you for reading! I’m back from a bit of travelin’ and podcast work. More crafts, pics, deep thoughts, round-ups, and randoms to follow.
Trademark. ha!
That article is dumb and claims GenX was attracted to DJT’s irony, but I linked it anyway. The way voter demographics are reported after elections is dumb as well - it is always in percentages and rather misleading. For example one could think that 45% of GenXers voted for DJT, but that is just 45% of the GenXers that voted. Voting data should be in plain numbers and include information about the number of eligible voters and how many actually voted. Ya hear me?
"any GenXer that saw more than one “show” a week at a certain point in their lives counts. And if you know what a show is then you know.
On that note, we are all in culture shock nowadays because shows used to be cheap and plentiful. Ticket cost to income ratio seems to correlate to CEO to worker salary ratio."
Oh, man. As a Gen Xer who spent several formative years in Athens, GA, seeing one "show" a week minimum, the cost of this kind of entertainment may be the most profound future shock I have experienced.
We listened to Nirvana in Kurt’s lifetime.