I Hate The Phrase 'Generation X'

I hate the phrase “Generation X,” and I mean hate in the dictionary sense (feel intense or passionate dislike for) because if there is one trick that the left leaning media likes to use against the young in furthering their social political agenda, it’s the mass marketing (see browbeating) of an idea that is packaged and sold as a vague and cool sounding compliment but in reality is a cultural tranquilizer meant to stifle, divide and prevent any chance of unity among an entire generation. Hey “Baby Boomers” what if “The Greatest Generation” before you had decided to brand you “Generation C”, reasoning that you’re to inherit a new civilization, but then secretly went about setting up all the fail safe systems necessary to keep you from getting too close to real political power? That’s the way it feels to us “Gen-Xers” who woke up one day at the start of our young adult lives to a new identity courtesy of the media, and some silly book by that title. Thanks, but no thanks. How do you even describe yourself as an X anyway? It’s so vague and meaningless that it’s offensive.

Here’s how TIME magazine portrayed us in the late 90’s.

The do-it-yourself, no-one-is-going-to-look-out-for-me-but-me spirit among Xers is a product of coming of age when that was the message coming from the Administration,” says Mia von Sadovsky, 29, an ad-agency researcher. “We have hard-wired into us a different approach to getting things done.” A survey by Third Millennium found that 53% of Gen Xers believe that the TV soap opera General Hospital will outlast Medicare. If permitted, 59% of Xers would opt out of Medicare and save on their own. Of any adult generation, they have the weakest attachment to political parties, and in 1992 Gen Xers cast a higher percentage of votes for Ross Perot than older adults did. “We have a libertarian streak,” says Thau. “We grew up in a period with one instance of government malfeasance and ineptitude after another, from Watergate to Iran-contra to the explosion of the Challenger to Whitewater. We believe government can’t be trusted to do anything right.

To assume that my generation is politically center-right simply because a significant number of us grew up in the Reagan era is to not know what actually binds us together in the first place – the birth of video games and the home computer revolution. We were the first kids to get smart toys in the form of small electronic gizmos, followed by arcade games and home computers, made for and marketed specifically to children.

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Every boomer I know recognizes that video games are eternally “hip and cool”, (Their words, not mine) but hardly any of them know what those early games ingrained in the minds of the children that played them; that life is a puzzling challenge and you have to fight for your survival from the bottom up. You begin alone, with little or no help and minimal supplies and you don’t even know all the rules. And when you finally do reach the top it’s time to use every hard earned skill you’ve picked up along the way to beat the boss. The message is always survival of the fittest and and the experience of beating those old time games translates into a solid conservative worldview in the heart of many players. There’s no concept in the mind of a hard core gamer for favoritism or nepotism — and we’re especially adverse to being directed to the back of the line to wait our turn. This is what really bothers the left, that we happen to be the most individualistic, self-reliant and therefore non-brain-washable group of young people to ever come of age.

We went from the smoke filled arcades one summer to computers in the classroom in the fall. At an early age we were taught how to build them and how to program them. How to get the system to do what we wanted it to do. This created lawless high school hackers but also reinforced lessons learned in the arcade – that the new frontier of electronics and computers was the domain of children. Adults have already sailed the seas and been to the Moon. This new frontier was ours.

But now we’re hitting our mid-30’s and the generation known as “X” appears to have been completely neutralized to the point of non-relevance politically. Now it’s all about “Gen-Y” as the media elite so eagerly point out. Obama is the first Gen-Y President they say. (Where was the Gen-X President? Shouldn’t there be one before Y?) Some call him part of Generation Jones, whatever that is. There’s got to be a reason we’ve been so cleverly cast aside by the main stream media and my guess is that they know we’re the biggest threat to their industry they have ever seen. The battle lines were drawn long ago when as young people we started to look away from the TV, movies and newspapers and instead towards, arcades, BBS’s and next, the World Wide Web, making us a 47 million strong swing vote in this election and for many more to come.

Here’s how the dictionary of marketing terms describes us:

Generation-X: consumer group consisting of the post-baby boomersgeneration, born between 1964 and 1984. Generation-X is estimated to include 46 million Americans, or 17% of the U.S. population, spending $125 billion annually. Generation-Xers are characterized as having a high affinity for technology and as being computer and Internet proficient, skeptical about advertising claims, fast spending, and more impressed by personal style than designer price tags. They can be divided into three groups including college and graduate students, young professionals, and married couples. Entrepreneurship is high among Generation X-ers, and they tend to move easily from one employer to another. Coffee bars, extreme sports, and adventure vacations have developed in answer to the desires of Gen-X. Moderately priced retailers such as The Gap are favorites of Gen-X.