I’m an adult, white male. I should be on top of the world, right? And yet, what’s this shazbot I read about the millennials replacing the boomers as the generation now throwing their weight around? Just like that. Starting in 2019, the millennials replaced the boomers as the largest generation.
I can hold an intelligent, face-to-face conversation AND use a smartphone. And what thanks do I get? Product producers no longer care about generation X? Let’s face it. No one has ever cared about generation X. At best we were seat warmers until these snot-nosed, content-streaming millennials bumped us from the market place. Now you gotta be an indigenous TikTokker to stay in the loop. Screw that. It took me long enough to learn how to Tweet and Zoom.
Sure, Ready Player One threw us a bone. Eighties music is making a bit of a resurgence. And Stranger Things is truly more gen X than all the millennial viewers want to admit. The big franchises are willing to pander to us occasionally…if it means winning over our children. You know, so Kylo Ren could slide in as a replacement for Darth Vader (as if).
And don’t come at me with an argument based on the recent release of Top Gun: Maverick as some sort of gen X apologetics just because the original was released to a bunch of testosterone basting gen X teens back in the day. The original Top Gun, as well as the redux, are merely fancy recruitment spots for the armed forces. Alpha males stripping down to play beach volleyball before engaging in high-stakes sky wars and proving that even the smartest women can’t resist their offensive masculinity is a timeless motif. Nothing to do with gen X per se. The message boils down to “chicks dig a soldier, so why not enlist?” If anything, the fact that Top Gun had to be created in 1986 speaks to the fact that aging Boomers where leaving a massive hole in the heart of the military that care-free Gen X’ers where NOT clamoring to fill. So now it’s up to our children.
Well guess what, all you Hollywood recruiting jackwagons, I didn’t go see Top Gun: Maverick. And I sure as heck didn’t take my sons. So there. You thought it was gonna be that easy to ditch me for the next generation? I still vote (sometimes, when I feel like it), and I’m mildly upset (a little agitated at least). So the next time you are creating a widget or coming up with a screenplay, maybe you should think twice about passing over generation X. Because I still occasionally consume stuff. From buying the occasional second-hand DVD, to mooching my parents streaming subscription, to perusing Facebook Marketplace for used tools. I’m a consumer, kinda.
Okay, I guess I sort of understand why gen X doesn’t matter. But hey, for the next decade or so, you still need us to hold down all the jobs that are in the process of being automated. We’re the craftsmen/women who maintain the tenuous connection between tomorrow and yesterday. Until robots are programmed to replace us, you need us to deliver all the consumer stuff everyone else is buying. For the most part our eyesight hasn’t failed, and we’re still easily better drivers than Gen Y (those kids are nuts).
Until then, the least the rest of you can do is pretend that gen X matters (at least to our faces. We won’t care if you mock us behind your backs. We do that too).
At the Desk This Week
No desk working. I did manage to get away for an anniversary trip with the wife for the first time in several years. Not that it was our first anniversary in several years. It was our first celebration of our anniversary in several years. We’ve been married for twenty-three years. Crazy. We’ve almost been married for longer than I’ve lived without her. How is that for mind-blowing? I won’t lie, some of the years were terrible. Downright teeth-clenching, white-knuckling, gut-wrenching difficult. At least once I didn’t think I could keep ding it. But this last year has been genuinely blissful. So easily worth all the hard times, I don’t even have to pretend to do the math. I’m loving every minute and looking forward to how ever many I have left.
If You Wish to Start Reading The Green Ones…
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