{"id":15416,"date":"2012-06-08T09:46:56","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T13:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15416"},"modified":"2018-05-10T14:59:23","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T18:59:23","slug":"a-gen-x-lament-none-of-these-experts-even-agree-on-when-we-were-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/06\/08\/a-gen-x-lament-none-of-these-experts-even-agree-on-when-we-were-born\/","title":{"rendered":"A Gen-X lament: “none of these \u201cexperts\u201d … even agree on when we were born”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By any reckoning, I just missed being in Gen-X, as the earliest date anyone seems to use is 1961 (so my sister is a Gen X’er, but I’m a very-very-very-late boomer, apparently). In spite of that, most of my friends seem to identify much more with Gen X than the plutocratic fat cats of the early Baby Boom generation. Kathy Shaidle<\/a> explains the three biggest myths about Generation X:<\/p>\n

… the term \u201cGeneration X\u201d was popularized by our contemporary Douglas Coupland\u2019s titular 1991 novel. (And Coupland swiped his title from the name of Billy Idol\u2019s old pop-punk band; my fellow ex-punk Kinsella should know that, too.)<\/p>\n

There are lots of things \u201cgreat minds\u201d got wrong about Generation X since they started writing and worrying about them. (I mean, us.)<\/p>\n

After Coupland\u2019s novel \u2014 about over-educated, underemployed pop culture addicts who\u2019ve formed an ad hoc \u201cfamily\u201d of friends \u2013 swept the planet, countless \u201cconsultants\u201d (including, briefly, Coupland himself) started marketing themselves as experts on my demographic.<\/p>\n

These consultants made a whole lot of money, keynote-speaking to job-for-life CEOs about why we Gen-Xer\u2019s were all so broke and unemployed.<\/p>\n

And the most irritating (and yeah, ironic) thing is, none of these \u201cexperts\u201d (\u201cX-perts\u201d?) even agree on when we were born.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

The takeaway for pundits and other \u201cexperts\u201d is:<\/p>\n

\u201cGeneration X\u201d isn\u2019t synonymous with \u201cyoung people today.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m gonna be 50 soon. Dammit.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Like the Y2K \u201cexperts\u201d who came after them, all those demographic gurus and futurists who got rich theorizing about Generation X ended up looking pretty foolish. (But never had to give their money back.)<\/p>\n

When we Gen-Xers were trying to get our first jobs out of college or high school, we did indeed contend with an economy burdened by a triple-feature of double digit horrors: inflation, unemployment and interest rates were all way over 10%.<\/p>\n

We blamed those damn yuppie Baby Boomers. They\u2019d beaten us to all the good jobs and were never gonna give them up.<\/p>\n

(In the same way hippies had used up all the safe-ish drugs and free sex, and left us with crack and AIDS.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By any reckoning, I just missed being in Gen-X, as the earliest date anyone seems to use is 1961 (so my sister is a Gen X’er, but I’m a very-very-very-late boomer, apparently). In spite of that, most of my friends seem to identify much more with Gen X than the plutocratic fat cats of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,73],"tags":[407,319,1205,718],"class_list":["post-15416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-randomness","tag-babyboomers","tag-demographics","tag-generationx","tag-recession"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-40E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15416"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18197,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15416\/revisions\/18197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}