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17 Gen X memes for the generation caught in the middle

Gen X is so forgotten that it's become something of a meme. Here are 17 memes that will resonate with just about anyone born between 1965 and 1980.

screenshots of memes

Boomers, Millennials, and Gen Z

"Generation X" got its name in the early '90s from an article turned book by Canadian writer Douglas Coupland. And ever since, they've been fighting or embracing labels like "slacker" and "cynic." That is, until Millennials came of age and all that "you kids today" energy from older generations started to get heaped on them. Slowly, Gen X found they were no longer being called slackers...they weren't even being mentioned at all. And that suits them just fine.

Here are 17 memes that will resonate with just about anyone born between 1965 and 1980.

Gen X basically invented "Whatever."

gen x memesSOURCE: TWITTER

Until recently, Generation X has been sitting back and watching as Millennials and Boomers eat at each other with an amused, non-confrontational attitude. But recently, Millennials and Gen Z became aware of their presence, and dubbed them "The Karen Generation."

They seem to be embracing the Karen thing.

SOURCE: X

While I'm pretty sure the "Karen" thing is not complimentary—as BuzzFeed puts it, it's meant to communicate someone who is "the middle-aged white mom who is always asking for the manager and wondering why kids are so obsessed with their identities,"—lots of people landed on a different Karen to represent the generation: the martini-guzzling, wise-cracking Karen Walker.

Get it right!

SOURCE: X

Well [expletive] me gently with a chainsaw, she's right. The 1980s cult classic starring Winona Ryder and Shannen Doherty really is the Mean Girls of the '80s and a much better term than Karen.

The disdain is mutual...

The Breakfast Club

SOURCE: X

Most of my Gen X friends have Gen Z kids and they are intergenerationally very chill with each other. However, Gen X is the generation most likely to have Boomer parents and younger millennial kids, and this meme seems to be resonating a bunch with Xers of a certain age.

A lot of Xers are enjoying the "OK boomer" squabble.

SOURCE: X

The media tends to ignore Generation X as a whole—as a few tweets coming up demonstrate—and that's nothing new. After all, they're used to it. They were latchkey kids whose parents both worked long hours, so they're used to being somewhat neglected.

"No one cares what we think anyway..."

via GIPHY

This GIF of Janeane Garofolo mocking her classmates at the high school reunion is basically a whole Gen X mood and definitely captures how a lot of this generation caught in the middle feels about the "OK boomer" wars.

A whole mood.

SOURCE: X

Gen X: "Look, don't pull us into this. You'll make me spill my beer."

Gen X: Get used to it.

SOURCE: X

Perhaps Gen X's blasé attitude to the generation wars has something to do with being called "Slackers" for a full decade.

Pass the popcorn.

SOURCE: X

Aside from this whole "Karen generation" blip, Gen X continues to be largely overlooked, and that fact—as well as their silent delight in it—is possibly one of the most Generation X things to happen.

Pay no attention to the man behind the venetian blinds.

SOURCE: X

Back in the '90s, Gen X bore the same kind of criticism Boomers tend to heap on Millennials and Gen Z now. It's not necessarily that they want to watch a cage match. It's just they're so relieved the heat is aimed elsewhere.

See?

SOURCE: TWITTER

Although this chart doesn't list the generation names, the approximate age ranges are all there...except for a big gap between the ages of 35 and 54 where apparently no humans were born? Poor Gen X (and some elder Millennials) apparently don't have political beliefs worth examining.

Don't you forget about me...

SOURCE: X

If Millennials are the "burnout generation," I guess Gen X is truly the invisible generation. I'm starting to feel inspired to write a science fiction novel where everyone born from 1965 to 1980 inhabits a totally different dimension.

There are perks to being invisible...

SOURCE: X

Being overlooked can be an advantage when you just want to sit in the corner and be immature.

Party on.

SOURCE: X

Before Brené Brown was telling us all how to dare greatly, Gen X got their inspirational advice from a different kind of Ted and his pal Bill, who taught us all how important it is to learn from history and be excellent to each other.

Too late and yet too early.

SOURCE: X

Romance—or getting lucky—was never easy for Generation X. They were the generation most impacted by the AIDS epidemic when it comes to anxiety about casual sex. Whereas Boomers had the free love of the late '60s, Gen X was about safe sex, which usually meant less sex. And even when having safe casual sex, singles in the '90s had to meet people the old-fashioned way or, if they did meet online, they felt shame over it. Now online dating is the norm.

When Gen X replaces the Boomers.

SOURCE: X

This is probably an optimistic view—because the truth is there are "Boomers" in every generation, and many of them tend to find their way into powerful positions. Let's call this a best case scenario, though.

The Nihilism Generation

SOURCE: X

There is no generation more over it than Gen X. They are ready for the apocalypse, but don't expect them to, like, help or anything!

Now we have Generation Alpha to contend with, so let's hope they're more chill about the generation wars than their predecessors. And as of 2025, an even newer generation is starting: Generation Beta. Hopefully, the fighting will have died down.


This article originally appeared five years ago.

@cosmo_andtheoddparents/TikTok

He wuvs his vet.

Not every dog might jump with joy after seeing their vet out in public. But for Cosmo the Golden Retriever, it was practically Christmas all over again when he spotted his own vet, Dr. Jones, at a brewery.

In an adorable clip posted to TikTok, we see Cosmo in pure, unadulterated bliss as he snuggles with an equally happy Dr. Jones, who, considering he’s still in his scrubs, might have just gotten out of work to grab a quick pint.

Watch:

Ugh, the cuteness is too much to handle! People in the comments could barely contain their secondhand joy.

“He looked over like, “Mom, do you see who this is?” one person wrote, while another said, “What in the Hallmark movie? Adorable!!”

One person even joked, “Did we all check the vet’s hand for a wedding ring? (Said as a married woman. Looking out for you all, or something.)”

According to Hannah Dweikat, Cosmo’s owner, the two actually share quite a history. She tells Upworthy that when Cosmo was but a wee pup, he “gave a scare” after eating a Sago Palm seed, which are highly toxic to dogs, from a plant in their backyard, which of course resulted in him being rushed to the animal hospital and staying there over the weekend.

While that’s every pet owner’s worst nightmare, and certainly a scary situation for the poor fur baby, Dweikat says that “the calm and patient demeanor” of Dr. Jones and his staff put Cosmo at ease. And because of this, “Cosmo has always loved going to see his friends—especially because they give him lots of treats and snuggles.”

Cosmo and Dr. Jones’ buddyship has also blossomed thanks to proximity, as Dweikat only lives down the street from the clinic. “Which means we get to see Dr. Jones and his staff out in public at times and Cosmo takes every chance he can get to say hi,” she explains. This time, however, she was able to capture it all on video. Yay for us!

What makes a good vet?

While not every vet, however gifted, will be able to elicit this type of reaction from their patients, having a calming presence like Dr. Jones is certainly a good sign for pet owners to be on the lookout for when shopping around for their own vet. But that’s not the only quality a good vet needs. According to Saint Matthews University, a vet also needs to have high stamina (both physically and mentally), as well as an ability to tolerate unpleasant situations (you can’t faint at the sight of blood or vomit), a high level of emotional intelligence (maybe all doctors should possess this skill, but especially those who work with animals), adaptability, a sense of enthusiasm, and finally, excellent communication skills.

Dr. Jones seems to have these attributes in spades, and his patients clearly love him for it. None so much as Cosmo, obviously.

By the way, if you’re in need of even more content featuring this precious pup, you can follow Cosmo on both TikTok and Instagram.

Parenting

His mother gave him a 'husbands in training' course as a child. Every parent should do it.

Learning how to be a good spouse shouldn't just be something we pick up by accident.

Doug Weaver explains "Husbands in Training."

Even though the marriage rate in the United States is on a steep decline, chances are that the majority of kids growing up today will get married at some point in their lives. If current trends continue, about half of those will end in divorce.

Research published in the Couple and Family Psychology journal found that the top five reasons for divorce are a lack of commitment, infidelity, too much conflict, getting married young, and financial problems.

Wouldn’t it be great if we were taught from a young age how to be a good spouse so we could avoid these pitfalls? But in American culture, most of us aren’t taught the specifics of how to have a happy and healthy marriage. Most of us tend to pick things up from watching the married people in our orbit, most likely our parents.

No comment on how that's going.

Artist Doug Weaver had a much different upbringing. His mother, Mickey, made a curriculum for him and his two older brothers when they were kids to help them be great husbands when they got married.

"When I was a kid, my mom did this thing for me and my two older brothers called 'Husbands in Training,'" he explained in a TikTok video that has more than 5.9 million views. "It was a full, multiple-level curriculum on how to be a better husband."

Weaver says the training covered topics from chivalry to eating to a rather uncomfortable discussion on "the ethics of the porn industry." His mother also stressed the importance of listening to women and identifying when another man may be giving them trouble.

"There was a lot of really good stuff in that curriculum," Doug said. "There were things like what to do if your spouse says something and the information they give is wrong. How to handle it if they say something wrong in public versus in private, when it is appropriate to correct them and when it isn't."

Weaver’s mother was also way ahead of her time because she made a big deal about teaching her sons the importance of consent. "We talked about consent, we talked about the basics of respecting and honoring women and listening to women, and all of the things that really just make you a decent human being," Doug explained.

@dougweaverart

Husbands in training! #parenting #storytime #story

The lessons were so powerful that even Weaver’s father decided to take the course. "A lot of the things that we were learning from my mom were things that he was never taught growing up,” Weaver said. "So, he decided he also wanted to take 'Husbands in Training.'"

The course officially ended when Weaver and his brothers got married. "My mom even made certificates of completion that she signed and gave to each of us on our wedding day," he shared in his TikTok clip.

However, the video Weaver shared was so popular on TikTok that he’s making his mother’s course available to the general public. “After posting about ‘Husbands in Training’ on TikTok, the TT community really wants my mom to produce content about raising boys to be good men,” he wrote on a GoFundMe fundraising campaign in 2022.

The overwhelming response to Weaver’s TikTok has inspired a new YouTube channel to spread Mickey’s lessons far and wide. But it has also made a lot of people realize that teaching people how to be great spouses is a lifelong journey and should be a major part of child-rearing. Learning how to be a good spouse shouldn't just be something we pick up by accident.


This article originally appeared three years ago.


Unsplash

The longer I'm alive, it seems the more people's names that I have to remember. With two kids in school, sports, and other activities, I find myself trying to keep track of dozens of different friends, teammates, siblings, coaches, teachers, and of course, parents. It makes my brain hurt! Lately I've had half a mind to start a spreadsheet so I can start remembering Who's Who.

In order for that to work, I've got to find a way to stop people's names leaving my head immediately after I'm introduced. I know I'm not the only one who does this. It's like people say their name and it just zips right into one ear and out the other! And for that, I went looking for tips when I stumbled upon a good one from a unique sort of expert.

Derren Brown is one of the most famous mentalists in the world, so he knows a thing or two about people. Mentalists are a special breed of magician that focus on tricks and illusions of the mind.

They do things like hynopsis, mind-reading, and impossible predictions. There's trickery, involved, of course; but mentalists are also masters at reading people and have to employ advanced memory techniques to keep track of information they learn during their shows.

In an interview with Big Think, Brown revealed some of his favorite memory hacks; including his 'party trick' to never forget a person's name.

Giphy

The secret is to create a link between the part of your brain that stores information like names, and the visual part of your brain that is more easily accessed.

"You find a link between the person's name and something about their appearance, what they're wearing, their face, their hair, something," Brown says. "You find a link with something that they're wearing so if they're called Mike and they've got big black hair you think, 'Oh that's like a microphone' so I can imagine like a big microphone walking around or if they've got a stripy T-shirt on you imagine a microphone with those stripes going around it.

"And it's the same process later on in the evening you see them, you look at the stripes and you go, 'Oh that's Mike. Oh yeah that's Mike. The hair, why am I thinking the hair is like a big microphone? Oh yes, of course, they're called Mike.'"

Microphone Mike! Any sort of alliteration based on a physical characteristic will work. Stripey Steve, Tall Tim, Green Gene. The more interesting and unique, the better you'll remember.

There is one catch with the technique: You have to actually listen and pay attention when someone tells you their name!

"So, you do have to listen that's the first thing when they say the name," Brown says. "Normally the very moment where someone is giving you their name you're just caught up in a whole lot of social anxiety anyways you don't even hear it, so you have to listen."

Using someone's name when you talk to them has tons of benefits. It conveys respect, friendliness, and intimacy. When you're on the receiving end and someone you've just met uses your name, it just feels good! It feels like it matters to them that they met you.

"And then at the end [of the party] you get to go around and say goodbye to everybody by name and everyone thinks you're very charming and clever," Brown quips.

Listen to the entire, fascinating interview here.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Brown's name-remembering technique is tangential to an ancient philosophy called the "Method of loci".

The method involves attaching things to be remembered (numbers, tasks, facts) to specific places that are easy to visualize in your head. Imagine taking a brain-walk down the street you live on and all the objects or places you might see there. The mailbox, the gnarled tree, the rusty fire hydrant. This memory method asks you to visually associate one thing you want to remember with each item or location. The more strange and visual the image you can create, the better! Brown uses the example of trying to shove a sparkling-clean shirt into his mailbox, reminding him to do his drycleaning.

When you need to recall the item, you just take a little walk in your head down the street.

(Did you know that there's a World Championship of Memory? Most of the best competitors use a version of this technique.)

Giphy

The name hack isn't so dissimilar. You're attaching an intangible, abstract thing (a name) to a specific visual image you can see in your head and even in the real world. But that's just one way of getting better at remembering names! There are all kinds of tips, hacks, and methods you can try.

Some people swear by repeating the name immediately after hearing it. "Hi, my name is Jake." "Hi, Jake, nice to meet you!" (Just don't say someone's name too frequently or you risk coming off a bit slimy.)

Others use a technique similar to Brown's loci idea, but instead of a visual, you lean on things that are already deeply engrained in your memory, like rhymes or free-association. or even celebrities. Mary - had a little lamb. Jake - the Snake. Daisy - flowers. Tom - Cruise.

Another trick (that I've definitely used before) if you do forget someone's name? Introduce them to someone you know! "Hey, this is my wife, Sarah." The person was almost always introduce themselves using their own name, and then you get a second chance at remembering it.

A lot of the best advice really comes down to being intentional about remembering when you're introduced to a new person. Whatever mental gymnastics you choose to do with the name, the mere fact that you're thinking about it with such focus immediately after is a big part of why these 'tricks' help names stick.

It feels really good when someone cares enough to remember your name, so it's definitely worth putting in a little effort of trying to instill that feeling in others.

Upworthy has covered a few stories about people who decided to live permanently on cruise ships because it's cheaper than living on land or in a nursing home. These stories have connected with millions because they say a lot about the modern cost of living but are also aspirational.

Christine Kesteloo has become popular on TikTok with over 680,000 followers because she shares what living on a cruise ship is really like. Kesteloo is the wife of the ship’s Staff Chief Engineer, so she gets to live on the boat for free. She only has to pay for alcohol and soda, which she gets for half off according to Business Insider.

“I live on a cruise ship for half the year with my husband, and it's often as glamorous as it sounds,” she told Insider. “After all, I don't cook, clean, make my bed, do laundry or pay for food.“

Kesteloo’s life seems pretty stress-free. After all, she's basically on a permanent vacation. However, even though she lives on a cruise ship as a “wife on board,” there are a few things she either can’t or shouldn’t do.

She shared these four things in a TikTok video with nearly 10 million views.

@dutchworld_americangirl

I go through four things I can, and cannot do it while living on the cruise ship with my husband #weliveonacruiseship #4things #alaskacruise #cruiseship #cruiseshiplife #cruise #alaska #caribbeancruise #cruiselife #livingstsea #getreadywithme

1. No gambling

Kesteloo says she cannot sit at a slot machine and “play my heart out until I win.” She believes it would “look a little weird if I, as the wife of the staff chief engineer, won a big jackpot.”

2. Can’t leave the ship with the guests

When the ship arrives at a destination, she can't get off with the guests. She must wait about an hour and exit the vessel with the crew. When returning to the ship, she also has to be on time. “No, they will not wait for us,” she says. And the same goes for her husband, if they “miss the ship, someone else will take over the role.”

3. Sit in a crowded pool

Although Kesteloo has access to the pool, gym, and all the ship’s amenities, she’s cautious not to interfere with the guests' good time. She’ll exit the pool if it’s busy because “it’s just the right thing to do.”

4. Must have international traveler insurance

She must have insurance in case of a misfortune on the ship. But as a citizen of the Netherlands, they already have coverage and just have to pay a few extra dollars a month.

Some of the most popular commenters on the video were from women regretting that they married men who aren’t chief engineers on cruise ships or those who want to know where to find a single one.

"OK, can you explain how to marry a cruise ship engineer?" one female commentator wrote.

"How. in. the. H E double hockey sticks do I become the wife of a cruise ship engineer???? I don’t have to work AND cruise for free!" another added.

"Does he have any single friends with same job??? Asking for me," one more asked.

It's a charmed life!


This article originally appeared last year.

How long can you hang out?

Would you really want to know how long you have to live? On one hand, it’d probably inspire you to go out and complete your bucket list. On the other, it may be depressing to know just how many days you have left. Well, science has yet to discover a way to determine the average person's life expectancy, but some indicators can show whether someone is in danger of having their life cut short by deteriorating health.

A study published by Clinical Interventions in Aging in 2019 determined that handgrip strength can be a reliable proxy for how long one has to live. One of the best ways to judge handgrip strength is to time how long you can hang from a bar. To test your grip strength, find yourself a pull-up bar, whether at a gym or local park, take a deep breath, and start hanging.

The study found that 30 seconds is a good target for women and 60 is an excellent goal for men. Therefore, if you go longer than the goal, you’re looking at a long life. But if you can’t quite get there, your life may be shorter than you’d like.



Dr. Peter Attia, founder of Early Medical and author of Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (2023), believes that grip strength is a great way to determine one’s overall health.

“It's just a great proxy for overall body strength and muscle mass, but I think it's also a very functional form of strength,” he said on The Drive podcast. “Basically, everything in your upper body is mediated through your hands. And if your grip is weak, everything downstream of that is weak. When you watch someone who's got a weak grip deadlifting it's very difficult for them to deadlift correctly because they don't create a proper wedge.

Doctors Eve M. Glazier and Elizabeth Ko at UCLA Health say poor grip strength is connected to numerous diseases. “Research continues to link a decline in grip strength to a range of adverse health issues, including heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. It has also been found to be a predictor of the likelihood of post-surgical complications, post-surgical recovery time and mortality,” they wrote on the UCLA Health blog.

Weight can also significantly affect how long a person can hang from a bar. So, do lighter people have an unfair advantage over those on the heavier side? Well, weight is also an important indicator of longevity. A study published in Aging Cellfound a direct correlation between increased body mass and decreased longevity.



The good news for people who didn’t quite make their hang time goal is that you can improve it by practicing dead hangs.

How to perform a dead hang (according to Healthline):

  • Use a secure overhead bar. Use a step or bench to reach the bar with your arms easily. You don’t want to jump straight into a dead hang.
  • Grip the bar with an overhand grip (palms facing away from you). Aim to keep your arms shoulder-width apart.
  • Move your feet off the step or bench so you’re hanging on to the bar.
  • Keep your arms straight and stay relaxed.
  • If you’re new to the exercise, hang for 10 seconds. Then, work your way up to 45 seconds to 1 minute at a time.
  • Slowly step back onto the step or bench before releasing your arms. Repeat up to 3 times if you wish.

This article originally appeared last year.