+
Sign up for
The Upworthiest
Our top stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox.
upworthy

generation x

Joy

Five Gen X values from the ’90s that can save today’s world

We're bringing "whatever" back.

via Unsplash

A mix tape from 1992.

A few weeks ago I came across an article about a kid who watches television at 1.5x speed so he can cram as much viewing in as he can. It seemed that his unquenchable desire to get through shows in the Golden Age of television meant he’d sacrifice the entertainment value of the show just to get to the end.

“Man, this guy would have been crucified in 1993,” I thought.

As a 45-year-old card-carrying member of Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1979), I remembered a time when nobody bragged about the amount of TV they watched. In fact, they bragged about not owning a TV. “I don't watch TV, man,” people would say. “It only exists to sell you stuff.”

This complete reversal on the social acceptance of gluttonous TV viewing made me wonder what happened to the values we were raised on as Gen Xers? We were taught that sincerity was for simpletons, everything corporate is evil, old school is always better than the latest and greatest, authenticity is king, conformity is death and there is nothing worse than being a sell-out or a poser.

Nobody would have ever referred to themselves as an “influencer” in 1991—that’s the definition of a sell-out.

“After writing this book, I’m back in the mindset of ’90s thinking, which is that nothing is worse than selling out,” Chuck Klosterman, author of “The Nineties: A Book,” told Esquire. “Nothing was more embarrassing in the ’90s than trying to convince people to like the thing you made."

Deep inside the heart of almost every Gen Xer is a deep-seated feeling of nihilism. We didn’t trust the corporations that laid off our parents or gutted their pensions in the ’80s. In fact, everything corporate was predatory. We didn’t have a lot of faith in family values because we were the first generation raised by single parents or in daycare. We didn’t care much about politics either. Back in the ’90s, Gen X’s aversion to politics was historic.

Of course, these are all generalities about a generation of nearly about 65 million people, but studies show that there are some definite hallmarks of being a Gen Xer.


According to a generational differences document circulated through the business community, Gen X’s core values are “skepticism,” “fun” and “informality.” They’re described as “self-reliant,” “independent,” “unimpressed with authority” and motivated by “freedom.”

In the young Gen Xer, the culture of the era “instilled a wariness and skepticism, and a kind of ‘figure it out for yourself’ mindset,” Paul Taylor, author of “The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown” told The Washington Post. And with that came a sense “that you don’t have to shine a light on yourself. You’re not the center of the universe.”

But things have changed since the ’90s when Gen X was coming of age. We live in an American culture that is fractured by political partisanship, fueled by a constant culture of outrage, crippled by a preoccupation with technology, plundered by greedy boomers and annoyed by overly sensitive millennials. All of this is happening while we face the greatest challenge of our times, climate change.

The answer to all of these problems is simple: admit that Gen X at one point had it right and if we followed its lead, we could reverse these terrible trends. OK, it might not fix all of our woes, but the way things are going now surely aren’t working. Plus, weren’t the ’90s great?

Also, with hat in hand, I must admit that this message is for Gen Xers as well. Many of us have lost our way by forgetting our disdain for authority and skepticism toward institutions. This is a call for us to remember what we once stood for and to fight back by doing what we do best—staying above the fray.

Gen X, it’s time to strap on your Dr. Martens boots and get back to fighting the “Battle of Who Could Care Less.” It’s time we collectively got our “whatever” back and showed the other generations how powerful dismissiveness can be.

Here are the top five Gen X values that we need to embrace again.

5.  Buying vintage items

Nothing was less hip in the early ’90s than wearing mall clothes. If you had any style you shopped at a thrift store and bought used duds from the ’70s and early ’80s and remixed them into something awesome. If you were into hip-hop or skating you shopped at the surplus store and rocked some super-durable Dickies or Carhartt gear. The mood of the times was totally anti-fashion. These days, we live in a world where fast fashion is killing the environment. By embracing the Gen X value of old-school cool, we can help the planet while looking much more fashionable in the process.

4. Corporate skepticism

In the early 2000s, people fell head-over-heels in love with smartphone technology and social media so quickly that nobody stopped and said, “Hey, wait a minute!” Now, we have a world where kids are depressed, the culture has become divided and nobody talks to each other in public anymore, they just stare at their phones. I can totally understand why young millennials and Luddite boomers would fall for the big-tech ruse, but sadly, Gen X was asleep at the wheel and fell victim, too. The generation that embraced the notion that TV rotted your brain needs to remind everyone to go outside and play in the sunshine or read a book. And if you read a book it should be by Bret Easton Ellis.

3. Just say “whatever”

Two of the most popular Gen X phrases were “whatever” and “talk to the hand (because the face don’t give a damn).” These may seem to be flippant responses but they are the correct way to deal with other people’s nonsense and in 2022, we have to deal with a constant barrage of it.

Somewhere along the way, people forgot that it’s even more powerful to ignore someone than to admit they got under your skin. In the world of social media, we unintentionally amplify the most wretched voices by subtweeting, commenting and liking the posts from the army of grifters fighting for our attention.

We also live in an era where many seem to be addicted to outrage. The quickest way to stop fanning the flames of outrage is with a simple, “whatever.” Like dogs distracted by squirrels, we’ve got our heads on outrage swivels these days. Throwing around the occasional “whatever” gives us the time and energy to focus on the problems that really matter and take action.

These days “whatever” matters more than ever.

2. Bring back snobbery

Good taste used to matter. In the 2000s, millennials decided that people have the right to like what they like and that it’s worse to judge someone’s personal taste than to have bad taste. Gen Xers based their entire personalities on taste and demanded integrity from artists and were rewarded by living in a time of superior films and music. These days, no one listens to new music and we’re stuck in a world dominated by comic book movies because no one stood up and shamed people for liking low-effort culture.

1. ​Political apathy

America’s political divide has calcified over the past decade because more and more people are basing their personal identities on their politics. This has created a culture where the dialog between liberals and conservatives has become a shouting match that only makes people dig their heels in further. It’s also created a culture in Washington, D.C. that has attracted a more debased form of politician and led to the gridlock that has halted any sense of progress. Sadly, Gen X has also been sucked into this vortex.

Things were a lot different in the ’90s. Back in 1999, Ted Halstead at The Atlantic noted that Xers “appear to have enshrined political apathy as a way of life.” He added that Gen Xers “exhibit less social trust or confidence in government, have a weaker allegiance to their country or to either political party.”

Compared to what’s going on in America in 2022, this type of apathy seems welcome. Back in the ’90s, taking a “chill pill” could solve everything. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone took one, and then we could open our ears and hearts and have some constructive discussions?

There was a common lament in the 1980s that the boomer hippies had sold out and became boomer yuppies. They went from being concerned with peace, love and the planet to stocks, bonds and conspicuous consumption. Gen X is now in its 40s and 50s and it’s fair to say that we've moved from being the outsiders to creating technological and political machines that are generating the type of conformity that we once railed against.

Now that Xers are at the age where we get to run the world for a few decades, it’s time to recommit to the core values that make us well … us. The great news is that as Gen Xers, it’ll be easy to get back to our roots because we were raised to ironically love the past.


This article originally appeared on 03.10.22

From Your Site Articles
generation x
Family

Those 'carefree' 70s and 80s childhoods weren't the utopia some make them out to be

Let's ditch the rose-colored glasses and acknowledge that Gen X childhoods included a lot of unspoken and unresolved trauma.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Gen X childhood wasn't as "carefree" as it seems.

Everywhere you turn these days, someone is celebrating the simple joys and freedoms of childhood in the 70s and 80s. Indeed, in some ways, Gen X childhood was glorious compared to how kids grow up today. We went outside and rode our bikes without helmets. We went to the park, climbed trees and risked our lives on questionable play equipment. We knocked on our friends’ doors without calling first and spent endless hours in play and adventure without supervision.

We had television and video games, but what we could do with them was limited by the technology itself. We didn’t have social media or cyberbullying or sextortion to worry about. We didn’t have doom and gloom news blasted in our faces 24/7. No cell phones, no GPS tracking, no Life 360. Our parents only had a vague idea of where we were and what we were doing most of the time. And despite staring into the faces of missing children on milk cartons at the breakfast table every morning, we just accepted that benign neglect was a normal aspect of childhood.

But did we, really? As much as Gen Xers love to reminisce about simplicity of our 80s childhoods, evidence suggests it wasn't quite the free-roaming utopia many make it out to be. After all, a lot of Gen Xers turned into “helicopter parents”—the polar opposite of the way they were raised. There's a reason for that.

Maybe it’s time to ditch the rose-colored glasses and acknowledge that the “carefree” childhood Gen X enjoyed actually included a lot of unspoken and unresolved trauma.

Anyone who has read “Lord of the Flies” knows what can happen when kids are left to their own devices, so let’s start with some of the unsavory things that happened during all those hours Gen X kids spent unsupervised. If you were lucky enough to have a peer group with decent heads on their shoulders, you may have fared okay, even with some ill-advised youthful shenanigans under your belt. But not every Gen X kid was so lucky.

A lot of people came away from those 80s childhoods with experiences no one should have. Bullying was a huge problem, but awareness about bullying was lacking, and if you weren't the type to fight back, you basically just put up with regular abuse. Sexual harassment and assault were common when we were growing up as well, but they weren't talked about in a way that led to support or empowerment of victims. Gen X didn’t have a “Me too” movement before or during their formative years like young people today have. Our generation was left on its own to figure out how to handle those things.

We were left on our own to figure out how to handle a lot of things. That’s likely what made us the resilient, independent adults we are, but that doesn’t mean our generation acquired those traits in a healthy way. Some of us did, but for some of us, independence and resilience were a trauma response.

How about the fact that Gen X grew up during the peak in divorce rates? Or the less talked about reality that millions of Gen Xers were raised by Vietnam vets, some of whom lived with untreated PTSD and who themselves were children of traumatized WWII vets? Or the fact that two-parent working households were new and no one had figured out how to do that without the kids feeling neglected in some way?

As a 2004 study concluded, "Generation X went through its all-important formative years as one of the least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history."

That's…not great.

I know I’m painting Gen Xers with a broad brush here. Not everything here applies to everyone, me included, but these are all things I've witnessed in my peers. The reality is a lot of Gen Xers grew up feeling unsafe and devoid of parental guidance a lot of the time, which is probably what prompted so many of us to lean so far into safety and connection with our own kids.

On the one hand, yes, the pendulum may have swung too far the other way into overparenting instead of underparenting. On the other hand, Gen X's own kids have grown up in the safest era for kids America has ever seen. That's not bad. It also appears that Gen X, at least anecdotally, has a closer relationship with their kids than they had with their parents. That's also not bad. We have a lot more research about what helps and harms kids when it comes to parenting, so despite raising our own children in the uncharted territory of the age, we at least have some psychosocial tools in our tool belts that previous generations of parents didn't have.

It's not a bad thing to want to give our kids some of the outdoor play and simple, non-screen-oriented joys we experienced as kids. But in advocating for such things, let's not pretend that our 70s and 80s childhoods were ideal when, in many was, they were anything but.

From Your Site Articles
gen x
Pop Culture

The Gen X grief when a 'Sesame Street' character dies is so real

We're the first generation to have educational programs molding our core memories.

"original-sesame-street-cast" by walt74 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Bob McGrath, one of the original "Sesame Street" actors, has passed away.

"A loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter."

It's a simple, repeated line from a one-minute sketch, but as a Gen Xer raised on public television, it's one of thousands of "Sesame Street" segments etched into my brain. Such memories still pop into my head at random times, clear as day, well into my forties. Bert singing about his oatmeal box while playing it like a drum. Kermit lamenting that it's not easy—but it is beautiful—being green. Buffy Saint-Marie breastfeeding her baby and explaining it to Big Bird. Mr. Hooper—the sweet, bow-tied man who ran the Sesame Street corner store—dying.

I was 8 when Mr. Hooper died. It was a big deal. I rewatched part of that episode recently to see what I'd think of it as an adult. The "Sesame Street" gang of 1983 handled it masterfully, helping us all process his unexpected death through Big Bird's own experience of learning about what it means to die.

"Big Bird, when people die, they don't come back," said Susan.

Big Bird let that reality sink in, then said that things wouldn't be the same without Mr. Hooper—exactly the sentiment we all had.

Bob comforted Big Bird, saying, "You're right, Big Bird. It'll never be the same around here without him. But you know something? We can all be very happy that we had a chance to be with him, and to know him and to love him a lot when he was here."

And now the always kind, always gentle Bob has joined Mr. Hooper and the original Big Bird, Carol Spinney, in whatever comes next. Bob McGrath passed away this past week at age 90, and I found myself mourning the loss more than I would have expected.

I suspect I'm not alone.

Those of us in the original "Sesame Street generation" were the guinea pigs on which the theory of educational children's television programming was tested. It was an experiment that proved beneficial for millions of us, helping us grow up smarter, stronger and kinder, according to research—but it also gave us a unique relationship with the people and characters who lived on Sesame Street.

The generation that came before us didn't have anything like "Sesame Street" or "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" or "The Electric Company," and the generations after us have had so much more educational programming to choose from. But those shows were all we had besides mostly-horrible-in-hindsight Saturday morning cartoons. For us, the people and characters on "Sesame Street" formed a core part of our most wholesome childhood memories. They weren't just entertainers, but teachers. They helped us become better humans in addition to teaching us our letters and numbers, and the emotional connection created from that mentorship during our formative years is profound.

I'm not a huge crier, but I cried when Mr. Rogers died and I cried when Jim Henson died. I didn't expect it, but I couldn't help it. And when I saw the news this weekend that Bob McGrath from "Sesame Street" had died, I had the same visceral reaction. A piece of my childhood is gone, just like that, never to come back. I didn't know him, of course, but I felt like I knew him. And in some odd way, I feel like he actually knew me, because he knew and understood kids.

Perhaps that's why so many of us feel an emotional attachment to our childhood educational show icons. We weren't just mindless consumers of cartoon entertainment to them, but precious children with the potential to learn and discover, to become more caring and more knowledgeable. We knew they saw us and understood the stages we were going through. I felt that genuine respect for me as a human being even as a young child. And as an adult, I've learned about the sincerity and earnestness of the "Sesame Street" creators and how hard they worked to create the absolute best for kids, which only crystallizes what I felt back then.

"Sesame Street" didn't just make learning the alphabet and counting entertaining. It taught us about life, about people, about relationships and about ourselves—lessons that became part of our identities. I've often thought that the world would be an entirely different place if every young child was raised on a steady diet of "Sesame Street," and the older and more experienced I get, the more I believe that. It really did make us smarter, stronger and kinder.

Rest in peace, Bob. Thank you for everything you taught us and for being such a positive part of our childhood memories.

From Your Site Articles
sesame street
Joy

People born between Gen X and millennials are humorously demanding recognition

Have you ever felt stuck between two generations?

Canva

Xennials, people born between Gen X and millennials just want to be acknowledged.

Are you a Xennial? If you are, you probably already know because you’re staunchly holding on to that moniker until someone pries it from your cold lifeless hands. If you're not a Xennial then you’re probably wondering what one is and why do they care so much about the distinction. Xennials are a microgeneration born between Gen X and millennials, you may remember them as Gen Y but much like the generation itself, somewhere along the way that was dropped and forgotten. They're uncomfortably straddling two generations with one foot planted in both, yet somehow not fitting anywhere.

The span of years that Xennials were born is 1977-1983 but there’s some infighting on where the cut-off should be. It all comes down to how you grew up and when regular exposure to technology came into your life, and whether it was through you or through your friends. Chances are if you don’t remember computers before they were full color, then you were likely born after the cut-off. Xennials' parents rarely knew where they were, as they didn’t have cell phones or pagers as kids and they were babysitting by the age of 8.

Xennials' Gen X siblings supervised them as closely as they were supervised: from a distance, far far away. I know because I am one. We were the Oregon Trail generation—we died of dysentery and drank from the water hose because coming in for water meant you had to stay inside. Google was not yet a thing when we were in high school. We had to Ask Jeeves.

My childhood was vastly different from my clearly millennial husband’s. When I saw that someone decided people born in my birth year were considered geriatric millennials, I was having none of it. So I did the very #Millennial thing of posting to social media to demand that Merriam-Webster stop dallying and finally add Xennial to the dictionary. Turns out I wasn’t alone in my frustration, the responses proved we really are just a generation wandering around confused.

One poster, Becca Zibung Mosier, responded, “1980 here and I’ll die on this hill with you!!!” Another, Jessica Morgan, accurately captured the insanity of being a member of a microgeneration saying, “Yesssss! I’ve always FELT more GenX (‘78), but at the same time not completely. This is perfect!”

Commenter Shane Millsom broke down the general chaos that is the Xennial existence by pointing out that we started high school with encyclopedias and card catalogs but came of age with the internet and cell phones. He noted that we were raised with old-school morals but were the first generation since the industrial revolution not to become wealthier than our parents. Millsom also wrote that we were raised to be environmentalists but have a healthy dose of skepticism, and observed that like Gen Xers, we love straight no-nonsense answers, but we accept everyone as equals like millennials.

The passion in Millsom's comment captures everything Xennials feel. We were raised to believe we could conquer the world with a college education and hard work ethic, then were quickly disillusioned when student loan bills came rolling in. We in-betweeners are just that—in between. Xennials encompass the best of two generations and that’s not a bad thing, we embrace it.

I'm still impatiently waiting on Merriam-Webster to give us this one. Don’t make me start a petition.

From Your Site Articles
xennials
Trending Stories