When Douglas Coupland appropriated the term Gen X, he was trying to capture the disillusionment of teenagers disgusted by Baby Boomer hypocrisy. We'd watched our parents trade civil rights and flower power for desk jobs and debt.
Gen X was irony. Gen X was detachment. Gen X saw the whole stupid game and decided, nah, we're opting out.
Coupland couldn't have known how perfectly the letter X would graph our generation's role in history. We stood small at the crossroads of post-war abundance and Internet delirium, sandwiched between 76 million corrupt Baby Boomers and 74 million manic Millennials. The past was loud and the future was loud, but us? We observed the freight train of history passing us by and didn't even wave, preferring to fold our arms and cross our knees and shrug our shoulders and sigh, "Whatever."
