Is Gen X Nostalgia Just Trauma-Bonding?
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/is-gen-x-nostalgia-just-trauma-bonding-09081b42
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/is-gen-x-nostalgia-just-trauma-bonding-09081b42
Don’t Be a Loser, Gen X Baby
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/17/opinion/gen-x.html
In theory, these X-ers were well aware that their parents were probably going to be better off than they themselves would ever be and couldn’t decide whether to be angry about it pre-emptively or to just slackerishly opt out of the corporate and political structures that led to it altogether. The Canadian writer Douglas Coupland, who popularized the term “Generation X” with his 1991 novel of that name, had a character in it named Dag, who puts it thus: “I don’t know … whether I feel more that I want to punish some aging crock for frittering away my world or whether I’m just upset that the world has gotten too big — way beyond our capacity to tell stories about it, and so all we’re stuck with are those blips and chunks and snippets on bumpers.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/17/opinion/gen-x.html
In theory, these X-ers were well aware that their parents were probably going to be better off than they themselves would ever be and couldn’t decide whether to be angry about it pre-emptively or to just slackerishly opt out of the corporate and political structures that led to it altogether. The Canadian writer Douglas Coupland, who popularized the term “Generation X” with his 1991 novel of that name, had a character in it named Dag, who puts it thus: “I don’t know … whether I feel more that I want to punish some aging crock for frittering away my world or whether I’m just upset that the world has gotten too big — way beyond our capacity to tell stories about it, and so all we’re stuck with are those blips and chunks and snippets on bumpers.”