Generation X

Since the 2024 election, liberals, progressives, and the left has been wringing our collective hands over why Trump won yet again.

Anthem for a forgotten cohort.

Skepticism drove some of this more cynical or realistic worldview, based on their experiences growing up in the 70s and 80s.

To be Gen X was to be disaffected from the consumer norms of the 1980s, but to be pessimistic about any chance for social transformation.

The 1994 studio film was written by a 20-something who mined her own life to tell the story of a generation that disdained 'selling out.'

In the cultural wasteland of the Reagan era, they showed that a band could have mass appeal without being cheesy, or nostalgic, or playing hair metal.

Reflections on Pavement, Nirvana, the very meaning of history, and the end of neoliberalism.

What was ethical consumption under capitalism?

Lazy assumptions about young and old cloud our politics.

From boomers to zoomers, the concept gets social history all wrong.

On the nostalgic and technophobic motives of the recent boom in suburban fantastic media.

The original “Zoom” burst joyfully out of Boston in the 1970s, and is still beloved by older members of Generation X.

You are not Gen X. You are not a Millennial. Unless you are a Baby Boomer, you are nothing.

Donald Trump seems stuck in the 80s.

By assigning personal attributes to birth cohort, generationism tends to undermine personal responsibility.

The 2008 election sparked an outburst of brightness and positivity across pop culture. Now hindsight — and cringe — is setting in.

Charting the history of a TV phenomenon.

Keir Milburn argues that generational analysis can explain class operation while Adolph Reed Jr. writes that it obscures historically specific social relations.

A generation is still dying younger than it should—this time, of “natural causes.”

People my age are described as baby boomers, but our experiences call for a different label altogether.

For members of the Hip Hop generation who came of age during the Black Power era, “reality rap” was an entry into the political power of Black history.

How a best-selling series gave young readers a new sense of agency.

The defining boundaries and problematic categorizations carried by our culture's treatment of the label "millennial."

When my father moved to Taiwan, a fax machine and a shared love of music bridged an ocean.

Once derided as cesspools of Reagan-era consumerist excess, the shopping mall somehow became an unlikely sort-of quasi-public space that is now disappearing.

If the press didn’t know what to make of Miss America 1992 Carolyn Sapp, they really didn’t know what to make of domestic violence.

A visual breakdown of the U.S. Senate by age.

What I relearned (about well-meaning liberalism, race, my late father, and my young gay self) rewatching the TV cop shows of my 1970s youth.

On William Gibson, Sonic Youth, and the genesis of the American suburb.