#gen-x — Public Fediverse posts

I recently thrifted a cotton kaftan that is super comfortable in LA’s recent heat. Which brought to mind Mrs. Roper of course. How old was Audra Lindley in 1978, I suddenly wondered. She was my current age, exactly. So I’m on schedule. Good to know. #genx #threescompany #turning60 #kaftan #losangeles #noPermThough

Track 4 of Pushrod & the Pistons.

Sorry again to intrude on your evening, just trying to establish a snail trail so The Man can't steal my Intellectual Property again.

"Nice Girls (Always Finish Last)"
--Pushrod & the Pistons

https://youtu.be/kExupZItwt4

Who said country ain't Queer? I Queered it 30 years ago.

#Rockabilly
#Psychobilly #Rock
#Music
#90s
#GenX

My '90s were my 20s' brain every time a login page has a ‘Remember Me’ checkbox:

https://youtu.be/y2Eah_EGiDc

#GenX #90s #90sMusic

The Week That Was: Leave, Life Admin and a Gen X Gut Punch

This week I finally took some very overdue long service leave. And when I say overdue, I mean the kind of overdue where the leave balance was probably sitting in the system wearing a cardigan, asking if anyone was ever going to collect it.

I had grand visions, of course. Rest. Relaxation. Possibly becoming the sort of person who drinks tea slowly while staring out a window and thinking deep, elegant thoughts. Instead, the week became a tasting platter of adulting, errands, health nonsense, emotional damage and the universe whispering, “You wanted time off? Cute.”

Long Service Leave: The Dream Versus the Reality

There is something deeply satisfying about taking leave that has been owed to you for so long it feels less like time off and more like retrieving buried treasure. Except instead of a glittering chest of gold, you get a calendar full of appointments, cleaners coming to clean, phone calls, and jobs you have been pretending not to see for months.

Because naturally, the minute you get time away from work, your brain goes, “Excellent. Now we can finally deal with every boring, practical, grown-up thing we have been avoiding.” Adulting arrived wearing sensible shoes and carrying a clipboard.

So yes, I did some responsible-person things. Not glamorous things. Not Instagram-worthy things. The sort of things that make you feel vaguely smug for thirty seconds and then immediately tired. Still, they were necessary, and future me will probably be grateful once she stops being dramatic about it.

Meanwhile, My Body Chose Violence

And then, because apparently the week did not already have enough plot, my body decided to contribute its own dramatic subplot. Specifically, the worst women’s health issues I have had in a long time.

Honestly, rude. There I was, attempting to have a peaceful week off, and my reproductive system apparently saw an opening for interpretive theatre. Not a quiet little background performance, either. No, this was full production value: lighting, sound effects, emotional monologue, and possibly a fog machine.

I am being direct because there is no point pretending it was just “a bit uncomfortable.” It was awful. But I am also choosing to keep it light because sometimes the only way through bodily betrayal is snacks, pain relief, inappropriate jokes, and strongly worded internal feedback to the management.

A Sombre One for the Gen X Heart

On a genuinely sad note, this week also brought the reported passing of Dolly Parton, Tim Curry and Peter Cullen. That is not a sentence my poor Gen X heart was prepared to process in one go.

Dolly was rhinestones, warmth, wit, big-heartedness and songs that somehow managed to be both larger than life and deeply human. Tim Curry was chaos, charisma, camp, menace, mischief and theatrical brilliance all wrapped in one unforgettable eyebrow raise. Peter Cullen was the voice of Optimus Prime, which means for many of us he was not just a performer; he was part of the emotional architecture of childhood.

It felt like the universe gathered up a handful of icons and said, “Here, remember mortality?” No thank you. Return to sender. My inner child is sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by VHS tapes, humming dramatically and refusing to make eye contact.

There is a special kind of grief that comes with losing people who shaped the background music, movie nights, cartoons and cultural wallpaper of your life. You may not have known them personally, but their work lived in your home, your memories and your sense of humour. This week, that hit hard.

Death received a lot of formal complaints this week and is currently on a performance improvement plan. Depending on how Death improves — also known as not taking anyone else before year’s end — Death may or may not be fired.

But Spring Has Sprung

Happily, because life is never only one thing, spring has arrived. And I love spring. I know every season has its fans, but spring is absolutely my favourite. It has optimism. It has colour. It has that little lift in the air that makes everything feel slightly more possible.

Yes, there is the small matter of hayfever lurking in the wings, ready to leap out like an overenthusiastic pollen goblin. But I am choosing hope. I am choosing blossoms. I am choosing sunshine that does not yet feel like the surface of the sun. I am choosing the smug joy of noticing longer days and pretending I am now a person who will go for brisk meaningful walks.

Spring feels like the world taking a deep breath and saying, “Right, let’s try that again.” After a week of life admin, body drama and pop culture heartbreak, I will take that little seasonal reset with both hands.

Two More Weeks on the Horizon

The good news is that I am due another two weeks of recreational leave, and I am very much looking forward to it. I am trying not to put too much pressure on it, because clearly the universe likes to hear plans and then immediately improvise jazz over the top of them.

Still, I am hopeful. Maybe those two weeks will include rest. Maybe they will include nice weather, soft mornings, decent coffee, and fewer errands. Maybe my body will read the room and behave itself. Maybe I will even achieve that elusive state known as “relaxed adult with clean laundry.”

For now, though, this week has been a lot. It was overdue leave that turned into a mixed bag. It was adulting with a side of cramps. It was grief for voices, faces and songs that meant more than I probably realised. But it was also spring arriving, gently and brightly, reminding me that not every ending gets the final word.

So, here’s to long service leave, however chaotic. Here’s to the icons who helped raise us from the television, radio and movie screen. Here’s to spring, even if it makes my sinuses question their career choices. And here’s to the next two weeks of leave, which I am formally requesting be restful, gentle and significantly less weird.

This is another reason why media perseveration is so vital.

We've got this amazing and rare opportunity to more clearly understand the gigantic cross-generational conversation of humanity, but some people don't care — or worse — some actively seek to destroy it.

#GenX #culture

Collective unconscious is a thing.

But if society had a collective *consciousness,* it would experience it like the guy in Memento, forgetting what happened prior to a few years ago, but definitely on a certain path based on long-forgotten choices.

🧵

#GenX #culture

People have gotten mad at me before while talking about generational cohorts because they think I'm making some moral comparison or pit people against each other.

But no. I'm just trying to listen to this massive collective conversation that transcends any one person's ability to understand it.

#GenX #culture

The generations are having a giant cultural conversation, but not a back and forth, more like a game of telephone where you never get to see the beginning or end of the chain, only the nodes closest to you.

The only way to get any perspective is to step outside yourself and then consume media from older times, and continue to consume new media as younger generations produce it, and try to make as close a guess as you can.

Today I've been thinking about how 00s music was a reaction to 90s music and trying to understand it in the same way I intuitively understood what my generation was reacting to in 60s-80s music.

This would be impossible without recording technology. Very few generations of people have been able to listen so clearly so far back down the chain.

🧵

#GenX #culture

Interesting. I want to see this movie.

There's a certain vibe to movies from that era that I call "the 90s movie." It's hard to pinpoint, but Napoleon Dynamite (along with Juno and Scott Pilgram vs. The World) in the early 00s were among the last of that breed. I noticed their absence through the end of the 00s as fewer movies met my expectations.

It's kind of a quirky DIY indie vibe (even if not technically indie), heavy experimentation, a certain casual kind of humor, a certain dynamic among the characters. These movies sought freedom through irreverence and rebelliousness. Movies that broke the rules without trying too hard.

The format became well established by directors like Kevin Smith and films like Go, Reality Bites, SLC Punk, Tank Girl, Slacker, Loser, Almost Famous, Empire Records, My Own Private Idaho, Blair Witch Project, Fight Club (I know, I know), and dozens more. If a low- to mid-budget movie came out in the 90s that was aimed at the youth (GenX), you could count on it having that special something that naturally bubbled up from the overall punk zeitgeist.

I saw a 2025 horror movie over the weekend (Netflix, Until Dawn) that likewise carried slight hint of the vibe (tho nowhere near as distilled). I commented on 90s clothing fashions coming back, but not only that. Just the kind of friendship the kids had, their banter, the use of music, what felt like a fresh take on tired horror tropes. It felt a little like a callback. But also maybe like I could expect to see more of that.

I do very much hope that style of cinema is coming back along with the fashion.

I'll excitedly keep an eye out for Edie Arnold Is a Loser.

https://www.sltrib.com/artsliving/2026/08/30/is-edie-arnold-is-loser-next/

#GenX #90s #punk #movies

How #GenX are you? Part 174

Old School Tech

Select all that apply.

#HowGenXAreYou #1970s #1980s #1990s
#Poll #Polls

This is both funny and also a bit heart warming.

"Being a Gen Xer, we're the luckiest generation because we're sandwiched between the two most dynamically angry generations currently alive. Since we have one foot in both worlds, it's our job to serve as translators between the two generations."

https://youtu.be/SILbT66jt9s

#Comedy #StandUp #GenX #Generations

It's no surprise us #GenX:ers were the ones who made #Internet really happen, living our most energetic years '95 to '15, still having a sense of wonder about the net at the same time.
Digital natives never got that. The #FOSS mindset, for instance, could never have spawned with them; they were robbed of the feeling of _participation_. They got a commodity, diluted and bland.

Ik heb op Youtube een oude & integrale aflevering van MTV's Headbanger's Ball opgezet. Want zondagavond zoals het 35 jaar hoorde... #genx

#GenX

Are you also slowing turning into your parents and perhaps having mini-date lunches at A&W (or similar)?

My wife and I discovered we are doing it just as my parents do, and noting that most of the sit in traffic seems to be the same aging couples in the range of us to my parents.

#aw #aging #genx

The #QuietGeneration, always forgotten

#GenX #NYTPuzzle #SpellingBee

GenX Concerts.

I agree with everything this man says.

#GenX

https://www.reddit.com/r/fixedbytheduet/comments/1vwkt73/gen_x_concerts/

As a #GenX -er, I remember Dolly at the peak of her, what? 60+ yr career.

Her talent was undeniable; but she was born a poor girl. So, I found it interesting how she allowed herself to be something of a punch-line in order to get a foothold in a man's world.

As a kid, you heard about her chest size long before you heard her music. This was deliberate (plastic surgeries, eg). "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap," she joked.

Then she used her platform to do tremendous good. #Legend 🏆

Sitting on a bench in Barnesville, Ohio, watching the town do its thing. Old buildings, weird architecture, green footprints, and absolutely nobody in a hurry. This is what happens when America refuses to become a strip mall.

#Barnesville #Ohio #SmallTown #GenX #America

It is seldom talked about...but I think one reason the American economy's #unfairness accelerated so much, during the prime years of #GenerationX, is that neither politicians nor businesses could justify speaking directly to that cohort and addressing its dissatisfaction and valid cynicism toward institutions.

Its population was undersized, compared to the two generations it got stuck between. So it wasn't profitable enough in terms of votes or market capture. Remember, the origin of its designation "X"—like, an unknown variable—was that it was too small for older leaders to comprehend; or really to bother trying to.

Hence, for decades, older people's self-interest went unchecked. And they got too powerful by the time Generation Y finally came of age.

❌

#demographics
#GenX

Kyle Chandler's interview about playing an aging Hal Jordan in HBO's "Lanterns" does a great job explaining why this show feels so familiar to me.
#lanterns #kylechandler #genx

“In the USA, #GenZ are experiencing the highest #unemployment rate of any demographic: entry-level opportunities are narrowing and #AI is slimming the #workforce. Compare this to the state of play of #GenX when Friends aired: they entered the workforce amid #TechBoom optimism and polled as "remarkably optimistic as individuals".

<https://bbc.com/culture/article/20260827-five-reasons-why-the-gen-z-friends-is-impossible>