Generation Xcellent — Here We Are Still, Entertain Us

Why Gen X is more than a forgotten middle child

Teenagers queueing for a Michael Jackson concert in Berlin, June 1988. Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F079012–0030 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons

In 2019, news channel CBSN ran a report about the different generations. They completely omitted Gen X. You know when you suspect you’re being ignored, that you’re invisible? This time I wasn’t being paranoid.

Squished between two large and vocal generations, the Boomers and the Millennials, Gen X are what some describe as “Jan Brady of the generation wars”. Following the Boomers’ heyday, we had a brief moment in the sun during the 90s before we were washed away by a wave of millennials.

But Gen X hasn’t crawled off into suburban obscurity, although some of us live there. We are more than the “forgotten middle child”.

Gen X want you to know that we’re still here, we’re still relevant and we’re still excellent — albeit slightly cynical.

Who is Gen X?

Statisticians argue the point, but Gen X is generally said to be born between 1965 and 1980. I myself was born in the mid-1970s. My…