As a young Generation X-er through the '90s I revelled in my X-er status: I sneered at baby boomers, read Easton Ellis with my eyes closed, and wanted to be Winona Ryder (more the whole Reality Bites thing than the cry-for-help kleptomania).Then with the arrival of Generation Y, we Gen X-ers moved from being the precocious generational youngest child to the confused and displaced middle child. We started having to shout to be heard above the roar of our older siblings' Winnebagos and our younger siblings' Vespas. Today we don't seem to be talented in any way, except at whingeing, bemoaning and being ignored.
That's right my angsty Gen X friends, we have become Jan Brady.
There's nothing that gets a poetically inclined demographer waxing more lyrically than when describing the difference between generation X and Y. Gen Y have variously (and gloriously) been described as confident, idealistic, optimistic, highly entrepreneurial, hard-working, socially and environmentally responsible, blah blah economic prosperity blah. It's all happiness and light and infinite possibilities for Gen Y.
For Gen X, it's all 'oh woe is me, don't hog the razor blades'. As Gen X-ers we should be happier: we're tech-savvy, educated and ethnically diverse, but that just means we can start blogs, quote philosophers and whinge to people across the globe (I think we all know what Kant said about Gen Y, haw haw).
So Gen Y rules the world and Gen X is going to hell in a hybrid car.
But sitting here brooding at my Gen X computer I've come across a happy-happy-joy-joy quote I wanted to share with you. Said the demographer Bernard Salt, quoted in a recent SMH article:
"In some respects the looming recession in 2009 will abruptly end the long Indian summer of generation Y's youth... I've spoken to a lot to baby boomers and generation X about generation Y and there's definitely the feeling that what these young people need is a JOLLY GOOD RECESSION to shake them up."
Hurrah! A jolly good recession. Bring. It. On.
