time for gen x to fall for capitalist pandering

I’m see­ing few­er and few­er ar­ti­cles about how cool and amaz­ing baby boomers are and more ar­ti­cles about how cool and amaz­ing Gen X is. 

This is, pre­sum­ably, in part be­cause every­one ex­cept boomers has col­lec­tive­ly de­cid­ed that boomers suck as a gen­er­a­tion. Also, the old­er boomers are start­ing to die off, so they’re no longer as prof­itable of a de­mo­graph­ic. Time to pan­der to Gen‑X now and take what­ev­er mon­ey they’ve got.

And I’m watch­ing a LOT of Gen-Xers fall for it. It’s pa­thet­ic and annoying. 

“Haha, YEAH!
We are the cool ones!
We’ve al­ways been THE coolest!”

No, no you’re not. 

First of all, aren’t you the gen­er­a­tion that sup­pos­ed­ly doesn’t care about any­thing? But now you care about be­ing cool? No. 

Fur­ther­more, none of us are “cool” be­cause all of us are Amer­i­cans trapped in a wak­ing night­mare of both kak­istoc­ra­cy and plutocracy. 

We be­come poorer,
dumber,
and less “free” by the day.
Noth­ing about this is cool. 

And your mu­sic and tele­vi­sion and movies weren’t cool­er or bet­ter than any­one else’s ei­ther. You only think it was be­cause it’s what you came of age with and you’re drunk on nos­tal­gia. Be­sides, none of that mat­ters any­way, so shut up.

It is in the media’s best in­ter­est to ap­peal to you so you will be­come dis­tract­ed with how much “cool­er” you are than every­one else and dig your heels in like stub­born assholes. 

It’s ex­act­ly what hap­pened to the boomers and they pret­ty much end­ed up de­stroy­ing our en­tire so­ci­ety with their en­ti­tled at­ti­tudes and their heads up their butts about how great they are. 

As soon as they were con­vinced they were the best, the next step was to scare them into think­ing the im­mi­grants and the queers and the fem­i­nists were com­ing to ruin their neigh­bor­hoods and steal from them and cor­rupt their chil­dren. It worked and now look at where we are. 

Lath­er rinse repeat.

Com­pas­sion is cool.
CAR­ING is cool.
Em­pa­thy is cool.
All of those things are punk rock as hell. 

Ig­nor­ing stu­pid-ass pan­der­ing think pieces writ­ten by ob­se­quious syco­phants whose end goal is to get you to waste time, mon­ey, and at­ten­tion on navel-gaz­ing and think­ing of your­self as bet­ter than every­one else is RE­AL­LY cool. 

Be­liev­ing it and per­pet­u­at­ing it is not.

And while I’m at it for the love of god stop falling for AI. It’s the equiv­a­lent of our boomer par­ents be­liev­ing every­thing on Fox News.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2025 Emi­ly Duchaine. Pic­tured: Scene from Al­pha­bet City (1984).

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