Where Did Generation X go?

This post has nothing to do with speculative fiction. I am just rambling on about something that has been bothering me lately. I can do that, I own the blog. I am solidly a member of Generation X. I was born in 1970 which is in the middle of every estimation of when Generation X started. Yes, there is debate about when Gen X began and ended. I believe anyone born from 1965-1985? is a member of Generation X. Others give the dates as a little earlier or a little later. Regardless of which way it goes Generation X is missing from our society. In media, entertainment, and academia, we are no longer seen as a group worth talking about or even acknowledging.

We constantly hear about the Millennials and the Boomers. The Millennials get press because their slacker status actually exceeds that of Generation X. Laziness is not the worst trait of Gen M they have been coddled for so long and their parents have treated them as special to the point they can’t cope with reality. Which leads me to wonder who the hell their parents actually were?

The Boomers, what hasn’t been said about that self absorbed group of losers. They dominate politics, the presidency, and make life a living hell for the rest of us with their constant demands for a tighter regulatory state. The Boomers are like a bunch of suffocating nannies. They want to plastic wrap the world.

Where did Gen X go? I have savaged both the Millennials and the Boomers, but I think I have the worst things to say about my own generation. I think we dropped out and left our responsibilities to others. I spent more than half my working life traveling from job to job working as an archaeologist. I am finally settling down in my forties. How did the children of Gen X get so messed up? I think we let our grandparents do to much of the rearing of our children. Those cloying nannies in the Boomer generation seeing the mess they made of Gen X, by being to permissive, went too far the other way. Participation trophies and safe spaces. They created a generation of emotionally stunted children and it is Gen X’s fault. We let the Boomers do this to our children.

I don’t like to leave an article without some hope. That hope is that as Gen X ages we will settle down and raise our second generation of children to be outgoing and brave. We will get our grand children away from the Millennials for a weekend at a time and let them get dirty and let them play outside. We need to make the next generation brave and Gen X is just the ones to do it. We are the people who invented extreme sports, created MMA, went camping in the most remote places on Earth, swam with the sharks, or in my case waded with the alligators. We are an extreme generation, lets make our grand children extreme.

I realize not every Gen Xer let their parents raise their children and I realize every Millennial is not an age stunted attention whore. These are just my observations of trends in our society. http://nukemars.com/?p=3161