Our GenX Arrested Development is Why We Care About 'Being Cool'

Appealing to those in their twenties suddenly seems really crucial...

"You're not hitting on me, right?"

"Huh? No. Hadn't really crossed my mind."

"Good. I hoped not. I hate dirty old men trying to get laid with women young enough to be their daughters."

I really wasn't hitting on her. It really hadn't occurred to me. The fact that she was in her twenties wasn't an issue. The fact that I found her completely unattractive was. For some reason, though, her comment rankled me. Crawled right up my ass.

Why does that bother me? I mean, who the fuck does she think she is? Does she think she's hot shit? And I'm no dirty old man, right?

That was it. The idea that I was seen as old and possibly grotesque in my ability to still get a boner pissed me off despite the fact that she was right. I was old enough to be her father and if she'd been good looking, I might have hit on her.

***

“Try not to go all Travis Bickle on me, OK?”

“Who?”

“Travis Bickle? Taxi Driver? ‘You talkin’ to me?’”

“Dude. Your reference is soooooo out of date.”

“Fine. Don’t go all Arthur Fleck on me, then.”

“Joker? I get that one, old man.”

Old man? When did knowing the main character of one of the most iconic films in the last century make me old? Sure, I’m only about three years from sixty… wait. What? SIXTY?

***

Have previous generations been so concerned with being seen as old? The kids always set the tone of pop culture and each generation has always seen those ankle-biters as worse than they actually are.

"The children nowadays are spoiled and have to be coaxed before they will do anything. When they do perform it is with an affected manner not at all suitable for a Christmas entertainment." — 1900

"Remove the girl or boy of today from radio, the telephone, furnace heat, the automobile, the libraries, movies, and other forms of amusement and comfort—give them merely a jackknife and nature's unchanging wonders for amusement and how would they fare?" — 1925

"Children today are brought up to enjoy only amusements that cost money, such as movies, roller skating, etc. but no one suggests that they try games of their own making or to think up simple pleasures." — 1943

"Our kids today are spoiled," he remarked. "When there was no television, you had to amuse yourself. So, I used to get up at daylight, as everybody else. We would go out to the courts and practice all day long." — 1967

"Kids today are spoiled by air conditioning and would just as soon go out and buy a videocassette and nuzzle in front of the television set." — 1987

Sure, we GenXers can look at the Zoomers and make the same, tired claim about them but, unlike previous generations, we also really want their approval and admiration. We'll clumsily adopt listed pronouns even if we think the practice is a bit stupid. We'll get Tik Tok subscriptions and follow the cool stuff even though we secretly hate everything about Tik Tok. We pretend their music is better than the rock and roll of our youth despite the fact that when we hop in our cars, we're listening to Classic Rock.

How did this happen? Why is the good opinion of a bunch of kids suddenly so important?

I have theories.

First, we GenXers are distinctly arrested in our development. There were no man-boys in the Boomer generation. Yes, they had movies and television but they didn't have videogames and, for us, computers were a whole new form of interactive entertainment. We didn't so much grow up as simply got older. We had no real wars to fight, no genuine crises to face, were mostly left to our own devices to figure shit out. GenX were the slackers, the latch-key kids, the generation of cynicism and found validation from our peers rather than our parents.

We're an entire generation of big kids. That's why we love our Star Wars that hit the world when we were twelve and thirteen. The pop culture we made pop culture is still popular with us and we want our taste making abilities to be embraced by our younger siblings. Aren't we cool?

Second, we are the original early adopters. We jumped onto Friendster and MySpace. We pioneered the early internet. We heralded in the Age of Videogames by going out to arcades and dumping quarters into Pac Man and Galaga. We bought those early Atari consoles and played Asteroids until our parents begged us to go back outside and disappear for a few hours like we did when we were younger. Therefore, we see ourselves on the cutting edge. We dive into SnapChat and realize we hate it. We go on Twitter and get addicted to the contentious mental patients screaming digitally at each other. We pretend to get it when we're told we should defer to those in the minority of the population's numbers because they are outsiders and we are outsiders, right?

I dated a woman half my age in my mid-forties. I was a year older than her father. It was strange but the sex was off the chain (see how I can use the slang of the kids, there?). I did my level best to prove to her how hip and open minded I was because I wanted her to continue to be interested. One day she tells me she's decided she's bisexual and is interested in a woman she met through me. Instead of rightly concluding that this twenty-three year old woman was still developing, stretching her boundaries, seeking her place in the world of sexual politics, I thought it was about me.

When she later jumped ship for the woman and then again to a more famous colleague who was a year older than I but with tons more money, I got it. I was a sample serving of daddy sex. I was a Port of Opportunity. A trial and possible error. A decade or so later, she's engaged to a nice looking guy her age and seems quite happy. In the back of my mind, I still want her to think I'm cool, though.

Gen X remembers a world without an internet to support limitless, unqualified opinions and spread innumerable lies and agenda-driven disinformation, and before cable networks like CNN and Fox News masked political partisanship as objective journalism. We recall a time when the world got its news almost exclusively from mainstream newspapers, news magazines, and major-network television and radio programs. The upside was that we largely agreed on what the facts were.

Gen X fought for our right to party. We invented quiet quitting but called it slacking off. There are substantially less than us than other generations but every reboot coming out today is a visit to our childhood.

We GenXers want to be seen as cool. We'll jump on any Zoomer trend without a thought because, hey, we get it.

Except we mostly don't get it. We're all now just aging to the point that we're no longer terribly concerned with the good opinions of kids, no longer willing to go along with the enthusiasms of the undeveloped brains and the causes of the mentally ill, more comfortable in our vintage skin.

Now, I look at the kids on their influencer sites, barely dressed in bikinis, and realize that along with the sex comes conversation and, christ, these kids are boring (or at least opaque).

I'm gonna go listen to some classic Van Halen that is extremely problematic, quietly judge those who think kinky is sexy, and read a real book.