Eric Spitznagel: Gen X Is Running the World — And Nobody Even Realized It

Last weekend’s Super Bowl Halftime Show confirmed what most of us have known for a while. Generation X is winning the culture wars. It’s not even close. 

The pissing match broke out on social media not long after the epic performances by Snoop Dog, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and Dr. Dre. It started when NBC News tweeted: “Super Bowl Halftime Show taps into millennial nostalgia.” Many agreed, sharing inflammatory comments like, “We needed this, Millennials. I love this for us.”

Gen-Xers were mostly unsurprised by the slight. “The erasure of Gen X is pretty wild because they’re the generation that created hip-hop,” tweeted filmmaker Bree Newsome.

Another joked: “Boomers taking all the money. Millennials taking all the credit. #GenXLife.”

Millennials trying to claim ’90s-era hip-hop icons as their own is patently absurd, of course. Not only were all the performers (except for Lamar) Gen-Xers by age, but they were also making records when most millennials were in kindergarten. It’d be like Gen-Xers trying to claim Bruce Springsteen as one of their own because he released “Born in the USA” when they were in high school.

But X-ers are used to being ignored or forgotten. When we get credit, it’s for being outsiders — “Coronavirus quarantine?” one 2020 headline raved. “Gen X was made for this” — but we’re mostly dismissed as failures. As the New York Times noted in 2019, “Gen X Is a Mess.”

As it turns out, the opposite is true. We’ve been slowly taking over the culture for years. 2022 is shaping up to be a big year for Gen-X nostalgia, from reboots of “Scream,” “Party Down,” “Jurassic Park,” and “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” to the return of Boba Fett and Gen-X comedy titans like Kids in the Hall and “Mr. Show” with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross.

But this isn’t about nostalgia. Gen-Xers aren’t looking to navel-gaze at our past. We’re celebrating our cultural victories.

“I think there’s a quiet confidence in our generation that we were right all along,” says John Moe, Gen-X writer and host of the podcast Depresh Mode.

Artists like Rage Against the Machine, Pavement, Fugees, The Lemonheads, and Bikini Kill have all reunited and are touring this year to celebrate (and in some cases, play in their entirety) their ’90s-era albums. Even “Rent,” that most Gen-X of Broadway musicals, is taking a 25th anniversary Farewell Tour. 

“These iconic albums are our trophies for getting everything right,” Moe says. “So to go see them played live is a photo album, a trophy case, and a quiet shambling victory lap through history.”

According to Nielsen, the top 10 mainstream rock radio songs of the 2010s — from 2010 to 2019 — are all from the ’90s. They’re Gen-X staples like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Metallica, Stone Temple Pilots and Sound Garden. For all the Boomer and millennial bragging about their superior music — please, God, I can’t watch another hour of the Beatles farting around in the studio — they’ve clearly all been listening to Xer music instead.

It’s even happening with once-derided Gen-X pop culture. “Jackass Forever,” the latest sequel by the injury-seeking Gen-X stuntmen now in their 40s and 50s, has been called “strangely poignant” and “exactly what the world needs.” Beavis & Butthead, who are getting a new series and feature film on Paramount+, are now hailed for their “brilliant Zen simplicity.”

We used to be dismissed as idiots with no taste, but in hindsight, we were ahead of our time.

Gen-Xers aren’t actually the “forgotten middle children” that the media often makes us out to be. In 2022 alone, the biggest pop culture stories are about whether Dave Chappelle (48 years old) has opinions that are too controversial, if Joe Rogan (54) should be canceled, if Tom Brady (44) should retire, and why Kanye West (44) is having such a public meltdown over his wife dating a millennial. 

For a so-called “forgotten generation,” the world sure does talk about us a lot.

The truth is, we have Keyser Söze’d the world. We were running the whole show and nobody realized. And yes, I’m referring to “The Usual Suspects,” a movie written (Christopher McQuarrie, 53) and directed (Bryan Singer, 56) by Gen-Xers. To paraphrase Söze’s most famous line, “The greatest trick Generation X ever pulled was convincing the world we didn’t exist.”

Eric Spitznagel is the Executive Editor of The Arrow, a digital newsletter from AARP created by and for Gen-X men.

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