GENERATION X
My fave part of this book - the text-box terminology running down the sides of the pages. Re-reading them all recently, I tried to pick out the ones that seemed personally familiar. And then realised I relate to most of them. Which is fine if you're about 22 but in your 30s it's perhaps time to realign your attitudes and make an effort to become less marginalised.
101-ism:
The tendency to pick apart, often in minute detail, all aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool.
Anti-Sabbatical:
A job taken with the sole intention of staying for a limited period of time (often one year). The intention is usually to raise enough funds to partake in another, more personally meaningful activity, such as watercolor sketching in Crete or designing sweaters in Hong Kong. Employers are rarely informed of intention.
Anti-Victim Device (AVD):
A small fashion accessory worn on an otherwise conformist outfit which announces to the world that one still has a spark of individuality burning inside: 1940s retro ties (on men), feminist buttons (women), and the now-almost-completely-extinct teeny "rattail" haircut (both sexes).
Black Holes:
An X generation subgroup best known for their possession of almost entirely black wardrobes.
Boomer Envy:
Envy of material wealth and long-range material security accrued by older members of the baby boom generation by virtue of fortunate births.
Bradyism:
A multi-sibling sensibility derived from having grown up in large families. A rarity in those born after approximately 1965. Symptoms of Bradyism include a facility for mind games, emotional withdrawal in situations of overcrowding, and a deeply felt need for well-defined personal space.
Brazilification:
The widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the accompanying disappearance of the middle classes.
Bread and Circuits:
The electronic era tendency to view party politics as corny - no longer relevant or meaningful or useful to modern societal issues, and in many cases dangerous.
Celebrity Schadenfreude:
Lurid thrills derived from talking about celebrity deaths.
Chryptotechnophobia:
The secret belief that technology is more of a menace than a boon.
Clique Management:
The need of one generation to see the generation following it as deficient so as to bolster its own collective ego: "Kids today do nothing. They're so apathetic. We used to go out and protest. All they do is shop and complain."
Conspicuous Minimalism:
The non-ownership of goods flaunted as a token of moral and intellectual superiority.
Conversational slumming:
The self-conscious enjoyment of a given conversation precisely for its lack of intellectual rigor.
Cult of Aloneness:
The need for autonomy at all costs, usually at the expense of long-term relationships. Often the result of overly high expectations of others.
Derision Preemption:
A lifestyle tactic; the refusal to go out on any sort of emotional limb so as to avoid mockery from peers.
Diseases from Kisses (Hyperkarma):
The deeply rooted belief that punishment will somehow always be far greater than the crime: eg ozone holes for littering.
Divorce Assumption:
The belief that if marriage doesn't work out then there is no problem because partners can simply seek a divorce.
Dorian Graying:
The unwillingness to gracefully allow one's body to show the signs of aging.
Down-Nesting:
The tendency of parents to move to smaller, guest-room-free houses after their children have moved away so as to avoid children aged 20 to 30 returning home.
Dumpster Clocking:
The tendency when looking at objects to guesstimate the amount of time they will take to eventually decompose: "Ski boots are the worst. Solid plastic. They'll be around til the end of time.”
Earth Tones:
A youthful subgroup interested in vegetarianism, tie-dyed outfits, mild recreational drugs, and good stereo equipment. Earnest, frequently lacking in humour.
Emotional Ketchup Burst:
The bottling up of emotions and opinions so that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking and confusing employers and friends - most of whom thought things were fine.
Expatriate Solipsism:
On arrival in a foreign travel destination one had hoped was undiscovered (only to find many people just like oneself), the peeved refusal to talk to said people because they had ruined one's elitist travel fantasy.
Fame-Induced Apathy:
The attitude that no activity is worth pursuing unless one can become very famous pursuing it. Fame-Induced Apathy mimics laziness, but its roots are much deeper.
Historical Slumming:
The act of visiting locations such as diners, industrial sites, rural villages - locations where time appears frozen - so as to experience relief when one returns back to "the present."
Homeowner Envy:
Feelings of jealousy amongst the young and disenfranchised when faced with gruesome housing statistics.
Knee-Jerk Irony:
The tendency to make flippant ironic comments as a reflexive matter of course in everyday conversation.
Lessness:
A philosophy whereby one reconciles oneself with diminishing expectations of material wealth: "I've given up wanting to make a killing or be a bigshot. I just want to find happiness and maybe open up a little roadside cafe in Idaho."
McJob:
A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one.
Me-ism:
The search by an individual, in the absence of training or traditional religious tenets, to formulate a personally tailored religion of his own. Frequently a mishmash of reincarnation, personal dialogue with a vaguely defined god figure, naturalism, and karmic eye-for-eye attitudes.
Mental Ground Zero:
The location where one visualizes oneself during the dropping of the atomic bomb; frequently, a shopping mall.
Metaphasia:
The inability to perceive metaphor.
Mid-Twenties Breakdown:
A period of mental collapse occurring in one's twenties, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments coupled with a realization of one's aloneness in the world. Often marks the induction into the ritual of pharmaceutical usage.
Now Denial:
To tell oneself that the only time worth living in is the past and that the only time that may ever be interesting again is the future.
Nutritional Slumming:
Food whose enjoyment stems not from flavour but from a complex mixture of class connotations, nostalgia signals, and packaging semiotics: (“Walnut Whips - the sort of food an air-force wife stationed in Pensacola back in the early sixties would buy for her husband to celebrate a career promotion.")
Obscurism:
The practice of peppering daily life with obscure references (forgotten films, dead TV stars, unpopular book, defunct countries, etc.) as a subliminal means of showcasing one's education and one's wish to disassociate from the world of mass culture.
Occupational Slumming:
Taking a job beneath one's skills or education level as a means of retreat from adult responsibilities and/or avoiding possible failure in one's true occupation.
O'Propriation:
The inclusion of advertising/packaging/entertainment jargon from earlier eras in everyday speech for ironic and/or comic effect.
Option Paralysis:
The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none.
Ozmosis:
The inability of one's job to live up to one's self-image.
Paper Rabies:
Hypersensitivity to littering.
Personal Taboo:
A small rule for living, bordering on superstition, that allows one to cope with everyday life in the absence of cultural or religious dictums.
Poorochondria:
Hypochondria derived from not having medical insurance.
Poverty Jet Set:
A group of people given to chronic travelling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permanent residence. Tend to have doomed and extremely expensive phone call relationships with people names Serge or Ilyana. Tend to discuss frequent-flyer programs at parties.
Poverty Lurks:
Financial paranoia instilled in offspring by depression-era parents.
Pull-the-Plug, Slice the Pie:
A fantasy in which an offspring mentally tallies up the net worth of his parents.
Rebellion Postponement:
The tendency in one's youth to avoid traditionally youthful activities and artistic experiences in order to obtain serious career goals. Sometimes results in the mourning for lost youth at about age thirty, followed by silly haircuts and joke wardrobes.
Recreational Slumming:
The practice of participating in recreational activities of a class one perceives as lower than one's own: "Karen! Donald! Let's go bowling tonight! An don't worry about shoes... apparently you can rent them."
Recurving:
Leaving one job to take another that pays less but places one back on the learning curve.
Safety Net-ism:
The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional safety net to buffer life's hurts. Usually parents.
Spectacularism:
A fascination with extreme situations.
Squires:
The most common X generation subgroup and the only subgroup given to breeding. Squires exist almost exclusively in couples and are recognizable by their frantic attempts to recreate a semblance of Eisenhower-era plenitude in the face of exorbitant housing prices and two-job life-styles. Squires tend to be continually exhausted.
Squirming:
Discomfort inflicted by older people, who see no irony in their gestures, upon younger people. "Karen died a thousand deaths as her father made a big show of tasting a recently manufactured bottle of wine before allowing it to be poured as the family sat in Steak Hut."
Status Substitution:
Using an object with intellectual or fashionable kudos to apologise for an object that is merely expensive: "Brian, you left your copy of Camus in your brother's BMW."
Survivulousness:
The tendency to visualize oneself enjoying being the last person on earth. "I'd take a helicopter up and throw microwave ovens down on the Taco Bell."
Tele-Parablising:
Morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots: "That's just like the episode where Jan lost her glasses."
Terminal Wanderlust:
A condition common to people of transient middle-class upbringings. Unable to feel rooted in any one environment, they move continually in the hope of finding an idealized sense of community in the next location.
Underdogging:
The tendency to invariably side with the underdog in a given situation. The consumer _expression of this trait is the purchasing of less successful, "sad" or failing products: "I know these Vienna franks are a heart attack on a stick, but they looked so sad against all the other yuppie food items that I had to buy them."
Vaccinated Time Travel:
To fantasize about travelling backward in time, but only with proper vaccinations.
Veal-Fattening Pen:
Small, cramped office workstations built of fabric-covered self-assembly wall partitions and inhabited by junior staff members. Named after the pre-slaughter cubicles used by the cattle industry.
Voter's Block:
The attempt, however futile, to register dissent with the current political system by not voting.
My fave part of this book - the text-box terminology running down the sides of the pages. Re-reading them all recently, I tried to pick out the ones that seemed personally familiar. And then realised I relate to most of them. Which is fine if you're about 22 but in your 30s it's perhaps time to realign your attitudes and make an effort to become less marginalised.
101-ism:
The tendency to pick apart, often in minute detail, all aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool.
Anti-Sabbatical:
A job taken with the sole intention of staying for a limited period of time (often one year). The intention is usually to raise enough funds to partake in another, more personally meaningful activity, such as watercolor sketching in Crete or designing sweaters in Hong Kong. Employers are rarely informed of intention.
Anti-Victim Device (AVD):
A small fashion accessory worn on an otherwise conformist outfit which announces to the world that one still has a spark of individuality burning inside: 1940s retro ties (on men), feminist buttons (women), and the now-almost-completely-extinct teeny "rattail" haircut (both sexes).
Black Holes:
An X generation subgroup best known for their possession of almost entirely black wardrobes.
Boomer Envy:
Envy of material wealth and long-range material security accrued by older members of the baby boom generation by virtue of fortunate births.
Bradyism:
A multi-sibling sensibility derived from having grown up in large families. A rarity in those born after approximately 1965. Symptoms of Bradyism include a facility for mind games, emotional withdrawal in situations of overcrowding, and a deeply felt need for well-defined personal space.
Brazilification:
The widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the accompanying disappearance of the middle classes.
Bread and Circuits:
The electronic era tendency to view party politics as corny - no longer relevant or meaningful or useful to modern societal issues, and in many cases dangerous.
Celebrity Schadenfreude:
Lurid thrills derived from talking about celebrity deaths.
Chryptotechnophobia:
The secret belief that technology is more of a menace than a boon.
Clique Management:
The need of one generation to see the generation following it as deficient so as to bolster its own collective ego: "Kids today do nothing. They're so apathetic. We used to go out and protest. All they do is shop and complain."
Conspicuous Minimalism:
The non-ownership of goods flaunted as a token of moral and intellectual superiority.
Conversational slumming:
The self-conscious enjoyment of a given conversation precisely for its lack of intellectual rigor.
Cult of Aloneness:
The need for autonomy at all costs, usually at the expense of long-term relationships. Often the result of overly high expectations of others.
Derision Preemption:
A lifestyle tactic; the refusal to go out on any sort of emotional limb so as to avoid mockery from peers.
Diseases from Kisses (Hyperkarma):
The deeply rooted belief that punishment will somehow always be far greater than the crime: eg ozone holes for littering.
Divorce Assumption:
The belief that if marriage doesn't work out then there is no problem because partners can simply seek a divorce.
Dorian Graying:
The unwillingness to gracefully allow one's body to show the signs of aging.
Down-Nesting:
The tendency of parents to move to smaller, guest-room-free houses after their children have moved away so as to avoid children aged 20 to 30 returning home.
Dumpster Clocking:
The tendency when looking at objects to guesstimate the amount of time they will take to eventually decompose: "Ski boots are the worst. Solid plastic. They'll be around til the end of time.”
Earth Tones:
A youthful subgroup interested in vegetarianism, tie-dyed outfits, mild recreational drugs, and good stereo equipment. Earnest, frequently lacking in humour.
Emotional Ketchup Burst:
The bottling up of emotions and opinions so that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking and confusing employers and friends - most of whom thought things were fine.
Expatriate Solipsism:
On arrival in a foreign travel destination one had hoped was undiscovered (only to find many people just like oneself), the peeved refusal to talk to said people because they had ruined one's elitist travel fantasy.
Fame-Induced Apathy:
The attitude that no activity is worth pursuing unless one can become very famous pursuing it. Fame-Induced Apathy mimics laziness, but its roots are much deeper.
Historical Slumming:
The act of visiting locations such as diners, industrial sites, rural villages - locations where time appears frozen - so as to experience relief when one returns back to "the present."
Homeowner Envy:
Feelings of jealousy amongst the young and disenfranchised when faced with gruesome housing statistics.
Knee-Jerk Irony:
The tendency to make flippant ironic comments as a reflexive matter of course in everyday conversation.
Lessness:
A philosophy whereby one reconciles oneself with diminishing expectations of material wealth: "I've given up wanting to make a killing or be a bigshot. I just want to find happiness and maybe open up a little roadside cafe in Idaho."
McJob:
A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one.
Me-ism:
The search by an individual, in the absence of training or traditional religious tenets, to formulate a personally tailored religion of his own. Frequently a mishmash of reincarnation, personal dialogue with a vaguely defined god figure, naturalism, and karmic eye-for-eye attitudes.
Mental Ground Zero:
The location where one visualizes oneself during the dropping of the atomic bomb; frequently, a shopping mall.
Metaphasia:
The inability to perceive metaphor.
Mid-Twenties Breakdown:
A period of mental collapse occurring in one's twenties, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments coupled with a realization of one's aloneness in the world. Often marks the induction into the ritual of pharmaceutical usage.
Now Denial:
To tell oneself that the only time worth living in is the past and that the only time that may ever be interesting again is the future.
Nutritional Slumming:
Food whose enjoyment stems not from flavour but from a complex mixture of class connotations, nostalgia signals, and packaging semiotics: (“Walnut Whips - the sort of food an air-force wife stationed in Pensacola back in the early sixties would buy for her husband to celebrate a career promotion.")
Obscurism:
The practice of peppering daily life with obscure references (forgotten films, dead TV stars, unpopular book, defunct countries, etc.) as a subliminal means of showcasing one's education and one's wish to disassociate from the world of mass culture.
Occupational Slumming:
Taking a job beneath one's skills or education level as a means of retreat from adult responsibilities and/or avoiding possible failure in one's true occupation.
O'Propriation:
The inclusion of advertising/packaging/entertainment jargon from earlier eras in everyday speech for ironic and/or comic effect.
Option Paralysis:
The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none.
Ozmosis:
The inability of one's job to live up to one's self-image.
Paper Rabies:
Hypersensitivity to littering.
Personal Taboo:
A small rule for living, bordering on superstition, that allows one to cope with everyday life in the absence of cultural or religious dictums.
Poorochondria:
Hypochondria derived from not having medical insurance.
Poverty Jet Set:
A group of people given to chronic travelling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permanent residence. Tend to have doomed and extremely expensive phone call relationships with people names Serge or Ilyana. Tend to discuss frequent-flyer programs at parties.
Poverty Lurks:
Financial paranoia instilled in offspring by depression-era parents.
Pull-the-Plug, Slice the Pie:
A fantasy in which an offspring mentally tallies up the net worth of his parents.
Rebellion Postponement:
The tendency in one's youth to avoid traditionally youthful activities and artistic experiences in order to obtain serious career goals. Sometimes results in the mourning for lost youth at about age thirty, followed by silly haircuts and joke wardrobes.
Recreational Slumming:
The practice of participating in recreational activities of a class one perceives as lower than one's own: "Karen! Donald! Let's go bowling tonight! An don't worry about shoes... apparently you can rent them."
Recurving:
Leaving one job to take another that pays less but places one back on the learning curve.
Safety Net-ism:
The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional safety net to buffer life's hurts. Usually parents.
Spectacularism:
A fascination with extreme situations.
Squires:
The most common X generation subgroup and the only subgroup given to breeding. Squires exist almost exclusively in couples and are recognizable by their frantic attempts to recreate a semblance of Eisenhower-era plenitude in the face of exorbitant housing prices and two-job life-styles. Squires tend to be continually exhausted.
Squirming:
Discomfort inflicted by older people, who see no irony in their gestures, upon younger people. "Karen died a thousand deaths as her father made a big show of tasting a recently manufactured bottle of wine before allowing it to be poured as the family sat in Steak Hut."
Status Substitution:
Using an object with intellectual or fashionable kudos to apologise for an object that is merely expensive: "Brian, you left your copy of Camus in your brother's BMW."
Survivulousness:
The tendency to visualize oneself enjoying being the last person on earth. "I'd take a helicopter up and throw microwave ovens down on the Taco Bell."
Tele-Parablising:
Morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots: "That's just like the episode where Jan lost her glasses."
Terminal Wanderlust:
A condition common to people of transient middle-class upbringings. Unable to feel rooted in any one environment, they move continually in the hope of finding an idealized sense of community in the next location.
Underdogging:
The tendency to invariably side with the underdog in a given situation. The consumer _expression of this trait is the purchasing of less successful, "sad" or failing products: "I know these Vienna franks are a heart attack on a stick, but they looked so sad against all the other yuppie food items that I had to buy them."
Vaccinated Time Travel:
To fantasize about travelling backward in time, but only with proper vaccinations.
Veal-Fattening Pen:
Small, cramped office workstations built of fabric-covered self-assembly wall partitions and inhabited by junior staff members. Named after the pre-slaughter cubicles used by the cattle industry.
Voter's Block:
The attempt, however futile, to register dissent with the current political system by not voting.
