Generation X: How to Understand Them?

A brief guide to understanding Generation X

The Doptim team stumbles upon the three generations, X, Y, Z, the last three letters of the ChallengeAZ! Relieved to have found 3 article ideas at once!

Privilege of being firstborn, I am the X class

X, an old letter, a letter of the forbidden and the name of unknown variables. Evoke a sulfurous life? A birth under X? The next Polytechnique promotion? Or the X registers of the Archives? Generation X is mainly the invention of two Americans, William Strauss (1947-2007) and Neil Howe (1951-), who studied the history of Americans according to the principle of generations, generations that would be in recurring cycles of mindset.

Generation X, those born between 1961 and 1981, follows the baby boomers. It benefits from new rights gained by their elders, more freedom of morals, contraception, divorce, relationships outside marriage, friends of the opposite sex without ambiguity... The Cold War and colonial imperialisms are over. The population is growing less. Women are more present in companies. And overall, the financial situation of households improves, despite successive crises that no longer guarantee full employment like during the 30 glorious years of their parents.

After preparing us for a life of total blast, look, we would be cynical, individualistic, distrustful of institutions and leaders. Even so, so much bad spirit in a generation of 30 years... This is enough to despair marketing and human resources consultants.

It's not that hard to understand the Xs

Our heroes are in order of arrival on the small screen of our lives: Casimir and his paradisiacal island, with Julie's candy kiosk, Goldorak Go, Captain Flam from the heights of infinity and others more real: Madame Peel, Kelly, Sabrina and Jill, James Kirk, Steve Austin and super Jaimie (this helps to relativize the idea of hearing aids and superbionic braces: this will only happen if we mess up on a Mars expedition) and the craziest, Superman and Wonderwoman.

We collect orange plastic objects like our favorite dinosaur. We love gloubi-boulga. I am Kelly and he is Charlie, 35 hours a week. We also do extras, further in the galaxy to save all men, starting by keeping track of our ancestors, constantly going back to the future.

In the era of big data, one can question this mania of classifying people behind letters. But the Xs have no doubt found the solution. Play Kent Clark and Diana Prince, seem disinterested in the World, fit neatly into the marketing profiles prepared for them. And then, when needed, the Xs put on their blue and red suits, take the commands (overtrained on Enterprise, the Meteorites, we know this), go down to the street and save the world.

In short, the Xs do the job, like their ancestors.