Erasing Generation X

By Angel Benett

Why the media has worked so hard for two decades to cancel the Generation X legacy?

• Baby boomers began a freedom, unity and justice era that Gen X completed and made it a reality.

• The X Generation kids were a very influential and transformational generation to pop culture worldwide that continues to influence the world untill this day. Why the media and entertainment industry has minimized and wiped out an entire generation?

Everywhere we hear talks about Millennials and Gen Z, and the constant comparison with baby boomers as the so-called “previous generation.” The comparison is an obvious fallacy since the previous generation are the millennials and Gen Z parents, aka the X Generation.

The X Generation kids were a very influential and transformational generation to pop culture worldwide that continues to influence the world until this day.

Gen X culture didn’t focus on the hollow materialistic externalities of todays empty pursued of impossible wealth, beauty and ideals of power, but in the deep meaning and understanding of human connection, values, empathy and kindness, something missing today.

With such a strong legacy, why then, the media and brands seem to want to belittle and erase Gen X, when it’s Gen X who are currently in charge of running the world in politics, in executive corporate, in banks and all positions of power?

Just a quick look at how Gen X still influential today, and continues advocating for a just world, we need not look further but observe the phenomenon of the Johnny Depp’ defamation court case.

After he won his case against millennial ex-wife Amber Heard, who falsely caused him of being a wife beater, billions of people worldwide, the majority Gen X, seemed to have awakened in support of Johnny Depp.

Yet, strangely the media was split among those few news outlets who felt “justice was served and Depp was vindicated,” and then the majority of corporate media who decided to continue blatantly defaming him at all cost in order to protect the #metoo movement —knowing very well the public believed Johnny’s testimony due to the overwhelming evidence presented in court and the testimonies of dozens of eye-witnesses who corroborated Depp’s version of events – that he was the victim of domestic abuse.

This was an awaking moment for many Gen Xers, and made everyone see how Gen X is still a great unifying generation that continues to hold values and a great passion for justice.

The influence and amazing contributions of Gen X culture and values from kindness to unifying power.

Gen X not only influenced the world by creating transformational legacies in movies, music, technology and fashion, but it was a force for good, promoting positive thinking, creatively, human values, love and appreciation for each other’s individual freedom of expressions, always rooted in empathy, friendship, compassion, and admiration for each other’s uniqueness, something that has been lost on the new generations.

The Generation X kids are now in their 40s and fifties, yet this demographic is almost completely ignored or systematically minimized by major brands and the media, who have artificially labeled them as the kids of a Dumb and weird era. But again, that’s more of a fallacy that borderlines on propaganda than reality.

The contributions of Gen X to the betterment of humankind are endless, but they have been buried almost like this were on porpuse, why? Why the media and entertainment industry has minimized and wiped out an entire generation?

Gen X gave us hope one of humanities strongest and most valuable emotions. Who in their lifetime doesn’t know the valuable lessons of life, sympathy, compassion, and unity, reflected in movies like E.T., Star Wars, Top Gun, Independence Day, Dirty Dancing, Ghost or Contact through us? Or the contribution of the personal computer, mac, windows and iphone? Or songs of hope that are still used today.

The positive contributions of Gen X are endless, yet the media for the last two decades either ignores Gen X contributions or have treated this entire generation as non existent.

Perhaps the vanishing of Gen X culture is not accidental. Youtuber Graham Elwood once read a letter sent to him by a former Australian record producer who explained that 20 years ago, he and other music-industry producers gathered at a house party of a very influential industry leader and investor. They were made to sign a non confidently agreement at a meeting he was not expecting to have. Many found it odd, walked out and didn’t sign, but he joined the meeting and signed. What follow shocked him and as he said, “it haunts me until this day that I stood quiet all these years of what was said in that meeting.”

He and the other producers in the room were told that the positive songs of Gen X were to be no more, that from now on they ordered the producers to ONLY produce and promote rap and R&B songs related to money, fame, drugs, sex, individualism and violence. The meeting ended and we were told that if they repeat what they heard their lives and careers won’t be the same. The Australian record producer was so spoked that he quit and moved back to Australia.

Think about it, this happened while Gen X kids were still young in their 20s and 30s.

Through those years, in the last 20 years, Gen X has been accused of being naive and dumb when, in fact, they were innocent and good-hearted.

But in the last two decades of neoliberal ideology, kindness was promoted as weaknesses and mocked, while bullying, aggressive and heartless behavior was promoted as leadership.

A culture of love, empathy and and admiration for others uniqueness was replaced with a culture of selfishness, individualism and then subdivided by social movements based on our differences in color, gender, religion, country, and so on.
After Gen X legacy was systematically removed, new TV shows, movies, and music began to emerge, reinforcing the new generation culture who made work place bullies cool people, and narcissistic personality disorder an admired trait. By the mid 2007 we began celebrating bullies as leaders– and we even gave them new titles such as LIKE A BOSS, BASED, STREET CRED, ETC. All while singing song lyrics like, “I want to be a billionaire so fucking bad, Buy all of the things I never had, I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine Smiling next to Oprah and the Queen.” and gave music awards to song lyrics like “want to kill ya’ niger.”

Therefore, Millenials, and now Gen Z were taught to reject everything GEN X. And a new culture of unprecedented disrespect for the older generations emerged. Babyboomers passed on the torch of civil rights, anti-war and peace movements to Gen X, Millennials were taught to rip it apart and erase anything before them– their own historical memory. All their past was reduced to two words: UNCOOL and CRINGE. The current generations has been striped of cultural identity, abandoned living in the quiet desperation of todays green swamp of life.

——–
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of MexusNews.