I recently launched my new media startup, genxchronicle.com. It’s news, culture and lifestyle and through a Generation X lens. As Generation X, we don’t have the shadow of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights struggle hanging over us like the Boomers do. And we don’t have the wry, detached, Internet-fueled cynicism of millennials. What we have is a belief in things that matter, a desire to make the world a better place, and a love of our fellow human beings.
We don’t think everything in life is a joke. We actually believe there’s a time to be serious, and we make no apologies for this. We grew up in the seventies and eighties. We lived through the decline of the nation’s great cities, and Reagan’s musclebound imperialism and trickle down economics. Which were actually trickle up. We also suffered through Iran-Contra, the first Persian Gulf War, and Bill Clinton’s notorious infidelities.
We saw the fall of America’s great stars, like O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, and Bill Clinton himself. So we know that there’s a time for laughing, but there’s also a time for being serious, because life is too important to be blase all the time.
Our generation witnessed the 80’s Wall Street frenzy, the Savings and Loan debacle, and Black Monday in 1987, when the stock market collapsed. We also saw the birth of the term Yuppie, and the rise of hip-hop as a global art form.
Make no mistake, though, we had a great time growing up. The 70’s and 80’s had some of the country’s best pop culture phenomenons ever, from Sesame Street to The A-Team to the birth of Law and Order. And we had great directors, making great films, like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. We’d stack The Godfather, Goodfellas and Raiders of the Lost Ark up against the best American cinema has ever produced.
The modern environmental movement was born during our watch, ushered in with the first earth day on April 22, 1970. And as we tragically witnessed in Houston, Puerto Rico and Florida, this movement is needed now more than ever to combat the ravages of global warming.
The Cold War ended on our watch, brought about by Reagan and Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika, along with a healthy dose of Soviet Union command-economy implosion. So it’s true that freedom and democracy triumphed, but let’s not forget that free markets also played a big role.
The modern LGBT movement began during Gen X’s time. And the AIDS crisis — which Reagan shamefully refused to acknowledge or help to address — galvanized a new generation of gay activists and brought the beautiful colors of the rainbow together.
Obviously, we didn’t have the Internet. When we started out in the 70’s, the only screen in the house was a 12” black and white TV, and you only got 13 channels, if you were lucky. Then came color TV’s, and eventually cable TV, which was a revelation. 57 channels? Wow, what a bonanza!
Our music was played on 33” or 45” records, with maybe ten songs per album. No skipping five songs ahead, or shuffling to a new artist or album. You put it on, you played the whole thing, and you listened to it. There was no other option.
Tapes came next, and they were incredible. Along with Walkmans, they miniaturized music listening, and the rewind, fast forward and record functions were revolutionary. Finally, we had the CD player, which seemed great at the time. And if you were really lucky, you had a 6 CD shuffle player, to really mix up your tunes.
If you stack a CD player up against a smartphone with a Spotify app, the phone and app win hands down. But records, tapes and CD’s had a warmth to them that the coldness of the digital world just can’t replicate. I’ll still take the smartphone every time, but we do lose something in the process, that’s for sure.
We also had a reverence for the things that came before us. World War II, Vietnam and Watergate meant something to us, and we wanted to know about them because they informed our lives. We understood that there was a whole world that lived, breathed, worked, created, invented, laughed, cried, and loved before we ever even came along.
So we wanted to know about history, and to learn from our elders. I mean if you can’t learn from those who have more life experience than you, either your priorities are out of whack, or you’re doing something wrong.
The other night I listened to jazz on my Google Home device. It’s a pretty cool gadget, you can play music, listen to the news, or look up anything you want just by talking to it. So the jazz sounded incredible. First I listened to John Coltrane. Because I was born in 1974, and he died in 1967, so I really don’t know his work well. And he sounded great on the Sax. Languid, slow, passionate, and supremely positive as he belted out the notes.
I know more about Miles Davis than Coltrane. Because they were both born in 1926, but Coltrane died at 40 and Davis lived until 65. So Miles has the dominant oeuvre, and of course his music does absolutely rock. But it was great to learn about a new artist, one who came before my time and who I knew little about. It’s important to absorb history from the past. And I think today’s younger generations have too little understanding of this concept, too little respect for the past, and too little reverence for those who came before them.
It’s a broad statement, and there are many many exceptions. But my point is that Generation X wanted to learn from the past, and to use it to make our lives and the world better. Millennials and Generation Z far too often ignore the past in favor of Snapchat, Instagram and digital communication that, while superficially energizing, is in reality completely and utterly cold. The user almost always ends up feeling bad about themselves, while not knowing why, once the digital exchange is completed.
The Internet can do many great things, and it’s changed the world in lots of positive ways. But it’s also a cold, cold, heartless place where you can view murder videos on Facebook and witness cyberbullying firsthand on Twitter. It’s not anywhere you really want to spend a lot of time, is what I’m trying to say.
So Generation X is a serious generation. But although we’re serious, everything we do is done with humor, wit and grace. We believe our voices have been neglected for far too long, and it’s time to make our generation’s lions roar. There are over 80 million Boomers, and 80 million Millennials, in America, but only 60 million of us Gen X’ers. Part of that has to do with fluctuations in birth rates, part is due to socio-historical and economic events, and part of it is just fate.
But that doesn’t make us less important. In fact, it makes us more important, because there are relatively so few of us to speak up, and to tell the world of our experiences. And at genxchronicle.com, we want to speak up, and make our voices heard, now more than ever.
Because today we’re the leading lights in society. We’re doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, carpenters, teachers, nurses, electricians, and everything in between. We claim both Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who is the richest person in the world, along with Dave Chapelle, perhaps the most famous comedian in the world today, right down to Chelsea Clinton, the former First Daughter who’s a leading activist for the Clinton Foundation, which seeks to improve the plight of humanity around the world through anti-poverty and environmental initiatives.
So we’ve got the top names in business, tech, entertainment, and philanthropy, and through their work, we’re seeking to improve the lives of everyone on the planet and lift all boats, while at the same time having loads of fun and telling important stories. We have the wisdom that comes with age, and we use this to implement our vision for the future, but we’re also in our prime and full of energy and passion. In short, we’re ready to roll.
As social media turns the world into one dumbed-down emoji chat room after another, we want to tell stories that matter, just like our time growing up mattered, and the life experiences we had mattered too.
If you feel the same way, if you believe in something too, then we ask you to climb aboard as we embark on our journey. You have the chance to get in on the ground floor of something real. This is history in the making. Why not be a part of it?
And remember, Generation X matters.
