Why Gen X was built for this modern dystopia

THERE is a prevailing, somewhat patronising narrative circulating in the ether of social media commentary. It suggests that Gen X — the “forgotten middle child” sandwiched between the sheer demographic weight of the Boomers and the cultural dominance of Millennials — has been blindsided by the volatility of the 2020s.

The argument posits that analog-native Gen Xers, now moving into their 50s, are bewildered by the erosion of institutions, the rise of digital surveillance, and the collapse of the “normal” world.

Please, disabuse yourselves of this notion. 

To suggest Gen X didn’t see these changes coming is to fundamentally misunderstand the curriculum on which we were raised. We are not bewildered. We are vindicated.

If anything, Gen X is the only demographic that has been waiting for this exact scenario since we were dropped off at the movie theater in 1985. We didn’t sleepwalk into this dystopia; we have the original scifi paperback copies of the user manual.

The hybrid advantage

The primary reason Gen X wasn’t caught off guard is technical. We possess a unique anthropological distinction: we are the last generation to have a fully analog childhood and the first to have a fully digital young adulthood.

We recall a world where information was scarce and had to be physically retrieved from a library, yet we were also the ones who laid the fibre optic cables, dialed into the first BBS boards, and built the early architecture of the internet. 

We do not view technology as “magic,” as some older generations might, nor do we view it as an innate extension of our limbs, as Gen Z might. We view it as a tool — and often, a weapon.

We were the beta testers for the digital age. We saw the promise of connectivity, but we also grew up reading William Gibson and watching WarGames. 

We knew from the start that the machine could turn on you. When algorithms began radicalising populations and privacy evaporated, Gen X didn't gasp in shock. 

We simply nodded and thought, "Yes, this is exactly what the cyberpunk novels warned us about."

Raised on dystopia

Culturally, narratives of inevitable progress did not coddle us. While the Boomers had the optimism of the post-war boom and Millennials were promised that higher education guaranteed success, Gen X was fed a steady diet of skepticism.

Look at our pop culture touchstones. RoboCop wasn't just an action movie; it was a satire on the privatisation of public services and corporate overreach. 

They Live was a treatise on subliminal consumerist control. The music of the early 90s — grunge, industrial, alternative — was steeped in a rejection of the mainstream and a deep distrust of “selling out.”

We were raised on the idea that the “system” was inherently corrupt, that corporations were not your friends, and that the shiny veneer of society was likely hiding something rotting underneath. 

Consequently, the current global crisis of trust in institutions — media, government, finance — feels less like a catastrophe and more like a confirmation of our baseline hypothesis.

The latchkey resilience

Then there is the sociological aspect. We were the “Latchkey Kids.” We came home to empty houses, cooked our own meals, and solved our own problems because the adults were busy. This instilled a feral kind of self-reliance that is paying dividends today.

In a modern era defined by the gig economy, remote work, and the breakdown of social safety nets, the Gen X mentality of “no one is coming to save you” is a survival mechanism. 

We are accustomed to figuring it out on the fly. We are comfortable with solitude. We are used to navigating chaos without a chaperone.

When the pandemic hit and the structures of daily life dissolved, the panic was real. But for many Gen Xers, the isolation and the need to improvise felt oddly familiar. It was just a Tuesday afternoon in 1988, writ large.

The cynical realists

The mistake pundits make is confusing Gen X’s silence for ignorance. 

We aren’t shouting on TikTok or writing manifestos on Facebook because we generally don’t believe that shouting changes much. We are the cynical realists in the room.

We watched the Challenger explode live on TV. We watched the Berlin Wall come down and then watched the “End of History” morph into new, endless conflicts. 

We saw the Dot-Com bubble burst. We know that stability is an illusion and that change is usually violent and disruptive.

So, when you see a Gen Xer observing the current AI revolution, the political polarization, or the climate crisis with a look of grim detachment, do not mistake it for confusion or ignorance.

It is the look of someone who read the warning label on the package forty years ago, while everyone else was just excited about the new toy and you were just in your daddy’s ball sac.

We knew this was coming. We’ve just been waiting for the rest of you to catch up.

Oh, if you’re wondering what the gibberish at the beginning of this article — that was the sound of success, the sound of connection to the future that we saw coming.