Being a Gen Xer is my affliction. Is Gen Z’s enthusiasm curing me? Hmm, maybe

Were I to find myself held captive by alien anthropologists, keen to learn more about my generation, Generation X, I would tell them that we were so wry, cynical and intimidating during the 1990s – the peak of our cultural dominance – I didn’t even know I was one.

Imbibing Douglas Coupland’s seminal novel Generation X, reading The Face magazine and watching Richard Linklater’s 1991 cult classic Slacker, the high priests and priestesses of Gen X seemed so far removed from my own droopy teen dagdom, the idea that I could count myself among their number was laughable. It was not until my mid-30s that the penny finally dropped.

This may be the most inadvertently Gen X thing I’ve ever done: not bothering to learn what generation I’m a part of. That’s slack. If Gen X suffered from one malady, it was self-consciousness, with a secondary diagnosis of apathy. These are not useful traits to be holding on to in 2025, when the chaos enveloping the globe demands more than a shrug of the shoulders and contemptuously raised eyebrow.

To pinpoint the moment when the rehabilitation of my jaded Gen X heart began, let’s rewind to June 2023. I’m surrounded by open browsers, but I’m not trying to prevent an unauthorised nuclear missile launch. It’s much more important than that: I’m trying to secure tickets to the Melbourne leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. The stakes are stratospheric. My oldest daughter is what you might call (if you were given to understatement) a Swiftie, but better understood as someone whose obsession warrants its own Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders entry. Her moods rise and fall based on Swift’s musical output; she confessed recently her low spirits were not the result of VCE pressures, but Swift’s extended break after her tour.

Floating on a sea of browsers, conscious of the maelstrom of emotions that will be unleashed should she miss out, I begin to understand that this is not just another domestic chore, like arranging dental appointments and parent-teacher interviews. To secure tickets, I must believe in the mission itself. I must buy into not only the Swift phenomena, but the unbridled enthusiasm of Gen Z. Could I become less Gen-X’y?

This is no small undertaking: my Gen X snobbery is as much a part of me as the legs I walk on, and as reflexively deployed, a billowing smokestack of uppity disdain for mainstream culture that can be seen from outer space, like the Pyramids of Giza.

There was no one less prepared than me to raise a Swiftie. A child who worships stadium-filling pop stars, rides the wave of each new viral trend without shame (her bedroom is currently filling with Labubu dolls), and doesn’t take sincere displays of emotion to be a measure of deep uncoolness; who doesn’t pretend not to care when really, she cares a lot. An earnest student of teen girldom, she manages her insecurities not by affecting an air of nonchalance, but by being the most fully actualised, CinemaScope version of a teenage girl she can be. Her music, her clothes and her make-up are not a studied rejection of mainstream aesthetics, as mine were, but a bear-hug of what she loves. Gen Z may carry many anxieties and burdens, but appearing unmoved by everything is not one of them.

In my experience, ambivalence – about work, relationships, our very existence – was the sine qua non of Gen X. Don’t try too hard. Don’t let anyone know how much you want it – professional success, or love or money. Affect an air of affectlessness. Earnestness and sincerity were anathema. Our self-conscious ambivalence is perhaps best exemplified in a 1991 TV interview with Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth. She has just produced a record, and the purpose of the interview is to talk about her experience of producing a record. “Is producing something you do a lot of?” the interviewer asks. “Oh yeah” replies Gordon, her voice dripping with sarcasm, eyes shaded by large black sunglasses. “I try to do it at least once a week.” She has the air of someone who’s been on the phone with Telstra all day, trying to fix a billing error. God forbid she should answer the question sincerely, or cop to enjoying what she does. This was the attitude I was marinated and cooked in.