Thread by @thejournalista

Gen X is trending because Fox News thinks we are the ones who can kill cancel culture.

*laughs in 2 Live Crew, NWA and Sinead O'Connor*

A little tutorial on Gen X:

We are the first generation to have existed in both the analog and digital world

We played the first video game systems.

Our music was the first to get that little parental advisory warning for explicit lyrics.

We watched them try to cancel Madonna, Twisted Sister, Prince, Michael Jackson, rap music as a whole, sex education, and weed (that fucking DARE program lol)

We played outside. We drank out of water hoses.

We played Tetris, Track and Field, PacMan, Ms PacMan, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Galaga, Space Invaders, Q-Bert, Burger Time and Paper Boy in ARCADES.

We are the generation of the Brat Pack. Word to Judd Nelson, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Patrick Swayze (RiP), The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, John Hughes and fucking Ferris Bueller.

We watched Soul Train and American Bandstand on Saturday mornings.

Frozen meals were "tv dinners" and came in limited variety.

We know who shot JR. We know why although we loved Crystal Carrington, Alexis Colby Carrington was THAT BITCH.

Mommie Dearest was a fucking Joan Crawford documentary.

The Elephant Man scared the shit out of us, but ET and Star Wars gave us hope.

We are probably the last generation to actively go to drive-in movie theaters before the hipster revival of them.

We shopped at Lerners, The Limited, Express, Little Folk Shop, Judy's, Contempo Casuals, The Wet Seal, Kinney Shoe Stores

We went to roller skating rinks AND ice skating rinks. We skateboarded. We played Atari, Nintendo and Super Nintendo as well as Sega and the original PlayStation.

We are the generation that recorded music off of the radio onto cassette tapes. Please don't @ me if you never had to sit there so you could pause at just the right moment so the radio station DJ wouldn't be talking on your tape.

We had the Sony Walkman and later the Sony Discman. We had CDs and cried softly when everything went digital.

We are the most ignored generation until y'all need us.

We get shit on all the time for shit the generation before us, as well as cuspers did.

And we laugh, drink our wine, smoke our weed and let the ones in front of us and behind us fight it out.

I'm pretty sure in most cases we are the last generation to enjoy actual real matinee prices at a movie theater.

We also remember when there was only one movie showing at a theater and there were multiple theaters for you to go to, not these big Cineplexes you kids have now.

We are the last generation to dial popcorn and get the time on the phone. Remember? "At the tone, the time will be..."

We got in trouble for calling 976 numbers.

We are the last generation that didn't have to dial area codes to call out, unless you were calling out of state. otherwise, mostly everyone who lived near you had the same area code.

We rode Huffy and Schwinn bikes. We ate Jolly Rancher stix, Chick-o-Stix and Now n Laters. We remember the candy lady.

We are the last generation where your mama's friend could see you out doing something bad and check you for it, and you KNEW you were going to catch it cause your mama will have heard about it before you got home.

We remember disguising our voices to answer the phone because there was no Caller ID, and you didn't know who was on the other end before you picked up.

We used pay phones, and we had beepers. Cell phones didn't become a big thing until most of us were in or done with college.

We remember the big spectacle of Princess Diana and Prince Charles getting married. We remember Nelson Mandela getting freed from prison. We remember the Exonerated Five trial, the Reagan assassination attempt, the Challenger explosion

We remember all the Jaws movies and the original RoboCop movies. We remember that short stint when Timothy Daly was a bootleg James Bond, and we remember when Sean Connery made his comeback for Never Say Never Again. (bahamas, STAND UP)

We remember the Pepsi commercial that burned Michael Jackson, we remember Beat It jackets and that fucking Motown 25 performance when he first did the Moonwalk on live tv.

We listened to Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, A-ha, Blondie, the Go-Gos, Prince, Michael Jackson, Ray Parker Jr, Huey Lewis and the News

We remember when @RickyMartin247 was the cutest member of the original "boy band," Menudo.

We watched Joan Jett be a Runaway, and we loved her solo career too. Pat Benatar taught us that Love Is a Battlefield. We were Goonies. We were scared of Jason, Michael Myers and fucking Freddie, bitch. Our nightmares were REAL.

We watched Diff'rent Strokes, Facts of Life, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Mork & Mindy, Family Ties, Golden Girls and whatever that show was that Golden Girls was actually a spinoff of. I can't remember the name now cause OLD.

We saw Back to the Future. We remember the original Universal Studios tour. We remember Colossus at Magic Mountain. We remember when Disneyland only had one fast ride...Space Mountain. We remember when they added Big Thunder Mountain to the mix.

We remember when you needed tickets to ride the rides at Disneyland, and the cost was in addition to admission if you wanted extras. You had to choose your rides wisely.

We are Less Than Zero. American Psycho. The Rules of Attraction. Word to @BretEastonEllis

We bleached our bangs with Sun-In. We wore Bonnie Belle (sp?) lipgloss. We are probably the last generation of girls to liberally splash ourselves with Jean Nate. We remember the "I bring home the bacon" commercial for Enjoli.

We grew up on Erika Kane, Victoria Lord Buchanan, Scottie Baldwin, Ryan's Hope and Loving. When we were home sick, the Price Is Right was on at 10am every school day.

We remember when you could still smoke cigarettes on airplanes and in movie theaters, and you had to specify whether you wanted "smoking or non-smoking" at restaurants (I think you still have to do this in Vegas. not sure)

We remember wanting to be the person who pushed the little button when you heard the little tone while watching films at school. If you know, you know.

We played kickball, handball, tetherball (still the fucking champ of this shit!), hopscotch, freeze tag, mother may I and red light green light.

Some of y'all played Hot n Go Get it, but I was innocent and at Bible study.

Adam Walsh was the first big news kidnapping most of us remember. It pivoted his father, John Walsh, into advocacy and crime tv fame, but before that, the TV movie about what happened to him scared the shit out of all of us.

We remember life before cable tv. Then we remember when it was either ONTV or SelectTV before the big cable companies came along. RT this if you snuck and switched it to the Playboy channel when your parents went to sleep.

Sure, David Lynch gave us Twin Peaks but you a real one if you remember Eraserhead. That shit freaked me out.

We loved The Outsiders, and we remember Stevie Wonder's voice singing the theme song over the opening and closing credits.

We remember the Super Bowl Shuffle. We remember the Lakers/Clippers rivalry of the 80s. We remember K-Swiss, Starter jackets, Fila and Dia Dora. The real ones remember Le Coq Sportif.

*my mom, with her FAST ASS, just text me to correct me and say the game was called "Hide and Go Get it," not Hot and Go Get It.

Sorry mom. Didn't mean to mess up the game you obviously played but I didn't.

😂😂😂😂

We remember getting our hair done and wearing our good clothes for picture day. Your mama had to make a choice before she ever saw the pictures. By the package or not.

Remind me to tell y'all about my 8th grade pictures where I visibly had a piece of blue bubblegum in my mouth.

Mama Journalist was pissed as fuck lmaoooooo. She had bought the big pack and refused to give those pictures to anyone.

We used rotary dial, then push-button, then cordless phones all before we got to cellphones. word to @curlsmcgee7

RT this if your parents ever called you in the room to change the channel for them because what the fuck was a remote control?

RT this if your granny had them plastic floor runners in her house that had the little pokey things on the other side that would fuck your feet up. QT it if you purposely turned it over to fuck your cousins/siblings up.

RT this if your granny had plastic on her furniture and you were not allowed to sit in the "front room."

We are probably the last generation to (safely) walk to school by ourselves. We could be anywhere outside, even out of our neighborhood, as long as we were in the hosue before the street lights came on.

RT this if you had a tire swing in your yard. We did. We had the only one on our block and everyone wanted to get on it.

RT this if you climbed trees.

We didn't have skateparks. You took your chances on the sidewalk or the street, and there were no helmets or knee pads or any of that shit. We were the original fucking JACKASS.

We are the generation that stayed up late one night to watch the premier of Michael Jackson's video for Thriller, and it was a fucking EVENT.

RT this if you remember the disclaimer that showed at the beginning because he was still a practicing Jehovah Witness.

We remember when they didn't have the Kool-Aid with the sugar already in it. There were just those little packs that you had to measure out the right amount of sugar or else give your whole family DIABEETUS

Our moms went to Tupperware parties, and their friends sold Avon or Mary Kay.

RT this if you ever ate a salisbury steak TV dinner. QT if you ever ate the country fried steak one that was actually chicken.

We remember when @tacobell had the Taco Light, and it was BOMB AF. We remember when they introduced the Nacho Bellgrande and the taco supreme. We remember when they had the enchirito.

We took Driver's Ed in high school. Shout out to all my friends from Fairfax High School in Los Angeles who got kicked out of the simulator class for fucking around like we were really driving something in there.

We remember when the menu was Big Mac Quarter Pounder, Hamburger and Cheeseburger. The McRib made an occasional appearance.

We remember getting those King crowns from Burger King.

Do you have McDonald's money? was some real shit.

These days, everybody got McDonald's money.

We remember when they came up with that "Extra Value menu"

We remember Oldsmobiles. RIP, Oldsmobiles.

If you could drive a stick, you were the shit.

We were once referred to as the generation of apathy. We are not apathetic; we just aren't here to fix the shit y'all broke. Period.

So, in summation, Gen X will not be getting rid of cancel culture. Y'all boomers tried to do it to shit we liked too. We didn't care for it then, we don't care for it now, but we ain't forgot y'all were the ones who started it.

Pull up your Depends and fix it your damn self.

Sincerely,

Generation X.

Some things I mentioned in the thread and some I didn't, but here is a healthy dose of nostalgia for my Gen X cohort:

The Enjoli commercial

Some old commercials from our childhood:

Gen X played Sim City so the rest of y'all could play The Sims.

Gen X played "Command & Conquer" so y'all could play Call of Duty and Division and everything else.

Did hitchhiking end with Gen X? I mean specifically teenagers doing it.

My mom follows me, and she's probably going to freak, but me and my cousin Sharmayne used to hitchhike a lot.

We had a plan for defense in case shit went left, lmaoooo but thinking back, we did it a lot.

Remember emergency break through in the time before call waiting? You could have the operator interrupt the line to let people know you were trying to call

Captain Kangaroo. Wonderama. Zoom. Romper Room. 3-2-1 Contact.

Points if you can tell me what brand this commercial jingle was for:

You've got the look I want to know better.
You've got the look that always together.
Working. Playing. Day and night, _______ has the fit that's right!
The ________ looooook. The _________ loook.

How old were you when Bowie's "Let's Dance" came out, and how much do you still love that fucking song.