Gen X Is Feral and Not to be Fucked With

And how Gen X stayed out of the Great Generational War

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There is an epic battle of the generations that has been raging for years. Its worthy adversaries are the baby boomers, the millennials, and Gen Z — and we’ve been locked in digital and real-world battles of wit and mockery.

Gen Z flippantly calls the elders, ‘Boomers’, generally accompanied with an eye roll. Boomers say Gen Z can’t afford houses because of their affinity for avocado toast (ignoring the fact that a bag of avocados costs 12X what it used to). Millennials are the butt end of jokes, while trying to interpret between the boomers and the zoomers.

If you’re wondering, ‘Where’s Gen X?’

In the intergenerational shit war, Gen X generally stays out of it. But who exactly let Gen X off the hook?

We all did.

They terrify us.

I was born in 1983, so I’m a millennial. Well, technically, an elder. Another name for us, elder millennials, is xennials. But don’t let the X fool you, we’re not Gen X. They scare the bejeezus out of us.

Gen Xers were born between 1965 and 1980, making them currently between 45 and 60 years old. They’re called the X generation, because they’re so intimidating that they didn’t even get a real name.

We millennials have seen some shit, and we talk about it. But Gen WTF (there’s going to be a few of these playful name iterations of Gen X) — they’ve seen even more shit, but they don’t talk about it. They just stare into your soul until you get the point.

Gen OMG fought the boomers, raised the millennials, and are the ones putting roofs over Gen Z’s heads.

They’re the original Fuck-Around-Find-Out (FAFO) generation. And personally, I neither want to fuck around with them, nor find out with them. I don’t need the Gen X wrath in my life. They chose to hibernate for the generational war, and I’m not going to poke that bear with a proverbial stick.

Gen X Are as Formidable as They Are Alarming

Thankfully, Gen IDGAF is excellent at not getting involved in the generational war, due to a time-based hiccup in the giving-out-fucks continuum. Almost no fucks were alloted to them. In the lineup at the fuck factory, they were last — and barely a fuck was given.

Due to their empty bucket of factory fucks, Gen GOAT don’t get involved in the other generations' fighting, they just sit back with popcorn watching us.

Occasionally, they’ll throw a little fuel on the fire because they’re a bunch of pyros who love playing with fire.

Gen FAFO only gets involved in a few scenarios —like to fight for the underdog, because bullying wasn’t illegal when they were kids, and they still haven’t resolved their trauma about it yet. They don’t like drama or starting shit — but they definitely don’t like starting shit they can’t finish.

So if they’re entering a fight…well…run.

Why Run? Because they’re hair-raising and spine-chilling.

You might be asking yourself, ‘They seem pretty chill, why are they scarier than a blind barber with a straight razor?’

The first of many, many reasons is that they were raised by boomers. ‘But boomers are so sweet and affable!’ Sure, now. But you’re only seeing boomers in their grandma and grandpa era now. You didn’t see them as parents. Boomers have since lost the majority of their fucks along with their keys and phones.

Back when they were parents to baby Gen Xers, they were tougher than a two-dollar steak.

The boomers who raised Gen X had to be reminded by a TV public service announcement, asking, “Do you know where your children are?” Because their parents didn’t know where their children were. They were probably poking a badger down by the river, or running away from a man in a van with ‘free candy’ spray painted on the side of it.

Every Gen OMFG kid was left at a store and 27 other random places because their parents forgot them there. Again, they really didn’t know where their children were. And they couldn’t just call them (because phones were attached to the wall back then), so they just said ‘meh’ and figured they’d come home when they were hungry, or injured.

Part of Gen X toughness comes from the fact that they weren’t allowed in the house for anything other than sleeping. So they were raised like feral barn cats.

Gen STFU also grew up in a time when mental illness wasn’t ‘a thing’. They still had it, but they just white knuckled it like a bare-knuckle boxer battling an invisible opponent. These untreated mentally ill individuals festered and marinated to perfection, becoming some super interesting fucking individuals.

However, since they were a generation raised without mental health services, the hallmarks of their generation are just a list of trauma responses. It’s what happens when you’re raised by people who were also in a mental health state most closely captured by the term ‘mentally pickled’.

One of their fav games as kids was almost punching each other in the face, and if you had a natural human reaction and flinched, they got to actually punch you. Twice, because they called it ‘two for flinching’. If this doesn’t raise a generation of absolute fucking psychopaths, I don’t know what does.

Back in the day, just to impress their friends and scare us youngins — I saw Gen X put out lit cigarettes on their tongue. Without flinching, because, again, ‘2 for flinching’.

Gen FUBAR grew up breathing asbestos, eating lead paint, and drinking liquid Legionella out of garden hoses. If nuclear winter broke out, it would be just Gen X and cockroaches left.

They could buy a BB gun at the corner store as an impulse purchase, while they were there buying beer and cigarettes for their parents. They were probably 7 at the time.

They’ve been self-sufficient since they were big enough to push a stool over to the stove and cook dinner. They were babysitting their younger siblings at 8 years old. And their ‘treats’ were going to the store to buy candy with the money they made from their side jobs.

By the time they were 13, they smoked, drank, and had a full-time job at the steel mill.

Gen FFS played in parks so dangerous that if you didn’t get sent to the ER at least once a year due to playing in them — you weren’t doing it right. That’s partially a joke, they didn’t go to the ER for anything. If you got concussed, your boomer parents just made you drink coffee to keep you conscious.

They survived the crack epidemic, lawn darts, mass incarceration, gremlins, AIDS, and dodgeball.

Gen MOFO don’t listen to authority because they have trust issues since birth. Their parents lied to them about everything from coffee stunting your growth to masturbation making you go blind. And Gen IRL didn’t have the internet to fact check any of their boomer parents’ bullshit. If they wanted to prove their parents wrong, they had to walk to the library and then learn the Dewey Decimal System.

Image by krakenimages.com on Freepik

There was no internet, so the way they learned their friends went missing was by reading it on their milk carton as they ate their morning Mr T Cereal. And because they’re older than Google, they just walked around in a perpetual (mapless) state of I-don’t-know-shit and had to just ‘figure it out’.

This generation weren’t allowed to be allergic to shit. If you had a gluten allergy, you ate it until the ouchy went away. If you had a peanut allergy, you just died.

If you’re thinking a generation couldn’t possibly get more feral, they did, over time. The majority of them either went to the military, rehab, or jail. The ones still left could survive whatever hell on earth is thrown at them.

Oh, and the women are menopausal now. So that’s a new clusterfuck to throw a monkey wrench into the already chaotic system.

Never back this gang into a corner, because they’ll fight like feral badgers on meth. They’re not just feral, they’re rabid because back in their day, they had to fight wild animals on their way home alone. Every single one of them has been in a dust-up with a trash panda, which is a raccoon that they had to fight for their dinner.

And now, for funsies, Gen LMAO watch serial killer documentaries. They’ve watched so many that I’m pretty sure half of them could qualify as a paralegal, not to mention could get away with 12 different ways to hide a body.

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Their feral upbringing, combined with all the hazardous chemicals, turned this generation into X-Men. Despite not having safe spaces, their mantra lays somewhere between ‘zen as fuck’ and ‘wish a motherfucker would’.

They’re sweet lil Care Bears that are cool as the other side of the pillow, until you poke them.

Gen NSFW grew up in perpetual fight or flight mode, so much so that almost nothing makes them fight or flight anymore. Plus, now they have 12,000 things to stream on TV. And Prozac. Thank fuck.

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Generational War Outies

Anyhoo, that’s why Gen X was left off the generational hook. Whatever you do — do not poke that bear. They don’t start shit, but when provoked, and with the right motivation — they’ll end it. End what? Nobody knows, because we leave them the fuck alone. I’m assuming what they’d ‘end’ would be society, humanity, and the planet.

They’re the last generation of feral children; they didn’t know what a ‘safe space’ was, and they fought in real life, not on the internet. They will fuck you up 12 ways from Sunday.

Gen ‘#$@&%*!’ were the new lost generation for a reason — they like it that way. They were also called the Baby Busters, and if you don’t want busting too, don’t rattle their generational cage.

The only thing about Gen X that can give the other generations a chance is that while they mount up, regulator-style, to ride at dawn — they also now need to be in bed by 10 pm.

Anyhoozy, nobody let Gen X off the hook. They are the hook.

Only FA with Gen X if you want to FO.

If you’re looking for a teachable moment here, I’ll pull something out of my keister for you. It’s that feral upbringings seem to create surprisingly zen humans. And perhaps the real reason they stayed out of the generational war…is that it’s stupid.

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