Douglas Coupland’s seminal novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, is widely believed to be the inspiration for the name given to our generation – those of us born between 1965 and 1979.
The novel is unique and truly groundbreaking, offering a brand-new perspective on the emerging culture. The book is complete with a list of original vocabulary, necessary for understanding the mindset of this young generation navigating a changing society.
Below is a list of “-isms” presented in the book and their corresponding definitions.
Consensus Terrorism: The process that decides in-office attitudes and behavior.
Ethnomagnetism: The tendency of young people to live in emotionally demonstrative, more unrestrained ethnic neighborhoods: “You wouldn’t understand it there, mother – they hug where I live now.”
Safety Net-ism: The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional safety net to buffer life’s hurts. Usually parents.
Spectacularism: A fascination with extreme situations.
Japanese Minimalism: The most frequently offered interior design aesthetic used by rootless career-hopping young people.
Armanism: After Giorgio Armani: an obsession with mimicking the seamless and (more importantly) controlled ethos of Italian couture Like Japanesse Minimalism, Armanism reflects a profound inner need for control.
101-ism: The tendency to pick apart, often in minute detail, all aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool.
Conspicuous Minimalism: The nonownership of material goods flaunted as a token of moral and intellectual superiority.
Cafe Minimalism: To espouse a philosophy of minimalism without actually putting into practice any of its tenets.
Me-ism: A search by an individual, in the absence of training in traditional religious tenets, to formulate a personally tailored religion by himself. Most frequently a mishmash of reincarnation, personal dialogue with a nebulously defined god figure, naturalism, and karmic eye-for-eye attitudes.
Bradyism: A multisibling sensibility derived from having grown up in large families. A rarity in those born after approximately 1965, symptoms of Bradyism include a facility for mind games, emotional withdrawal in situations of overcrowding, and a deeply felt need for a well-defined personal space.
2 + 2 = 5 -ism: Caving in to a target marketing strategy aimed at oneself after holding out for a long period of time. “Oh, all right, I’ll buy your stupid cola. Now leave me alone.”
Obscurism: The practice of peppering daily life with obscure references (forgotten films, dead TV stars, unpopular books, defunct countries, etc.) as a subliminal means of showcasing both one’s education and one’s wish to disassociate from the world of mass culture.
Expatriate Solipsism: When arriving in a foreign travel destination one had hoped was undiscovered, only to find many people just like oneself; the peeved refusal to talk to said people because they have ruined one’s elitist travel fantasy.
These are only a handful of original vocabulary terms presented in the novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, by Douglas Coupland.
Did you know the Gen X nickname, The Slacker Generation, comes from the 1992 movie, Slacker? Check out this original movie review from a Gen Xer seeing it for the first time in 2024.
For more about Generation X, both fun and informative, visit the home page and do some exploring!
The best thing for me that came from reading Generation X, just after it was published (without the accelerated subtitle), was that it led me to read every future novel or book that D. Copland wrote. He’s always had his finger on the pulse of life in this cross section of life in this world.