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!