Is Gen X Nostalgia Just Trauma-Bonding?

There is something a little sad in all the memes that try to capture the essence of this generation of latchkey kids turned cynical slackers.

Excerpt: "As my 50th birthday approaches, something unsettling has started to happen: Social media has figured out that I’m a member of Generation X, and it wants me to feel nostalgic about it.

It’s not that I mind opening Facebook and seeing photos of the cast of “Diff’rent Strokes” or quotes from “Seinfeld,” though I try not to click on them—you have to be careful not to encourage the algorithm. What bothers me is the mythmaking about how tough we Xers had it growing up, and how tough we became as a result.

“One thing about Gen X is we ain’t built soft. We got steel-toed souls,” a man with a big graying beard declares in one video. We are “the original FAFO generation,” another meme declares.

Apparently, everyone born between 1965 and 1980 spent their formative years doing things that would be regarded as insanely hazardous today: climbing metal playground equipment; riding in cars without seat belts; wandering in packs late at night.

In one Facebook post, a fading photo shows a rec room decorated in 1970s browns and yellows, where a group of what looks like 10-year-olds are nonchalantly smoking cigarettes."