Now We Are 40 Audiobook (Free)

What happened to Generation X? Millenials dominate our Facebook feeds and people bang on about the infant boomers – but what about us? The dropped generation, the middle youth, the center child of today. Are we still cool?

Generation X? Remember them? The kids who believed they’d never develop up. The era Douglas Coupland immortalised in his novel from the same name. The wry, understanding navel-gazers obsessed with cool and getting cool who today are sandwiched between your boomers from the 60s about Right now We Are 40 as well as the millennials.

Gen X’ers came of age against a backdrop of Britpop as well as the Spice Women, Tarantino and Pulp Fiction, Madchester and the Stone Roses, acid house and rave, very clubs, Ministry and Cream. They holidayed in Ibiza on top of hooch and E rather than ever thought there’d be considered a comedown.

So whatever occurred to them?

We turned 40. And as Tiffanie Darke points out with this witty exploration of the era who defied generalisation, we’re not handling everything that well…

Where once we wore floaty skirts and Doc Martins, now we’re sporting Scandi fashion and ‘interesting’ trainers. We still party in Ibiza but now bodyboard in Cornwall. Where once mixtapes had been the best mating call, today we consider selfies and swap Spotify playlists – even while conspicuously wearing large Dr Beats headphones and casually leaving outdated packets of Kingsize Rizla laying round our open up plan kitchens.

Moreover, Gen X are now in control. In government, in business and the creative industries. The most anti-establishment of generations has now become the establishment. But mainly because tech overtakes the arts simply because society’s great shaping power, Tiffanie ponders – does cool and its own quest still matter? If Gen X experienced it sorted, gave us Barack Obama and downward facing canines, why is stress the new flu? Why are we working not for love any more – or awesome – but to avoid negative equity and depleting pension pots?

In Today We Are 40, Tiffanie interviews a few of the most iconic Gen X’ers such as Pearl Lowe, Richard Reed and Blur’s bassist Alex Adam to look at how Gen X live their existence in between being youthful and old, and how it feels to want to burn down the establishment and then realise that you now will be the establishment.