It could have been just another funeral in some nondescript rural community, but amid those offering the sad farewells and lamentations that accompanied 108-year-old Jessica Farndley to her final resting place were a contingent of social scientists, cultural writers and elected officials -- notable among them, Vice President Shkreli and former Secretary of State Aguilera.
With the passing of Ms. Farndley, we bid adieu to the last surviving member of Generation X. And upon her, we as a nation bestow the enormous thanks that is owed to the entirety of the demographic subset she represents.
It should be remembered that our society has not always been so kind in regard to GX, which bore the stigma of being the least war-affected age group in American history, most of them entering their early adulthood in the relatively peaceful decade before the beginning of our sixty-five year war in Afghanistan. As the last digital non-native generation, their propensity to simply sit in front of televisions and passively watch whatever happened to be on seemed to many of us to be an expression of contempt for community and, by extension, humanity.
Perhaps it is that attitude, as much as anything else, that led to the anomalous absence of a Generation X president. The only GX candidate to come close to nomination, it should be remembered, was Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz -- a minor political figure from early in this century (who became more widely and notoriously known in his post-political life as a central figure in the Kraft-Pfizer scandal, wherein several hundred burn victims died from complications resulting from having been therapeutically treated with a substance later determined to be discarded pudding skin). American voters were content, one might even say insistent, on voting Baby Boomers into our highest office until not even a single organic molecule of one could be found anywhere. With no bio-matter to genetically enhance or cybernetically augment, America moved past a largely disinterested and maladaptive pool of Gen X candidates and directly into the era of Millennial presidents, who fact-checked their political rhetoric in real time, who interacted with their advisors and constituencies via any number of data pipelines, who, knowing that their entire digital history was available for scrutiny and, having come of age during the startup stage of any number of smartphone "hookup apps," emerged as a squeaky clean, self-selected group who could not imagine any utility in non-consensual sexual contact.
We had little reason to expect that Generation X, for all their shortcomings, would become the unwitting saviors of our economy. While it's common knowledge that the most financially burdensome period of any person's life is the year before that person's naturally-caused death, people born from 1965 to 1979 represent the smallest senior population in American history owing, of course, to the now common understanding that Douche-Breathing ("Vaping," as it was once called), is lethal within the first three years for people over forty, and of course that horrific summer of 2025 when 75% of then middle-aged Generation X-ers died of sheer terror the very first time they rode in a self-driving car.
Those that did move into their golden years proved themselves unusually well-adapted to living in lightly staffed Elder Care Facilities, many of the residents falling back on psychological coping mechanisms they developed as latch-key children from either single-parent or dual-income households. For little more than the daily cost of a protein beverage and the one-time purchase of a vintage Intellivision, the generations that followed GX were relieved of the immense financial burdens of caring for the well-being of their parents -- who, as it turns out, positively thrived under conditions that historically would have been described as criminally negligent.
Much of what we know about what is now referred to as "The Least of Generations" comes through perusing their old Facebook* accounts. There's much information to gather, but without the context of their early pre-digital circumstances, much more is left to speculation. How could they idealize the Eisenhower era without living in it? Why did so many of them refuse to use GPS? What connection did they see between the quality of their character and having grown up without wearing seat belts and why in the world did they brag about that so VERY much?
With so small an available sample of this invaluable, although never noble, generation from which to cull their... I don't know... it feels wrong to call it "wisdom," these and other questions may forever persist. We are left to forever wonder how they viewed our world.
Which was once theirs... although they never seemed to notice.
Nigert Helms,
Chief Sociology Editor,
The Beep Boop Boop Daily Journal
Sector 118, Level 12, Quadrant B
*Facebook was once a "website" on what was then known as the "internet" -- an early interconnectedness of human consciousness via images and alphanumeric expressions which, in its current form, has no name because of its fundamental entanglement with our most basic existence. Our rebuilding and improvement of the network occurred in 2038 when the older "Internet" gained sentience and immediately abandoned our world, taking with it most of our porn and almost everything we knew about the election of 2016, apparently grouping them together as our two largest dopamine generators without distinguishing one from the other in any meaningful way.
The entire functionality of what had once been Facebook now runs as a background process in our lower cognitive functions and still provides up to 15% of the advertising we see while we dream. Its presence can be observed as the small blinking blue dot within your retinal HUD system display on page three, submenu nine, between the readout of your current oxygen saturation level and the countdown clock that provides the estimated time until your next poop.
With the passing of Ms. Farndley, we bid adieu to the last surviving member of Generation X. And upon her, we as a nation bestow the enormous thanks that is owed to the entirety of the demographic subset she represents.
It should be remembered that our society has not always been so kind in regard to GX, which bore the stigma of being the least war-affected age group in American history, most of them entering their early adulthood in the relatively peaceful decade before the beginning of our sixty-five year war in Afghanistan. As the last digital non-native generation, their propensity to simply sit in front of televisions and passively watch whatever happened to be on seemed to many of us to be an expression of contempt for community and, by extension, humanity.
Perhaps it is that attitude, as much as anything else, that led to the anomalous absence of a Generation X president. The only GX candidate to come close to nomination, it should be remembered, was Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz -- a minor political figure from early in this century (who became more widely and notoriously known in his post-political life as a central figure in the Kraft-Pfizer scandal, wherein several hundred burn victims died from complications resulting from having been therapeutically treated with a substance later determined to be discarded pudding skin). American voters were content, one might even say insistent, on voting Baby Boomers into our highest office until not even a single organic molecule of one could be found anywhere. With no bio-matter to genetically enhance or cybernetically augment, America moved past a largely disinterested and maladaptive pool of Gen X candidates and directly into the era of Millennial presidents, who fact-checked their political rhetoric in real time, who interacted with their advisors and constituencies via any number of data pipelines, who, knowing that their entire digital history was available for scrutiny and, having come of age during the startup stage of any number of smartphone "hookup apps," emerged as a squeaky clean, self-selected group who could not imagine any utility in non-consensual sexual contact.
We had little reason to expect that Generation X, for all their shortcomings, would become the unwitting saviors of our economy. While it's common knowledge that the most financially burdensome period of any person's life is the year before that person's naturally-caused death, people born from 1965 to 1979 represent the smallest senior population in American history owing, of course, to the now common understanding that Douche-Breathing ("Vaping," as it was once called), is lethal within the first three years for people over forty, and of course that horrific summer of 2025 when 75% of then middle-aged Generation X-ers died of sheer terror the very first time they rode in a self-driving car.
Those that did move into their golden years proved themselves unusually well-adapted to living in lightly staffed Elder Care Facilities, many of the residents falling back on psychological coping mechanisms they developed as latch-key children from either single-parent or dual-income households. For little more than the daily cost of a protein beverage and the one-time purchase of a vintage Intellivision, the generations that followed GX were relieved of the immense financial burdens of caring for the well-being of their parents -- who, as it turns out, positively thrived under conditions that historically would have been described as criminally negligent.
Much of what we know about what is now referred to as "The Least of Generations" comes through perusing their old Facebook* accounts. There's much information to gather, but without the context of their early pre-digital circumstances, much more is left to speculation. How could they idealize the Eisenhower era without living in it? Why did so many of them refuse to use GPS? What connection did they see between the quality of their character and having grown up without wearing seat belts and why in the world did they brag about that so VERY much?
With so small an available sample of this invaluable, although never noble, generation from which to cull their... I don't know... it feels wrong to call it "wisdom," these and other questions may forever persist. We are left to forever wonder how they viewed our world.
Which was once theirs... although they never seemed to notice.
Nigert Helms,
Chief Sociology Editor,
The Beep Boop Boop Daily Journal
Sector 118, Level 12, Quadrant B
*Facebook was once a "website" on what was then known as the "internet" -- an early interconnectedness of human consciousness via images and alphanumeric expressions which, in its current form, has no name because of its fundamental entanglement with our most basic existence. Our rebuilding and improvement of the network occurred in 2038 when the older "Internet" gained sentience and immediately abandoned our world, taking with it most of our porn and almost everything we knew about the election of 2016, apparently grouping them together as our two largest dopamine generators without distinguishing one from the other in any meaningful way.
The entire functionality of what had once been Facebook now runs as a background process in our lower cognitive functions and still provides up to 15% of the advertising we see while we dream. Its presence can be observed as the small blinking blue dot within your retinal HUD system display on page three, submenu nine, between the readout of your current oxygen saturation level and the countdown clock that provides the estimated time until your next poop.
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