Power Mist: The tendency of hierarchies in office environments to be diffuse and preclude crisp articulation. All they do is shop and complain.”Ĭonsensus Terrorism: The process that decides in-office attitudes and behavior.
If you haven’t read the book and are curious based on these snippets or on its reputation, I can recommend it.Įmotional Ketchup Burst: The bottling up of opinions and emotions inside oneself so that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking and confusing employers and friends – most of whom thought things were fine.Ĭlique Maintenance: The need of one generation to see the generation following it as deficient so as to bolster its own collective ego: “ Kids today do nothing. Some are obviously aimed at the era others have more cross-generational application. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one.īelow is a selection of entries from Coupland’s Generation X lexicon ( Xicon?), in the order they appear in the book. one created by the expansion of the service sector.Ĭoupland on McJob: A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. OED on McJob: An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. It’s worth comparing the two glosses: where the OED is appropriately disinterested and concise, Coupland adds wry sociological insight: The OED cites Generation X in its entry for McJob, but credits a Washington Post headline from 1986 as the first use.
Some of the near-100 such entries, like McJob – the first in the book – have become established in broader usage. (The symptoms for Historical Underdosing are the same.) Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines, and TV news broadcasts. To live in a period of time when too much seems to happen. For example: Ultra short term nostalgia (unhyphenated in the book) is ‘homesickness for the extremely recent past: God, things seemed so much better in the world last week.’ This had special resonance after the UK’s Brexit vote last month, as did Historical Overdosing: It remains a rewarding read, inventive and humorous, with a sincerity unspoiled by its often sardonic views.Ī salient feature of the book is an ingenious, comical, cultural glossary supplementing the text as it unfolds. A quarter-century after publication seemed a good time to revisit Douglas Coupland’s self-consciously zeitgeisty novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.
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