This is your brain on nostalgia.

I’m already bent out of shape on a number of topics for a number of reasons, and this morning I came across one more to add to the list: whiny Gen X’ers who are gobsmacked because they fell backwards into a myth of tenure that many of us figured out wasn’t true thirty years ago.

The New York Times published a piece by Steven Kurutz this week about Gen X creatives—designers, writers, directors, photographers—who came up during the golden years of magazines, advertising, indie film, and the early internet. The article wants you to grieve for them. Apparently, they’ve hit their fifties and realized the world moved on without them. Now they’re stunned to find themselves drifting. Overlooked. Unhired. Unwanted.

The article is soft and reverent, like a eulogy for relevance. The story is framed as quiet tragedy: members of Gen X who built careers on creativity and craft are now left behind by youth culture, algorithms, and AI.

Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights—or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles—and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer who can’t get hired, or the magazine journalist who isn’t doing much of anything.

Gen X-ers grew up as the younger siblings of the baby boomers, but the media landscape of their early adult years closely resembled that of the 1950s: a tactile analog environment of landline telephones, tube TV sets, vinyl records, glossy magazines, and newspapers that left ink on your hands. When digital technology began seeping into their lives, with its AOL email accounts, Myspace pages, and Napster downloads, it didn’t seem like a threat. But by the time they entered the primes of their careers, much of their expertise had become all but obsolete.

The implication is that these people were once important. They had vision. They had taste. And now? They’re confused. They’re bitter. They’re still clinging to some version of a world that doesn’t exist anymore—and maybe never did.

The whole piece reads like a eulogy for a group of people who—at least in the narrative being pushed—were quietly erased by change. Left behind by algorithms. Replaced by influencers and AI. Victims of speed, youth, and the collapsing definition of craft.

When I saw the headline, I was intrigued. I hoped maybe I’d find some validation for why so many of my peers are out of work and struggling to find jobs. Maybe it would offer a new lens worth considering, or some spark of insight to pass along.

But the more I kept reading, the more it pissed me off. This isn’t Gen X, it's sloth.

No matter how gently you wrap it, this grief tour is covering up something harder and far less poetic. These people didn’t suddenly become obsolete—they got comfortable. They stopped being curious. They stopped moving. They ceased to evolve.

I’m not denying the economic shifts that are pulling at the strings of everything. Systems have changed. Economies and budgets have collapsed. Platforms devoured institutions. Career ladders were replaced with glitchy elevators that only move sideways. We’ve been through this—what, one… two… three… a dozen times since The Breakfast Club hit theaters.

If you stopped evolving—if you clung to the job you had in 2004 like it was your birthright, if you refused to stretch your skill set or rewire your perspective—then yeah, you're not relevant anymore. But that’s not injustice. That’s inertia.

You mistook consistency for growth. You confused repetition with mastery. You were offered a hundred chances to adapt, and you said no—over and over again—because, what, you stopped being counterculture and bought into the myth of the American Dream? So now you're mad at the system for not wanting what you refused to update?

That’s not Gen X. That’s just fucking stupid.

The generation I remember—and still feel damn lucky to be part of—was built on flux. We watched analog die in real time. We moved from cassette to CD to Napster in under five years. We had one foot in zines and one in HTML. We came up in online chat rooms and dot-com implosions. We are the generation born in the epicenter of constant and radical change.

And here’s what I really don’t get: if Gen X was so anti-sellout, where’s the rebellion now?

We were inspired by the Ramones, Prince, Madonna, John Hughes, Steve Jobs, David Carson, Spike Lee, and Kurt Cobain—none of those people stayed in one lane. They mutated. They burned bridges. What creative professional worth anything ever decided, “I’ll just do this one thing forever and the world will always love me for it”?

That’s not creativity. That’s nostalgia in a leather jacket—and also every metal hair band from the '80s.

It’s not that your work doesn’t matter anymore. It’s that you stopped doing the work that matters now. You decided your best work was behind you. You started clinging to legacy instead of making the next thing real. You stopped being dangerous. You became safe, even to yourself. And when the jobs dried up, when the systems moved on, you called it a betrayal instead of a natural consequence.

You don’t get tenure in creative work. There’s no pension for past ideas. You are only as vital as your willingness to evolve. This act of grief—like something sacred was stolen from you—is not Gen X. Maybe it’s country club. I don’t know. But if you stopped evolving, if you stopped pushing yourself, if you refused to learn anything new because you didn’t like the way it felt—then yeah, you’re obsolete. And don’t pin that bullshit thinking on an entire generation. That’s not me. That’s not anyone I know.

So no, I don’t want your elegy, Steve. I don’t want your hand-wringing. I don’t want any more soft-focus profiles about a generation that supposedly expected nothing and is now shocked that nothing came.

I want clarity. I want fire. I want people who are done waiting for the industry to want them back, and ready to want themselves again. I want mutation. And I will always want my MTV.