You’re Not a Xennial, You’re Just Soft

Look, I don’t know who came up with the term “xennial,” but I’d bet money they also pronounce “charcuterie” like it’s a sacred ritual and not just Lunchables for people with a mortgage.

Here’s the pitch: people born between 1977 and 1983 are too cool to be Millennials and too sensitive to be Gen X, so they carved out a little velvet-rope microgeneration for themselves. A boutique generation. A small-batch, locally sourced Gen X. Something you’d find at a pop-up shop next to the beard oils and vinyl reissues of Jagged Little Pill.

You had an analog childhood and a digital adulthood? Yeah, so did the rest of us. You taped songs off the radio, blew into NES cartridges, and survived Y2K with nothing but a box of Pop-Tarts and dial-up. You don’t need a new label—you need therapy like the rest of us.

Calling yourself a xennial is like moving into a rent-controlled apartment, painting over the graffiti, and opening a candle shop called “Grit.”

You’re not redefining anything.

You’re rebranding your way out of discomfort. And honestly, it’s insulting. Like Gen X didn’t fight hard enough to earn our emotional dysfunction the old-fashioned way—with boredom, latchkeys, and a constant, low-level sense that no one gave a shit if we lived or died.

You don’t get to duck out of that just because you discovered Google before your parents did.

You are Gen X. Maybe the softer edge. Maybe you cried during Rudy instead of The Crow. That’s fine. But don’t run from the label because it isn’t shiny enough. We’re not supposed to be shiny—we’re duct tape and sarcasm. We’re Gen X. The last analog kids. The burnout benchwarmers who turned being ignored into an identity.

You can either fake the funk and call yourself a xennial… or you can own it, grab a Capri Sun, and sit with the rest of us while we pretend not to care.