80s toys: every list shows the box. Nobody had the box.
The 80s toys you remember were one arm short and running on smoke-detector batteries. A condition report, not a catalog.
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90s nostalgia fashion: the revival skipped the part where we went to work
90s nostalgia fashion remembers the weekend. Gen X remembers the dress code, casual Friday, and the one suit that covered every interview and wedding.
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90s nostalgia items: we’re the ones who paid for them
Every list of 90s nostalgia items is written to the kid in the back seat. This one’s from the person with the receipt.
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90s nostalgia movies: the ones you love are the ones that were on
The 90s movies you remember weren’t picked. They were on: edited for TV, formatted to fit your screen, and always halfway through.
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80s nostalgia has now lasted longer than the 80s did
The decade lasted ten years. 80s nostalgia has run for thirty-three, and every revival is a copy of the last one. A dub of a dub, from the people who had the original.
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What comes after Gen X — and why you had to look it up
Millennials, then Gen Z, then Alpha, then Beta. The straight answer, the dates nobody agrees on, and why we’re the generation you had to look up.
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90s nostalgia is a product now, and we’re not the customer
90s nostalgia is a category now, and the numbers say Gen X isn’t even its biggest market. What the decade loses when it gets packaged.
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Retro Halloween costumes: we were the last ones in the plastic smock
The internet’s idea of retro Halloween costumes stops in 1960. The boxed smock-and-mask kind is the one with witnesses.
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Gen X memes: we were doing this on a photocopier
A meme is a setup with the setup removed. Which is why Gen X memes land the way they do — and why the ones that explain themselves never do.
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Ditto machine day: the purple paper we all inhaled
The ditto machine ran every school day before the photocopier won. Why the paper was purple, why it smelled, and why you don’t own a single one.
