Birth of the Slacker | Generation X

Most Gen Xers are in school during the crash, so at first they think, "Like, so what?" I'd never quite understood the stock exchange game enough to be interested. I would like to meet this Dow Jones; I thought he was a guy in all the Disney movies.

I vividly remember that day because all these classmates of mine in college were huddled around the TV, and I was like, "What's going on?" Like, full-on Keanu Reeves, like, "What's up? The stock market's crashing? Well, that's fine, I'm creative, who cares? I'm going to be a writer."

It turned out that had an impact on the job market. It turned out there weren't as many jobs. Recession is already here. General Motors and Ford are laying off almost 25,000 workers. Coming out of college with a degree doesn't matter; no one can find work.

I applied for every single opening in my field, but there's just—there's nothing. Times are hard. You just going to have to swallow your pride. For Gen Xers, the new reality sees the birth of McJobs and the death of traditional careers.

White-collar workers are hit the hardest this time. The stereotype of the slacker is born. The whole idea of us being pegged as slackers, I think, came out of the fact that we couldn't get jobs. People started looking at different ways that they could do things, precisely because those traditional paths weren't there anymore.

That's kind of what Gen X was—a bunch of us kind of gone like, "Well, maybe there's like a back door into this." All sorts of independent film, independent music, alternative ways of working. That doesn't make you a slacker; it actually makes you the opposite.