8 Gen X Favorites That Millennials Scorn

Oddly shaped, with a pathetic engine and the ignition inexplicably located on the floor: The Financial Times described Swedish automaker Saab as "the anti-brand brand." Could it be any wonder that Generation X loved them? Saab sales climbed steadily throughout the early 1980s and, after a drop off in 1986, rebounded through much of the 1990s. The car took a star turn in such slacker classics as High Fidelity and Sideways. But as the FT concluded, "the commercial drawback of being an 'anti-brand brand,' of course, is that many people drive Saabs precisely because other people don’t."

Saab sales hit a wall in first part of the last decade, in part because GM, which acquired the brand in 2000, watered down the car's distinctive flavor in an effort to expand its appeal. Saab essentially stopped production in 2011. Millennials, lukewarm on cars to start with, don't seem to notice what they are missing, at least according to AutoGuide.com.

If you went to college in the 1980s or 1990s, chances are you smugly obsessed about (or just as smugly avoided) abstract yet strident discussions of the way language shaped our perception of the world around us. It was kind of like "checking your privilege" through abstruse academic jargon. If "the theory wars" no longer rage, maybe it's because there is no one left to fight them. In 2010, just 7% of college students majored in the humanities, down about half since the late 1960s. Yale, which graduated 165 English majors in 1991, had just 62 in 2012. So what exactly do college students get overwrought about these days? Apparently, it's who's going to get that internship at Facebook.

It now seems strange that a mall store known basically for T-shirts, khakis and other basics became a fashion icon. But it just kind of happened. Here is writer Lucinda Rosenfeld's take in Slate: "It's hard to overstate the importance of black pants to young women in the early 1990s. Once you found a pair that fit perfectly -- and maybe a good square-toe black ankle-boot to match -- half the work of assembling a sleek, confidence-building wardrobe was done." She goes on to explain that, while her favorite pair cost "a week's salary" back in the day, her second favorite pair, which she wore three days a week, came from Gap. How did Gap -- or The Gap as we used to call it -- lose its lucrative role as the workhorse of 20-somethings' closets? Perhaps anti-fashion could only be in fashion for so long. And the company has faced plenty of low-cost competition from chains like H&M and Uniqlo.

How long is any rock band's shelf life? U2 managed to remain cool longer than most -- from at least the early 1980s through the 1990s and into the oughts. They even made Christian rock seem cool. But the jig was finally up last year when Apple's decision to gift U2's new album to iTunes users sparked a backlash. One obvious explanation is age -- Bono is past 50. Another is the decline of guitar-oriented pop. But don't overlook changes to the brand of U2's homeland. Once associated with post-industrial poverty and violence, the Irish Republic traded its troubled but defiant image for computer chip factories and real estate speculation. Maybe U2's social justice street cred went into the bargain.

The New York Times called Cameron Crowe "something of a cinematic spokesman for the post-baby boom generation" in 1992. At the time Crowe had Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Say Anything already under his belt, and was just getting ready to release Singles. (If you haven't seen it, let's just say it's aged far better than Reality Bites.) The former Rolling Stone writer later hit box office gold with Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous, which deliciously skewered Boomer narcissism from a vantage that's somehow both younger and less credulous. Since then, however, Crowe has failed to match his '80s and '90s success. Elizabethtown, which inspired the mocking "manic pixie dream girl" trope, was widely seen as a disappointment. In 2011, Crowe managed something of come-back with We Bought a Zoo. The film, which earned about $75 million at the box office, was better than the title makes it sound. But it's hardly going to inspire any garage bands.

Just like millennials, Gen Xers put on their headphones on and tuned out the world. There were differences. Unlike today, fancy gadgets were never white but black or silver. (A notable exception was the youthful, yellow "Sports" model that made a cameo appearance in Hot Tub Time Machine.) And there were a lot more buttons, partly because music players came with a radio and partly because in an analogue world, more rather than less signaled connoisseurship. But there were similarities too: Gen X's technological marvels were also conceived in a far off place whose special culture fostered unique capitalistic virtues that our betters admonished us to learn from and imitate. It just happened to be Japan rather than California.

Sony managed to transverse the mid-1980s move from cassette tapes to CDs, with the Discman. It wasn't as if digital music caught the company blind sided. Sony introduced something known as the "memory stick Walkman" in 1999, more than two years before the iPod appeared. But Sony's reluctance to embrace the MP3 format and its struggles integrating hardware and software proved to be just the opening Apple needed.

Young people tend to identify themselves more with music than with television, especially network television. But few would argue that in the 1990s NBC was the envy of its competitors. Jerry Seinfeld is a boomer. But Seinfeld's quartet of ne'er do-wells, whose humor mostly involved aimless complaining, fit right in with Gen X's celebrated ambivalence. As for Friends, well, Generation X may now be faintly embarrassed that they watched. But watch they did. The show was a top 10 series for its entire run, averaging 20 million viewers, according to Slate. It's finale garnered more than 50 million. Since then NBC has had hits -- even with millennials -- like The Office and 30 Rock. But the rise of cheap-to-produce reality television, new competition from cable channels like HBO, and, of course, the Internet, mean networks just don't enjoy the same cultural relevance or profits that they used to.

The 1990s was a golden age for baseball. Or so it seemed in 1998 when Mark McGwire's and Sammy Sosa's race to surpass the home run record riveted fans. The long ball helped (along with a fashion for building new, smaller "bandbox" ball parks) to boost attendance and television ratings, making baseball seem secure in its role as the national past time, even in era of Michael Jordan. Today, the sport is still trying to cope with the fall out of what we now call The Steroids Era. Average attendance, which climbed from about 25,000 following the strike-shortened 1994 season to roughly 30,000 by end of the decade, has been more or less stuck there ever since. This year's gambit -- a clock to speed up the pace of play -- is apparently designed to appeal to millennials. But many of them seem more excited about soccer.