"If you want to have Xers get their hackles up," Howe said, "force them to watch 'High School Musical.' It's so happy, so team-oriented, so achieving, their parents care so much about them . . . ."
As Gordinier sees it, everything changed -- as abruptly as the appearance of Hooters on a street of used bookstores -- with the arrival of Britney Spears in 1999: The Xers' groovy, college-radio-and-thrift-store heyday was out; consumer hell was in.
"As soon as Britney broke, a change took place. It was a rebellion against what I'd call rock 'n' roll values, in favor of blunt corporate values."
He cringed as he recalled the early, clean-cut Spears: "Miss Teen USA, an obedient child, more conservative than her predecessors. . . . In a way she's still obedient -- obedient to the tabloids -- doing what fame demands."
He sees a parallel change in hip-hop, from the melodic ingenuity of Tribe Called Quest and the political courage of N.W.A to the hedonistic, bling-obsessed world that followed. And a few years later, the "totalitarian kitsch" of "American Idol" crossed the Atlantic and things got even worse.
He noticed the fault line watching the evolution of the interns at Details: No longer was he talking to the new crop about cult writer Joseph Mitchell and the art of nonfiction. "A new breed started coming in, and our conversations were all about, 'How do I become an editor in chief?' 'How much do you make?' "
Of course, Gordinier's generalizations are not rock solid: The Xer (born 1968) Celine Dion is hardly a disc-digging, integrity-obsessed hipster; with his lefty politics, thrift-store duds and literary pretensions, Conor Oberst of the band Bright Eyes seems like a classic Xer -- except for his 1980 birthday.
Gordinier concedes that demographics don't have to be destiny: "Doug Coupland was right when he said that X is really more of a sensibility than a generation."
But some of these age-based generalizations remain pretty solid, said Kate Torgovnick, the 27-year-old author of the college cheerleading chronicle "Cheer!" who will debate Gordinier at an event in New York in April.
"I think he's right that my generation has been told we're very important," she said, conceding that her peers tend to be personally ambitious, use cellphones and IM incessantly, and read US Weekly.
Her fellow Millenials, she said, are less likely to give in to sarcasm. "You'll hear us use the word 'awesome' a lot."
