MID-TWENTIES BREAKDOWN:

a period of mental collapse occurring in one’s twenties, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments coupled with a realization of one’s essential aloneness in the world. Often marks induction into the ritual of pharmaceutical usage.

EMOTIONAL KETCHUP BURST:

the bottling up of opinions and emotions inside oneself so that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking and confusing employers and friends–most of whom thought things were fine.

SUCCESSOPHOBIA:

the fear that if one is successful, then one’s personal needs will be forgotten and one will no longer have one’s childish needs catered to.

ANTI-SABBATICAL:

a job taken with the sole intention of staying only for a limited period of time (often one year). the intention is usually to raise enough funds to partake in another, more personally meaningful activity such as watercolor sketching in Crete or designing computer knit sweaters in Hong Kong. employers are rarely informed of intentions.

NOW DENIAL:

to tell oneself that the only time worth living in is the past and that the only time that may ever be interesting again is the future.

BAMBIFICATION:

the mental conversion of flesh and blood living creatures into cartoon characters possessing bourgeois Judeo-Christian attitudes and morals.

DISEASES FOR KISSES (HYPERKARMA):

a deeply rooted belief that punishment will somehow always be far greater than the crime: ozone holes for littering.

SPECTACULARISM:

a fascination with extreme situations.

STATUS SUBSTITUTION:

using an object with intellectual or fashionable cachet to substitute for an object that is merely pricey: “Brian, you left your copy of Camus in your brother’s BMW.”

SURVIVULOUSNESS:

the tendency to visualize oneself enjoying being the last remaining person on earth. “I’d take a helicopter up and throw microwave ovens down on the Taco Bell.”

CULT OF ALONENESS:

the need for autonomy at all costs, usually at the expense of long-term relationships. often brought about by overly high expectations of others.

CELEBRITY SCHADENFREUDE:

lurid thrills derived from talking about celebrity deaths.

POOR BUOYANCY:

the realization that one was a better person when one had less money.

101-ISM:

the tendency to pick apart, often in minute detail, all aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool.

YUPPIE WANNABE’S:

an X generation subgroup that believes the myth of a yuppie life-style being both satisfying and viable. tend to be highly in debt, involved in some form of substance abuse, and show a willingness to talk about Armageddon after three drinks.

ULTRA SHORT TERM NOSTALGIA:

homesickness for the extremely recent past: “God, things seemed so much better in the world last week.”

CAFE MINIMALISM:

to espouse a philosophy of minimalism without actually putting into practise any of its tenets.

AIR FAMILY:

describes the false sense of community experienced among coworkers in an office environment.

OCCUPATIONAL SLUMMING:

taking a job well beneath one’s skill or education level as a means of retreat from adult responsibilities and/or avoiding possible failure in one’s true occupation.

BRADYISM:

a multisibling sensibility derived from having grown up in large families. a rarity in those born after approximately 1965, symptoms of Bradyism include a facility for mind games, emotional withdrawal in situations of overcrowding, and a deeply felt need for a well-defined personal space.

STRANGELOVE REPRODUCTION:

having children to make up for the fact that one no longer believes in the future.

SQUIRES:

the most common X generation subgroup and the only subgroup given to breeding. Squires exist almost exclusively in couples and are recognizable by their frantic attempts to recreate a semblance of Eisenhower-era plenitude in their daily lives in the face of exorbitant housing prices and two-job life-styles. Squires tend to be continually exhausted from their voraciously acquisitive pursuit of furniture and knickknacks.

POVERTY LURKS:

financial paranoia instilled in offspring by depression-era parents.

OPTION PARALYSIS:

the tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none.

DOWN-NESTING:

the tendency of parents to move to smaller, guest-room-free houses after the children have moved away so as to avoid children aged 20 to 30 who have boomeranged home.

taken from generation x, douglas coupland.