Gen X: The Last Great American Generation

How Our Pop Culture Dominance Got Replaced by Slop Culture, and Why It Matters

Today I happened across the glossy New York Times Style magazine from Sunday, which they call T for some reason. A fashion magazine for women and gays called T is the kind of unintentional humor I can appreciate.

I used to read this oversized, floppy ‘zine cover to cover, but because it was launched at the tail end of the Great Magazine Era, and it didn’t leave much of an imprint on me (except on my fingers). It launched in 2004, when I still lived in New York City and we would get the Sunday print edition every single weekend, like all New Yorkers were still required to do back then.

10 years earlier, in 1994, I was slaving away at my first-ever real job in the Great Magazine era, as a college summer editorial assistant (unpaid) at another oversized, floppy publication: Interview Magazine. Its offices were on lower Broadway in Soho at the time and why yes, did I feel cool working there.

I picked up T because of this cover, which is absolutely irresistible bait for anyone my age:

Funny that they didn’t put Conan (a former Simpsons head writer) on here, but did include his annoying bandleader.

Ferris, Fight Club, Winona, Keanu, great. But why use Keanu in his millennial era and not in his peak Gen X Point Break era?

They also printed an alternate cover: