35 Memes for GenX, the Forgotten Middle Children of History

John Summers • Contributor

Oct 2, 2025 7:00 PM EDT

Not to sound too dramatic, but us GenXers really are the last bridge between the old world and the new one. I can still remember my dad wheeling in a color TV like it was the Holy Grail, and suddenly half the neighborhood was camped in our living room just to see it glow. Our parents grew up in the black-and-white era, and for kids today that might as well be cave paintings.

But for us, it was the start of everything - rotary phones turned into push-button phones, then cordless phones, then clunky Nokias, and eventually smartphones that put an entire universe in our pockets. The chunky TVs of our childhood morphed into color, then flatscreens, then giant smart TVs that spy on us while we binge.

We were the last ones to experience all of it - the mixtapes and the CDs, the arcades and the early consoles, the dial-up screech and the WiFi click. These 35 memes are for GenX: the latchkey kids who turned into the tech translators for everyone else.