Too Soon

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By Matt Haber

October 9, 2008 | 4:40 p.m

"Hey, Hey We're the Grungies"

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via hulu.com

Didja hear the news? The Dow Jones industrial average just fell below 9,000. If it keeps sliding, young people in the U.S. might find themselves the new Generation X—you know, those early '90s coffeehouse denizens whom we were repeatedly told were "the first generation that may end up worse off than their parents."

Gen-X is clearly on the minds of the folks at Hulu.com, NBC Universal and News Corp's video site. How else to explain the prominent homepage placement given to Richard Linklater's ur-X 1991 movie Slacker?

In 1997, Time Magazine wondered:

[W]hat happened to those lazy, listless baby busters who supposedly typified the new generation? Beavis and Butt-head were their icons; Beck's Loser was their song ('Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park'); Richard Linklater's Slacker, with its Austin, Texas, deadbeats, was their movie.

They're online, apparently, checking their E*Trade portfolios and watching Hulu, as history repeats. Though this time, in an inversion of Marx's old chestnut, not as farce, but as tragedy.