A recent TD Bank survey found that Gen X was the most likely to overspend during the holidays. However, The New York Times noted, “Many retailers and marketers are looking past them and to millennials and Gen Z, especially as malls continue to empty out and more shopping moves online.”
Gen Xers are used to being ignored, but it just might be our superpower.
It’s 2026, and the first wave of Gen Xers are turning 60. Our movie heroes, like the anti-woke Indiana Jones, are beating the latest self-congratulatory and woke Golden Globes in the viewership, according to Variety. Our toys are our highest value assets. And best yet, Gen X — led by Greg Gutfeld, Taylor Sheridan, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk — is at the top of media and pop culture. We are in our Golden Age of success and change.
Gen X never asked for permission to take over. We just quietly wandered in, shrugged, and built our own media. That’s why the rise of Gen Xers like Gutfeld, Sheridan, Rogan, and Musk feels so organic. Our generation’s blend of skepticism, independence, and a punk mindset dismantled the old guard’s echo chamber. These guys built their own empires, leaving CNN, late-night liberals, and Hollywood elites scrambling for relevance.
Greg Gutfeld’s success is Gen X comedy and pop culture sensibility finally getting the megaphone it deserves. Gutfeld may technically be on the cusp of the generational dividing line, but I’m claiming him for Gen X. Late-night humor was guarded by the same handful of network institutions that insisted audiences only wanted one flavor.
In recent years, that flavor was simply anti-Trump. In contrast, the late-late-late show, Red Eye, on Fox News harkened to a time reminiscent of Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. The show was suspicious of authority, irreverent, and uninterested in applause from the “right” people. In true Gen X punk form, fans leaned into the fact that many viewers simply didn’t get it. Why was he always talking about wearing a shorty robe? Why is there a puppet? Why am I awake? Who are these people? (I was lucky enough to be a guest for several years).
Over the past year, while Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel peddled Trump Derangement Syndrome-induced monologues, Gutfeld! delivered laughs and a growing audience. Last Night On wrote, “Gutfeld! remains the undisputed ratings leader in late-night television, an impressive feat for a program that airs on a cable news network rather than one bigger broadcast channels.”
Additionally, the New York Post noted, “Late-night standout ‘Gutfeld!’ continued its reign as the most-watched show in the genre, averaging 3.1 million viewers and 362,000 among adults 25-54 — the only late-night program to grow year over year as broadcast competitors faltered.”
Gutfeld embodies Gen X’s irreverence and rightly mocks the legacy media’s self-importance. The other late-night hosts are now the punchline, not the puncher.
Speaking of ruggedly handsome, outdoorsy men, there’s Taylor Sheridan. A cowboy John Hughes, his writing captures the spirit of Gen X storytelling. While studios chased DEI formulas, he wrote the kinds of stories people actually watched, and on his own terms.
Born in 1970, Sheridan lassoed a devoted audience with Yellowstone and its spin-offs, redefining the Western for a post-woke world. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Landman lead Billy Bob Thornton said, “People are hungry for human stories. These days in the theaters, it’s mainly event movies and superhero things and animated stuff and all that; there are a few human stories to come through. But these things are like a 10-hour movie that explore human beings. And I think people are hungry for that and I think that’s why they relate to Taylor’s stuff.”
According to Outkick, Sheridan’s tales of ranchers, landmen, marshals, and unfiltered Americana raked in $2.9 billion in revenue, making his shows TV’s biggest hits with viewership climbing season after season. He bypassed the Hollywood bubble, filming in real America and speaking their language. As he told Esquire magazine in 2018:
Here’s the worst two words put together in the past ten years: white privilege. Oh, really? Help me, Mr. Harvard-fucking-Ph.D., convince the man who’s losing his ranch, who can’t afford his kid’s college—he has no health care, he has no fucking clue what Obamacare is, he’s never seen a social-security-fucking-office, his only concept of federal government is taxes. How do I convince that guy he’s privileged? You won’t do it.
Sheridan’s massive NBCUniversal deal in late 2025 underscores his clout, influencing everything from production trends to Texas politics. Most importantly, his success exposed Hollywood’s biggest flaw: they forgot (or ignored) that authenticity sells. Gen Xers know that audiences crave raw truth over polished remakes by committee.
Born in 1967, Joe Rogan’s success is a middle finger to legacy media’s belief that people have short attention spans and trust their experts. We can handle long-form content when it’s entertaining and real. Rogan simply offered conversations without perimeters. His show is everything legacy media isn’t, and for that, he was punished during the Covid pandemic. When asked about whether he was worried about CNN attacking him, he said, “My first thought is this’ll work a little bit until I start talking.”
He knew that his audience was already overshadowing CNN’s. According to AdWeek, CNN averages around 500,000 viewers. The Joe Rogan Experience tops charts with an average of 11 million downloads per episode on Spotify.
The Hollywood Reporter also noted that Rogan continues to dominate in the crowded podcast space, writing, “The Joe Rogan Experience was Spotify’s top global podcast for the sixth year in a row. But he also topped Apple and YouTube’s lists this year, marking all-around domination for the first time.”
It warms this Gen Xer’s heart to see how his podcast empire has flipped the script on the so-called experts touted by the legacy media. He’s a curious contrarian with a black belt in no-BS conversations.
Finally, there’s Elon Musk. The 1971 South African transplant raised by a single mom harnessed his chaotic, Muppets’ Animal energy to nuke legacy media from orbit by buying Twitter (now X – divine providence!) and turning it into a Mad Max, free-speech battleground. He confronts the press daily, often gleefully noting that X “now ranks as the #1 news app in 167 countries worldwide.” Changes like ditching link previews that diminished media clicks and Community Notes fact-checking their spin also didn’t win him any fans in the legacy media.
Thanks to Musk, X lets users bypass gatekeepers, amplifying voices and views that legacy media ignores. Legacy media spent years deciding which stories could be told about tech, about government, and about the future. The more people ignored the narratives foisted upon them by legacy media stars, the angrier those dimming stars became.
Gen X grew up skeptical of government institutions. Blame E.T. for our trauma-induced distrust of government. We were raised on latchkey independence that made us take risks and not be afraid of failure. Together, Gutfeld, Sheridan, Rogan, and Musk embody the Gen X spirit that killed the legacy media’s influence because they dared to ignore it, all while being ignored themselves.
