Gen X, 16 years later

Sixteen years after its initial publication, Generation X grows up and hangs up the slacker ghost. Or as Christine Smallwood writes in the New York Observer, it is inevitable that the rebel becomes the very thing he despises:

Mr. Coupland was the anti-McInerney. He was the one who rebelled against the culture of consumption, who wrote about “real” things, authentic things, like girls in vintage dresses and finding yourself in the desert. He didn’t know about Bolivian marching nights in Manhattan or … whatever else it was that Mr. McInerney wrote about. Mr. Coupland is Canadian, after all: He liked nature and worried about the nuclear threat.

But now, Coupland sells Blackberries, hides in his own private island, all of which is kinda preppy. Perhaps your McJob can buy you nice things after all. In a weird turn of events, Kurt Cobain is now the highest earning dead celebrity, surpassing Elvis and Dr. Seuss. What's the sense of rebellion then?