The novel is a social satire about three members of Generation X - Dag, Andy, and Claire - who have moved to Palm Springs, California to get away from an overly commercialized world and rediscover themselves. Still, the characters' attitudes and dress styles were seen by critics and readers alike as being reminiscent of those of grunge fans and musicians. Thus, it is unlikely that Coupland had taken grunge music into account when writing the novel, since it is not likely that he knew of it at the time. While grunge had begun to gain popularity at around the same time, it had not yet gained enough to be widely known Nirvana had yet to release ' Smells Like Teen Spirit', the song that is widely credited for giving grunge its mainstream popularity, at the time that the novel was published. Template:Ref However, contrary to common belief, the novel makes no reference to grunge at all in fact, there is very little talk of music in the novel. Many critics have claimed that Coupland managed to predict the popularity of grunge music with this novel. More notably, however, was the widespread use of the term 'Generation X', which began being used as a name for the generation by the media after the publication of the novel. Some of these terms, such as McJob, became commonly used by both the media and the public. The assortment of neologisms presented in the book would help in this popularizing. The novel became widely popular after its first publication.

As Coupland explained in a 1995 interview, 'In his final chapter, Fussell named an 'X' category of people who wanted to hop off the merry-go-round of status, money, and social climbing that so often frames modern existence.' This would become a popular view in the media of what the Generation X's attitude was like at the time. Coupland took the X from Paul Fussell's 1983 book Class, where the term 'class X' designated a region of America's social hierarchy rather than a generation.

Generation x coupland