X: The brand, the generation and Elon Musk
A mark on a map. A movie too outrageous to give a rating. It's the stuff of revolutionaries (Malcolm X) and punks (X, the band).
It stands in for a kiss, and represents an unknown quantity in mathematics. XXX is porn — the first true currency of the internet. X can be the hidden conspiracy of «The X-Files,» or the shorthand for the drug Ecstasy, popular with ravers in the '90s.
On Monday, Twitter unveiled its new name, and with it, a new logo. The unfurling of the new branding had the same chaotic energy Elon Musk has brought to every step of the journey since he bought Twitter in October. As users on X (formerly referred to by some, semi-affectionately, as «the bird app») adjusted to their new surroundings, there were many questions to ponder.
Like for example: If it wasn't called Twitter any more, were the posts still tweets? What is the sound of an X flying through silicon? A zing? And why did Musk choose it? His age might have something to do with it. In the 1990s, X reigned supreme, after Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel «Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture» permeated the lexicon. «We were in our 20s when we were named Gen X,» said Anthony Sperduti, 50, founder of the branding studio Mythology.
«So maybe X sounds good to us, because it seeped into our brain.» At 52, Musk falls right into that demographic. For marketing purposes in the 1990s, X had a certain cool. It conferred a rejection of authority — you could imagine Bart Simpson with a marker writing X's on the walls of his bedroom — while also being co-opted by mass consumerism.
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