The novel was set circa 1990, in the then-rapidly growing and economic booming-turned-into-depressed communities of Palm Springs and the Inland Empire region.

The initial group of characters is expanded in this section, which introduces stories from additional characters: Claire's boyfriend Tobias, Claire's friend and Dag's love interest Elvissa, Andy's brother Tyler, and Andy's boss and neighbour and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. MacArthur.

Claire travels to New York, while Andy takes a dreaded trip to visit his family in Portland.

Yuppies in the novel were thought to represent Orange County (where they grew up), the Inland Empire (where they live) and L.A. (where they commuted to work).

He is described as a "global teen" and bears great similarity to the main character in Coupland's second novel, Shampoo Planet, that shares his name and mannerisms.

[4] In Fussell's 1983 book Class, the term category X designated a part of America's social hierarchy rather than a generation.

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."

Coupland felt that people his age were being misclassified as members of the Baby Boomer generation.

I just want to show society what people born after 1960 think about things... We're sick of stupid labels, we're sick of being marginalized in lousy jobs, and we're tired of hearing about ourselves from othersLater, Coupland described his novel as being about "the fringe of Generation Jones which became the mainstream of Generation X".

[8] In 1987, Coupland (who was born in 1961) wrote an article for Vancouver Magazine in which he lamented the lack of realization for people within his own birth cohort.

A year later, he received a $22,500 advance from St. Martin's Press to complete a handbook on the "generation" that he had outlined in the article.

What I think a lot of people mistake for this thing that might be Generation X is just the acknowledgment that there exists some other group of people whatever, whoever they might be, younger than, say, Jane Fonda's baby boom.Coupland was offered large sums of money to act as a marketing consultant for the Generation X age group,[17] but he turned them down, notably refusing to create an advertisement for Gap.

The biting, ironic tone of the novel and its pop culture allusions helped bring about a new era of transgressive fiction, including the work of authors Irvine Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk.