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 last 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 Mr. Musk choose it?
周一，Twitter公布了它的新名字和新标识。自伊隆·马斯克去年10月收购Twitter以来，它的每一步发展都充满了混乱的能量，新品牌的发布也不例外。X（它之前曾被一些人半带亲昵地称为“鸟应用”）的用户在适应新环境的过程中，有很多问题需要思考。比如：如果它不再被称为Twitter，那么帖子还能叫推文吗？X飞过硅谷会发出什么样的声音？嗖嗖声？马斯克为什么选择它？
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.
可能与他的年龄有关。20世纪90年代，在道格拉斯·库普兰1991年的小说《X世代——加速文化的故事》(Generation X: Tales for a Accelerated Culture)风靡一时后，“X”占据了崇高的地位。
“We were in our 20s when we were named Gen X,” Anthony Sperduti, 50, founder of the branding studio Mythology, said. “So maybe X sounds good to us, because it seeped into our brain.” At 52, Mr. Musk falls right into that demographic.
“我们被称为X世代时才20多岁，”50岁的安东尼·斯佩杜蒂说道，他是品牌工作室——神话的创始人。“所以，也许X对我们来说感觉不错，因为它渗入了我们的大脑。”现年52岁的马斯克正好属于这个群体。
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. X was the symbol for generic products, so X could be both rebellious and mass-produced.
在20世纪90年代，X用于营销确实显得有点酷。它体现了对权威的拒绝——你可以想像巴特·辛普森用记号笔在卧室的墙上写X的样子——同时也被大众消费主义所同化。X是非商标产品的象征，所以X可以是叛逆的，也可以是批量生产的。
Big business got in on the letter, too, as it tried to bottle the alternative energy of the decade. The X Games started in 1995, a shorthand for “extreme,” a term used to describe sports like snowboarding, which was allowed into the Olympics only in 1998. The Xbox video game console came in 2001.
大企业也加入了“X”的行列，试图将这十年的另类能量装入瓶中。极限运动会(X Games)始于1995年，X是“极限”(extreme)一词的缩写，指的是单板滑雪等运动，直到1998年才被允许进入奥运会。2001年，Xbox视频游戏机问世。
Musicians and hipsters applied the letter liberally as they created companies. Eli Bonerz and Adam Silverman opened the clothing store XLARGE (a favorite of the Beastie Boys) in Los Angeles in 1991. Kim Gordon and Daisy von Furth started their clothing brand X-Girl in 1994.
音乐家和潮人在创建公司时大量使用这个字母。1991年，艾利·博纳兹和亚当·席尔瓦曼在洛杉矶开了服装店XLARGE（它是“小兽孩”的最爱）。金·戈登和黛西·冯·福斯于1994年创立了她们的服装品牌X-Girl。
But X has its limitations.
但是X也有它的局限性。
“It’s not meaningful as an identity,” Michael Rock, 64, a partner at 2x4, a branding consultancy based in New York and Beijing, said of the new logo. “It’s meaningful as a negation or a cancellation. A crossing out.”
“作为一种标识形象，它没有意义，”64岁的迈克尔·洛克在谈到新标识时说。他是总部位于纽约和北京的品牌咨询公司2x4的合伙人。“它的意义在于否定或取消。划掉。”
Still, Gen X was the first generation to have a letter as a name, and even if they didn’t love the moniker, they took pride in being undefinable. In any case, the name stuck. And it seems to have truly stuck longest and strongest in Mr. Musk’s psyche. (Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.)
不论如何，X世代是以字母作为世代名称的第一代人，即使他们不喜欢这个绰号，他们也为自己的无法定义而感到自豪。总之，这个名字被保留了下来。而且，它似乎真的在马斯克的心里留下了最长久、最强烈的印象。（马斯克没有回应置评请求。）
Indeed, Mr. Musk seems to have something of a fixation with the letter X. He named his rocket company SpaceX, a Tesla the Model X, and one of his own children X Æ A-12, or X for short. Mr. Musk’s second company, X.com, emerged in the X-still-having-a-moment year of 1999 before merging with another company and becoming PayPal in 2001.
的确，马斯克似乎对字母X情有独钟。他给自己的火箭公司命名为SpaceX，给一款特斯拉车型命名为Model X，给自己的一个孩子起名叫X Æ a-12，简称X。马斯克的第二家公司X.com成立于1999年，那是“X世代的风头还在继续”的年份，2001年，该公司与另一家公司合并，成为PayPal。
As a single letter, X had little competition for branding until 1998 when Apple unleashed the lowercase i in the naming of the iMac. Compared with the violent slash of X, the i was optimistic, self-referential and cheerfully anthropomorphic — the little dot like a head perched above a pert, standing body ready to take over the world. A millennial letter, you might say, there to replace the self-defeating X and its latchkey energy.
作为一个单独的字母，X在打造品牌方面几乎没有竞争对手，直到1998年，苹果公司在iMac的命名中使用了小写i。与X的暴力斜线相比，i显得乐观、自我指涉，而且具有欢快的拟人化风格——一个小圆点，就像一个脑袋，栖息在一个小巧挺拔的身体上，准备接管世界。你可能会说，这是一个千禧年的字母，用来取代自我否定的X和它无人管束的能量。
By branding everything he touches with X it’s as if Mr. Musk is begging the world to remember his prime years when he was starting to build his empire. (Not a very stereotypically Gen X instinct.)
马斯克用X来标记他接触到的一切，似乎是在乞求世界记住他开始建立自己帝国的黄金岁月（这不是典型的X一代本能）。
In a way, Mr. Rock said, “it’s a non-choice, the suspension of narrative to be supplied later.” He felt the actual logo the company put on the site as a place holder was beside the point. “Perversity seems to be at the heart of it.”
洛克说，在某种程度上，“这是一种别无选择的选择，先不提供背后的叙事，日后再说。”他认为，该公司在网站上放置什么样的标志并不是重点。“反常似乎是它的核心。”
Mr. Rock likened it to “a leather motorcycle jacket at a Tesla launch,” more akin to the Xbox or X Games branding than any of the more authentically counterculture uses from the 1990s.
洛克把它比作“特斯拉发布会上的摩托车皮夹克”，更像是Xbox或 X Games的品牌塑造，并没有上世纪90年代那种真正的反主流文化用途。
“I can imagine it appeals to Elon Musk’s persona as alternative, edgy, mysterious or punk, but it comes across as tech-bro cringe,” he said.
“我可以想象，它符合伊隆·马斯克另类、前卫、神秘或朋克的形象，但它给人的感觉是科技小子的尴尬感，”他说。
In the end, if Mr. Musk succeeds in making X into “the everything company” he wants it to be, the logo won’t matter. And that’s perhaps the most Gen X outcome of all.
最后，如果马斯克成功地把X打造成他想要的“无所不能的公司”，那么这个标志也就无所谓了。这也许是最符合X世代的结果。
翻译：晋其角
