I need a rant about millennials

No idea what you're talking about. I'm a millennial and love my life. Sure, there are worse years and better ones - that's normal, but on the whole, I'm perfectly happy.

9/11 didn't affect me in any way whatsoever. I grew up in an Eastern European country, was 13 when it happened. Didn't pay much attention to it; it was a blip in history like any other. Obviously, it was a very tragic event, don't get me wrong. But for me, it was one of the many; it's not like it's a unique single tragedy that happened during my lifetime.

As for the internet and social media, loss of a 'simpler' life, I disagree completely, again. I absolutely LOVE it. The world is on my fingertips now. I travel a lot, go to gigs, museums, ballet, etc - the world is your oyster, just open google and you can find and book anything, in any corner of the world, any time of day. Internet shopping, banking, social media - love it all. And don't feel 'depressed and bombarded with negative news' every day, if I don't like something, I just tune it out. I would absolutely HATE to go back to the pre-internet and pre-mobile phones stone ages.

Covid lockdowns were fine for my teen, who is now almost 14, and fine for me. We just sat at home for a bit. What's the big deal? Sure, a little boring, but it passed, and we went back to normal life straight away. We facetimed (thanks again, internet!) with family and friends, and still managed to travel. No fuss, no 'terrible trauma', no whinging.

That's very noble of you.

US boomers were drafted and Australian boomers were conscripted. Many didn't make it home, and those that did were often left with severe PTSD and no thanks for their sacrifice, as it was an unpopular war. If people are going to make generalisations about an entire generation, they ought to take into account what that generation went through outside their own little lens.

🙄

I think what you need to take away from this is: spend less time arguing/discussing things with strangers on the internet. You had a "discussion" with a stranger who didn't see your point of view on one site, so you come to a different site to start a thread to complain about it. Bizarre.

Millenials are by far the whiniest bunch. Can’t wait for Gen Alpha do bad mouth them like they’ve been doing to the Boomers all this time

I’m a millennial and a younger one as well (1993). I don’t feel this way at all. 9/11 legit triggered my issues with anxiety. We got sky TV around that sort of period and my mum was obsessed with sky news so it always seemed to be on. 9/11 was terrifying and I was pretty certain the terrorists were coming for us next for a long time… Also Holly and Jessica stands out and Millie Dowler, then 7/7 obviously.

Still, I don’t walk around with a victim complex or whatever it is you’re claiming. I’d say I’m pretty hardy. I teach Gen Z and can see some minor differences in their approach to the world. I hate voice notes and short form content for example.

My mum is a boomer who was out living her best life in the 80s and she always says how grateful she is that her parents couldn't track her every move haha! No having to text when you got in, no tracking apps, if she didn't answer her house phone that was the end of that!

Exactly, this generation thing is just mumbo jumbo - In terms of 9/11, I remember watching it for an hour on the TV, feeling very sad for those involved - then cracking on with my day in rural Herefordshire - it didn't impact me personally at all, any more than Grenfell did or the Israel/palestine war, or the war in Ukraine, its just stuff on TV happening elsewhere, sad yes, but not personally involving me.

I haven't read the thread, just snippets but I have to agree with the pps who point out it's rather divisive for not much of a reason.

I'm not ok with division, we all share the this one world, I think it's best to try to see where each individual is personally coming from before deciding they represent an entire group (even if they say they are, if they look, they will usually find they are mistaken and most others of that group do not always agree with them)

Yes there definitely is, as an older millennial I often feel affinity with gen xers! My mum is a boomer and luckily she does understand that the world is a vastly different place to the one she prepared me for.

I think a lot of the anti-millennial stuff comes from people who genuinely don't understand how it IS harder for us to have what they had, hence why we get called lazy or bad with money so often. Too busy eating avocado on toast to buy a house - man, I can't always afford avocados haha.

As for your original post I do wonder if it was more an american/uk thing rather than generational. Unless it's from a position of 'something traumatic happened in my formative years and actually, things haven't been great since' view point.

I was 15 when 9/11 happened and then it was only a short jump to the 2008 crash, so you could argue that those events kind of bookending my late teens/early adulthood was a big deal. Of course not as big as living through something like WW1 or WW2 those experiences are disappearing from living memory.

I feel so lucky to be a millennial! Slightly envious of GEN X because that seemed like the sweet spot to me! All the freedoms but none of the tech yet, social media, cctv capturing your every movement. I’d like to of lived in the ‘tax disc in the post’ era 🤣 Plus obviously, house prices. But go back to any generation before that and the quality of life was definitely worse! We’re so lucky! Yes we had covid, brexit etc but absolutely every generation has its woes.

I don't know the psychology behind it but people always do stuff like this. Some examples I've seen online recently;

But then I am Welsh and we love our mum's here
I always cry at the news but that might just be because I'm a Libra though
I don't mind bus journeys because I'm from Manchester

I've also seen general things people love all across the world eg drinking tea, squid game, binge watching, toast, eating out, watching friends, grinding coffee beans for your morning coffee being attributed to being a particular race, from a particular place, particular generation, a particular sex.

People love to divide themselves off for some reason.

You don't though. You've generalised all millennials

I am a millennial and I'm definitely not saying my generation have had it worst, as PP have said, each generation has its own difficulties.

For me though as another PP mentioned it is the yawning gap between what I expected my life to be like compared to my parents, and how it has turned out. My mum bought our family home in 1985 for £22k on a mortgage that was easily affordable with her wage. My dad left and she still continued to pay it solo, with no difficulty and was then mortgage free by her mid 50s.

I then bought THAT SAME HOUSE from her with my husband in 2015 and we paid a shocking £240k for it. That's a ridiculous increase in 30 years, and I can tell you, despite both working in good jobs, our combined wages haven't increased to the same scale.

I graduated in 2008 after 3 years of hard work, having been told all through high school 'work hard, get a degree, you'll get a good job' only for all of those 'good jobs' to disappear overnight.

I'm 40 now and am no way as financially secure as my mum was at 40, despite the fact she was a single parent and we have two wages coming in. The world has changed, and we as a generation have been/are being squeezed.

I also dislike how difficult it is to afford childcare etc- back in the day it was common/not unexpected for one parent to stay at home while the kids were little - that is out of reach for many families now and I feel I'm missing out on their childhood.

Nope, not something I come across either. I think it's down to individual people.

How many millennials do you think there are on this earth? Do you really suppose that's the mindset of all of us? If we're all fluffly and crave healing, does that mean there is no crime commited by millenials? Being a Gen Xer, I would have expected more wisdom to be honest, but you know - people are people, not some made up generational band, so you can't generalise.

Give it time, it’ll come - there’s 35 pages to go yet !!

I do agree with this and prefer to do this myself, but for the sake of argument/explanation, I think the divisions are to account for the fact that historical events and eras of economic or social development don't always fall neatly into decades. So when discussing how certain historical factors have affected society, it can be a bit more tailored to take account of those factors.

I think maybe someone should explain to your friend that 9/11 changed the world and affected us all.