I need a rant about millennials

[HanG77]

Okay, I may offend millennials but hear me out (and please, millennials, offer me an explanation as to why your generation do this)...I've just had a discussion with a millennial on a thread for a social media post showing the Tartan Army having a blast in Boston, her comment was about how it was "healing the millennials". I replied saying it's lovely for all generations to watch given how divisive the world is, and she said due to 9/11 millennials crave the world healing more. I get this a lot with millennials - like they think every cultural experience is about them or for them - even taking things that are from other generations and claiming it as their era - and they act like no other generation has had any big events to deal with. I argued the Lost Generation (world war) and Gen Z (being children/early adults when the whole world stopped) have had it worse out of all the living generations (in my opinion).

For context, I'm a British Gen X, also I have a lot of close millennial friends so it's not personal, it's about them as a collective. Also, this person was American - I think maybe the American nationalism adds to it (more so than with Brits of this generation).

What appalling dress sense? Why?

As I've said in my previous replies, it's a trend I've noticed online for years, it's something I've noticed with my Millennial little sister my entire life, it's something I've noticed with work colleagues (again over countless years). I posted today's example because it was a particularly odd one and I wanted people's take on something I find interesting - and for those thinking I'm bashing Millennials, I'm interested in ALL generations and what makes them tick.. I have many thoughts in Boomers but my post wasn't about them, so another day.

You have somehow managed to misunderstand the entire post.

Not really relevant to the discussion. The point is that you can’t generalise to a entire generation based on a few people you know.

Have you talked about those UK boomers whose lives were dominated by bombings and murders for nearly 30 years, who couldn't go into a city centre shop without being scanned, who never sat beside a window in a cafe or pub, who always had a contingency plan for meeting if they were separated while out and about?

Or what about those UK boomers who saw the entire economic and social underpinning of their society destroyed as the key industry was closed, leaving a million people unemployed?

Same. She’s a bit odd isnt she. It’s like me saying I hate all gen x people for thinking everything revolves around them being.

I mean, I get that you don't like it, but there's nothing intrinsically silly about names like Millennials, Gen X etc for a rough categorisation of a generation. I don't know why you seem offended by that bit. You might not like it, but it's not intrinsically silly.

And generally, these categorisations aren't proxies for the happenings of a single decade, that's the point. Talking about Millennials doesn't mean you're talking about the 80s - it allows you to talk about the life experience (at any point in their lives) of people who were born roughly between 1981 and 1996, whether that experience happened in the 80s, 90s, 00s or whenever.

What's frustrating are the sweeping generalisations taken as gospel, with no room for nuance or for different lived experience.

Totes cray-cray 🙂

Gen X were at school - watching news footage and surrounded by scared adults - when Chernobyl blew up. And the AIDS crisis. And Mad Cow disease. And it wasn't just news - it was embedded in entertainment as well. Threads, When the Wind Blows and Red Dawn all reinforced the fear instilled by the Protect and Survive leaflets. Three Mile Island and Windscale being a little earlier perhaps didn't get the same visual coverage. IRA bombs did, though. And Lockerbie, which changed travel rules in a similar way to 9/11.

Those a little older had Vietnam - have you seen the photo of the young girl covered in napalm? Can you imagine seeing that when you're around the same age as she was? Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile crisis. Plenty of opportunities for the world to combust far more dramatically than ISIS could ever manage.

9/11 may be 'the' event for Millennials, but it's one of many for older people. And for everyone, one thing on that list will be 'the' event that changed things forever. And whatever 'the one' was it probably didn't have an objectively more significant effect than many others at a global, long-term scale - but it happened when you were at just the right age for it to shift your personal perspective.

I feel like it’s maybe more of a social media thing. I think it seems to really drive people to label themselves to the nth degree. Defining yourself by your ‘generation’ seems pretty pointless in real life, but it’s really useful for the algorithms that track and sell us shit constantly. Then it becomes a trend and more people post about it, before you know it, we’re all doing it and pretending it’s totally normal to generalise 20-30% of the population based on something we read/watched online.

If people would say 'everyone in their 20s' or 'people between 20 and 50' or whatever I'd have some idea what they were on about with their generalisations. I've just about sorted who boomers are, everything else - no, have to look them up, and it's pointless and boring. Every generation faces challenges.

Sure…but what is their appalling dress sense?

You cannot be blind to the irony of getting annoyed by millennials reductively and exclusively labelling "everything" as millennial, while doing just that yourself. Surely not. And yet, I think you might be.

Then please enlighten me. I find this post so insanely pointless it’s mind dumbing.

9/11 may have been "the event" for a small group of horribly privileged and probably American or British millennials. For millions of others born in the same 20 or so years, it is just another thing, and a less immediate thing at that.

It could be your algorithm considering it is social media you keep saying you mainly see this on.

Dear me, obviously I am generalising and I don't mean every single Millennial. I have said on many replies that the majority of my closest mates are Millennials and they don't have this trait, its something I mainly see on social media (and could be to do with Millennials growing up around the internet) and occasionally in the UK in the odd Millennial I meet and in my little sister (and I notice it more as myself and my elder sister are Gen X and there's a notable difference in our outlooks). Also, if you read my post, my comment was aimed at Millennials in the US - as I think most of the ones I refer to on social media are from there so it's a generational / cultural thing I find interesting.

"Gen z, I love that generation" "a Millennial thing", some of my best friends, who I "adore", are millennial, shame about the "culture stealing",

And yet, "we're all boxed into feeling or living a certain way based on being born in a certain era, instead of just humans, which is how I like to see it".

Are you drunk? Are you even listening to yourself?

Oh, and on the "culture stealing", I can't help myself - if you take such issue with this, I have to hope you're not White British/ white American? Because the hypocrisy of your posts would stop being funny if you were.

Exactly this, the Lost Generation - nothing compares to what they went through, although I do feel empathy for younger generations not being able to buy their own homes despite working hard. It's about having security in older age, that's a big worry to not have that with rising cost of living and rents. I know as I was late to buy and it caused me sleepless nights, but of course, not comparable to the horrors of war.

So because it didn’t happen, we shouldn’t have been concerned? Wow okay. We had the ozone layer but behaviour changed to mitigate it.

I don’t think we did have it uniquely bad as previous generations suffered.

As for climate change, people won’t do anything to try to mitigate it so it is inevitable. But while people jet off all over the world several times a year, use disposable nappies for so long etc, and in fact have children, those people can explain their contribution to climate change to their children.🤷‍♀️

Hopefully I will be dead by the time the planet burns.

And again, you surely cannot be unaware that every generation currently alive has people in it who've experienced war and even genocide? Millennials included. Your beloved gen Z included. And - an indictment of us all - babies born yesterday.

Many things compare to what "the lost generation" went through, and there will be many millennials who the lost generation can relate to for sheer hardship and suffering in war. Both groups might find it hard to relate to your irritation at an algorithmic nonsense of your own making. As I've said, time to step away from the internet.

I have never been able to buy a property or contribute to a pension so the younger generations don’t have a monopoly on insecure housing

I reckon you’re right. But Gen Z are barely into adulthood yet. So it’s not confirmed.

I do feel for Gen Z.

So it's not possible to look at things in a nuanced open-minded way? For me to see a social-cultural trend that annoys me but not remove that from my lived experience? Many Europeans don't have a good opinion of Americans (for example) but that doesn't mean every single American they meet fits that stereotype of what an American is. So because I think some things I've noticed a lot of Millennials do is annoying, I can't have close friends that are Millennials when they don't do the annoying things I've noticed? Very strange of you to think like that.

Secondly, regarding the labels - Gen Z, Gen X etc refer to a loose grouping of people based on years they were born, it refers to experiences those generations had at pivotal moments of childhood that shaped them - for instance, Gen X has the AIDS crisis, Gen Z had Covid etc. It tells us what their loose historical, cultural and tech experiences are and how that shaped them (as a generalisation). What I don't like is how anything happening in culture is often called a 'Millennial thing'. The football fans having fun for example is not a 'Millennial thing'. It's a misuse / misunderstanding of this categorisation firstly. Also, yes, they do 'steal' things from other eras and claim it as their own which is annoying.

On your other point, I am using the labels on this thread as it's easier for reference given the entire thread is about this. If I am chatting to my Gen Z niece however, she doesn't make reference to being Gen Z ever, and I don't talk about being Gen X, we talk about our human experiences. Which is why, on social media, it annoys me when Millennials constantly reference that they are Millennials.

Also by culture-stealing I meant they claim a cultural event from a different generation / era as their own.

So no, not drunk. I hope that answers your rude question.

Its well recorded millenials have had a shit adulthood. Most of which has been recessions, crashes, low inflation when trying to save for house deposits, high inflation when spending on houses. It’s been a clusterfuck.

PP is right I reckon Gen Z will have it worst. But my point was millenials had the arguably best childhood (perks of traditional childhood alongside perks of tech without many cons) and the juxtaposition of then having the first worse adulthood in history is quite a jump.