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).

I believe that the dividing into generations is even more meaningless now than ever, and is often a very lazy shortcut to just being generalisingly rude about people. Things like socio-economic status, class, education, background family values, all offer far better insights into why people are as they are. I am a boomer, but I never owned any property until after I retired. In rented in London for nearly 40 years. I have a teenage child. I know what is going on the world. I am a lifelong socialist who has never become more conservative. My adult children do not cause me despair, I admire them greatly.

As a response to talking to some mentalist on the internet, I shall court the opinion of more.

I honestly thought the millennial bashing had spent itself by now. It was funny for a while when people didn't realise how old we actually are but finally worked it out and started leaving us alone.

At any rate, you having a social media spat with someone and extrapolating it to everyone born from 1981 to 1996 (I think? Even that's in debate sonetimes) doesn't make everyone born in those years look silly.

A Gen X person had an interaction with a millennial person on SM. Disagreed. Got it.

I think Gen X was the lucky generation. Coming of age during the long boom after the Cold War ended. My kids started college in the Great Crash. All have Masters but can't afford to buy property. No doubt Gen Z will face the same problem....

The whole world hasn't stopped though?

Every time I hear the Boomer/X/Z/millennial groups mentioned I have to look them
up. Can never remember which is which and from when to when. Surely I’m not the only one?

I'm a millenial. I don't think we feel like everything is about us. But I think we do feel very hard done by as we came to adulthood during the financial crisis when the capitalist gravy train began to stop working. So we were very used to everyone seeming to get more and better then it all just went in reverse. We are the first generation where getting a degree wasn't a leg up and actually just a weight of debt around our necks.

But I think most of my generation would definitely acknowledge that all of that is even worse for the generation below us!

I know lots of millennials and I have not noticed this.

This.

Though I have seen someone going through financies in US - average gen x vs millennials waes and costs and while gen x were about 200 dollars a month short so found it hard millennials were about 1-2 thoundand on average short a month form standard living costs.

I'm very late UK gen x - I got fed up growing up of hearing about 60s - I think a lot of more modest people got famous and got into media and kept on banging on about their youth.

I was in only second graduate job when 9/11 happened - we had all the new sites webpages up and TV on in office- it was shocking but I grew up in country who had terroist bombing and went on to have more. It's doesn't have the cultural impact it does in US.

I have to say watching us reactors - they are woefully ignorant about their own history let alone any one elses and subject to a huge amount of US propaganda and myth making and very uncurious - apparently this is a product of their education systems.

Honestly no idea what you’re going on about tbh.

I think what does make Millennials (in the UK at least) unique is that their entire adult lives have been punctuated by crisis after crisis after crisis, whereas other generations have experienced difficult (even traumatic) times but a) these have been interspersed with better times and b) have had a general upwards trajectory in things like incomes and living standards. I’m a younger Gen X, educated and work in a professional job but since 2008 my standard of living has fluctuated, dramatically at times, and in 2026 I’m still carefully watching the pennies and dreading the washing machine breaking down. Life feels very precarious, particularly in a single income household, and I at least have managed to buy a house, meaning more stability for me and my children than many Millennials (and older Gen Z’s) have.

I sometimes think about all the people who would have lived through two world wars and the Spanish flu pandemic. Of course they are all dead now, but those were huge world events with massive loss of life, trauma and destruction.

I’m with this poster.

It was a cringe thing to say, but that person doesn’t speak for an entire generation.

Oh, stop with the generational stereotyping. Imagine if this kind of theory was put forward in relation to different races or cultures or disabilities! It would be completely unacceptable, and rightly so.

Yeah, I think I was probably unfair to say Millennials (in general), as my three best mates (Brits) are Millennials (and several close friends) and they're not like this at all - it does seem to be an American thing.

We're late stage gen x and 2008 when we had young kids was a blow - and yep there been a lot since.

Millennials are currently 30-45 in age apparently - graduating into that rather than having a few years in work place like us would have been a massive hit.

My DC are graduating now - or in few years - eldest complains in media her generation it's always the worst stuff happening - they are all late stage Z.

Can confirm this is how I feel as a millennial, and something I think about often.

DD1 means media potrays events as worst thing ever - rather than more just what is happening.

Don't think I made that clear - she thinks it is what is is and they'll just have to get on best they can as we did as their DGP did.

@scoobysnaxx We are the first generation to know and remember and appreciate life before and after social media. 9/11, COVID, recessions.

Hello, Gen X here. I want my 'mourning' back. You are talking utter shite. Every generation that went before you can remember what life was like before any of these things. Are you mad?

Elder millennial here. I've never heard that expressed, but I think there is something jarring about being the first generation that hasn't had things better than the generation before in living memory. I remember identifying that was likely to be the case during the 2008 crash and being told I was being overly pessimistic, but it has actually proven to be true. Personally I feel lucky that I had established my career and bought my first home before the crash, but I feel really sorry for younger millennials and Gen Z who have struggled to establish themselves during decades of austerity and rising living costs. The rise of AI is going to make things even tougher for younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

I see what you're saying, but it's not quite comparing like-for-like. Yes, this kind of generational categorisation is a very blunt tool, as @Monty36 said above, but in practice, is it not likely that for a lot of people, the era they grew up in is probably overall more of an influence than e.g. race, ethnic background or disability? I'm thinking of the influence of things like the school curriculum, lack or prevalence of social media, typical technology of the time, wider cultural attitudes, interest rates and the jobs market, the state of healthcare at the time (and available vaccines), the political landscape, the wider geo-political/international landscape etc. I guess I'm saying that personally I think that is probably more of a leveller than most other categories, with outliers of course.

Yes, especially since the borders are so arbitrary. Just looked up and millennials were born 1981-1996. I reckon there is quite a bit difference in the childhood and experiences of those born in 1980 compared to 1996. Can't really say that about those born 1980 compared to 1981 though.

Another one who is completely deluded. I'm Gen X, born in 71. I was 8 years old when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979. There was no long boom, there were huge recessions, millions of people on the dole. For those who went to University in the very early 90s there was another recession and no jobs. Generation X is not the lucky generation. There has only been 1 lucky generation and that is the boomers.

But, and its a big but, there are lucky people from every generation who have grown up and taken advantage of family wealth. They are the big winners of life. The rest of us, not so much, regardless of what group we fall into.

We had the miners strikes, the oil crisis. 3-day weeks, power cuts. Doing our homework by candlelight. Vietnam. The Cold War, the constant threat of being nuked.

My parents were evacuated to escape the blitz. Dad did national service, told he was going to be sent to Korea. Luckily, the war ended before that.

Granddad was a boy soldier on the Somme. His parents' generation were blighted by cholera epidemics. "We want our mourning back". Lol, you don't know how lucky you are.