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).

agree, it's such nonsense. Just the media trying to be more divisive so we don't focus on who is actually to blame for 99% of the issues impacting our quality of live (billionaires and now a trillionaire hoarding wealth).

A few years ago people were just older than you or younger, not split into tribes according to things like the length of their socks and how they part their hair!

OP you are being silly. You seem to have met one weirdo and extrapolated that out to over a billion people. You wouldn't do that about a particular race/sexuality/religion.

Particularly silly given millennials are probably the most likely group to be in the 'active parenting' phrase right now, and thus the largest user base of MN, I'd hazard a guess most won't agree with you that we're all arseholes! Which you also seem to have now acknowledged yourself, so not really sure why you bothered starting the thread!

oh ok, that makes sense, I couldn't make head nor tail of this post and I like a good rant!

Exactly this. As if everyone born in the same decade thinks the same way.

The only thing is that you may have some similar cultural references.

I think its a bit pointless to talk about Millennials as a homogenous group. There will be a massive difference in how events affected you depending on your age within that group (google tells me Millennials were born 1981-1999). 15 year spread! The twin towers fell in 2001 some millennials would have been 2 hardly going to impact them. Others were 20 very much aware of the world and the impacts of huge events. I'm a Millennial I don't have any of those feelings. The chat gp description that @scoobysnaxx posted above sounds alien to my feelings.

Ugh! I hate all these generations divisive chats! I recently deleted the Facebook app for many reasons but one of the big ones was constant videos/reels of 'influencers' posting about fashion choices of Millennials versus Gen z, and constant battles between the generations. I notice it seems to be Americans talking about it more than British people. Americans also I believe have an extra generation - can't remember what it's called but it's to do with Vietnam.

Also Millennials span quite a few years, the older millennials will be much more like Gen X and the younger ones will be more Gen Z. Also, how old was this person? Twenty somethings of all generations throughout all time generally think they are the centre of the universe and everything is about them. Although this person was probably just out of her 20's.

I am a millennial apparently, and have never felt like the person you were talking to, I barely understand what she's going on about!

It's all just a load of divisive crap, aimed at getting us to buy more stuff and post more stuff to keep up with the zeitgeist.

If this discussion was on Facebook or X, I'd advise deleting them, so much of social media is a cesspit of hate and division. Why oh why did Zuckerberg/Meta ruin Facebook?! It was so good when it was just about keeping up with friends and family!

The great events that become cultural touchstones have a particular impact on the cohort experiencing them as older teens/young adults when they mark a transition or an awakening to the wider world.

For me, that political awakening was the fall of the Berlin Wall and despite how utterly shitty things are now I have a deep belief that social justice is possible and worth striving for.

For my parents their event was the assignation of JFK and for them the world is a place where good things can be snatched away in a moment, and they hold tightly to what they value.

The end of the Cold War, ime, came on a wave of artistic, musical and cultural youth culture. It felt like we were rising. But my parents didn’t feel the same sense of optimism, because their lens was different.

9/11 was horrific, but for me. was still mitigated by a belief that good can flourish and bad things can be overcome. It was an entirely different experience for the generation who came of age to that. I can respect that. And I can respect a desire to seek fellowship in shared experiences. Sometimes age and life stage matters.

There has only been 1 lucky generation and that is the boomers.

Tell that to all the boomers conscripted into the Vietnam War.

People regularly complain on here about ageism and use of the word boomer being offensive. If those threads aren’t allowed then surely this isn’t given that it’s making a sweeping generalisation about a specific age group.

I'm a millennial and I think this is such utter bollocks. Basically, it's a nice way of saying 'it's harder for us because we had nicer childhoods'!

I feel very lucky to be a millennial not gen Z, and it makes me really sad to see people of my age already spouting shit about how hard we've had it and trying to dismiss the advantages we had compared to the generation below, while at the same time warbling on about how it was all better in their day. I hate that nostalgia has become our dominant public discourse, but I feel like at least it's a normal life stage for pensioners. Seeing people in their 30s and 40s doing it is just such self-indulgent nonsense.

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.

Has gen x out performed boomer generation - I think it depends on the metric but didn't think that was so.

DH job generation before would mean much higher standard of living - though DH got through uni with no loans - me few years younger had a few - debt our kids have is way more. Also gen x are likely to have higher retirement ages and more likely to have kids and elder care at same time than previous generations.

So I agree every generation seems to be finding it financially tighter - just not so sure millennials are the first generation to find this.

I totally agree .

And maybe she was picking up on your British snobbery? You can call Americans nationalist but let’s balance the equation accurately. Speaking as someone who has lived in both countries and is from another country but living in the UK.

Just saw one thread where someone was saying it's not pensioners we should blame it's poor people on benefits

Now this thread saying no this generation didn't have it the hardest, this other generation did

I'm sick and tired of infighting, figuring out who to be most angry at or place most blame on. OP you can't generalise an entire generation of people. Why would you feel the need to argue another generation had it worse than this random commenter's generation.

Divide and conquer in action while the wealthy and powerful laugh at us

Millennial here, doesn’t make sense, unless this person has a personal connection to the events of 9/11 and has an unusual way of communicating it?? Possibly the American aspect? Sometimes they have a very different approach to sentimental expressions.

This must be ironic. All Gen X. 🤣

Sounds like someone with main character syndrome rather than a millennial generalisation.

Again a US touchstone not a UK one - UK didn't fight in the Vietnam war 55-75 with us getting there 65.

We did fight in Korea war 1950-53 - and that included British National Service conscripts.

Within any generation there are lossers and winners.

The economic and demographic head winds were with the boomer generation - which our parenst fit into but they didn't have it easy in UK - 50 working class poor childhoods starting work at 15 and half to 16.

What do all gen Xers take the views and actions of one person and attribute it to a whole generation of people?!

I think it is a bit arbitrary dividing people into these age brackets, and I have not heard of exactly what you have mentioned OP. There will always be luck and circumstance feeding differently into lives of people of the same generation.

What I would say is I do feel the lower end of that age group tend to feel "empowered" by their opinions in a way that other generations have tended to rein in a bit and leave some space and respect for wisdom and life experience. It's as if ideas and values that aren't trending on SM really should be shelved as out of date. I was at a lunch the other day with a lady in her early 30s who was the DD of my DM's friend, plus a few of my DM's friends, and was really appalled by the disrespect for their views - out of date, hilarious, eye-roll inducing, as though they were all half-witted when in fact there are some very accomplished and intelligent ladies amongst them, and their views were better-reasoned than hers. All she could say to defend hers was "well that's just not how people think now." It wasn't a love of debate: it was simply a shutting-down and parking of alternative viewpoints. I really don't recall my friends (now mid-late 40s) being so totally dismissive of previous generations. Even if you did things differently, there wasn't this need to tell them how wrong and laughable they were. There was a base level of respect.

To be fair, this will always be partly down to personality of the individual, but I do feel as though there is a lot more of the attitude that being disrespectful is somehow clever. To the extent that you can attribute attitudes and behaviours to certain age brackets, I feel SM has played quite a part. People take it as a substitute for proper education and upbringing, and all the respect seems to have to flow in certain directions only.

I can never remember who is which generation - I feel this helps to not lump groups of people into having the same opinion.
I don't know which generation I am so I can have my own thoughts.

Agree with this to an extent. As a millennial it feels like we were the last generation to believe in hard work paying off except due to circumstances beyond our control it didn’t. I did the “education, education, education” thing and have grafted but it hasn’t paid off financially or lifestyle wise and I’m no better off than previous generations were leaving school at 16 and working their way up. It does feel you were sold a lie. I’ve noticed online that Gen Z seem to have had a pessimism about their futures from the start which is its own problem of course for which I really do sympathise but slightly different to that mourning and betrayal you’re talking about.

Although I don’t really get what 9/11 and Scottish football fans has to do with us.

They certainly are but it only truly informs the experience when they consider it in context.

Millennial here, what a load of crap

when I hear anyone of any age talk crap, I roll my eyes and move on.

I’m a millennial (right in the middle) and never come across this attitude.