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).

Oh God yeah on the AIDS and nuclear war, when I think back, that's a lot of heavy stuff to take on as a kid (I remember the AIDS adverts constantly telling us we'd die if we had sex and the cartoon about what to do in a nuclear explosion) but I don't define myself through those things, but with some Millennials, I think they do. My niece is Gen Z, finished school and went to Uni in Covid and she barely talks about it. Just carried on, did well, had fun. So I do think it seems to be Millennials that do it.

I don’t even understand what you are on about. Gosh the millennial bashing is just something else….

I'm gen z and not clear what this is about.
When did the world stop OP? You said in your first post?

The millennials you know might do that. Do you grasp that they aren't the only millennials? That their age doesn't make them all the same as each other? That other people their age find what you're saying they do incredibly weird? Almost as weird as your obsession with generational traits which aren't actually a thing. Step away from the internet.

They do a lot as their own though
Many videos Ive seen millennials posting, people have commented about it being Gen X, then they’ll say ‘Oh yeah, Gen X too’ no not Gen X too, it was only in that generation 😂

Gen X had parents and careers advisers who remembered the labour shortages of the 60s, when you could walk out of a job in the morning and walk into a new one the same afternoon. But we were trying to get first jobs in the post 87-crash/90s recession/as the dot com bubble burst. As children we were told robots would take over all manual labour and to expect a 6 to 12-hour work week. Instead we spent the first decade or so of our careers before the existence of the working time directive (the working week for junior doctors regularly exceeded 90 hours, which wasn't safe for anyone) and grappling with constantly changing technology that needed a brand new programing language every time you'd finished learning the last one. I've had to re-buy my music collection 4 times because of technology changes. I first used an Internet chat room in 6th form, and remember the peace of life before pagers and mobiles, as well as life before social media, but have spent most of adulthood living with them. The students before us had full grants and could claim benefits during the holidays. By the time I got to university the grant was exactly the same amount as my accommodation costs (not including food, books, travel or anything else), student loans didn't exist, and students couldn't claim benefits. I lived through the 70s recession; Black Friday means the '89 crash not the Amazon sale - not to be confused with Black Monday which was the '87 crash; then there was the 90s recession and Poll tax riots, the dot com bubble, Y2K and the 2008 crash. By 24 I'd been made redundant twice with no notice because the entire company went bankrupt, and have spent most of my working life under constant threat of 'restructuring' consultations. The hope of the Iron Curtain falling was followed by the Balkan wars and fear of Europe falling apart, then the resurgence of Russian authoritarianism and expansions. Everyone lived through Covid and the world changed for eveyone after 9/11; but we also had the Cold War, the Troubles, acid rain, mad cow disease, the hole in the ozone layer and the rise of the superbug.

My parents grew up with the shining promise of the Atomic Age and the post-war social contract, and instead got the rolling blackouts of the 3-day week, the endowment mortgage mis-selling scandal, and waiting for days on trolleys in hospital corridors because there's no bed available.

My grandparents saw the glitter of the Roaring 20s as they were on the brink of adulthood, then came of age to the Jarrow March, the Wall St crash of '29, and were then sent off to war.

Childhood is always better and simpler, whatever point you're looking back from.

What part don't you get? I'm not bashing Millennials, I'm curious about something they do and wanted to ask why. Every generation has it's quirks and I'm interested to know what (culturally) effects them.

I dunno, I find the kids who went through Covid seem to have a bigger zest for life as they missed out on so much during. I'm only going by family members I know though - time will tell.

Nothing to do with millennials and more to do with one random opinion.

Love this post, this is my point, our experiences are all very human, we've all been through it, the world has never been equal, at peace, easy for anyone.

I’m not sure either of these things are real things. They’re just exchanging points of views with a stranger on the internet. Maybe not that deep…

But this is Gen X? Or xennials at least? I remember all those things and have a very strong sense of the before and after. Millennials won't really remember life as adults before social media, they were born earliest 1981, and by 2000 social media was a thing.

But the mourning of not being able to achieve despite the hard work, that feels sad. Some Gen X snuck in and managed to get the last wave of decent property with low rates and that made a big difference.

I get that, but I've read reviews describing the actual stories within her books as the stories of millennials. Not her voice but the actual experiences she's writing about too - and the experiences of the characters are universal, at least on the debut as I experienced them as a Gen Xer.

I see it a lot, I just happened to use one example I thought was so strange. I've replied elsewhere about this but I see it on social media, I see it with Millennials I know too.

Why do you need to rant about an entire genre based on one internet nutter?

What part?

Its definitely just pockets of Millennials as my Millennial friends aren't like this, my little sister is though and the occassional Millennial I've worked with, but I mostly see it a lot on social media posts - things being claimed as a Millennial experience - and I don't see other generations do it. If it was just posts I'd assumed saying 'Millennial' within it gets them hits but it's in comments too - like the example in my post.

Are her characters millenial aged? I think you’re the one wanting everything to be about you rather than understanding that saying a millenial writing about characters who are millennials could be described as writing the voice of millenials.

Even if my heartbreak is a universal experience it’s still a millenial one because I AM a millenial.

I see Gen X people in the comments on YouTube saying ‘Gen X ignored once again’ all the time

Yeah, I think that's the part (the 9/11 bit) that annoyed me, the first bit about the football being healing for Millennials I just found odd (given the football fans clip was mostly of old gits my age!). I was early 20s when 9/11 happened and had a boyfriend, work colleagues and friends living in NYC at the time and they're still pretty traumatised by it and they're all my generation.

I don’t think it didn’t affect other generations - it absolutely did. But I think as millenials many of us saw people throwing themselves out of flaming buildings on TVs at school. Hits different when you’re 7 years old and your parents are scared. It wasn’t the only experience of 9/11 but it was an event that was during lots of millenials early years so it may have been different - not more just different - to the experience of adults.

Hmmm… bit of an odd post.

I’ve met a lot of Gen Xers who have appallingly dress sense. Does this make it a characteristic of their generation?

Millennials cover a huge cohort or people born with a timespan of an about 20 years - they aren’t all the same. Can’t say I recognise your description at all.

You've sort of proved my point, Millennials so often claim my generation's cultural moments as their own, like they've forgotten there's an entire generation between them and Boomers who actually went through what they're claiming they did. They do it with Gen Z too. It would be like me as a Gen Xer claiming I lived in post-war Britian like I was a Boomer.

That person is not some kind of a spokesperson for all millennials in this country. Tbh that sounded more like a Gen Z whinge 😂 I certainly don’t feel that way

I don't know why you think I want everything to be about me when I'm saying words like 'universal' and 'human experience' and talking about 'all the generations experiencing one world' in all my replies?! I don't like labels. I'm a huge fan of Bret Easton Ellis and Douglas Coupland and if someone unfamiliar asked me what they wrote about, I'd never think to say 'the Gen X experience' despite them coming to fame in the era as Gen X men as they write about life, human nature - things not limited to one generation. This need for everything to be labelled as 'Millennial' annoys me as it's so reductive and exclusive.