Let's talk about all the hate on millennials

Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
They're lazy

They're entitled

They all want participation trophies

Yada yada yada.

I keep hearing this. I hear it everywhere. I hear it from people all over the Internet to people at work. And I hear it from both the old and the young.

And I don't get it. I don't see a spoiled generation that wants everything but won't do anything. I see a generation handed a lot of empty promises that walked into a world that just didn't want them. They loaded up on student debt to get degrees that weren't helpful for jobs that just weren't there. I think they have been massively screwed by our society in a lot of ways. And instead of looking at them as a group that is in a lot of trouble people blame them for it all.

I think ultimately this goes back to a persistent theme in our world of looking for someone to blame for...whatever...and picking the weakest group you can to do it. And while you can't go around saying such and such race are a bunch of no good lazy whatever's, there's nothing stopping you from saying it about the young.

And I'm getting so tired of it. If I have to hear another fucking boomer complain about how 20-something millennials are ruining the country...

I mean really. How are you going to blame kids for this shit? WE DID THIS. They didn't run up the national debt. We did. They didn't cause the housing crisis. We did. They aren't the ones who sold out the environment for gains in the stock market. We did that too. Ironically, while they weren't the ones who shouted for war in Iraq/Afghanistan, they were the ones who fought it and will suffer the most for its consequences. Shit, they aren't even the ones who came up with the idea of the participation trophy. That too, was us.

This generation, as with any generation at its conception, is free of the sins of the world. Sure, they might make mistakes in the future, but they are in no way to blame for its current state.

And at the end of the day there are much larger generational issues that are not being addressed right now that flat out terrify me, namely the coming retirement crisis brought on by the boomers. The average retirement savings of someone nearing retirement is a whopping 100k. This is a group that is going to be *heavily* dependent on entitlement spending, both in terms of social security and Medicare. Not to mention all the unfounded pension obligations out there that are bankrupting cities across the nation. That is the real generational crisis. And instead of focusing on that what are we doing? We're attacking the generation that will be carrying the financial burden brought to them by their parents.

Anyways.

/rant.
 
Gruebeard

Gruebeard

Kids these days. It doesn't matter what decade, what century, what millennium these days are in. We look down on the newer generation.[DOUBLEPOST=1472505274,1472505098][/DOUBLEPOST]By the way, you seem to be labelling yourself as a Boomer. I didn't think you were that old. I mean, Dave's not even close to that old.
 
Dei

Dei

Yeah my own parents aren't even technically boomers.

But I still fight with my mom about this constantly. She doesn't have the right circle of people to see the shit I see with younger friends, who have a masters and still work shit paying jobs "to get experience" but at the same time can't afford to live on their own and pay their debt. She just sees kids that live off their parents, and her kids never did that. (Though, my brother and I fled as quickly as we could even though we were poor as fuck for a while because my parents have certain attitudes that are very overbearing, and my parents 100% would have let us stay, so they never had to make that choice.) They don't see things from the perspective of today's economy, they see it from the perspective of when they were that age. A lot of older people don't really get how different things are now money wise. They also don't see how hard millennials actually have to work to break even, they just see what media bias tells them to see.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Actually, you can blame the Participation Trophies on the Xers, not the boomers.

Also Adam Conover's just a cranky millennial spouting half-baked sound bytes he has barely researched, if at all. "How conceited do you have to be to name yourself the "greatest generation" they didn't name themselves that, the boomers did - or at least, the people who named it that were boomers. It was meant as a nod to the fact that they were the generation who grew up in the depression and went on to win WW2. Boomers are held in even higher contempt than any other generation, I think, as everybody's been pointing out for at least 30 years, because:

1) When they retire, it wrecks the economy
2) they're the generation most "in charge" in that they're the business owners and politicians, and things keep getting worse
3) they reaped the benefits of growing up during one of America's most prosperous economic periods and turned that into a sense of entitlement
4) Unpaid internships instead of hiring

Also, I think the time frames are wrong... the boomers aren't 1940-1960, they're 1945-65 or so, give or take, and Generation X is really just a murky generational fog between boomers and millennials mostly characterized by existential uncertainty. I generally find that people who fit the millennial stereotype were born no earlier than the mid 90s.

That said, there are "good kids" and bad kids. Underling #1 is a millennial by any definition, and yet she's probably one of the best workers to ever work here. That said, I can name three other people we've employed her age or younger who definitely fit the disparaging description. Granted, none of them have ever wanted to take 6 weeks off for a spirit journey, but they definitely wanted to get paid to facebook all day, regardless of what else did or didn't get accomplished.[DOUBLEPOST=1472506719,1472506605][/DOUBLEPOST]
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
Gruebeard said:
Kids these days. It doesn't matter what decade, what century, what millennium these days are in. We look down on the newer generation.[DOUBLEPOST=1472505274,1472505098][/DOUBLEPOST]By the way, you seem to be labelling yourself as a Boomer. I didn't think you were that old. I mean, Dave's not even close to that old.
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I'm not a boomer, but I'm old enough/been through enough voting cycles/been in the workforce long enough to accept my share of responsibility for the world as it is.

GasBandit said:
but they definitely wanted to get paid to facebook all day,
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Says the man posting funny pictures to Halforums all day :)
 
Dei

Dei

Also, I don't think participation trophies are bad, as long as winning trophies are also a thing. My daughter very clearly knows the difference between a participation award and a winning award.
 
strawman

strawman

The difference in wage versus age over the last few decades is not as big as people are making it out to be:

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/student-loans/average-salary-by-age/

Unfortunately, on average, young people are making slightly less than previous generations did at their age. Most experts chalk it up to wage stagnation that hit as part of the 2008 recession. Between 1980 and 2013, for instance, the average age at which young adults’ salaries reached $42,000 a year increased from 26 to 30, according to a 2013 report by Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce.

Rising student loan debt isn’t helping. The average college graduate left school with $28,950 in student loan debt in 2014. If you’re struggling to pay off student loans, a debt calculator like MyNerdWallet can help you figure out how to lower your payments or get rid of your debt faster.

While it’s taking longer for young people to gain financial independence, the good news is that having a college degree makes a big difference in the amount of money you’re likely to make. In 2014, workers who were 25 and older and had a high school diploma made a median wage of $668 a week, or $34,736 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Workers 25 and older with a college degree made nearly double that: $1,193 a week, or $62,036 a year.
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It's a little worse for people 25-35 now than it was for them two decades ago, but the difference isn't as big as some appear to suggest.

But honestly I'm not sure it matters. You can point to people that are struggling, and you can then also point to people in similar circumstances that are doing fine. We've had recessions before, and the youth just entering the workforce at those times and immediately after suffered at the hands of the recessions.

As far as "entitlement" or "blame" I suspect that every generation has been on the receiving end. Gen X. Gen Y. The baby boomers. The lost generation. They've all been pilloried, and then defended and put on a pedestal at different times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#List_of_generations

To some degree it's simply part of our society. Every generation has stereotypes, and is viewed negatively in some way or fashion.

Now the millenials are on the hotplate.

Here's an article showing what happened when the gen x was on the hotplate: http://www.newgeography.com/content/001374-get-real-aout-generation-x-stereotypes

Here's an article which compares Millenials and boomers both favorably against the gen x: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/05/generation-x-americas-neglected-middle-child/ saying,

One reason Xers have trouble defining their own generational persona could be that they’ve rarely been doted on by the media. By contrast, Baby Boomers have been a source of media fascination from the get-go (witness their name). And Millennials ... have been the subject of endless stories about their racial diversity, their political and social liberalism, their voracious technology use, and their grim economic circumstances.
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So more ink is spilled - both positive and negative - about the millenials and the boomers than the x, and they all have things society thinks negatively about them, as well as things positively held true about them.

So, in short, I don't see your point. If you want journalists to stop writing anti-millenial articles then I wish you good luck. If anything it's spurring millennials on to prove the articles wrong. Journalists write negative stories because they get more views than positive ones.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Necronic said:
I'm not a boomer, but I'm old enough/been through enough voting cycles/been in the workforce long enough to accept my share of responsibility for the world as it is.



Says the man posting funny pictures to Halforums all day :)
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Difference is, I manage to get work done, too :p And I'm not hourly, they were.

Actually, most of my posts happen during times where I'm waiting for the computer to compile something.
 
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PatrThom

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
most of my posts happen during times where I'm waiting for the computer to compile something.
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Huh, I don't think I realized that you code.

Personally I blame the Gen-X'ers who fill their Millenial offsprings' ears with tales of wonder and cushion them from reality for breeding this sort of stereotype.

--Patrick
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

PatrThom said:
Huh, I don't think I realized that you code.

Personally I blame the Gen-X'ers who fill their Millenial offsprings' ears with tales of wonder and cushion them from reality for breeding this sort of stereotype.

--Patrick
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That's what happens when you let kids watch Labyrinth.
 
Celt Z

Celt Z

I still can't figure out who is considered a Millennial. I had assumed from the original coining of the phrase, it was anyone who was born in 1990 or later. But some places I've seen say that "older Millennials" are start in 1981, which replaces what we knew as Generation Y. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I feel like there was still too much of a technology-effecting-every-day-society jump in that decade. Maybe the late 80's could be considered part of the Millennial generation.

And since we're talkin' bout my g-g-g-generation, (X? I think?)

stienman said:
As far as "entitlement" or "blame" I suspect that every generation has been on the receiving end. Gen X. Gen Y. The baby boomers. The lost generation. They've all been pilloried, and then defended and put on a pedestal at different times.
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So, it's fair to say "Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss"? ... The Who jokes aside, I wonder if this generation divide really got started in post-WWII when we first considered "teenager" a viable group. Previous to that, "youth" wasn't really a marketable group, unless we were talking about children. You were either a child or an adult. Now we have "teenagers" and "young adults", who seem to earn the ire of every previous generation. (Ironic, because as others have pointed out, they were the ones who created the youth and set up their environment.)
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
I have no generation. I was born in 1965 and I'm right on the line. So neither generation claims me.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Celt Z said:
I still can't figure out who is considered a Millennial. I had assumed from the original coining of the phrase, it was anyone who was born in 1990 or later. But some places I've seen say that "older Millennials" are start in 1981, which replaces what we knew as Generation Y. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I feel like there was still too much of a technology-effecting-every-day-society jump in that decade. Maybe the late 80's could be considered part of the Millennial generation.

And since we're talkin' bout my g-g-g-generation, (X? I think?)
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Generation Y got folded into Millennials, essentially because they were still comings of age during the whole tech revolution that started in the late 80's. They were still young enough to have grown up using computers on a fairly regular basis, even if the Internet wasn't a super common thing until the early to mid 90's. In that light, '81 does seem like the correct cut-off point. Besides, there wasn't a whole lot distinguishing millennials from Y whys anyway, other than Y's could remember a time before personal computers were common.
 
Denbrought

Denbrought

Gruebeard said:
I figure if you can't remember life without internet, then you're a millenial.

And if you can't remember life with the internet, then you just might be a redneck.
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I remember life before the internet, but AFAIK anyone born in the 90's is firmly in the Millenial category.
 
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