Today at work came up yet another conversation about those damn "millennials." I'm in marketing, so this is a frequent topic, as millennials are a hot commodity for advertisers. If you can "hook em young," you get the coveted "brand loyalty" that will pay out for years to come.
BUT no one can agree on who exactly this group is, or what age range it includes. Some say those born between 1980 and 2000. Others break that into Gen Y and Gen Z. If the range is that wide, then anyone age 36 to 16 is getting clumped together. And we're allllll getting pigeon-holed into the same frickin' stereotypes (so quit being so snooty, Gen Y, we're all in this together).
So, when I commented that what we were really targeting for marketing purposes (young moms) was the "older millennials" - it was like I'd shot each Gen X and Boomer in the room straight in the face. OLD?! How dare I! Typical youth, being ridiculous! They got so hung up on the word "old" that they didn't get my point -- that the "millennial" generation isn't just one small group, and more importantly, it's not as simply defined as their countless conferences would have them believe.*
Here's where I get a bit ranty...
The one thing I think all millennials agree on - we hate fucking being called millennials. The word comes with a negative connotation (created by the media) of being lazy, entitled sheep, herding toward the latest social media craze. If the label is bad, the images are worse. As a friend of mine put it: they can call us whatever they want, as long as they stop pinning up Lena Dunham** as a stock photo for our generation.
Sure, every generation feels "misunderstood" at some point. And while stereotypes are often rooted in some form of truth, that truth is sometimes found via only a small sample size. Putting that aside, let me bitch about a few 'leading definitions' of my generation for a minute here:
- Delayed rights of passage. They call us the Peter Pan generation. Not just because we all love the movie Hook, but because we "won't" grow up. As if we purposely refuse. Well guess what, it's hard to grow up when you graduate in a recession and can't get a job. We didn't break the market, we were just kids. Those who came before us shot the economy in the face and then blamed us for moving back home. We wanted so desperately not to that we all eventually accepted jobs with horrid pay so we could spend that pittance on overpriced apartments to prove we could make it. Which lead to...
- Debt issues. Yep, the price of higher education and interest rates on student loans decided to skyrocket. So when we came out into that recession, we came carrying the weight of thousands of dollars in debt on our backs. Oh yeah, and those shitty jobs have set us up to make less money over our lifetimes. Because when you get a pay raise on dirt, you just get slightly more dirt. And unless you live in Waterworld, that really doesn't help you out. But of course, the real reason we're poor is because we're just....
- Lazy bastards with side gigs who spend all their money on smart phones. AKA we have to work two or three jobs just to pay rent and minimum payments on our loans. And the only light of hope while we work 60 hour work weeks (salaried at $30k a year) is to have some escapism via the tiny technology we carry in our pockets that connects us to the world and which we rely on for our...
- Social media obsession. Since our lives are frequently rubbish, we live vicariously through the "me-myself-and-my-fabulous-friends-and-adventures" stars of the Youtubes and blogosphere that we mindlessly scroll through (while sitting on the toilet, which is really our only downtime since we're busy with all those side gigs). We "consume video" because videos allow us to multitask so we can have both escapism and enough time to do the dishes. We also spend countless hours curating our own online presence to display the version of ourselves that will get us the most likes, because we constantly need...
- Instant Gratification. Unlike generations before, almost everything now is more measurable. We can tell if people approve of our ideas based on the statistics on social media. We don't have to guess, we know. Technology feeds us all the data we need to be happy about our place in the world, or to feel like a total loser on a clear scale that's not just in our heads. And technology will always tell us because...
- Technology and us grew up together. We were in the cradle with computers and cell phones. We started school when computers started showing up in homes. We went to high school with floppy disks in our pockets. I got my first cell phone when I went away to college, and my first laptop only when I went to study abroad. I still don't have a smartphone, but I spend half my workday discussing device rendering issues for our website - because I can.
Because technology and us have been BFFs for years. We grew up awkwardly together: braces, bruises, buzzy dial-up and all. We feel like access to information is a right, even if that sounds a bit....
Whose bright idea was this?? - Entitled. We grew up in a world with freedom of information, and we're not going backwards and accepting anything less.
Do we feel entitled about getting a promotion at work? NO, but we feel like we should get one when we've earned it. Why? Because a bunch of Boomer parents put the doe-eyed notion in our heads that if we WORKED HARD and stayed positive, and showed off our talents, and all the things that made us bright little stars, that we WOULD be able to excel. Hard work, dedication. Be kind, rewind. Go to college and get a job. You filled us with a false idea that at graduation, we'd receive diplomas and jobs, just like that.
And then we walked out into the world, with stars in our eyes and ambition in our souls, with a drive to make the world a better place... and most of us got knocked flat on our asses. So we picked ourselves up and worked hard, just like we were told. We switched jobs because our work wasn't appreciated (unlike our parents, we don't want to just put up with being shit on by "the man" - we want some g'damn positive affirmation). We got shut down for ideas because things have "always been done" a different way. We kept working hard. And you know where it got us? Mostly, it just got us bitter.
As we watched older people with less talent run the companies we worked for into the ground, powerless to move up and help. We reached out for mentors to guide us, we networked, we scrambled. Some took any job they could to try and stop living paycheck to paycheck. To the point where the only thing most of us feel entitled to now is our free time outside of work. If putting in the extra time isn't rewarded, we're not going to keep being indentured servants - we're going to squeeze every ounce out of our free time and make it as shiny as possible, because we DO feel entitled to the same happiness we see from those internet personalities. It's why we cover our tiny cube walls with bright motivational quotes - to remind us that there's life out there.
We give up on changing the world.
Just let us grow up to be unicorns and let's be done with it.
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| The internet gave this to me, because we're friends. |
* Here is one of many decent articles about millennials. Go read this, not the other rubbish.
**Sidebar on Lena Dunham re: Girls. Not a single millennial I know can relate to the characters on that show. We all hate them because they give a bad name to our generation. I went into that show hoping I'd get some fellow youths to commiserate and empathize with, but I only grew to dislike each character more and more as time went by. They're awful; we are not like that... Except for the gay dads, we might have some gay dads.
*** General disclaimer: I'm not living paycheck. I've finally almost paid off my $27,000 of student loan debt. I'm not just surviving, but am thriving - but that was after a lot of years of shit and struggle. A lot of my friends have finally come through the other side (now that we're all pushing 30), but many have not yet. We're not all the same, this whole article was just another set of stereotypes *shakes fist at the irony of it all - and the possible misuse of the word irony*
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