Is life getting too f*cking complicated for our own good as a society?
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
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I think Millennials tend to compare themselves to too wide an audience. Most GenXers I know (and there are exceptions) use our family and friends as the yardstick by which we measure our lives. Millennials (and the more recent iGeneration, I guess) use their family, their friends and pretty much the whole of social media as their yardstick. As a consequence they are casting their nets impossibly wide, constantly trying to compare their perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable and entirely blameless lives against the few rare exceptional individuals who rise to prominence on social media. It's essentially a form of culture shock - trying to take in and live up to the whole of the Internet and just ending up swamped by the sheer dauntlessness of such an impossible task as a result.
Except there is a difference. My mother raised her two sons (and for the most part her ex's two daughters from his first marriage) practically alone. She paid her mortgage and she gave us a fairly decent life. We were poor, but we never lived in poverty. I am far more qualified and experienced than my mother was at my age. I have a job that pays me better than she had and yet I have to live with my girlfriend's parents because if I didn't every month I'd be wondering if I could even pay my rent. At least in Ireland the country was largely built through social housing and social services that helped raise it from being a war torn third world shithole. But now the generations who got those handouts have taken them entirely for granted and have decided that young people just aren't working hard enough and we have some cheek to expect affordable housing and wages that pay our bills (when once again on average we're better qualified and work more than they did).That's where poverty fatigue comes in. My mother was never afraid of losing everything. Even when she was living paycheck to paycheck. Millennials are currently wondering if they'll ever afford to own a home and raise a family.Xprimentyl said:
The world is an indifferent and uncaring place and millenials probably have set their expectations too high; raised on helicopter parenting with their overly sheltered formative years and adolescence brainwashed by social media and the fable that 'you can be anything'. When expectation meets reality the result is disappointment. But well, you can always blame the boomers I guess.
Hell, between r/entitledparents/Idontworkherelady, and constant threats from the political right wing, I don't even want to go outside anymore, let alone worry about how complicated it is.
Defining generations is always going to be vague with really wavy borders, but I believe the rough bracket for millennials being born is 1985 to 1995. So mid to late 20s isn't far off but someone in the early to mid 30s would also technically count. Its why just trying to lump everyone in as 'millennials' is dumb especially if you're trying to blame them for thingsBaffle2 said:
The theory of generations suggests that each successive "generation" experiences a dialectical reaction to the generation and cultural norms that held the most influence in society when they were young, on the one hand absorbing some of their values and on the other reacting against their perceived excesses. I think that's the only sense the term "millennial" is useful, it isn't just people born in a certain year, its people whose dominant influences were the same and came from the same place. It also doesn't remotely represent the majority of people born in a certain year, it's extremely weighted towards the middle class for example (because the middle class tend to be culturally hegemonic). It also tends to revolve around youth stereoptypes and doesn't reflect how generations evolve as they age, generation X is still defined by 80s and 90s social stereotypes about punk, grunge and yuppie culture, but many Xers are in their 50s now and there's little sociological interest in how the social stereotype has changed during that time.
In short, treat the whole thing as an interesting ideal type which can teach us a bit about shared formative experiences. For example, the stereotype about millennials struggling financially and not having housing is clearly a reflection of the fact that millennial were entering the job market or early in their careers when the 2007 financial crisis happened. The stereotype about all millennials working in media or creative professions reflects the fact that millennial were the first young adults to enter the workforce with some exposure to the internet and new media, and the stereotype about millennials being particularly concerned with social issues comes from the fact that millennials directly experienced the "turning point" of perception of those social issues.
But I think it's important to remember that milennials will (and already are) going through the same transformation as every previous generation. They will stop being young outsiders reacting against someone else's cultural and economic dominance, and they will become the culturally and economically dominant force in society, and I worry that when that happens a lot of the idealism of milennials will turn out to be as hollow as that of previous generations.
In short, treat the whole thing as an interesting ideal type which can teach us a bit about shared formative experiences. For example, the stereotype about millennials struggling financially and not having housing is clearly a reflection of the fact that millennial were entering the job market or early in their careers when the 2007 financial crisis happened. The stereotype about all millennials working in media or creative professions reflects the fact that millennial were the first young adults to enter the workforce with some exposure to the internet and new media, and the stereotype about millennials being particularly concerned with social issues comes from the fact that millennials directly experienced the "turning point" of perception of those social issues.
But I think it's important to remember that milennials will (and already are) going through the same transformation as every previous generation. They will stop being young outsiders reacting against someone else's cultural and economic dominance, and they will become the culturally and economically dominant force in society, and I worry that when that happens a lot of the idealism of milennials will turn out to be as hollow as that of previous generations.
Bunch of po faced humourless fucks. What's wrong with dying of a crack and heroin overdose at 25? It was good enough for us and it should be good enough for them. Worthless ingrates.Gordon_4 said:
See, now that's a another problem with millenials. All this social media, no one goes out and socialises properly anymore, no one immerses themselves in the culture, in making contacts. That's how you end up getting the better deals. Of course you're going to have to take out a loan if you're buying off some shady fuck you just bumped into hanging around on a street corner.altnameJag said:
