Millennials Reveal What They Genuinely Think Is The Worst Thing About Their Generation
Millennials have taken a lot of crap over the years. They're the Generation of laziness, of whackos, of ridicule. Everyone says they don't want to work and don't understand how the world functions. They of course have combated that argument with protest. They say they won't just accept the World as is and swear to change it! However every Generation has it's issues.
Redditor _askmenextyearifimok asked for some truth from the youngins asking... Millennials of Reddit, what do you think genuinely _is the worst thing about your generation? Acknowledge what's wrong so you can fix it.
JUST SAY NO...
Everyone is so non committal. If I ever write a book, I'm calling it "I'd Rather Hear No." If you don't want to hang out, go on a date, or are not interested, just tell me. I'm tired of"we'll see", "maybe," or my personal favorite "I'll let you know."
JUST ALOT OF SMOKE...
Millennials talk a big talk on social media when it comes to social/political issues. When it comes to actually doing something about it, not so much.
Posting about something means nothing if there's no follow through y'all.
TAKE NOTE Y'ALL...
Here's your daily reminder that millennials are the generation born in the 80s and 90s. Even the youngest millennials are in their 20s. The oldest millennials are approaching 40.
Sometimes people say millennials when they really mean teenagers. Teenagers are Gen Z.
SO PREDICTABLE...
I'll say that I am very suspicious of all the talk about what _"millennials are like." _Every older generation looks down in predictable ways on the younger generation, and there's rarely much truth in it. When I was a kid, our parents worried we were worshiping Satan by playing D&D. They worried we'd rot our brains with Atari and Nintendo games the same way we now worry our kids are rotting their brains with smartphones. Maybe there is something to the bad effects of smartphones, I don't know, but I certainly look at the claims with a skeptical eye.
READ A BOOK...
I'm gonna go with social media. It's caused a lot of problems.
Before all these various websites, people could only compare themselves to the people they met in real life. They'd only really get to know about 150 people at a time according to monkeysphere logic. So if you're looking at developing a skill like drawing, you could feel pretty good about how you were doing and get some validation from your improvement over time. Now, though? You see a billion artists all sharing their work, so you'll see millions of artists better than you. That doesn't mean you're bad, but it's harder to get validation for the effort you've put in. Especially now that things like Tumblr reblogs and Twitter retweets and Instagram regrams give you a numerical sense of how well you're doing. Now it's not "I'm not as good as Jeff but I've personally seen how much effort he puts into his work," it's "I'm not as good as GokuLovesSonic19387 on Deviantart and all I have to go on is that he says he drew this amazing sketch in 5 minutes, so I guess I'm worthless".
I'm using drawing as the example because that's what gets to me personally, but this can also apply to physical attractiveness or wealth or any other skill or quality of life.
Social media also causes people to stir up outrage, and make people upset over things that might not be true, might not affect them in any way, or is otherwise not worth getting angry over. And the people who care the most will guilt-trip each other into re-whatevering the outrage so that everyone gets outraged too.
So now we have a generation of people who don't think it's worth developing their hobbies and skills because they don't feel they're as good as GokuLovesSonic19387 and are also livid over some trivial thing (which I'm not going to make up an example for because I'm sure whatever example I come up with will be serious business to someone).
Now this next thing might be a touchy subject, but people on social media seem to really like labelling themselves. No matter what you feel on anything, you can find a group that agrees with you, validates your opinion, and encourages you to define as much of your identity as possible by it. Then you're a part of some group that didn't even exist before and that causes you to dislike people in the other group who also used to just have a casual opinion.
Social media also has the dangers of some people sharing every detail about their lives, so that anything they say and do could have serious consequences in every part of their lives, and other people remaining completely anonymous, so the things they say and do have zero consequences at all.
So yeah. It's bad. And if you agree with what I've said here, don't forget to Tweet me over at Instatumblr.
I GOT SKILLS....
That we have not been educated to do jobs that are needed, but rather we were told that we can do whatever we want. Then we spend years and years studying and preparing for that thing, believing that passion and hard work is all that's needed to do the job in question, only to realize that if it's not needed, no one is going to pay us for it no matter how talented, educated, or passionate you are in it. Once you realize this, you find yourself too old to start over, and facing competition from others who were lucky enough to go down paths that lead straight to success and are far more experienced than you because they didn't have to start over at 30.
Which is how you end up with people with 2 diplomas working jobs that require none. And even then, you will still have less experience than the kid who started working at McDonald's at 18 and will be your manager when you apply there at 26. So no wonder you will have worse work ethic than those who went straight to McDonald's without wasting years of their life and a bunch of money on education that is totally useless to them.
We then find ourselves lost and without purpose, losing passion for what we liked and not having the skills to do what is needed --- we end up both without passion and without skill.
YOUNG AT HEART...
That fact that I'm 30 years old now, and people talk about my generation like we are all 21 year old kids.
WE'RE JUST CASUAL..
We struggle to form, and maintain meaningful relationships?
Maybe that's just me...
THINK BIGGER!!
Inability or unwillingness to recognize the impact of filter bubbles putting us in echo chambers online that only serve to stagnate thought and intellectual progress.
Especially in today's political climate.
JUST DO YOU...
The obsession with labels and trying to fit in with everyone while claiming to be individuals. Seriously, just do you and forget what everyone else does or thinks. You are you and only you are in charge of your own happiness. If you have to have labels and fit into certain groups or cliques to be an individual, then you're living entirely wrong.
THAT'S A GIVEN...
Student loan debt.
ALL IN OR NOT AT ALL...
The idea that if you are 90% with someone/something but 10% against it that you're an enemy.
There are so many things where if you have even the slightest reservation, boom, evil. For example, on reddit I once got downvoted and called a Trump-supporter for saying I didn't think Obama would be a good choice for a supreme court justice because of the drone strikes on American citizens. Another time I called Trump an unfit candidate, but talked about how he ran an incredible campaign that really appealed to the common man that we should learn from and someone asked if that's why I voted for him.
On facebook I once gently corrected a factually incorrect statistic (i.e. they used the number for all unarmed shootings rather than black unarmed shootings. I pointed this out but said it was still way too high), and I got laid into for invalidating someone's feelings.
There's no room to say _"I agree for the most part but..." _or even _"I disagree for the most part but..."_ It's all or nothing. If you don't think Obama was the second coming of Christ or Trump is literally Hitler reincarnate, you're clearly against everything good, right, just and beautiful.
STOP THINKING SO MUCH...
I think an oversaturation of information is an issue. We are so used to being able to google something or YouTube it that our critical thinking and problem solving skills are getting worse and worse.
WE'RE ALL ONE!
Not at all a fan of the tendency of a large amount of people to go looking for things to be offended about - or going on the attack against allies. Example - recently stuck up for someone in an LGBTQ group. Some random chick got in my face about how I wasn't welcome because I was "a straight." - then when I tried to explain I was on their side got an a sarcastic "ooh, NOT ALL STRAIGHTS then? " as if I was an'all lives matter' idiot.
REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE...
A severe lack of physical interaction. And I don't mean sex, I mean most of our interaction is filtered through screens. So many people I know complain about being awkward or uncomfortable in new settings (including myself) and that is because we just aren't used to being around other people except for our immediate families. This keeps people from wanting to interact more, further pushing ourselves into an almost hermit like state, making it easier to fool ourselves with our own confirmation bias as our environmental experiences are extremely limited. Our parents were the last generation to (on average) have a truly human experience where everybody learned how to act because they actually interacted with each other rather than constantly having tone, inflection, etc filtered through text and literal filters i.e. snapchat. I know mental health is a touchy field in which we can't be 100% certain about a lot, but I feel this simple shift in interaction provided a large environmental element that greatly influenced the way people develop mentally. Perhaps a lot of people that are "on the spectrum" just never had enough physical interaction growing up and are now facing an uphill battle trying to fit in to a society where fewer and fewer people know how to "fit in."
FAKE NEWS!!!
Every opinion is a strong opinion. There is very little room for nuance. Everything is extreme one way or another. Black or white. Nothing is just okay or neutral. You either love a song or hate it. You're either a staunch conservative or bleeding heart liberal. Middle ground has eroded almost completely.
TRY A LITTLE...
The lack of efforts. When something is too hard, it is easier to just quit.
SNOWFLAKES ABOUND...
The victim olympics.
Everyone is constantly looking for a way to be offended, and claim _"society" or _"the system" is the reason for their problems and not themselves.
Sure you may have been dealt a crappy hand, and you may have to work harder than others, but life isn't fair. You have two choices, resign yourself to your status, or try to improve it.
WE GOT PROBLEMS...
Increasing overall nihillism.
Suicide rates increasing. Degenated materialistc views and goals. Brainless consumption.
Aggressive capitalism. The only two remaining true emotion in most of the people are fear and greed. Just like on the Streets.
WW2 was 70 years ago. Longest time in the world where there were no MAJOR conflicts between the biggest countries.
Most of the respected things our parents practiced basically became useless.
Everybody starts to care less about the people around them.