7 ms·

Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up

40 points by msohcw 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
codex 13y ago
Maturation cannot occur without independence. The Great Recession has prevented independence for a large number of young people.
- philwelch 13y ago
  I don't buy it. If it was a real recession rather than a chronic shortage in marketable skills, some of these millennials wouldn't have mommies and daddies who could afford to keep them around. My dad grew up in the Depression and somehow managed to support himself from manual labor from the age of 14. Show me an unemployed hipster 20-something willing to do day labor but unable to find any. You can't find one. Maybe this "Great Recession" is an effect, and not a cause, of the fact that white Americans are increasingly too decadent to work for a fucking living.
  - secstate 13y ago
    Amen. And of course eventually we'll have something like a massive ecological disruption (or War with China) that will fuck everything up all over again and we wont have time to write asinine op-eds about "what's wrong with people" (or comment on them, pot ... kettle black). We'll be too busy digging our asses out of despair.
hindsightbias 13y ago
This is just a bot regurgitating all the mille stereotypes.
Aqueous 13y ago
Yay! Another article where the older generation shits on a younger generation. Is it possible - and this is just me talking here - that maybe our generation isn't composed of a bunch of emotional weaklings who can't bear the stress of life, but that you guys fucked it up pretty badly for us? Your self-interested conservative personal responsibility do it yourself policies bankrupted the economy because you were asleep at the switch, and now we can't find jobs. I can guarantee you that if you flip back several decades you'll find an article in Life Magazine written by some asshole asking the question "Why are the baby boomers such pussies? We fought World War II for crissake!" A load of horseshit. Life is hard. Help, you assholes.
- andyl 13y ago
  Classic butthurt!! Maybe this will help: http://bluebirdofbitterness.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/butthurt-report-form.jpg http://bluebirdofbitterness.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/butt...
- GuiA 13y ago
  The average parent's age for first child has never been higher, just like the rate of 20-somethings still living with their parents. No matter what the reasons for that are, you can't refute that it's bound to have some interesting consequences on the psychology of the 20-somethings in question.
  - sp332 13y ago
    you can't refute Actually, maybe we could, if we had some evidence, which you don't.
  - wambotron 13y ago
    I completely agree. Hell, some first-time parents are as old as many first-time grandparents.
  - Swizec 13y ago
    Average age is only up because women started child bearing later. About a hundred years ago it was common for men in their very late 20's to have finally built a life of their own and get a bride. A bride who was 16 or so because that meant she still had plenty of child bearing years ahead of her. What if men just got back to that same state, while women have joined men in this status instead of having the whole teenage pregnancy thing?
Untit1ed 13y ago
This isn't a story representative of a generation, this is a story about one messed-up 30 year old. I can't think of anyone I know who can't figure out how to do laundry and homework in one day, and I don't think it's because I'm in a circle of particularly self-sufficient Gen-Yers. Honestly, if the Onion were stuck for content they could publish this article word-for-word and I'd gladly believe it was supposed to be satire.
- was_hellbanned 13y ago
  If I understood the author correctly, she is a psychotherapist talking about people she sees professionally. So, this could just as easily be a story about how Millennials are much more willing to see a therapist for these sorts of problems than their parents' and grandparents' generations were.
  - supercanuck 13y ago
    Or maybe it is about people who are 30 and need therapy? Why generalize an entire generation? ... because, page views. I'm 32 and I HATE laundry and every single person in my age group that I have met hates it too.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  This therapist alone has seen more than 100: "Her case is becoming the norm for twenty- to thirtysomethings I see in my office as a psychotherapist. I’ve had at least 100 college and grad students like Amy crying on my couch because breaching adulthood is too overwhelming."
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    Does this have anything to do with the variance between the "expectations" that were laid out for Millennials & the reality of what actually exists. If you're brought up to follow all the rules & go to college, work 40 years and then retire & as soon as you get through the first part (follow the rules & graduate) and you can't get a job at Starbucks - life might seem a bit harder than you expected.
ecspike 13y ago
A lot of these parents are enablers. They made it ok for their overachiever kids to have no job as opposed to a job not in their field of study. I graduated during the recession of 2003-2004 which was almost as long as the Great Recession. We've been technically out of the recession for over 3 years.
wambotron 13y ago
I'm thirty but I do notice many of my coworkers and other folks my age cannot grow up. It's not even just a matter of getting a job. Most of the folks I know are still partying all the time as if they're at a high school kegger. I'm not sure of the exact cause, but I do think people having children later in life (late 30s, early 40s for many people I know) coupled with the fact that most of them are only having one child causes a bit of over-involvement and softening of parenting. There are too many "special snowflakes" who grow up and cannot handle the fact that none of us are these special creatures and you have to compete for everything you want and need to live. I think shifting blame to older generations is a result of some of these things. Yes, there have been some messed up things handed down to us, but it's nothing we can't fix. We just have to get our act together, plan things out, and work hard. Life IS hard, but it's how you respond and adapt to hardships that define you. Blaming everyone else is not going to do anything.
- Swizec 13y ago
  As a guy who has suddenly become closer to 30 than to 20: Man, partying is SO MUCH MORE FUN when you have money than when you're a broke student counting pennies. So. Much. More. Fun. The way I see it, there just isn't any valid reason for wanting to "grow up". I have never seen anyone who is happy claim they are a grown up. "Grow up" is something people who are disappointed in life say when they see you having more fun than they are.
  - vanadium 13y ago
    Growing up isn't about not partying. It isn't about being boring. It isn't about getting married and churning out children. It isn't about being "the man" in any way. It isn't about becoming a fiscal miser who doesn't enjoy his/her money, nor does it prevent you from enjoying some drinks or even your drug of choice, if that's your thing. It's about accepting and owning what's expected of you as an individual, autonomous, functioning member of society. Nothing more. Owning control of yourself. Does this mean you have to get married, have children, and stop partying? No, not at all. Does it mean you take the initiative to pay your bills on-time and hold up your end of the bargain at work, at home, in your relationships, and society in general? Absolutely. I'm in my mid-30s, and I did a lot of very hard partying clear into the twilight of my 20s well into my 30s. The money might have helped, but "growing up" made it a hell of a lot easier to enjoy those times simply because worry wasn't even on the radar knowing everything I could personally control was in check--because I made sure of it. Nobody else controls any aspect of my life that I myself can control. And yes, with wife, child, and more micro-manageable responsibilities than I could have ever imagined when I was younger, I'm a hell of a happy person. Family, friends, gadgets, code, etc, etc. What makes you grown-up isn't arbitrary; in the end, it's in fact a pretty clear line that transcends generations: Own. Your. Shit. But I'll leave the rest of the thread to conduct the typical older/younger generational ad hominems.
spodek 13y ago
It seems every generation discovers the same new problems of every generation before it. And as each earlier generation matures, it describes the new generation disparagingly. This article described the movie The Graduate, which everyone felt described a generation coming of age in the 60s. Pick other movies and books for other times. Take it far enough back and you have this quote "Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers." which sounds contemporary but dates back centuries (often attributed to Socrates, but not likely that old). It sounds contemporary in every time. I conclude things aren't suddenly getting worse -- http://joshuaspodek.com/arent-suddenly-worse http://joshuaspodek.com/arent-suddenly-worse -- which makes my life better.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Hey Josh, I actually agree with your quote - but a surprising number of your posts / comments / submissions are or have links / references to your site. That's not inherently bad (I'm not against self promotion at all), but it sort of comes across like your contribution to the site is one big promotion for your site rather than focused on the contribution to the community. Hopefully this isn't too out of line - but I thought I'd mention it as I've seen a few of your posts in the past couple of days referencing that site multiple times & realized they were all yours.
  - spodek 13y ago
    I go back and forth because I usually prefer to post on topics I like to write about, which means I've often written about them elsewhere. I try to write posts that get votes, implying the community values them, so I try to make posts that stand on their own without clicking the links but get more depth with clicking. If the material is relevant I could still leave it out, copy it, or link to it. I'll use your feedback as a data point suggesting reducing the links. I'm a fan of constructive criticism, though it feels funny doing it publicly like this.
- umsm 13y ago
joelrunyon 13y ago
Great counterpoint in the New York Times the other day on the shifting values of millenials. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/opinion/sunday/millennial-searchers.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/opinion/sunday/millennial-... This is more the extrapolation of one struggling 30 year old onto a generation rather than the symptoms of an entire group of people
acadien 13y ago
Hooray for anecdotal evidence! I even agree with some of it, but there's sweet fuck all to back up any of it. A highlight for the those of you that couldn't make it through the whole way: "A generation ago, my college peers and I would buy a pint of ice cream and down a shot of peach schnapps (or two) to process a breakup. Now some college students feel suicidal after the breakup of a four-month relationship." This shit is publishable?
- sk5t 13y ago
  In past times, people were too tough for suicide, clearly.
- xerophtye 13y ago
  Ok i din't read it all the way through so thanks for posting that. But SERIOUSLY?!?!? You know it wasn't our generation that wrote "romeo and juliet".... And i thought this was backwards now? I thought young people now care even far less for relationships and more for sex...
- djur 13y ago
  I had no idea Sylvia Plath was a millennial.
LetMeListen 13y ago
I'm 21, do not have a college degree, work for 7.50hr, and feel exactly like this with the exception that I have to deal with it on my own because I neither have the time or money to spend on therapy. I've learn to deal with things and keep it moving because no one else is going to lend you a hand unless you have something to give in return; that's how I see it anyways.
- winstonx 13y ago
  Find a friendship :-)
- neona 13y ago
  Similar situation here, my only problem is that while I am able to (barely) sustain myself, depression and similar issues are continuing to stymie what attempts I can make to better my situation. I honestly don't know what I think these days, other than that something needs to change, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm not as much of the problem as I like to tell myself.
  - LetMeListen 13y ago
    Stop thinking that. Think of yourself as the last piece of wonderful on earth and that everyone is here to compliment you, as egotistical as this sound it will boost your morale.
brianbarker 13y ago
Yet another "Millennials Suck" article. Woooptie doo. What's really going on is the Baby Boomers are getting old and they're sounding like that old Grandpa in his rocking chair bemoaning "kids these days."
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
aresant 13y ago
Things are inherently different with and for the Millennials: http://www.pewresearch.org/millennials/ http://www.pewresearch.org/millennials/ http://cew.georgetown.edu/failuretolaunch/ http://cew.georgetown.edu/failuretolaunch/ I particularly appreciate the data from PEW as it allows for contrast vs. Gen X / Boomers at the same age / place.
brisance 13y ago
This is entirely anecdotal but "Amy" could very well be my sister-in-law. Yes, she's 30. Her previous two boyfriends had the same first name and the current guy she's seeing also has the same first name. I don't think that's coincidental. I think partly my mother-in-law is to blame because of helicopter parenting and always leans on my wife (the older sister) to serve as an emotional support.
ChristianMarks 13y ago
What's wrong with contempt for authority? Is there a more appropriate target for contempt? As for lacking respect for elders, why do they deserve respect? I certainly should not have listened to my elders when I was younger. They did me no favors, and it took decades for me to stop listening to them. Now that I'm old enough to be one of them, I must say that I am supremely unimpressed.
nisa 13y ago
I fit into that description. 30. Lot's of problems related to money and discipline. No helicopter parents through. What I realize quite often when I'm talking to friends and what I hear very often when I talk to my parents is a lack of deep social connections. If you have a social circle you really like and you can count on it's far easier to organize yourself and get your stuff done. Because you learn that stuff together in your circle. You just grow faster in a group of like-minded people than fighting all the bullshit alone. Finding this social circle is pretty hard for me. If this social circle is lacking or you just does not care about you if you don't fit their worldview you are on your own. Now you are scared and desperate to to fit somewhere in. Everyone is fighting their fight alone. It's more often than not a piss-match about status and money and importance than a real friendship. The partying is the illusion of this social circle that you want to keep in your life. If you drop this you'll have to face that you are totally alone and nobody gives a fuck about you. If I talk to my parents or grandparents I realize that they still meet with their colleagues from school or university or old jobs. If you don't function now nobody cares. Old friendships just vanish. This may be my problem. I'm not sure. Maybe I'm an loner or idiot. But there is a difference in comparison to earlier generations and most people I know or talk to feel pretty alone very often.
od2m 13y ago
I think millennials are simply on the verge of realizing that the American dream they've been sold is a lie, and they don't know what to do. Meanwhile the older generations are screaming at them "Pay for my medicare and medicaid that won't be there for you! Pay taxes to pay my state funded pension! I don't care that you cant afford a home, or medical care, or college! I don't care that we outsourced your jobs and that you can't make enough money to be poor!"
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
People keep looking for that magical ONE reason why everything is the way it is. It's NOT just 1 cause of these problem, it's numerous. The Job Market - Automated and outsourced jobs have limited workplace opportunities over the decades. From all the older folks I talk to, they mention how much easier it was to get a job and how many jobs there were back when they were young compared to today. The Money - Inflation has made the price of everything more expensive, yet most wages have relatively stayed the same. So I'm getting payed the same amount yet the price of everything around me is getting higher. I feel like I can't ever catch up. Growing up and Relationships - Almost every single friend I have ever had has divorced parents. The rare few whose parents are still married are miserable. Is this what awaits me? Find love, start a family, be miserable? Growing up is extremely discouraging when you can see the terrible results of "growing up" all around you. I don't want to hate the person I love. I'm afraid of finding a spouse because I've seen what happens when others do. It's like walking down a dark alley covered in others' blood, and every time you turn around to run away a sea of voices taunt you with "stop being a pussy! grow up and go down the dark alley like we did". I don't want to go down a road knowing there's something bad at the end. Sorry. Work Hard/Don't work hard Paradox - It pisses me off when I hear someone say "kids these days don't work hard enough!" and "Go to college so you can get a good job in an office somewhere and not doing manual labor" in the same conversation. This one is just confusing. Which is it? When I get a job working hard I'm looked down upon by peers because I don't work at Google or Facebook. I'm looked down upon by my parents because the job doesn't have dental and health and 40 hours a week and $20/hour. Hard working jobs do not pay well because they're so plentiful and there's a lot of people trying to get hired. So the prices are crap. America's Greed Problem: You cannot tell me you don't see it. From the bank bailouts, to the behavior of the car companies that needed to be bailed out, to outsourcing jobs, to the housing market (caused by people buying up homes, barely doing work on them, and flipping them to the next sucker) it feels like America's collective goal is to #1) create as shitty of a product as possible and sell it at the highest price possible and #2) find the most efficient and legal way to fuck people over. My parents worked so hard to buy the crappy house we have now at 7 times the price of a house in Bulgaria, and still it's always falling apart and needs maintenance while homes in Bulgaria are built like a rock, out of brick and cement, more energy efficient, and cost less. Extremist Politics: It feels like the liberal and conservative parties have gone to more and more polarizing extremes to differentiate themselves and counter-balance the other party's philosophies. This has turned into 2 parties that don't listen and don't think but instead react using old traditionally memorized values. When looking at Republicans and Democrats, they've all but stopped "thinking" about each problem that faces the nation and instead throw their "blanket solutions" over whatever problem comes their way. If one party were truly better than the other, we would have kept them in power permanently. Instead we switch parties every decade or so. This political environment isn't getting problems solved. It's not giving me hope for a better future. And it sucks that my only choices every few years are between people who are either hard working but backwards thinking or people who are educated but lazy and bureaucratic. Oh and the best part: Every 4 years I get to pick a president from 2 unproven daydreamers with unrealistic promises. For me personally, I don't want to grow up because I don't see the payoff in growing up. I know watching my parents abuse themselves by overworking only to come home and be tired and miserable isn't much of a motivation. And the response from others has always been "well that's life you lazy p.o.s.". People don't even know me yet they call me lazy. I've worked outdoors, in warehouses, in tree removal, at theme parks. I've had really hard manual labor jobs. I can assure you I'm a hard worker and not "lazy". People will work hard but there has to be a payoff, that's how all games work. And when the game of life doesn't come with its rewards, people don't want to play anymore. Even the makers of Farmville knew that.
joelrunyon 13y ago
Related (humorous) video: Millennials: We Suck and We're Sorry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4IjTUxZORE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4IjTUxZORE

40 points by msohcw 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

codex 13y ago

Maturation cannot occur without independence. The Great Recession has prevented independence for a large number of young people.

philwelch 13y ago
I don't buy it. If it was a real recession rather than a chronic shortage in marketable skills, some of these millennials wouldn't have mommies and daddies who could afford to keep them around. My dad grew up in the Depression and somehow managed to support himself from manual labor from the age of 14. Show me an unemployed hipster 20-something willing to do day labor but unable to find any. You can't find one. Maybe this "Great Recession" is an effect, and not a cause, of the fact that white Americans are increasingly too decadent to work for a fucking living.
- secstate 13y ago
  Amen. And of course eventually we'll have something like a massive ecological disruption (or War with China) that will fuck everything up all over again and we wont have time to write asinine op-eds about "what's wrong with people" (or comment on them, pot ... kettle black). We'll be too busy digging our asses out of despair.

hindsightbias 13y ago

This is just a bot regurgitating all the mille stereotypes.

Aqueous 13y ago

Yay! Another article where the older generation shits on a younger generation. Is it possible - and this is just me talking here - that maybe our generation isn't composed of a bunch of emotional weaklings who can't bear the stress of life, but that you guys fucked it up pretty badly for us? Your self-interested conservative personal responsibility do it yourself policies bankrupted the economy because you were asleep at the switch, and now we can't find jobs. I can guarantee you that if you flip back several decades you'll find an article in Life Magazine written by some asshole asking the question "Why are the baby boomers such pussies? We fought World War II for crissake!" A load of horseshit. Life is hard. Help, you assholes.

andyl 13y ago
Classic butthurt!! Maybe this will help: http://bluebirdofbitterness.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/butthurt-report-form.jpg http://bluebirdofbitterness.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/butt...
GuiA 13y ago
The average parent's age for first child has never been higher, just like the rate of 20-somethings still living with their parents. No matter what the reasons for that are, you can't refute that it's bound to have some interesting consequences on the psychology of the 20-somethings in question.
- sp332 13y ago
  you can't refute Actually, maybe we could, if we had some evidence, which you don't.
- wambotron 13y ago
  I completely agree. Hell, some first-time parents are as old as many first-time grandparents.
- Swizec 13y ago
  Average age is only up because women started child bearing later. About a hundred years ago it was common for men in their very late 20's to have finally built a life of their own and get a bride. A bride who was 16 or so because that meant she still had plenty of child bearing years ahead of her. What if men just got back to that same state, while women have joined men in this status instead of having the whole teenage pregnancy thing?

Untit1ed 13y ago

This isn't a story representative of a generation, this is a story about one messed-up 30 year old. I can't think of anyone I know who can't figure out how to do laundry and homework in one day, and I don't think it's because I'm in a circle of particularly self-sufficient Gen-Yers. Honestly, if the Onion were stuck for content they could publish this article word-for-word and I'd gladly believe it was supposed to be satire.

was_hellbanned 13y ago
If I understood the author correctly, she is a psychotherapist talking about people she sees professionally. So, this could just as easily be a story about how Millennials are much more willing to see a therapist for these sorts of problems than their parents' and grandparents' generations were.
- supercanuck 13y ago
  Or maybe it is about people who are 30 and need therapy? Why generalize an entire generation? ... because, page views. I'm 32 and I HATE laundry and every single person in my age group that I have met hates it too.
greenyoda 13y ago
This therapist alone has seen more than 100: "Her case is becoming the norm for twenty- to thirtysomethings I see in my office as a psychotherapist. I’ve had at least 100 college and grad students like Amy crying on my couch because breaching adulthood is too overwhelming."
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Does this have anything to do with the variance between the "expectations" that were laid out for Millennials & the reality of what actually exists. If you're brought up to follow all the rules & go to college, work 40 years and then retire & as soon as you get through the first part (follow the rules & graduate) and you can't get a job at Starbucks - life might seem a bit harder than you expected.

ecspike 13y ago

A lot of these parents are enablers. They made it ok for their overachiever kids to have no job as opposed to a job not in their field of study. I graduated during the recession of 2003-2004 which was almost as long as the Great Recession. We've been technically out of the recession for over 3 years.

wambotron 13y ago

I'm thirty but I do notice many of my coworkers and other folks my age cannot grow up. It's not even just a matter of getting a job. Most of the folks I know are still partying all the time as if they're at a high school kegger. I'm not sure of the exact cause, but I do think people having children later in life (late 30s, early 40s for many people I know) coupled with the fact that most of them are only having one child causes a bit of over-involvement and softening of parenting. There are too many "special snowflakes" who grow up and cannot handle the fact that none of us are these special creatures and you have to compete for everything you want and need to live. I think shifting blame to older generations is a result of some of these things. Yes, there have been some messed up things handed down to us, but it's nothing we can't fix. We just have to get our act together, plan things out, and work hard. Life IS hard, but it's how you respond and adapt to hardships that define you. Blaming everyone else is not going to do anything.

Swizec 13y ago
As a guy who has suddenly become closer to 30 than to 20: Man, partying is SO MUCH MORE FUN when you have money than when you're a broke student counting pennies. So. Much. More. Fun. The way I see it, there just isn't any valid reason for wanting to "grow up". I have never seen anyone who is happy claim they are a grown up. "Grow up" is something people who are disappointed in life say when they see you having more fun than they are.
- vanadium 13y ago
  Growing up isn't about not partying. It isn't about being boring. It isn't about getting married and churning out children. It isn't about being "the man" in any way. It isn't about becoming a fiscal miser who doesn't enjoy his/her money, nor does it prevent you from enjoying some drinks or even your drug of choice, if that's your thing. It's about accepting and owning what's expected of you as an individual, autonomous, functioning member of society. Nothing more. Owning control of yourself. Does this mean you have to get married, have children, and stop partying? No, not at all. Does it mean you take the initiative to pay your bills on-time and hold up your end of the bargain at work, at home, in your relationships, and society in general? Absolutely. I'm in my mid-30s, and I did a lot of very hard partying clear into the twilight of my 20s well into my 30s. The money might have helped, but "growing up" made it a hell of a lot easier to enjoy those times simply because worry wasn't even on the radar knowing everything I could personally control was in check--because I made sure of it. Nobody else controls any aspect of my life that I myself can control. And yes, with wife, child, and more micro-manageable responsibilities than I could have ever imagined when I was younger, I'm a hell of a happy person. Family, friends, gadgets, code, etc, etc. What makes you grown-up isn't arbitrary; in the end, it's in fact a pretty clear line that transcends generations: Own. Your. Shit. But I'll leave the rest of the thread to conduct the typical older/younger generational ad hominems.

spodek 13y ago

It seems every generation discovers the same new problems of every generation before it. And as each earlier generation matures, it describes the new generation disparagingly. This article described the movie The Graduate, which everyone felt described a generation coming of age in the 60s. Pick other movies and books for other times. Take it far enough back and you have this quote "Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers." which sounds contemporary but dates back centuries (often attributed to Socrates, but not likely that old). It sounds contemporary in every time. I conclude things aren't suddenly getting worse -- http://joshuaspodek.com/arent-suddenly-worse http://joshuaspodek.com/arent-suddenly-worse -- which makes my life better.

joelrunyon 13y ago
Hey Josh, I actually agree with your quote - but a surprising number of your posts / comments / submissions are or have links / references to your site. That's not inherently bad (I'm not against self promotion at all), but it sort of comes across like your contribution to the site is one big promotion for your site rather than focused on the contribution to the community. Hopefully this isn't too out of line - but I thought I'd mention it as I've seen a few of your posts in the past couple of days referencing that site multiple times & realized they were all yours.
- spodek 13y ago
  I go back and forth because I usually prefer to post on topics I like to write about, which means I've often written about them elsewhere. I try to write posts that get votes, implying the community values them, so I try to make posts that stand on their own without clicking the links but get more depth with clicking. If the material is relevant I could still leave it out, copy it, or link to it. I'll use your feedback as a data point suggesting reducing the links. I'm a fan of constructive criticism, though it feels funny doing it publicly like this.
umsm 13y ago

joelrunyon 13y ago

Great counterpoint in the New York Times the other day on the shifting values of millenials. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/opinion/sunday/millennial-searchers.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/opinion/sunday/millennial-... This is more the extrapolation of one struggling 30 year old onto a generation rather than the symptoms of an entire group of people

acadien 13y ago

Hooray for anecdotal evidence! I even agree with some of it, but there's sweet fuck all to back up any of it. A highlight for the those of you that couldn't make it through the whole way: "A generation ago, my college peers and I would buy a pint of ice cream and down a shot of peach schnapps (or two) to process a breakup. Now some college students feel suicidal after the breakup of a four-month relationship." This shit is publishable?

sk5t 13y ago
In past times, people were too tough for suicide, clearly.
xerophtye 13y ago
Ok i din't read it all the way through so thanks for posting that. But SERIOUSLY?!?!? You know it wasn't our generation that wrote "romeo and juliet".... And i thought this was backwards now? I thought young people now care even far less for relationships and more for sex...
djur 13y ago
I had no idea Sylvia Plath was a millennial.

LetMeListen 13y ago

I'm 21, do not have a college degree, work for 7.50hr, and feel exactly like this with the exception that I have to deal with it on my own because I neither have the time or money to spend on therapy. I've learn to deal with things and keep it moving because no one else is going to lend you a hand unless you have something to give in return; that's how I see it anyways.

winstonx 13y ago
Find a friendship :-)
neona 13y ago
Similar situation here, my only problem is that while I am able to (barely) sustain myself, depression and similar issues are continuing to stymie what attempts I can make to better my situation. I honestly don't know what I think these days, other than that something needs to change, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm not as much of the problem as I like to tell myself.
- LetMeListen 13y ago
  Stop thinking that. Think of yourself as the last piece of wonderful on earth and that everyone is here to compliment you, as egotistical as this sound it will boost your morale.

brianbarker 13y ago

Yet another "Millennials Suck" article. Woooptie doo. What's really going on is the Baby Boomers are getting old and they're sounding like that old Grandpa in his rocking chair bemoaning "kids these days."

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

aresant 13y ago

Things are inherently different with and for the Millennials: http://www.pewresearch.org/millennials/ http://www.pewresearch.org/millennials/ http://cew.georgetown.edu/failuretolaunch/ http://cew.georgetown.edu/failuretolaunch/ I particularly appreciate the data from PEW as it allows for contrast vs. Gen X / Boomers at the same age / place.

brisance 13y ago

This is entirely anecdotal but "Amy" could very well be my sister-in-law. Yes, she's 30. Her previous two boyfriends had the same first name and the current guy she's seeing also has the same first name. I don't think that's coincidental. I think partly my mother-in-law is to blame because of helicopter parenting and always leans on my wife (the older sister) to serve as an emotional support.

ChristianMarks 13y ago

What's wrong with contempt for authority? Is there a more appropriate target for contempt? As for lacking respect for elders, why do they deserve respect? I certainly should not have listened to my elders when I was younger. They did me no favors, and it took decades for me to stop listening to them. Now that I'm old enough to be one of them, I must say that I am supremely unimpressed.

nisa 13y ago

I fit into that description. 30. Lot's of problems related to money and discipline. No helicopter parents through. What I realize quite often when I'm talking to friends and what I hear very often when I talk to my parents is a lack of deep social connections. If you have a social circle you really like and you can count on it's far easier to organize yourself and get your stuff done. Because you learn that stuff together in your circle. You just grow faster in a group of like-minded people than fighting all the bullshit alone. Finding this social circle is pretty hard for me. If this social circle is lacking or you just does not care about you if you don't fit their worldview you are on your own. Now you are scared and desperate to to fit somewhere in. Everyone is fighting their fight alone. It's more often than not a piss-match about status and money and importance than a real friendship. The partying is the illusion of this social circle that you want to keep in your life. If you drop this you'll have to face that you are totally alone and nobody gives a fuck about you. If I talk to my parents or grandparents I realize that they still meet with their colleagues from school or university or old jobs. If you don't function now nobody cares. Old friendships just vanish. This may be my problem. I'm not sure. Maybe I'm an loner or idiot. But there is a difference in comparison to earlier generations and most people I know or talk to feel pretty alone very often.

od2m 13y ago

I think millennials are simply on the verge of realizing that the American dream they've been sold is a lie, and they don't know what to do. Meanwhile the older generations are screaming at them "Pay for my medicare and medicaid that won't be there for you! Pay taxes to pay my state funded pension! I don't care that you cant afford a home, or medical care, or college! I don't care that we outsourced your jobs and that you can't make enough money to be poor!"

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

People keep looking for that magical ONE reason why everything is the way it is. It's NOT just 1 cause of these problem, it's numerous. The Job Market - Automated and outsourced jobs have limited workplace opportunities over the decades. From all the older folks I talk to, they mention how much easier it was to get a job and how many jobs there were back when they were young compared to today. The Money - Inflation has made the price of everything more expensive, yet most wages have relatively stayed the same. So I'm getting payed the same amount yet the price of everything around me is getting higher. I feel like I can't ever catch up. Growing up and Relationships - Almost every single friend I have ever had has divorced parents. The rare few whose parents are still married are miserable. Is this what awaits me? Find love, start a family, be miserable? Growing up is extremely discouraging when you can see the terrible results of "growing up" all around you. I don't want to hate the person I love. I'm afraid of finding a spouse because I've seen what happens when others do. It's like walking down a dark alley covered in others' blood, and every time you turn around to run away a sea of voices taunt you with "stop being a pussy! grow up and go down the dark alley like we did". I don't want to go down a road knowing there's something bad at the end. Sorry. Work Hard/Don't work hard Paradox - It pisses me off when I hear someone say "kids these days don't work hard enough!" and "Go to college so you can get a good job in an office somewhere and not doing manual labor" in the same conversation. This one is just confusing. Which is it? When I get a job working hard I'm looked down upon by peers because I don't work at Google or Facebook. I'm looked down upon by my parents because the job doesn't have dental and health and 40 hours a week and $20/hour. Hard working jobs do not pay well because they're so plentiful and there's a lot of people trying to get hired. So the prices are crap. America's Greed Problem: You cannot tell me you don't see it. From the bank bailouts, to the behavior of the car companies that needed to be bailed out, to outsourcing jobs, to the housing market (caused by people buying up homes, barely doing work on them, and flipping them to the next sucker) it feels like America's collective goal is to #1) create as shitty of a product as possible and sell it at the highest price possible and #2) find the most efficient and legal way to fuck people over. My parents worked so hard to buy the crappy house we have now at 7 times the price of a house in Bulgaria, and still it's always falling apart and needs maintenance while homes in Bulgaria are built like a rock, out of brick and cement, more energy efficient, and cost less. Extremist Politics: It feels like the liberal and conservative parties have gone to more and more polarizing extremes to differentiate themselves and counter-balance the other party's philosophies. This has turned into 2 parties that don't listen and don't think but instead react using old traditionally memorized values. When looking at Republicans and Democrats, they've all but stopped "thinking" about each problem that faces the nation and instead throw their "blanket solutions" over whatever problem comes their way. If one party were truly better than the other, we would have kept them in power permanently. Instead we switch parties every decade or so. This political environment isn't getting problems solved. It's not giving me hope for a better future. And it sucks that my only choices every few years are between people who are either hard working but backwards thinking or people who are educated but lazy and bureaucratic. Oh and the best part: Every 4 years I get to pick a president from 2 unproven daydreamers with unrealistic promises. For me personally, I don't want to grow up because I don't see the payoff in growing up. I know watching my parents abuse themselves by overworking only to come home and be tired and miserable isn't much of a motivation. And the response from others has always been "well that's life you lazy p.o.s.". People don't even know me yet they call me lazy. I've worked outdoors, in warehouses, in tree removal, at theme parks. I've had really hard manual labor jobs. I can assure you I'm a hard worker and not "lazy". People will work hard but there has to be a payoff, that's how all games work. And when the game of life doesn't come with its rewards, people don't want to play anymore. Even the makers of Farmville knew that.

joelrunyon 13y ago

Related (humorous) video: Millennials: We Suck and We're Sorry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4IjTUxZORE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4IjTUxZORE