today I read a rather silly article on millennials (which I'm apparently a part of) and it just talked about how self absorbed and negative they are. I didn't even know that term existed but it does and just because a certain amount of people were born around a certain time they fit into that term. One of the things that got me thinking was that the article said "most millennials only care about personal branding and call themselves individuals." I guess us writers fit into that! I mean, I do consider myself an individual because aren't we all? I also care very much about my writing as it does shape who I truly am. The article said "anyone between the ages 18 and 30 only care about how they are perceived by others. They work on building their ideal selves hoping that others will see them as they see themselves." Do you think that is true? If you are under 30 and if any of that applies to you, do you think that is a negative thing? What are your thoughts on this in general? Us writers are quiet people who love to fly off the radar. Do you think most people excluding us writers are like that? It's a silly post indeed but it had me thinking!
Alex, every generation will get certain qualities ascribed to it. It's natural. I'm Gen-X. You used to be Gen-Y, but then your generation got renamed millennials.
I'm going to have to tacitly agree with the article. Comparing myself at that tender age to a good portion of today's younger generation, we weren't nearly so obsessed with... self. We were also more optimistic (naive), about our futures. The other thing I've noticed, is that this younger generation live very fractured lives. When it comes to learning a craft or any subject seem less able to dedicate body and soul to it. When I'm in artistic mode, it never leaves me no matter what I'm doing. Thankfully, I've found someone on this site who shares that fearless approach to imagining and creating. It's a good kind of scary when you start with a foggy idea for a story, and see it materialize in front of your eyes. Writing, or for that matter any artistic discipline shouldn't be a solitary pursuit, nor should you labor quietly at it.
Yes when I said writing is a solitary work i don't mean I keep it to myself. I do ask for beta reads and I have been submitting to as much journals as I can. I try to be quite open about it but as a person with a very quiet and solitary personality I do tend to detach myself from the world (at least the majority of it) when writing. I love that you can keep that mode with you. Most of us writers can't quite live off of our work and need a day job. It's good to draw the line and don't take your day job home with you.
The most glaring quality I've noticed about millennials (particularly younger millennials) is their propensity to follow rules and particularly order. They're very civil, surprisingly timid (obviously extremely PC), and I would say they are actually less egocentric in the sense that they are not bursting with confidence at all. You're not going to get into a fight in the middle of the street with a young stereotypical millennial. They're actually a rather boring bunch.
How insulting to be lumped in with group. I find that those younger than me are quite empty in the noggin, obsessed with their iphone/social media junk (now to be fair I don't mean all of them, just a vast majority). They come off as shallow and short attention spanned. Though this could be just where I am, and that the people around here are hit or miss depending on who you bump into. Also I have become rather jaded as a result of being single and divorced for a little of 3 years now, on top of becoming somewhat of a recluse that speaks with you guys on the forum as there is nothing for a person like me to do where I am at where I can interact with people of any degree of interest to me. So I guess you can say that I have a strong distaste for the 'millenial' generation that I happen to be lumped in with. Granted I am way closer to 30, and going to be more jaded as a result of being stuck in the crap situation that I have been placed. So my opinion will stay firm, unless it can be proven otherwise.
I used to have this opinion of those younger who share the same technical generation. I'm twenty-six. So toward the older end of the generation. But when I went back to college a couple years ago, I met some really smart interesting kids. In my first class back in school, there was this seventeen-year-old kid whom I thought was going to be totally full of shit. Turns out, he was super grounded, intelligent, and hard-working. The internet seems to paint them all with the same brush, but I've found the variance to be as wide as any other group of people. Now, I'm actually quite hopeful for the future based on the people I've met. Granted this is a small sample, but the kids I've interacted with have totally changed my opinion.
Well I'm one of the dreaded Baby Boomers, so I'm quite a distance away! But I really dislike the way these terms, like Millennials and Baby Boomers get used to downgrade a whole generation. We all have our strengths and our problems to solve. I don't hang out with 'Millenials' to any extent, but the few I do know are really nice folks. And many of them were politicially active during the Scottish independence referendum, and worked their butts off for it. AND were willing to do all the hard work, and still keep going after defeat. They have a lot of grit, in my opinion. One of our best and most admired young MPs was still at University when she was elected. Mhairi Black. She's fantastic. The only thing I would be cautious about, when it comes to that generation, is their reliance on constantly being 'connected' via the internet, and their inability to function for very long without their phones. This obsession is not specific to that group of people, but they are probably the first generation to be raised with this as more or less a constant in their lives. I'd say put the phones down and live in the moment a lot more often than you do. But other than that ...carry on and be yourselves and enjoy your 'time.' And for heaven's sake, help us dig out of this mess we're in.
i agree with @Spencer1990. i'm on the front end of the millenial generation, turning 30 in a few weeks. i work at our local university, and while some students make me go "wow, you have a lot to learn," there are so many others who remind me that the vast majority of our generation isn't doomed. my biggest realization as a millenial is that i have a very difficult time focusing, and my attention span is extremely limited. i daydream a lot; some of my best ideas occur via a lapse in focus during my regular work day. i slide away from reality entirely too easily, and i suppose you could say that gives me a creative advantage. BUT, that also means that when it comes time to put my nose to the grindstone i can struggle to move forward. our instant gratification culture has molded us (or at least me) in to workers with very little discipline. As for the part about caring only what others think... i can see the validity in that. i recently made a comment in another subforum about how i rely on how others perceive me, and that i think it's something I feel i need to change. caring too much about what other people think about me has kept me from taking meaningful action in my life. my recent decision to try writing a book is my impetus to learn about accepting criticism without taking it so deeply to heart that I flame out and quit. with the prevalence of social media, i think that we millenials definitely care too much what others think of us, and in my opinion it's not a good thing.
It amazes me that otherwise intelligent people can put any stock whatsoever in these labels. Generalising based on age is precisely as silly as generalising based on anything else; race, gender, (dis)ability.
I think there's a grain of truth to the labels. People born and raised during the same time frame, effected by the same sort of policies / cultural views, world events (like 9/11), or technology ("smart" phones) will be more likely to have similar shaping experiences. These are very influential during the years where your mind is developing. I hate most people my age, and I'm a millennial. The PC culture they all seem to be a part of is what gets me, and the easy obedience to authority. They've been raised in a "participation award" environment that pampers them, and they feel entitled to things without putting in the work for it. The important part to remember, is to still give them the benefit of the doubt. Let them make a first impression. Some of them are just fine.
How many 'millennials' in this thread alone have said they dislike their alleged generation mates? Does that not key you into the idea that you're not unique in your distaste for the image of them, and therefore that the image being rallied against isn't real? People have always seen the downfall of humanity around the corner, and they've never been right yet. People born in the nineties are no different to people born in the forties; it's your perception of them that's different. If mobile phones had been invented in the 60s, my grandmother's generation would be the ones that had whined about them, and my mother's would be the ones denounced for staring at the screens all day. If older people had been brought up with the technology we have today, they'd be no different.
Yeah, nobody's blaming anybody for what technology gives and takes away. But it is an influence on every generation. When I was growing up, our home was the ONLY one I knew of that didn't have a TV. I mean ...that was in the 1950s, and everybody else had one. Except us. I felt very hard done by, I can assure you. (My mother thought TV was a waste of time ...and to some extent I think she was right. I didn't then, though.) My friends all developed the need for TV, and also the ability to watch it and do something else at the same time. Me? I never developed a need for it (and now that I have it, I don't watch it very often) but absolutely cannot do something else while watching a show. It's still a novelty to me. If somebody speaks to me, I don't hear them. I am totally engrossed in the show. If I'm not, I usually just walk away. I love my computer, and hate when my internet goes off outwith my control. However, I take frequent breaks from it, and when I go on holiday I don't take the internet with me at all. I don't own a smartphone. So I think part of me still languishes back when we didn't have a TV and everybody else did. I don't feel deprived, I feel lucky. I've had my feet in all the worlds.
It's good that you don't feel as though you were deprived, I can respect that. I find it harder to respect it, though, when people take the absence of technology and turn it into a virtue. I've seen that a fair bit around here lately, and to say it annoys me is the understatement of the decade. Be content with what you have, rather than building a superiority complex. Realise that, just as you're not part of the sterotyped mass of 'generation blahblah', neither is anyone else.
To look at it from a different perspective, I think the whole hated "millennials" label has risen out of the fact that the older generation has full access as an audience. Before social media, people my age, (oh, god, do I have to say it?) closer to forty, would have been too busy to know the inner thoughts, struggles, and whines of another generation. They would have been insulated in their own worlds of careers, relationships, children, and, unless they were in education, they would have gone on without knowing how people in their twenties naturally focus on themselves, who they want to be, and how others perceive them.
I agree that this kind of generalization isn't really useful. Sure, there are environmental factors shared by all millenials, but there are so many other environmental factors that aren't shared. Social class, geographic location, health, birth order, family structure/functionality/traditions, religion, height, beauty or lack thereof, early experience, etc. etc. If you're a marketer or someone else dealing with data in the aggregate, maybe it makes sense to look at generational labels (maybe). But looking for a correlation between something as nebulous as creativity and something as limited as year of birth? I think you may as well look at horoscopes.
I quite enjoy the whole nastiness element... ....the way 'baby-boomers' sat on their fat asses, smoked pot, counted the dollars amassed on their many mortgages, the cruise holidays - one long slick of shit through the Arctic, meanwhile their parents were war heroes. They disgust me almost as much as this new 'generation snowflake,' spoon-fed their entire lives, without even the wits to drive a car, or fill out the unemployment benefit pro-forma, or masturbate without a facebook tutorial, probably. At least Generation X, we had Nirvana, and also that film Clerks - wasn't that about me? 'Trainspotting' - the book/movie - that was me too. I am so angry.
I'm "True Romance," The Beastie Boys, and seeing the Challenger explosion live in my school cafeteria.
Milennials can't create their way out of a paper bag. That's why Hollywood is so desperate to cling onto 80's and 90's franchises. New Powerpuff girls became crap. Simpsons became crap. Music became crap. Art became crap.
Listen Phil - understand I squeezed out my own little millennial and he's doing jus fine. Yeah, okay - he lives on my face, plays his goddam guitar 25 hours a day: 'The new voice of folk music,' he says. 'I'm sure you are, son,' I cry, and bring him another cup of tea. 'What time shall I tidy your bedroom?' I say, and also I say, 'hey, hey sonny, you know these things, they call them women, how 'bout you get one? Remember Tamagotchi, it's all the same business...then me, mom, we could run away...' 'Them bitches. Have you heard about the new men's movement, Daddy? And Daddy, can I get you something off the darkweb, daddy, see you through to pay day?' 'What, no, no, no, no drugs, please, and no more, no more of the bitches, think peaches my boy. Don't you love a peach?' 'Feed me, FEED ME, gnom, gnom, gnom...'
