Are the Millennials really the Me generation?

Relevant

This song really speaks to my generation.

Good song, though I liked 'Captain Jack' better but it isn't on the more recent releases of that album.

I don't think so. For background, I'm in pretty much the same boat as Tuefel, having been a start of the 80s kid in that period of a few years that no one quite knows how to define as belonging to what generation, and came along just in time to see a lot of the US infrastructure and society fraying at the edges as I came of age.

The big, seemingly intractable problems in society were not created by millennials, even though it's become in vogue within the last year or two to blame them for everything. As a ridiculous example, there was an article I saw awhile ago asking if the instant gratification bug and self-centeredness of millennials was the reason why you have situations like stores open on almost every holiday, or operating at 2AM on Black Friday.

Uh... no. Unlike their elders, millennials have fuck all buying power, (so even if they want to change the hours those stores are open, they'd get laughed at) they're not the executives who decide to screw decency in the name of chasing a buck, and in most cases, they're the ones working those miserable shifts in those lousy stores, and would love it if the stores were opening at 8 or 9 AM instead of dragging them away from their families at ridiculous hours to work for subsistence wages. (Also, here's a hint: millennials do their shopping largely online, not in person. It's a thing that happened when you weren't paying attention, mainstream media. It's part of why malls are not doing so well these days.)

Yeah millennials take a lot of pictures of themselves. Because, you know, nobody ever took pictures in front of famous skylines or monuments before. The only difference is now they can do it themselves instead of asking someone else to take a picture of them, and everyone has a camera because the camera in your phone is a lot easier to carry than the bulky and awkward bundles of the old style cameras.

But selfies are so much more selfish and greedy than the greatest hits of the boomers, like outsourcing, predatory loans, college price/degree inflation, getting behind racist dog whistles (welfare queens driving Cadillacs) to justify fucking over the poor and needy, refusing to treat the mentally ill and throwing them into the streets, turning medicine, news and science into strictly for-profit ventures with corporate sponsors/overlords, destroying unions and blue collar labor/manufacturing, using public money to underwrite multi-billion dollar international corporations and then declaring that it would be unforgivable socialism (*dramatic grasp*) to actually tax their profits, etc.

Millennials have their problems and flaws, but being some radically selfish/self-centered Me generation tearing apart the fabric of American society with their vanity isn't one of them. All that shit that we're reaping came from seeds planted before the Millennials ever came along.

those are some fair points however our generation does have one thing that the previous on didn't have and that is the internet's ability to transfer information at high speeds.

edited 25th Sep '15 10:01:24 PM by GAP

You do realise that you're not the first generation to grow up digital, right? You're second gen.

Which means somebody else laid the rules of trolling and chat down when modems were still pretty dodgy.

X-gen and Y-gen: say thank you. We got shat on, too, for this — finding things out we didn't learn in schools or libraries, using cheap cameras "irresponsibly" — the works. :/ It might not have been as high speed, but all the foundations are there.

If any of us lot grouse at you for these things... remind us who came up with ASCII pictures of embarrassment during their weekends...

edited 25th Sep '15 11:37:07 PM by Euodiachloris

I work as a government archivist, and I must say it has crossed my mind, and the minds of others in my profession, just how different our job'll be in the future, given the ways people document themselves today. In some ways, the current generation will be the best documented one ever, in others they'll be abysmally underrepresented. Nobody keeps emails or texts (except for professional reasons), and certainly not tweets, and other than email, most people don't really correspond at all.

We take more pictures not just because of greater access but because it costs nothing now. When I was a small fry, 35mm was still the standard (I had a 110 once too), so I recognize that before our generation, taking pictures was costly delayed gratification. You took pictures that mattered because you wouldn't get to see how they turned out until a few dollars and days or weeks later.

Isn't the Library of Congress archiving all public tweets?

edited 27th Sep '15 12:13:29 PM by TParadox

Ever improving quality cameras in digital has certainly helped photographers of every stripe from casual snappers to professional photographers. Better yet those same cameras allow you to see how your shot turned out, take as many shots as a memory device can hold, and any number of digital tricks that has made them the now preferred cameras over film.

I kid you not modern cellphone cameras are good enough now to be used as part of a missiles image guidance package.

The sheer amount of data that can be transferred around the world at a moments notice is truly astounding. Turn around times for events can measured in minutes or seconds and just about everyone has access to a camera now because they are standard on our common gadgets.

edited 5th Oct '15 3:45:50 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Millennials are stupid selfish immature kids who just won't shut up and be happy to work in grossly unfair conditions to let the previous generations keep enjoying their overinflated standards and egos. Seriously, how much of a shithead do you have to be?!?!

Lol.

@Cozzer

I am not that immature. <_< >_>

edited 5th Oct '15 5:13:17 PM by GAP

...now I can't understand if you're sarcastic or you didn't notice I was. :P

I was trying to be funny.

Comically Missing the Point joke pretty much. Kinda sad how in this day and age you can't tell if people are making jokes or being serious about things...

edited 7th Oct '15 2:31:08 AM by Bleddyn

Over the internet it can be tricky. No visual cues from body language and no tonal hints from vocals. Contrary to popular belief it takes a fair bit of effort to clearly communicate via the internet sometimes.

Using emojis and overt written cues helps a lot. Something the millennial got a crash course in but the generations behind us are likely a lot better off with doing then previous generations.

I mean, I feel like having a cartoon pictogram of hundreds of concepts is rather much (I'm 27 and shaking my cane at the neighborhood kids), but I'll use a smile, wink, or frown to get a point across.

My mother bought me a couple of OMG Shakespeare books, the ones that translate plays into emojiis and textspeak. I'm probably exactly the right age for it, if not a little old. I understand it very well, but it's an annoying way to communicate.

edited 7th Oct '15 8:23:15 PM by TParadox

It does seem a bit odd but sometimes even the text based Emoji's can convey a surprising amount of info in a short amount of characters.

It's when they start getting complex it starts getting weird. Like this one ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ A personal fav. Almost a language unto itself like talking in acronyms.

Or using pictures and words to convey something. Like comics. For example my Parable Parable comic in my profile.

I consider "Emojii" to refer to a unicode character specifically created as a pictogram (usually substituted with a color graphic), while "emoticon" is still the term for ones built with preexisting characters.

Whatever works. I have seen them used interchangeably.

I feel like an old man even when I am only 27 at this time.

At first I thought Emojii was a brand name for the most popular software, then I found out they were adding pictograms to Unicode and that's what it's supposed to refer to.

I feel old and I am only 18.

Then again my parents constantly pressuring me to the point of occasional breakdowns and my insomniac tendacies don't really help. I look younger then I am but I certainly don't feel that way sometimes mentally and even physically....

Most of my feeling like an old man is mostly mental as I realize how out of touch I am with with the things of internet and real life. Wow, the years went by fast and I feel as though I didn't do anything yet.

I don't familiarize myself with most celebrities nor internet sensations. I find myself very frustrated when a topic like that pops up as I wish I could participate but I can't because it's about something that I don't really care for.

Not really sure if I dodged a bullet there or not. But then again memes and internet hits get really annoying real fast let alone people who act like they know celebrities personally just because they read shit about em.

edited 11th Oct '15 10:04:46 PM by Bleddyn