One of the dullest preoccupations of our time is the endless Millennial Bashing that goes on online. Usually arriving over Facebook in the form of a meme or a video of some reputable speaker that everyone else has heard of, a Millennial Bash usually refers to kids on their cellphones who do nothing but scroll and cannot find a job in the “real world.” The latest one I have seen says that Millennials are afraid to handle raw meat. There are many more out there, but I am nod going to drag them out and labor them when the reader can no doubt think of many more for themselves.
The points I do wish to labor follows.
First off, these bashes are usually directed towards the young, in general, where more than one identified generation currently exists. The Millennial is not just anyone who is young. The general birth dates in which Millennials fall are roughly the 1980’s to the year 2000. There are differing dates depending on who is cited. They are the generation after Generation X, and are also known as Generation Y, or The New Boomers, or Echo Boomers. I like to think of them as “Generation Why?” They have dared to ask why things are the way they are. The people coming after Generation Y are called Gen Z, or iGen. There is a long article on Wikipedia to help with defining what a Millennial is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials
The point I want to come to is this: The bashing of the generation after is nothing new. It is an old and story-less tradition that is carried along from generation to generation, and its hallmarks are the deriding of the new generation because of how easy they have it compared to the old generation because of the technology invented during the reign of the older generation, or due to the shifting attitudes of the new. I see my generation doing it to them Millennials, even though most people of my generation have limited access to the Millennials. When I was a kid, my generation was told to get a haircut, lose the earring, and get a job. We were told how easy we had it because they had to do math in their heads rather than use a fancy pocket calculator. And if any of us paid attention, we heard them say that when they were kids, they were told how easy they had it because of clothes washers and automobiles. They were told of how the generation before them HAD to make due or do without. “Buy it once and wear it out. Make it do, or do without,” was a Depression Era maxim. For as long back as can be found, people of the newer generation was rode down by the generation before them.
What I find depressing is that it has changed from something your mom or dad would yell at you, or what you might hear from an old man sat at a bus stop to cyber-bullying. Now the cries of the old generation get yelled into the ether via memes that spread across social media. Likely, the Millennials will do the same to the generations that follow them, after all, they have not been taught any better.
But who knows? Gen X has done a lot to stop dads reaching for the belt every time his child is in trouble, and a lot towards equality between the sexes, though there is still a lot of progress to be made on both accounts. Perhaps as the new generations leave the old customs behind, they will drop intergenerational bashing as well, and come to realize that no matter our ages, we are all in life a short time before we hand it all over to those who follow us, and they are going to pick it up as we left it and do the best they can with it. That is certainly what my generation has done. Perhaps we can do just a little bit better in the future?
As generations change, our very culture changes. The America of today is nothing like it was in 1900, or 1950, or 1990. It is changing under our feet. We either move our feet and keep up, or we fall down. I don’t expect my kids to fall down. And when my kids have come to me with the counter excuse “Oh come on, you did this when you were a kid,” I have merrily told them that I have every right as a parent to expect a better life for my kids than the one I had. Things change. That always stays the same. So I say, encourage them, don’t bash them for keeping up with the change. Don’t bash them for getting along in the world you have handed them
This truncated bitch-fest has been brought to you by,
Kelsey J Bacon