After calling foul about 'ageism" in the United States because Democrat governor Jerry Brown was deemed too old at 76 to run for President in the upcoming 2016 election, Bill Maher claims the culture is giving undo entitlement to younger generations. He counters this by claiming that Millennials should be called "Generation Ass" and that "They're all hooked on crack." In all seriousness, though. Maher sets very clear boundaries between the generations' domains: "You are beautiful when you're young, and you're wise when you're old". Not objectifying at all. "The best part of Maher’s rant is the new asshole he tears millennials for thinking, foolishly, that the world is theirs and theirs alone. The core of this rant is about the “cultural trend” of booty, from Instagram selfies to Nikki Minja to dat ass dat ass dat ass memes on Reddit."
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Jesse Singal addresses the stereotype of Millennials in the workplace, citing a trending article written in order to explain why they are inferior to their predecessors: "Because technology! And independence! And coddling parents!" It’s cliché, at this point, to note that (1) every generation loves talking about the shortcomings of “kids these days”; and that (2) when you combine this eternal human tendency with a technological revolution that a lot of older (and not-so-older) folks are still struggling to gain a handle on, you get a lot of excruciatingly bad writing and “analysis.” Still, it’s worth occasionally dipping into the world of stupid anti-millennial trend pieces to understand how easy (and, apparently, profitable!) it is to misrepresent an entire generation and stoke ancient sorts of youth panic.
Today’s specimen comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which earlier today published an extremely silly story story by Seth Abramovitch about how, when it comes to being Hollywood assistants, millennials are far inferior to their predecessors. Why are they inferior, you ask? Because technology! And independence! And coddling parents! Let’s dive right in: Horror stories are traded among the bemused: Have you heard about the assistant's mother who called a power agent to complain about how she was treating her daughter? Or the assistant at a boutique agency who froze when his boss asked him to print a script? (He'd only ever seen them in PDF format.) That assistant’s mother sounds terrible. Those damn overbearing Gen X-ers! As for the assistant who had never seen a printer (?), maybe you shouldn’t hire someone who lacks the technical expertise of a moderately intelligent toddler? Naturally, the story then broadens out into an examination of how kids “just don’t get it”: "They don't get the whole 'I'm here to take care of your every need' mentality," says Josh Green, vp business affairs at Sony Music, of the current crop of assistants. "They gossip, play on Twitter and Facebook and IM all day. They'll do what's asked but never anticipate their bosses' needs." So … fire them? The job market is horrible. I promise, promise, promise there are millennials out there who will eagerly exhibit every bit of the obsequiousness terrible people in Hollywood demand — somehow, despite our alleged inability to do any work without “play[ing] on Twitter and Facebook and IM all day,” we seem to be breaking into the ranks of law and medicine and journalism and quantum-mechanical research just fine. I have a feeling that if you look hard enough, you can find someone willing to tear themselves away from Instagram long enough to find you a soy latte. Don’t blame the generation if you don’t know how to hire a competent human being. Then there’s this towering monument to incoherence: A common complaint is that millennials expect too much, too soon. Having been raised on a steady diet of YouTube, Netflix and other forms of instant gratification, they frequently are shell-shocked by the grueling hours and low pay that awaits them in Hollywood. When Syracuse University grad Yoni Liebling moved to L.A. in 2010 to take a job in CAA's storied mailroom, he admits his expectations were slightly out of whack. "I had that millennial mentality," says Liebling, 27, of those itchy early years. "I thought, 'I'm going to work for it, I want it, thus I should get it.' " It didn't take long for Liebling to realize that Hollywood is the type of place where few low-level people advance "unless you bust your butt." He then proceeded to roll up his sleeves and get to work. Let’s break this down into its gloriously nonsensical constituent parts: Having been raised on a steady diet of YouTube, Netflix and other forms of instant gratification, they frequently are shell-shocked by the grueling hours and low pay that awaits them in Hollywood. “I can watch whatever I want on YouTube; therefore, I don’t see why I should have to work hard,” said no actual person ever, because this doesn’t make any sense. I had that millennial mentality," says Liebling, 27, of those itchy early years. "I thought, 'I'm going to work for it, I want it, thus I should get it.' " It didn't take long for Liebling to realize that Hollywood is the type of place where few low-level people advance "unless you bust your butt." He then proceeded to roll up his sleeves and get to work. Abramovitch’s argument is that millennials don’t understand how important hard work is (because YouTube). As evidence to support this fact, he quotes … a millennial who says he had “that millennial mentality” that hard work is important, and subsequently worked really hard (Liebling, Abramovitch reports, is now assisting a famous producer). Checkmate! And don’t worry, there are more mentions of technology, because technology is a thing that exists and changes stuff and things: [S]avvy assistants — many of whom tend to mimic their bosses' habit of microscheduling everything — make sure to get in a good Googling ahead of time. The more they can glean from Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds, the easier to tell if this drinks date is a potential colleague, competitor or even a casual fling. Yes, millennials invented the concept of researching who someone is before hanging out with them. You’re welcome, world. The rise of Facebook and Instagram has added yet another layer of complexity. Jittery agencies have scrambled to revise social media policies in a bid to ensure that snap-happy assistants are staying on brand, noncontroversial and respectful of their high-powered clients' privacy. Again, what does this have to do with millennials? For thousands of years, humans have been remarkably creative when it comes to finding ways to suck at their jobs. Obviously a given moment's most popular methods of sucking are dependent on things like technology. Why is it that non-millennials have so much difficulty understanding that sometimes people need to be fired, disciplined, or otherwise corrected, and that this perennial truth tells us exactly nothing about their generation writ large? Anyway, I could go on and on, and I’m not meaning to beat up on just one example of a flourishing subgenre (well, I am a little). But these stories get tiresome after a while. There are, of course, rigorous ways to look at generational differences, to figure out how technology is affecting us (it would be silly to assume it isn’t), and so on. But where we could have a substantive discussion, instead we get mostly anecdata-driven incoherent nonsense. I’m so mad about this I’m going to tweet my Instagram Facebook Snapchat, and then call my parents and have them call Abramowitz’s editor. According to Films for Action, the historic Republican landslide the US witnessed this week can be blamed on a very specific demographic - people under 30 who decided to be "cool and hip" and not vote at all. Election 2014 Postmortem: We Fucking Did This To Ourselves by Erin Gloria Ryan Did you vote yesterday? Are you under 30? Well, congratu-fucking-lations. You are among the few and the proud.
Yesterday, Republicans swept to what I'm bound by day-old tradition to refer to as "historic victories," taking the Senate, increasing their majority in the House, and holding fast to most contested governor's races. They even picked up a few surprises—for the first time since 2003, Illinois elected a Republican over incumbent Muppet Pat Quinn, and in Maryland, Republican Larry Hogan upset Anthony Brown (and, one can assume, most of the Democratic Get Out the Vote drive in the state). Wonks insist that this is a referendum on the job that President Obama is doing, or on Obamacare, or on Ebola, on "the economy." "The American people want something new." "The American people want change." Nope. Old white people want change. And they're the ones who get it, because they're the ones who give enough of a shit to vote in midterms. NBC News has some telling (and shameful) data visualization about who votes, and when. This year, 37% of the people who voted were over 60. Only 12% of voters were under 30. Compare that to 2012, when Democrats were the ones celebrating — 19% of the vote came from people under 30 and only 25% from people over 60. In 2010, that gap widened up again; 12% of voters were under 30 and 32% were over 60. In that election, Republicans won big, swinging the House. In 2008, young people showed up, and Democrats won. It's not rocket science. Young people are simply not showing the fuck up when they're not voting for President. And as a result, the people sweeping into other political offices during midterms—from the local level all the way to Capitol Hill—are at best out of touch, and at worst raving lunatics with world views so dangerously antique that they defy parody. Disapproving of the right wing and then electing even fringier right wingers to office is the electoral equivalent of ordering the worst item on the menu and then sending it back because it doesn't have a hair in it. But by not voting, we managed to pull it off! Congratulations, us!Witness Senator-elect Joni Ernst, Iowa's answer to Michele Bachmann, who once sponsored a Personhood bill and says she carries a gun to protect herself from the federal government. This is a woman who got into an exchange with Esquire's Charlie Pierce this week when he pointed out that only one person in the US currently has Ebola. "You're giving me your opinion," shesaid. Melting wax figure Ted Cruz has already taken to cable news to declare that he will not necessarily be supporting human turtle Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader (but will be, as always, supporting Ted Cruz Awareness). Thom Tillis, a cosponsor of North Carolina's "motorcycle vagina bill" is about to be sworn into the Senate for a six-year term. Tea Party favorite Mia Love was elected to office in Utah, becoming Congress's first ever black Republican woman. This is what happens when young people sit out elections. The Tea Party is not dead because we haven't shown up to kill it. Contrary to what the faces of Sad Liberal Cable News Commentators may indicate, it's not all bad; anybody lamenting this country's doom today either has a very short memory or wasn't paying attention to what happened in 2010 and 2012. In recent history, Democrats have benefitted when more people vote, and they've especially benefitted when young people get off their perky asses and assert themselves as citizens. The 2016 election season will be here before we know it, and by then we'll have double the shitshow to be angry about, and they will come out to vote in bigger numbers, and they will likely undo some of what happened last night. But this doesn't mean that young people's binge-purge relationship with democracy is harmless or that what has been done can be fully undone. The Senate, after all, is in charge of confirming federal judges, and with the GOP in charge, they stand to put a dent in the judicial legacy the Obama administration was quietly building. Ruth Bader Ginsburg better not retire or die in the next two years, or her replacement will face a judiciary committee headed by Scalia fans. And don't be surprised if the nuts Grandma elected use their newfound legislative power to impeachPresident Obama. They can do that, now. They can also pass the craziest, most batshit laws that they want, including that 20-week federal abortion ban McConnell said he'd push back in June. They can pass laws until they're blue—or red—in the face, but President Obama doesn't have to sign them, and Republicans don't have a big enough majority to override the President's veto. Politicians from both sides are saying that they'll work to compromise, but history — and well-earned cynicism — dictate that what will probably happen is more of the same, but with new characters. In other words, Congress is going to do even more nothing than they've already been doing, but they're going to be crazier about it. What happened last night might look scary, but it's a disaster of our own making. This is what we get when young people sit on their asses instead of voting—old white people decide who will make laws primarily affecting the much younger, the much browner. We don't have to let the out-of-touch paranoia of the elderly dictate the direction of the country, but we have, over and over, and the damage continues to pile up in our system like poison. A few bright spots: Oregon passed its Equal Rights Amendment and legalized recreational marijuana, DC jumped on the Pot For Fun train as well, and so did Alaskans. Anti-abortion measures failed in both North Dakota and Colorado. And: Scott Brown lost to Jeanne Shaheen, making him the first Senate candidate in US history to lose to two different women. Girl power? NPR has begun a series entitled New Boom, which focuses on Millennials and their impact on society. See more of their articles at npr.org. Articles from that series will be posted frequently on The Millennial Times. ![]() Why You Should Start Taking Millennials Seriously by Selena Simmons-Duffin In the U.S., people born between 1980 and 2000 now outnumber baby boomers, and their numbers are still growing because of immigration. This generation is already shaping American life, and in a series of stories — largely reported by millennials themselves — NPR will explore how this New Boom is transforming the country. There are more millennials in America right now than baby boomers — more than 80 million of us. And I'm gonna go ahead and guess that if you're not a millennial, you kind of hate us. We seem so lazy, so entitled. We still live with our parents. We love our selfies and we're always talking about ourselves. But, here's my case: Millennials have already shaped your life. The Millennial World Let me start with those little screens we're always on: Millennials aren't simply users of social media. We invented it. Mark Zuckerberg, along with the inventors of Instagram and Tumblr and Snapchat, are all millennials and all millionaires. Oh, actually, Zuckerberg is worth billions. Millennials were there first. We picked it out and showed everybody else how to use it. These tools have also transformed some of the most important stories in the news. So we're all already living in a millennial world. It's connected. It's open. And it's diverse. "Forty-three percent of millennials are nonwhite," says Eileen Patten, a research analyst at the Pew Research Center (and a millennial herself). "When we look at older generations — boomers and silents — less than 3 in 10 were nonwhite." Because millennials look different en masse than generations past, the future is going to look different too. They've already led the country to massive shifts in opinion on social issues over the past decade. "They've led the way in terms of same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization — majorities favor both," Patten says. "They support granting citizenship to unauthorized immigrants — about half do — compared with lower shares among the older generations." As a whole, millennials are progressive and accepting. And for all you've heard about crippling student debt, high unemployment, "failure to launch" — we're hopeful. "[Millennials] are optimistic about their financial futures," Patten says. The recession hit when many millennials were at the launch point of their careers. One of them was Ryan Koo. He got a bachelor of arts studying film in 2003, and got a job working at MTV in New York City. "I got laid off along with 700 other people on the same day at the end of 2008," he says. So he moved home to Durham, N.C., and tried something else. "I started No Film School just as a personal blog," Koo says. "My startup costs were like $600 I think." Today the ads pay his New York rent. He raised $125,000 on Kickstarter for his first feature film and got grants from more old-school places like Tribeca and Sundance. Koo is one of many millennials who feel like they can make something happen for themselves. "Thirty-two percent say they currently earn enough to lead the kind of life they want. And 53 percent say they don't, but they think they will in the future," Patten says. That includes the millions of millennials who are still in school, including Kyla Marrkand. She's a high school senior at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C. She knows all about the tough economy and she's realistic, but she believes it's going to go well for her. "Everybody doesn't have the drive," she says. "I have the drive." The New Boom We millennials have drive. We are optimistic. There are more than 80 million of us. Which is why the millennials at NPR are reporting on our own generation for a series we're calling #NewBoom. We won't be rehashing stereotypes. We won't be dismissive or flip. Because if we — millennials and nonmillennials alike — are going to understand the future of the country, we need to understand this generation. Millennials have already steered the country to a place where diplomats tweet, gay marriage is turning mainstream, and running a blog can be more financially secure than a company gig. If we've done all that before 35, get ready. |