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I stopped hating my generation (born 1983, so I'm just barely a Millennial rather than an Xer) when I stepped back and looked at the picture in its totality and

I stopped hating my generation (born 1983, so I'm just barely a Millennial rather than an Xer) when I stepped back and looked at the picture in its totality and realized that we looked bad because (except in athletics, where objective genetic talent rules the day and rich parents or producers alone can't make a career) most of the prominent Millennials were produced by the worst of the Baby Boom generation. First of all, authoritarian leftism isn't new. The ex-leftist neoconservatives of 2003 who got us into the Iraq War? They weren't the civil rights activists or the hippies. They weren't the ones fighting for desegreation or womens' or gay rights activists. Rather, those people were the communists, Stalin-defenders in the 60s, the left-wing authoritarians who swung right when they were older and richer. It's not really a loss that they went from left to right in the Reagan Era, as they were assholes the whole time. Anyway, someone being a jerk on Twitter is not the same thing as what the Weather Underground was up to. For good and bad, we're pretty moderate in comparison to the Baby Boomers. I stopped hating Millennials when I realized that the worst of us are products created by the worst of the exiting generations. You can find anything in any generation, so one bad apple (or few) says little about the generation and much more about those who endeavored to find it. And a young generation will be defined, when it is young, based on the uses that older generations find for it. Evan Spiegel? Lucas Duplan? Miley Cyrus? Justin Bieber? Lena Dunham? They're detestable, but they reflect on their producers, the ones who made their careers, and not on "our generation" in any meaningful way. If you look at the currently small-- and it's small not because we suck but because we're still young and most of us haven't had a chance to get started yet-- percentage (in the arts and business) of prominent Millennials who are actually self-made, the picture is a lot more flattering.

CPLX 11y ago
> Evan Spiegel? Lucas Duplan? Miley Cyrus? Justin Bieber? Lena Dunham? They're detestable, but they reflect on their producers, the ones who made their careers, and not on "our generation" in any meaningful way. I'm with you otherwise but this line of reasoning is pretty dubious, a sort of counting the hits and not the misses approach. It doesn't reduce well. If we blame the boomers for "producing" millennials why can't we just turn around and blame the prehistoric Madison Avenue types that produced the boomers[0], and so on and so forth. [0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Conquest-Cool-Counterculture-Consumerism/dp/0226260127 http://www.amazon.com/The-Conquest-Cool-Counterculture-Consu...
- michaelochurch 11y ago
  My point is that a large percentage of the people who are prominent right now are the ones who had lift from the worst of older generations. They're not reflective of the generation as a whole, or what we will be when some of us actually get into real power. Right now, the oldest Millennials are 33. In 15 years, it will be different.
  - CPLX 11y ago
    Perhaps, I suppose we'll have to see. One could also make the argument that these guys who are becoming billionaires will only spawn whole cottage industries of metastasized douchebaggery in 15 years (ala Peter Thiel) but I'll concede it's possible that there's a pending cultural shift that will dwarf all this just over the horizon.
mauricemir 11y ago
Leftists ROTFL all those baby boomer liberals are Centre Right - Social Democrats at Best.
AwesomeGriffin 11y ago
> Rather, those people were the communists, Stalin-defenders in the 60s I think you'll find a lot of them were rather Trotsyists rather than Stalinists[1] which made the leap to the right during Reagan's early anti-USSR years somewhat easier as they had a long term hatred of the (post-Stalin) Soviet Union. But yes, they were still assholes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

CPLX 11y ago

> Evan Spiegel? Lucas Duplan? Miley Cyrus? Justin Bieber? Lena Dunham? They're detestable, but they reflect on their producers, the ones who made their careers, and not on "our generation" in any meaningful way. I'm with you otherwise but this line of reasoning is pretty dubious, a sort of counting the hits and not the misses approach. It doesn't reduce well. If we blame the boomers for "producing" millennials why can't we just turn around and blame the prehistoric Madison Avenue types that produced the boomers[0], and so on and so forth. [0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Conquest-Cool-Counterculture-Consumerism/dp/0226260127 http://www.amazon.com/The-Conquest-Cool-Counterculture-Consu...

michaelochurch 11y ago
My point is that a large percentage of the people who are prominent right now are the ones who had lift from the worst of older generations. They're not reflective of the generation as a whole, or what we will be when some of us actually get into real power. Right now, the oldest Millennials are 33. In 15 years, it will be different.
- CPLX 11y ago
  Perhaps, I suppose we'll have to see. One could also make the argument that these guys who are becoming billionaires will only spawn whole cottage industries of metastasized douchebaggery in 15 years (ala Peter Thiel) but I'll concede it's possible that there's a pending cultural shift that will dwarf all this just over the horizon.

mauricemir 11y ago

Leftists ROTFL all those baby boomer liberals are Centre Right - Social Democrats at Best.

AwesomeGriffin 11y ago

> Rather, those people were the communists, Stalin-defenders in the 60s I think you'll find a lot of them were rather Trotsyists rather than Stalinists[1] which made the leap to the right during Reagan's early anti-USSR years somewhat easier as they had a long term hatred of the (post-Stalin) Soviet Union. But yes, they were still assholes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism