I’ve hated being a Millennial ever since the stupid avocado toast days. I’ve been pretty vocal about my dislike of profiling generations, I know everyone is probably getting tired of me ranting about it. I see it as useful for knowing what environment people have likely grown up in and that’s about it. It’s very obviously often weaponised as a way to divide people and I’ve always tried to ignore the discourse (despite probably annoying you all by ranting about it constantly in a “Jesus Dort just get off the internet and go get some help” kind of way)
But now Millennials are getting older and it feel like we’re only getting more and more hate. We’re being remembered by everyone, young and old, as failures who accomplished nothing. Nothing we did mattered, and nothing we do now will ever be acknowledged as ours because in the eyes of society our time is over. It feels like the world is like “Oh thank god those losers don’t matter any more, see how much better at life the next generation is? Zoomers are directing Hollywood hits at age 20!” like I want to be happy for them but at the same time I can’t help but feel like when my generation did/does shit like that no one went/goes “Wow! Look at what Millennials accomplished!” I feel like the only time anyone ever spoke/speaks about us is to complain about how much we suck. Anything good we do/did gets ignored and only our flaws ever get acknowledged.
It really gets me down for some reason, maybe it’s RSD, a mid-life crisis, maybe I’m just weak, who knows? I feel like we weren’t given the chances others were and given yet we’re judged for it like it was our fault.
Anyway this is the last I’ll ever say about it because it’s embarrassing to be whining like a victim in my 30s and this site isn’t a mental health service. I just feel like I’m part of a generation whose life is over before it got a chance to begin and I never got a say in it. Like nothing I do now matters.
Posting this in the neurodiverse comm because I’m pretty sure my feelings are the result of… something, whether it’s the aforementioned RSD from my AuDHD, some kind of trauma or just middle age around the corner making me existential, I don’t know. Maybe all three.
Fully understand if mods decide to delete this for being too much
One piece of this I think about is how the generation before us millennials (boomers) keep redefining what adult and youth means. A friend of mine recently applied to a “youth support grant” that was open to people 39 years old and under. Ten years ago a similar grant open for youths would have been for those 30 and under. I look forward to next call when youth will be 50 and under in a few years.
The boomers are holding on to the social title of adult, which means that the rest of us are defined as perpetual children. This is not good for mental health. But of course it makes sense when so few of us do the “adult” things like own homes or have pensions or careers.
You know, there was actually…oh well, whatever, nevermind.
Hahaha was going to say similar. If there’s a gen that gets shit on for “failing” its Gen X the “slacker” gen, and the fact that we jump straight from boomer to millennial sorta highlights that. No shade on the Gen X’s. Anything people say a generation failed at is not realistically that cohorts fault, just like millennials spanning the end of growth, 9/11 forever wars and multiple financial debacles isn’t our fault.
Also everything is still being run by boomers, so it’s still their fault and until they die off it’ll stay that way. I guess some of the evil billionaires are technically Gen X, but whatever. The country aint being run my millennials yet.
I’m less inclined to cut my fellow Xers slack. I can almost forgive boomers their ignorance, things just were the way they were for decades, and by the time they started really changing, they were old and set in their ways. Xers, even the ones that managed to snatch something for themselves before things got too shitty, saw what was happening in real time while they were still young enough to understand. Xers, especially the younger ones, that give millennials or later generations shit suck worse than boomers.
Yeah, that’s why I specified boomers – because they are the ones defining these things. I didn’t intend to leave out GenX entirely, but, well, they don’t fit into this narrative. I guess they do, as the older siblings of the controlling parents
Older siblings of controlling parents LOL. But yeah agreed.