Good morning John
A few weeks ago I was on an airplane
sitting next to a young woman, maybe 23 years old
Over the course of the flight, talking to her, I discovered that she does this flight a lot
And the last two years, she has taken this same flight a hundred and fifty times.
She didn't like the flying, she did it for her job and her job...
she didn´t seem to like that much either
But she'd gotten a degree, so that she could get a good job and it had worked
and now she is working in a company where there are opportunities for advancement
But not unless you have more than five years of experience
and as miserable as spending this much time in the middle seat in coach sounds to me,
she was fine, she was happy, she was working her butt off doing a job that she didn't find that interesting, but she wanted a good life and she was willing to wait for it.
John I present to you: an American millennial
Universally ridiculed as entitled and self-centered
But in fact understanding the world in deeply different ways than previous generations
with new and unique pressures on their identity
and tasked with dealing with problems unlike anything our economy, and our country, and our world has ever seen.
During this week's recording of "Dear Hank and John" you told me
about an article you wrote for the World Economic Forum
Entitled "Why the Word Millennial Makes me Cringe", and I immediately ran to
go read that article as soon as we were done recording
because yeah, the word "millennial" totally
makes me cringe. Among a ton of good points you make
in this article, you mentioned that the word "millennial"
was not assigned to themselves by themselves.
It was assigned by baby boomers.
It was then later popularized
in articles and op-eds by other people who weren't millennials
that generally did one of three things
One: made sweeping generalizations about the most diverse group of young people in American history
Two: complained that a young person
was acting in a way that they did not expect them to
or three: gave other generations anxiety
about what these unknowable snake people are doing to America
so basically
one group of people created a term for another group of people
and then used that term
to talk about how scary they were and belittle them
and make fun of them
yeah, that's gonna make some people cringe
of course the original definition of millenial
the creation of the word
it was separate from all of this other like
let's use that term now to talk about how weird young people are
but it does not change that it's happened
and continues to happen
and it's a ah god
there may have been a time
when America was homogenous enough
to intelligibly talk about generational trends
but I think that time has kind of passed
like the idea that millennials are the first generation to have grown up with the internet
blindly ignores the fact that there are still
young people in America who don't have access to the internet
and in general these conversations tend to
replace the reality of the "young American"
with like "the kind of young American
that people who have opinions professionally tend to interact with"
all of this kind of makes me cringe a little bit
but additionally
we so rarely talk about the actual challenges
that young people in America face right now
both practically and existentially
many young people these days have been told
that in order to be valuable these days
they need to be everything
they need to not just find a good job
but to find a good job that is also extraordinarily impactful and meaningful
and while they're doing that
they might as well also find themselves in a perfect relationship
and eat ethically
and become a homeowner
and pay off their student loans
now I don't want to be mad at anybody for any of these things
I'm happy to cringe
but for the most part
these people are just trying to get clicks
'cause when it comes down to it, previous generations worked really hard
to make life better for me
than it was for them
and I really do believe that's the case
whether that's the fact that gay people can get married
or that I can get all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and the rest of Netflix for just $7.99 per month
or that cars are much less likely to kill people now
but while solving problems
they also created problems
and also just put a tremendous amount of pressure
on the upcoming generation
to expect more of themselves
and of their lives
that's not the easiest thing to deal with
not least with things not turning out as planned
and it's very strange to me
that one of the chief complaints of the older generation
this generation that worked so hard to make life easier for their kids
is that young people these days
have it too easy
especially when it's increasingly clear that they don't
John, I'll see you on Tuesday