Millennials

Saturday

Peter Savodnik

How the West was lost

One feels for the olds who birthed this cancer. They just wanted to placate the youngs. They had no idea they were disemboweling the same institutions they were charged with safeguarding against the idiot-children. The olds, the so-called progressive elites (so-called because they lacked any sense of noblesse oblige), were scared of being ‘on the wrong side of history’. They wanted the youngs — the new radicals — to like them, to follow them on social media. They wanted to hold onto their power, and they were shallow, and they were vulnerable to their own spinelessness. Blinded by it.

hate

Monday

Will Lloyd

From Cool to Cringe: what’s happened to American culture?

Back in March, around 4,000 years ago, the world was ending. Plague swept in from the east like a horde. Clam-tight lockdowns, unthinkable even days before, were announced everywhere. Who could save us? On March 18 our prayers were answered. An honor roll of Hollywood bluebloods took action. Assembled by Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot, they created a video montage cover of John Lennon’s masterpiece — yes! — ‘Imagine’, which she posted — thank goodness! — on Instagram. ‘We’re all in this together,’ said Gadot’s expensive oval face, and, in a sense, she was right. Will Ferrell and Mark Ruffalo, Sia and Zoë Kravitz, Norah Jones and Amy Adams: they were all in this big wet bathful of tears together.

cool cringe

Monday

Ben Sixsmith

I hate the Nineties

I’m a Nineties kid. You know what that means: Tamagotchis, Super Mario, Sega, primitive cell phones, slap bracelets, skateboarding, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, David Koresh, scooters, Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, the Spice Girls, the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the Nato bombing of Sarajevo, Pokémon!, Blink-182, Bill Clinton, Friends and the friends of Bill Clinton. What a decade! Only Nineties kids will understand it. And as even Nineties kids grow up, Nineties nostalgia is now big business. Everyone from the Spice Girls to Smashing Pumpkins has launched comeback tours on a rising tide of misty-eyed affection. McDonald’s brought back Tamagotchis and Furbys and other veteran Happy Meal toys. Friends is set to make a highly profitable return.

nineties

Thursday

Meghan Murphy

Millennials will be the death of us

It turns out millennials are the worst generation after all. By now, we should all be well aware that social distancing is crucial if we wish to end the coronavirus pandemic anytime soon. Many of us have responded accordingly — if not already forced to close by state mandate, bars, restaurants, and other employers have determined nipping the virus in the bud outweighs the financial cost of shutting down their businesses. Events and shows have been canceled around the world, and most schools are closed through the semester. No one is thrilled about it, but there is one group that seems to be handling the disruptions to their lives with less decorum than others: millennials. 'May as well enjoy it before everything gets shut down,' one spring breaker toldFox News on Tuesday.

Miami spring break millenials

Wednesday

Jarvis Dupont

‘OK boomer’ is the most important meme of my generation

‘What the fuck is that on your head?’ a repulsive white man called out to me from a shop doorway as I crossed the street towards him. He was standing with a couple of other men. All white. All of them in their thirties at least. Wishing to remain civil, I graciously replied, ‘It’s a top-knot, or semi man-bun. First implemented as a popular hairstyle in Japan during the Edo period.’ The uncultured wretches all scoffed visibly at this enlightening nugget of education I had gifted to them with no request for recompense. ‘Haha this hipster prick thinks he’s the fucking Karate Kid!’ retorted one of them as the rest mocked and jeered. I winced inwardly at his foolish statement.

boomer

Tuesday

Caroline McCarthy

Spare me, Generation X: you’re not that special

A sprawling New York Times feature package this week showcases essays, photos, and snippets of nostalgia that all amount to the declaration ‘This Gen X Mess.’ One of the declarations in one of the essays is that ‘it’s easy to decide that Gen X is culturally irrelevant.’ Who actually thinks that? I was born in the mid-1980s and I’ve been sick of hearing Gen-X talk about itself and its place in history ever since I grew old enough to date men born in the Seventies without it being gross and creepy. To backtrack a bit, the events of my birth toss me squarely into the elder bracket of ‘millennials,’ you know, that overexposed generation of helicopter-parented, selfie-snapping, Adderall-addled ‘digital natives.

generation x

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

Millennials aren’t taking offence. They’re hunting for victims

In a recent column, I vowed to return to a point made in passing. To refresh your memory, the American magazine the Nation printed a formal apology for running a harmless 14-line poem by a white writer about homelessness. The poet’s sins: using the word ‘cripple’ and adopting a voice lightly evoking what I gather we’re now to call ‘AAVE’: African-American Vernacular English. Facebookers were incensed, comments huffy. The poet apologised, too. I decried this ritual progressive self-abasement as cowardly and undignified. But it’s worth taking a second look at that story as a prime example of screaming emotional fraudulence in the public sphere.

antifa snowflakes millennials