Tuesday, July 28, 2009

A Light-hearted Look at the Millennial Hype

In the Millenials Guide to Millenial Guides, Dan Macsai (a millennial) pokes fun at the plethora of books that purport to explain this apparently complex and unique generation. According to Macsai, "by and large, these books are long, boring and peppered with irritating half-truths. In Trophy Kids, for example, there's a whole page dedicated to deciphering text-message lingo, replete with acronyms like "CRBT" (crying really big tears) and "FOMC" (falling off my chair)--none of which I have ever sent, received, or heard anyone say. And in Generation Me, Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D., posits that the 1994 movie Clerks is "a pretty accurate illustration of how young people talk, with about two swear words in every line." Gimme a f***ing break."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What I have always found most interesting about Millennial experts is that they always seem to be between the ages of 45-60. Especially regarding generational expertise as opposed to someone studying biology it would seem very difficult for someone outside of that age range to truly understand what is going on. I for one (as a 25 year old) could never claim that I can get inside the minds of five year olds (who are the start of the next generation). Yet this is precisely what the experts try to do.

Also as Tammy Erickson points out in her book, many of the surveys comparing the attitudes of the Millennial generation to previous generations do not take into account the changing definitions of the words on the surveys. As a result certain statements that had a negative stigma to Baby Boomers are now much more positive to Millennials, causing a skewing of the results.