Millennials...

Deleted User wrote: »

In your experience, what are the characteristics of the typical Millenial?

Anybody that annoys people over the age of 35.

I hate the word Millenials

Millennial Traits: Anything that people born in the preceding forty years had levied against them by their elders until they had a succeeding generation to annoy.

I find that many of them have a chronic lack of responsibility. If they do something wrong at work, it's a shrug of the shoulders. If they screw up in life, same thing...although if they perceive the slightest wrong to them, it's drama and strops all round. Just an inability to perform simple tasks. I think this may be down to them being the children of baby boomers, and treated in a way that other generations before had not experienced.

Many Millennials are so desperate for work that they will give absolutely 110% for fear of losing said job and being reliant on the dole. They grew up in an easier era than the one they're working in and, same with any other group, it's adapt or perish.

An obsession with looks, physique, appearance. See the way gyms now focus on the body rather than training to run faster and lift more, or simple athleticism, and there are suggestions that steroid use is frequent. We live in an era when some people actually look to the likes of Roz Purcell for advice. Scary. Presumably linked to use of social media where images are so crucial to communication. Can us Gen Xers imagine the laughter if you went into school with pics of your lunch and a dozen selfies every day?

http://www.anabolicsteroids.net/steroids-in-sports.php

Bear in mind that with the eternal movement of the medical industry and research, there are always more dubious things to try, and also more things being banned, sometimes retroactively (or at least, banning them, and holdovers from when it was legal may still be present in the body when tested). Increased testing and more high-tech testing also reveals things accidentally ingested that likely would not have shown up before.

Also, I guarentee if GenXers had phones, they'd have done the same :P We're a narcissistic species!

An inability to accept criticism or challenge. I had one person at the upper end of the Millenial age range recently get very annoyed at my dismissal of the gluten free fad, and say I had just told her that her parents, siblings and everyone she knew was suffering from a fad. I pointed out that the prevalence suggested both self diagnosis and over diagnosis. Cue amusing tantrum and silence. Again, probably linked to their being the children of doting baby boomers.

I'm sure much the same was said about lactose intolerance. I screamed solidly for about eighteen months after I was born and no-one could figure out why this baby was so permanently enraged. In retrospect and looking at family history, it would appear I was reacting to lactose and the accompanying pain and making my feelings very much known about it! But lactose intolerance wasn't well understood back then.

Same side of the family also tends towards gluten intolerance and while the numbers of people with that intolerance are likely nowhere near as great as the amount who think they are, to dismiss the people who have gone off gluten and subsequently had less bloating, less pain, less discomfort after eating is a bit silly just because there are also some that buy into a fad.

Also, no-one reacts well to it being implied they're a blind and gullible idiot!

On the plus side, they are generally more liberal and tolerant than preceding generations...though Gen Xers may argue that they were the generation where taboos were really smashed.

Now, yes, this is true, but again, not by a huge margin. As you point out, it was the hippy generation that really started off the tolerance kick. And many Millennials are now turning more conservative and right-wing, due to the influence of the world they live in.

We go through boom and bust periods in advancing our society in how we deal with others, linked far more strongly to stability and wealth than strict generational bias, but there is a long-term trend to more openness and more tolerance. So this one is hardly surprising, and doesn't really speak positively or negatively about Millennials.

TLDR: People is people. Nothing you've shown is unique to the "Millennials" and the mere difference of being born in 1979 rather than 1980 makes far less difference than personal circumstances growing up.

Lollipops23 wrote: »

Basically Millenials are the generation who didn't get to reap the benefits of the Celtic Tiger, but who will be cleaning up its mess for decades to come.

Thanks for that, Generation X.

Those are some old gen x people. Oh the stories Bertie Ahern and Sean Fitzpatrick could tell about attending The Prodigy gigs in the 90s.

This seems to be a real hobby horse of yours. Running down "millenials" won't make you any younger, I'm afraid.

We had a guest speaker at work recently, who gave a very funny and insightful talk on the whole generation thing.

For reference, here's a quick guide to the generations (it's a subjective opinion)

Greatest Generation. These are the people that fought and died in World War II for our freedom, which we appreciate. But it's a little over-the-top as far as names go, isn't it? Tom Brokaw made the name up and of course everyone loved it. What, you're going to argue with your grandfather that he isn't in the greatest generation? The generation ended when the war ended.

Baby Boomers. This is the agreed-upon generation that falls within DiPrete's punctuated timeframe. It began when the Greatest Generation got home and started having sex with everyone; it ended when having sex with everyone was made easier with The Pill.

Generation X. George Masnick, of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies puts this generation in the timeframe of 1965 to 1984, in part because it's a neat 20-year period.

Generation Y. Masnick addresses this group, too, putting it "anywhere from the mid-1970s when the oldest were born to the mid-2000s when the youngest were." But mostly Generation Y is a made-up generation when it became obvious that young kids didn't really fit with the cool Generation X aesthetic but not enough of them had been born to make a new generation designation. NOTE: Generation Y is a fake, made-up thing. Do not worry about it.

Millennials. In October 2004, researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss called Millennials "the next great generation," which is funny. They define the group as "as those born in 1982 and approximately the 20 years thereafter." In 2012, they affixed the end point as 2004.

I'm Gen X technically myself, but as I'm getting older, Im seeing a lot more of the "millenial" generation at work. And yes, they do work differently. No doubt about it.

There are pros & cons to that. On the plus side, I find them quite ambitious and driven, very energetic and interested in social responsibility. Areas of improvement that I see could include having more realistic expectations, better written English skills and an ability to better absorb constructive criticism.

I'm sure that back in the day, some Baby Boomer was making similar comments about my generation.

Lollipops23 wrote: »

Basically Millenials are the generation who didn't get to reap the benefits of the Celtic Tiger, but who will be cleaning up its mess for decades to come.

Thanks for that, Generation X.

Everybody sorts out somebody else's mess. We sorted out the ozone layer and the church.

Get over yourself and get paying.

It won't just be us paying it off- our kids and probably grandkids paying for the CT mess, long after those who defaulted on their mortgages are dead and gone. At least they got to experience some of the fun.